 Morning folks. It's nice and warming warm and balmy down here in South Dakota. I like it Getting to the point. I'm tired of my snowblower and he's another oil changer ready. I changed last fall I don't know if you guys have gotten a bunch of snow or not, but Okay All right, so There's some really cool signs up here and this type of stuff why healthy soil when the rain comes where your soil Be ready unlock your farm's potential. I really like what's on those signs decreasing input costs protecting against drought How do you manage for that? And I'll say the same thing about this definition the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem That sustains plants animals and humans. That's a beautiful description, but I don't know how to put that on to the far Okay, now I don't have anything wrong with that But I just think it's really hard to deal with it So I'm gonna talk about some low-hanging fruit some things that I think Are some goals that a person should use when you're trying to use cover crops as a tool Yes, I think cover crops are a really good tool. I think they're an important tool And up here is some of my goals that we use in North Dakota. This is what your neighbors are working with Erosion too much water not enough water. I always tell people every year we have a flood and a drought same year Anybody have that kind of thing going on? Yeah, okay a little bit of salt You know, maybe you don't have salinity, but I bet your neighbors do And then a few weed problems that we're dealing with we're using cover crops for part of the system in all of this So I want to convince you first of all that we still have problems But we still have significant problems Okay, that's that's your grazing stick from South Dakota I stole that from you guys and I just stuck it in the in the dirt there and she's standing on her own That's the second wire of the bob wire fence. It's leaning up against this This sand was blown 200 yards out into the neighbor's field and this is the field that we work on came from the other guy And it was all sand right? Because all the clay and all the silt floats away So there were six to eight inches of sand here along this border We also inherited pigweed lambs quarters of nightshade, you know this idea that the dirty 30s We're the only time that we had significant wind erosion It's a false so it It continues every day 35 mile an hour and that was easy to get I just held it up and took a picture the gusting was up to 40 I didn't wait for it And guys will say well no till help you with that both sides of the road here no till soybeans Both sides of the road There's no residue left right you guys know this there's nothing to hold that soil in and away it goes This was a year ago production wise this still happens and it happens a lot Anybody know this one snirt Yeah, I was up in Canada PEI here not too long ago and they got red dirt. There's just a different color They still have snirt same thing How about where we farmed and where we haven't farmed Right and the grower I'm working for in this picture has actually never been tillage. This has done a long time ago But it still continues to happen. Here's your a layer. Here's your B layer. We're down into C layer Again, no till-soil being grown after a heavy rain event Here's another one at the bottom of a hill you could park my f-150 in there and everybody says that's a good place for a forward I don't know if that's true or not But you could park it in there not see it And this is in the middle of the field So this is in a very inconvenient place to go around and cut around so what does the farmer do? anybody know Pouser shot pushes in the good snow your goods not snow but soil into this and it washes out again next year Right because there's a flood in a drought every year. This is not snow So I showed you my snow my snow is black and my soils are white Something's a little upside down with that, right Now this these of course are the horrific pictures, but this exists and this picture is not hard to get Look at this picture in April and It's mostly Gypsum and some egg sulfate that kind of thing. It's at least two inches thick Surround all the slews some of the road ditches and some of those areas where water sits too long, right? Anybody seen salts? Solidity in this neighborhood two 81 quarters kind of famous for it, right? Just in the right area for it Here's what it looks like from the air in a different field This is a drone picture from this year. This is in mid-June and that's a soybean field You like the canopy control the weeds we have there guys How about the yield potential in here? How about this one so what I'm trying to do is convince you that your neighbors have a problem in North Dakota These things still happen these things are still going on. These are this year's pictures Because it's a lot easier to look at your neighbor and say boy. He's really doing something wrong What I want you to do here is leave here and think about Your fields in a different light look at them in a different way look for some of these problems some these low-hanging fruit Because folks even though so it means my pencil in the black on this field He's not making money is he because you can't just take your average yield and Put it in those acres. So these are the acres. I tell you to fire fire these acres And what does that mean now if you had an employee that came every Friday collected is checking every summer this week Would he still work there? I hope not But it's basically what these acres doing right gets its check up front gets a seed gets a fertilizer gets a spray It's all your inputs up front and gives you nothing in the end It's a fire that acre I've growers argue with me, but I'm paying rent on it. Okay. Well, they make that's your only debt Save all of your input costs Do something else when you got the hired man it wraps your your planter around the telephone poles You take them out of the planter. Don't you we'll take this out of soybean productions what I'm telling you to do You maybe you give that guy a broom Okay, that's what I'm telling you to give this a broom fire those acres and do something different with them Anybody have this guy? North Dakota lost its mind this year when we found Palmer Amaranth Found 20 some plants and we lost our mind. This is a terrible horrible nasty weed These pictures of water him in North Dakota That's a bad weed too and we've been ignoring it largely The other one we've ignored is this one. This is the one I call job security This is Kosha This is my friend. He will keep me in business till I want to quit for sure He's resistant to glyphosate. He's resistant to all ALS chemicals Dicamba's not doing the job The star anes not doing the job And this is a grower who Decided that I didn't know what I was talking about as far as resistance goes. So he decided he was going to prove me wrong Two gallons per acre around up in eight gallons of water sprayed at 10 gba You heard me Two two gallons around up per acre Now he got the neighbor and this guy and this guy over here, but this one and this one and that one So now what happens the next time we have Kosha in this field It's worse Exactly There's a couple of definitions for more on All right Here's what happens when you let that go This is barley planted into this field. This is a quarter section to one of my growers picked up for cheap Because the guy had been farming it before planted soybeans and then the year after that he planted soybeans Let me think what he plant. Yeah soybeans And what was in that soybeans again? Yeah, that's right Because they were penciling good on the paper And they were the cheaper ones. They were glyphosate and he was in a tight spot and preys are expensive and Different management's expensive And 138 acres 32 of them are harvested that fall He decided there was something wrong with that land and sold it My grower having more faith in me than he should have bought it And said you can fix that can't you? I don't know that's solid kosha folks and that's that same kind of kosha. I was just talking about Luckily for us kosha is only three years or so in the soil. We're able to change the cropping system Uh, most of the seed dies off after that and we purposely tried to get as much of it to grow as we possibly could every year to hit it hard But He was mad at me. He's like, I'm not making any money in that field. I said you're in a reclamation project, sir Now this is a picture I showed to people and I see this all the time Hopefully I never would see this in South Dakota, but I've fortunately have seen it Anybody want to put a combine through that? This picture is taken in august. So the kosha's gone to seed My question is why if you know, you're not going to combine that Why did the kosha go to seed and the grower says to me? Well, I did everything I could I spray everything I could on it That's not everything you can do. That's not even close Mow that off Get rid of it Don't let it go to seed Faith and dicamba. This was two years ago There's the dead ones. There's the live ones 14 days folks dicamba works in five Keep it in mind. I'm not saying that they're bad tools I'm just saying don't hang your hand on them Okay, so that's why I'm talking about cover crops as tools because there's something else in your toolbox Now a few things I want to talk about And this is the point when slide that people tend to argue with me. That's cool. That's fine. This is just my opinion My experiences what I've seen Trust the science now. I'm going to give you a bunch of anecdotal stuff I'm going to talk about what I've seen but I do a lot of science reading I've done a lot of work learning about science and I stick with it. Good science will lead you in the right direction be careful with experts Including bald headed bearded guys from North Dakota Just because I think it works for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you Right, this is all tailored. Every one of your farms and ranches is different What you're trying to do what your goals are where you're trying to get what works for you What makes sense for you is all different. I'm trying to give you some ideas Take them morph them try them try new ideas try other ideas Make them fit in your farm. That's what I'm trying to do So that's what I'm saying about don't worry about the rules the rules the guidelines I like the five guidelines for soil health. I like them But if you have to bend them a little bit to get them to fit Goal for it. I'll take progress. Okay, if you're moving in the right direction If you're taking on these challenges of erosion water management Solidity and weeds like we are sometimes we got to bend the rules a little bit and that's all right The other thing I'll say is I don't think agriculture is the same thing as nature This is one I get a lot of argument on that's fine But in my opinion agriculture is about producing as much food for one species as you possibly can right That's not really how I think nature works Lots of things feed on an anchor in nature Okay, so keep that in mind I don't think they're the same thing And I'll even go so far as to say I'm not sure that there are pests in nature Because if that's true, I'm a pesta beef cattle because I will kill them and eat them You see my point The other thing I'll say and and again you can argue with this. I don't think your A student needs a tutor If your A student's already getting 94 94 percent in the class and you hire a tutor for 100 bucks a month and they get a 95 Are you jumping up and down? Are you excited? How about timmy who's getting a D? Right 100 bucks may bring him up to a C. I'm jumping up and down now So my point is those acres that you fired and we're going to give them a broom Let's give them the tutor. Let's work on them. Let's work on those. They've got the biggest potential for gain Start there The other thing is you've got very little potential for loss Right if it's given you nothing back, what are you out? Just your expenses And then remember it takes time I've heard a few farmers that are really good soil health farmers talk about they wish they'd have done a lot more At the beginning and maybe that's true But i've seen more guys fail trying to do more at the beginning And a point here is like in like I said I was in canada and those kids are born with hockey skates on And you should see the kind of gear they can buy them You can buy $5,000 worth of gear for a six-year-old no problem Now you put him on the rink with a 20 year old Do you think he's going to be able to compete? What's the difference? Same gear probably better gear on the six-year-old be honest with you 20 year old drink a beer. He's not spending money on gear The difference is practice in time Time it takes time for you to learn the skills you need To change your management It also takes time for your soils to adapt to your management And biology will adapt to your management. It takes time This is the same thing i'll say again the hockey thing your professional hockey player You put him on the baseball team. Is he ready to go? He's not even close. Well, he's in condition He's got good muscle mass lifts weights every day got good hand-eye coordination, but it's a different sport, right? So i'm going to say the same thing for you folks. You are good farmers You know what you're doing You have learned the skills that it takes to run your system You change your system You're going to need some different skills Okay Keep that in mind and it takes a little time to acquire them not near as much time as it does from the ground up But if you're going to move into no till that's a different skill If you're going to move into using cover crops, that's a different skill So i'm just going to show you a few things that we're doing in North Dakota Doesn't mean they're right. They're wrong They are what they are, okay Uh, some of the things we're doing is we're doing a lot more reduced tillage Trying to get guys to go as no till as they can but not everybody works that way It's not the way they want to do it. I'm okay with progress I would like to see no till And we're splitting fields So I showed you those pictures of those acres that aren't paying we're taking them out of the system We're putting them into a different job And we're adding covers a big part of that And then the next thing here says user rate species one of the things that I get frustrated about is we talk about cover crops like they're one thing Anybody ever been to a three-day meeting on corn About soybeans will have a whole convention on one crop right because there's so much to learn. There's so much to know There's so many differences How many cover crops are there? 20 30 40 50 easily And we talk about them like they're one thing You'll hear your neighbor say I tried cover crops. They didn't work Anybody hear that Which ones What were you trying to do? What was your goal? What was your problem? Did you take care of them or did you just throw them out there and go here? Good luck We're carefully adjusting our inputs um I think there's some really awesome things that happen When you get into a soil health system But i'm not going to promise them to you Okay This year we had really good rain. We had good weather in north dakota. We had wonderful crop We had a hell of a horrible harvest, but we had wonderful crops And my soil health guys Reaped the benefits of it That doesn't happen every year from what i've seen And we're still learning how to do this. We're still tweaking it But we're carefully adjusting things as far as weed control goes. You saw my weed control pictures folks I don't want to skip a step That one where I talk about the combine that kosher can have 300 000 seeds per plant What's your corn seeding rate? Right around 30 000 ish 10 acres worth of seed on one kosher plant I don't want to screw that up So here's some of the stuff we're doing Section big half sections that we're cutting it up in all little pieces and people go Why would you do that? It's so nice to drive into and watch a youtube video for five minutes turn around You laugh because it's true Hopefully you watch these youtube videos again this summer. Okay You can put them on pause when you turn and then just hit play again. It's no problem Why would you cut this up? Well, this is that saline area that I was talking about This is the one that isn't paying any money He's not coming to the table This spot right here And that's planted into barley because it's the most tolerant crop we have for salinity. So we planted into barley But we don't have high expectations This is the guy who needs a broom. Okay, you don't put them in the planter So we're not putting a bunch of fertility out there. First of all, you soil test these areas to find out There's a lot of fertilizer left Because what happened? Fertilized it for 20 years and never used it exactly So the phosphorus numbers are 40 50 parts per million Potassium 300 to 500 nitrogen is 500 pounds because the water moves to that area and takes nitrogen with it You got more than enough Besides that the potential here is reduced because the salts are reducing the potential So whatever you get out of this is a bonus. So all we put in here is first of all We don't put soybeans in here and save 200 bucks. That's the first thing Second thing is we're going with barley whenever you can get there Everybody will tell me why you got to plant barley early to get the best yield. I'm not worried about the best yield I'm worried about any yield We planted this in June That's fine it'll grow 35 bushel of malt quality barley Now that's not paying any bills, but it's a lot better than zero What happens when you take the zeros out of your yield monitor guys? A lot of cool things happen And if you start getting a little bit clevered a little bit sneaky You can spray vanville On barley, which is the camber. You can spray ingenia on soybeans And some of these labels actually have a label for small grains of corn Some of the ingenia and some of that stuff But at the very least you can spray right up to the border and not worry about drift, right? So we didn't have to have any weeds in here Okay, now he should have went a little further back here. This should have been one block But hey, you learned right? Okay And this on this other side this triangular piece here is Some corn and had a lot of gosses wilt. We're not going to plant that variety in But rather than squaring this off because you'll see right here. There's a spot where nothing really grows Rather than planting corn in there. We just don't We changed the border on the field It makes more sense Instead of being negative whatever it costs you to plant corn we're putting rye barley oats Turnips radishes trying to fix this spot. We fired it from corn production because it sucks Makes sense Are these really that difficult to rounds? No, they're not Here's another one Nice little quarter when we originally started with this quarter years ago. Soybean average yield on this was about 22 bushel This is currently three fields. You can see the one here on the left This is grass and crp the landowner gets a check the renter doesn't pay rent It's not good crp, but it's better than dead soybeans Then right next to we have this l-shaped piece right here That was put into rye this year And then we followed with a cover crop. This is a little picture before we planted the cover crop And that rye did 37 bushel an acre And we did the same thing that we did with the barley We just didn't put a whole lot of inputs into it the grower didn't like it because he didn't have a whole lot of acres But he was harvesting in the end of july Is your combine really busy in the end of july? So he had time to do it, but it was monkeying around it was farting around. It was a few acres It was a one truckload You know, I didn't want to dry down and I don't think it was any good I think soybeans would have done just as well. No, you know, they wouldn't we've tried them 15 years in a row I don't know what makes you think they would have worked this year Okay And this right here was the good soybean ground. So we planted the soybeans makes perfect sense We've been doing this for about four years. You know what the average on this field is now 47 What's that do for your insurance? What's that do for your security as a farmer? And all the while you've reduced your input cost You've had to fart around you had to use that stupid little bin on the corner of the dead put up 1976 With an old drag auger that never starts To put that little bit of rye in there. This guy up here is laughing because he knows it's true, right? It's making you money It makes sense fire that acre and give it another job One of my favorite farmers, but notice he's looking down And I want to talk about this he doesn't want his face on this photo Why he grows cover crops That's why He doesn't want his neighbors to know that I'm showing this picture all over out Because they're just waiting for him to fail so they can rent his land Well cover crops are stupid all that money in the cover crops. You're not getting any money out of that Why would you do that? Peer pressure is a real thing, isn't it? It's a real thing what your neighbors think about you is important Maybe what your landlords think about you is more important, right? But is that a reason to lose money? Is that a reason to farm those acres that I showed you earlier? Or is that a reason to have a conversation? a discussion To talk about things Or to see your farm with a different eye To look at it differently Now that radish he's holding is 30 days old actually was planted 30 days before this picture so I can't even say 30 days old It was planted in august behind field pea now. We're cheating. I got in early Well, that was on purpose We wanted to put cover crops on this piece of ground. This is a light Sandy piece of ground it tends to blow a lot doesn't hold a whole lot of water told you about the flood and the drought, right? Well, this field never floods But we have water early and we have none late So do soybeans make any sense? They don't use any water early and they need a ton late. They don't make any sense. Do they we put in field peas? Guess what field peas are the opposite They they plant early they canopy early. They use water early and they don't like the heat He's been getting 50 60 bushel field peas as an average when he was getting 15 bushel of soybeans now you do the math That makes a lot of sense and then behind that We've got all kinds of time put in cover crops And what we're doing here is we're trying to increase our organic matter We're trying to reduce our erosion So i'm putting in oats is the main carrier here because it'll frost kill And it'll grow with a little bit of water We're using some radishes to help balance the carbon and nitrogen just a little bit We're putting some flax in and you can see one right by his foot I wish I had a better picture of it to try to get some snow catch To stand upright because if I get more water on here This field does better if I get a higher organic matter. It'll hold more water and keep it longer okay Every cover crop that we use I have a purpose for I have a reason to put it in and I would encourage you to think the same way These things are tools Yes, you need 10 9 16th wrenches, but you don't need it every time Right sometimes you need a sledgehammer and sometimes you need a 3 8 Each one of these things is a tool that has different Qualities and different purposes and different uses Now the other thing that this farmer has done is he's gone to a stripper header The main reason for that stripper header is because the residue is a nightmare to deal with in no tail And he's been fighting with it He can run faster with this stripper header. He's not running the straw through it The straw is anchored to the soil and guess what it's evenly put through the field Something they learned right away that green card driver needs to follow the combine Because if he's just driving out there willy-nilly, it's like getting a pat petting a cat backwards Follow me a straw is laying all different directions And if it's not breaking down, it's a nightmare to plant into they learned that the first year Okay, tom you're going to follow the tracks of the combine. Okay. No more of this driving all over Little things you'll learn that way This is the same thing. This is another sandy field. It's the same kind of thing old serratus rye Or not rye so much but because we don't want to grow in next spring Guys will ask me well, how do you plant this stuff? Do you broadcast your soybeans and corn expect a crop? Is that the best way to seed that stuff? I will encourage you to plant it any time you can you guys are farmers You know how to grow plants the best way is put them in the soil make sure they got moisture Now given that you can't necessarily do that every time So yes, if you're going to go ahead and broadcast them do it, but try to line things up to your best interest I tell people I plan for a rain And that usually gets a laugh right how do you plan for a rain? Well, I plant earlier for our cover crops Because we're more likely to have rain at the end of june or early july than we are at the end of july and early august for sure So for us aerial seeding a rye In august has been 30 chance of a hit if we do it in early july it's a 70 chance of a hit And in here, this is just a single disc drill. It's got two tanks on it You put the larger seeded in one tank you put the smaller seeded into the second tank And away you go And if you're only putting down one or two pounds of radishes or something like that put a little 11 52 with them Guess what they're running really good Makes sense. Okay Here's that broadcast rye This is what it looks like at harvest time and this was applied in mid june Mid to late june. We're doing it at our side dress timing Now i'm not saying that's going to work for you Okay, because I've seen issues with longer day corn 100 105 day corn Tends to be pretty dark in the canopy My corn in general is not we're looking at 85 day to 95 day most of it's right around 92 And most of the time it's not that dark in the canopy So a lot of this stuff will live but it's sick. It's spindly. This is three leaf rye. That's this tall It's looking for sunlight. It's like hey, where's the sun? Okay, well the corn's picking that up So we're going in to where we're top dressing our corn With a two bin machine the front bin Has got a little bit of urea and a little bit ams the back bin's got zero rye And we're actually variable rating the zero rye now Because this is that rolling topography So the hills I don't want to hold out a zero rye next spring the low spots. I want more So we've been putting 15 20 pounds on the hill 30 to 40 on the side hill and 60 to 80 in the low spot Trying to manage water Now what'll happen is if you try this you'll go along and there'll be a spot where the rye is Amazingly huge and there's no corn. You'll go that damn rye killed my corn No What happens to corn at this stage when you give it a little bit of water and a little bit of fertilizer? Next week. What's it look like? It's twice as big How big is your rye next week? Maybe sprouted this big Two weeks from now with three feet tall corn. Let's go one leaf rye. You think that's even a competition The biggest hog of the trough is going to win Now we have a leaky system in agriculture, don't we? There are leftovers And if I talk about Thanksgiving dinner, there's always leftovers at my house even though I eat a lot Okay, but I want you to think about this If you took your Thanksgiving leftovers and put them on the porch and left them would they stay there? Why wouldn't they stay there? Coon right raccoon You can be mad and shoot the raccoon you killed him. It's the end of it. You're done, right? Your leftovers are going to stay there no problem Well, there's another coon by the way You shoot all of them. They're just going okay. You get really good and you shot everything with four legs Is it still going to stay there? Flies fungi all this right mother nature doesn't like leftovers does she Some things are going to take advantage of it So what I tell people is if you get a dog This is my dog Because in this system there's leftover sunlight leftover nutrients and leftover water and what's going to take them? Water, hemp, kosher common ragweed you name it Now I get a dog because if you got a dog on your porch, he's going to eat your leftovers chase coons away That's kind of what my rye's doing here, right? It's competing for that little bit of leftover This is what it looks like here on the right side after harvest Same field Get a little bit of sunlight to it That's what it was lacking and it thickens up gives me a nice cover on that helps reduce erosion Helps increase infiltration helps do all of those things on that sign So everybody says well soybeans How do we do this in soybeans because the anchors that I work on is over 50% soybean So if I'm trying to make a difference I got to figure out something for soybean, right? So we've done this we've tried this In North Dakota we broadcast soybeans at about this time that yellow soybean leaf It's going to be about seven to ten days old leaves are going to fall off right you guys have seen this Okay Leaves fall down on it. It stays moist your cover crops grow You know how often that happens My experience has been one in nine years that works I'm not saying don't try it But I'm saying have realistic expectations One in nine years this works and this is where it worked And the grower who's done it says well, it's never been an issue in the company. So yeah, he's only worked once It's only this big so it's not a problem We were combine the snow beans this high this year, you know, they were huge So a little bit of rye growing in there a little bit of radish growing in there. That's fine I get that. Um, I'm not a huge fan of having cereal right ahead of corn in north dakota. It's not worked for me It may work for you. I know some people in Nebraska like to do it That's fine in Nebraska. They wait to plant things. I don't know about you guys, but As soon as we can get out in the field we go plant corn We don't have any time Nebraska's like we'll get to it next week, you know We'll wait till it's 50 degrees slow temp really My guys will plant a 42 Or whatever the temperature is today to get it done So that's a different story. So the Nebraska talks about killing your eye two weeks before you plant your corn well We don't have that time. So I don't like to do that But again, it doesn't mean it's not going to work Have your expectations try different things This one's a little bit harder to see But in the center of this picture here, you'll see there's barley there And off on the beginning you'll see the soybeans here and in the back you'll see the soybeans there What in the world is going on now? Well, this is one of those acres we decided to fire And again, it was a disc drill front tank back tank I had plenty of fertilizer out there and if we needed phosphorus we just spread it in the fall The barley in the back tank And when he hit this spot the plan was to turn off the soybeans and turn the barley on Well, he turned the barley on but he didn't turn the soybeans off because you never know You just never know they might grow Well, sorry boss, but I'm glad you turned the barley off. Let's put it that way And this is my dog Folks, that's my dog because that spot nothing else grows except for kosha, right? And it grows really well It does a hell of a job in there and it'll produce a lot of seed The barley grew it was this tall We didn't harvest it. We had no plans to harvest it. This is weed control This was water management. This is saline management all three in one crop And he didn't do an extra pass Oh, by the way, he didn't change any part of his program We sprayed a pre-emerge on this We sprayed an authority product anybody know how good authority is on killing grass Not Oh, and then by the way, they were liberty-linked soybeans And we didn't have to spray them till later till the barley was pretty big how good is liberty on big grass No We never did kill the barley But you can't harvest that because we sprayed two off label herbicides on it, but it's still a cover crop Just because you're using herbicides doesn't mean you're going to kill every cover crop And if you kill one or two, I don't really care to be quite honest with you Sometimes you need to So this system worked out now if he had to turn the soybeans off he'd have made it fair about a money on this deal But in the end he was still managing salinity. He was still managing kosher He's still managing his water. So it helped Now this is an old picture This one's at least 12 years old This is when we first started using cereal right at combat salt spots So the soy means it never grow the place was dead We'd plant so the slew is over on this side here The the low slew ground and there's a bunch of salty nasty stuff there And we planted cereal either in the fall Convince the grower to get 50 bushels and put it in and just say you know just put it in and next year If you want to plant your soybeans and they're fine plant your soybeans there and then kill it off Okay, there's a way out of this And I came back the next year and so you can see there's a slew that goes around this way And he came up with a sprayer here and he turned right this and he went back that way and he never sprayed right here So there's no herbicides there at all none See anything interesting about that picture How about this one? To the line Now remember when I was talking about that culture? What doesn't work on it? That's pretty cool That's really cool. Now did it kill them all? No So what's going on here? Well cereal rye gets going stupid early in the spring. It's already got to start in the fall It makes it through my nasty North Dakota winters Okay It's very competitive it grows very fast And there's also a thing called a lily path. It throws a little toxin out Into the soil and we don't know a lot about that But we do know some of that and that it does affect broadleaves pretty specifically and kosha obviously is on that list I like that list. I'm going to use that That's a cool tool So we started using this big time like yee haw I don't know if the rye has to be a certain size or not. We've done it So here's what I'll say Depending on when how big your rye is and how big your kosha is next spring, you're going to get varying results This is a biological system. Okay It's going to be varying results. That's that's all I can say on it, but we've had good results with it often So we've done a lot of this we start planting whole quarters that are bad kosha. I showed you the pictures, right? There's a couple of fields in North Dakota for sure that have bad kosha We start planting these fields in the fall to cereal rye And we just seed right into them planting green yee haw no problem It's not that hard This one's pretty big. It's pretty thin My grower's standing 10 feet away again. He doesn't want his face in the picture You don't want anybody to know Because the neighbors drove by and it looked nice and green and he went out and he planted into it like I showed you Then he went out and he sprayed it and everybody's like, what are you doing? That looks so good Well, the point was we control. I don't want the rye And this is what it looked like after planting like oh my god, nothing's gonna come up the neighbors are talking. Oh, man Was it going? You couldn't go in the coffee shop A couple weeks later looks like this Well, it's not so bad Anybody here garden or ever plant a tree What do you use right around the base of the tree for weed control? mulch that here mulch What's that looked like? Oh, you guys are quick learners Here's the soybeans mid-season guess what we still have in there A little bit of mulch I just got three months where the weed control You tell me another way I can get that For seven bucks I'm all ears 13 now. I don't care Flex stars over 20 and doesn't kill the damn thing Now if you notice this and maybe you can't quite tell those soybeans are a little bit yellow And they're a little bit short Okay So what was going on here is we have too much carbon in the system and it's stealing some nitrogen from us But to be quite honest with you, I don't really care in this system Now you might want to balance this but what luckily for me happened is that the grower thought he ran out With one round left on this quarter Packed up fold it up rolled down the road about a mile or so and he's goes, you know, I better check the tank Sure enough He had just enough left for one more round So instead of going back to this field, he just swung into the quarter that was there and he planted off around which was brilliant I love check strips Okay, so we had a heck of a good check strip in here When two different fields and they were close to each other not the same thing, but they were very close And where he didn't plant the cri in this field the soybeans were eight inches taller and they were darker green But the inner node spacing and the distance between the pods on these was about this big The distance between the pods where he didn't plant the cri was about this big And counting pods and soybeans is a futile effort, but we did it anyway And we really couldn't see any differences And nothing showed up on the yield map And even if we'd had even if we'd lost a little bit of yield I would argue to take it For that kind of weed control on a weed. I can't kill any other way Plus the erosion management plus The infiltration increases The carbon increases I'm going a little fast, but that's all right. I'm sure chrystal keep you busy So here's what I think and this is just my opinion. Okay There's a lot of measures on soil health. There's a lot of science being done There's a lot of scientists working really hard at finding good ways to measure soil health They're still working on it. They got some cool beginnings But I'm not sure I understand it all yet and I've been studying it pretty hard I'm not sure it all makes sense to me yet and I've been studying it pretty hard What I do know is that a shovel helps So that's what I use right here is a shovel now That shovel blade is only about four inches wide And that that slab of soil, which is not a slab It doesn't look like flour does it? I want to convince you today that soil that looks like flour is not a good thing That's a bad thing That's an erosion potential. That's a loss of soil. This is soil that's going to stick around. Why? Because it's got aggregates And if you learn one thing from my top today, it's aggregates aggregation holding things together. This is a loamy soil After about five six years This is what I want it to look like little chunks little Lego blocks all holding together because they don't wash away. They don't blow away They hold together And my understanding of this is this is like the city for their microbes There's different environments the outside the inside Different places for them to be there's a suburb. There's a downtown So if you want to live in the rock and night life, you live there So if your microbe wants certain things, that's where he lives, right? And they like to be underground and covered up As that's what they were Evolved under you take them until you throw them up in the air and you dry them out Put them in the sunlight and you put a hurricane through their 30. They don't like that That's a loam This is 65 clay And you can tell it was a little wet that day We dug in with a shovel And I squished it with my hand like this And that's what my hand looked like Now there's a little bit of mud on there But everybody tells me you can't do you can't build aggregates and clay soils That's a lie. There they are you can do it And I actually think if you do it right it doesn't take very long at all I said well, I got sand. I can't do it in sand Well, this is 62 percent sand And there they are It can be done different times Different lengths, but you have to manage for it specifically Now these aggregates are not near as strong as the clay ones But they're still there I like above ground growth for cover crops But I think what's going on below the ground is way more important This is a little radish about the size of my pinky But he's doing a lot of work A lot of guys tell me well, there's not enough time left in the end of the fall in some years There isn't okay this year. I'm going to grant you that I'm going to give you pass, right? August was a lot of fun or october was a lot of fun, wasn't it? You got a hundred acres done in october, right? Maybe Combined in snow beans everything's frozen all that kind of stuff So it's hard to get cover crops in that system But there's lots of time outside of that And I don't judge the cover crops by the above ground growth. Yes, we want density I want weed control. I need that but I judge this root growth is being really important too So when you're assessing success and failure Go back to your goals What were you trying to manage? What were you trying to accomplish? Did you pick the right species? Did you pick the right tool? Or do you try to fix your watch with a sledgehammer And then assess it and if you're not digging if you don't carry a shovel to assess your cover crops We don't have a lot to talk about you and I That shovel is important. My personal vehicle is a Ford Mustang. I got two shovels in it And I will pull off to the side of the road Randomly in South Dakota, and I don't have any business doing any of that and dig a hole I had a guy come by one day. He goes, what are you doing? I go, what are you doing? Confronted him I got kicked off land anyway, but it was worth it They've got them out front and if they don't I bet they'll hook you up with them. This is an infiltration test You pound a ring in the ground You pour a half liter of water on it and you time it And you see how long it takes for the water to go in anybody interested in that Because we get a lot of these nice two-day soakers right to just rain for light rain for two hours Two days night in slow light rain half inch of rain for two days Or do you get a five inches and 15 minutes? Well, maybe you get both but we get a lot more of that fast rain, right? I want to catch as much of that water as possible because I don't have enough left over to give up I don't want it running into that slew in that low spot where it's going to contribute to salinity and not help my crop I want it to go into the soil where it falls So you pound this in the ground You pour it in there and you measure it And I would say get two or three of them or make some you guys are farmers You can build anything make a few and here's what I'd say Make a few get in the side by side throw them in the back grab a case of water maybe a case of something else and Go to the neighbor's field Where he does a lot of tillage and pound a few in there drop the water in and then drive away And go into your field go into a no-till field Go into the ditch even if you want to because that's where the aggregates are Now if you go in the ditch or a good no-till field stay there and time it If you're going into heavy tillage you can come back in an hour or two or a day or two This is right out front This is one of the best ways to do this This is about aggregate stability. I'm talking about aggregates and where they are and what they look like And now I want to see how good are they? They got this demonstration out front. So you go out in your soils You take a claw to dirt And you try to keep it in one piece you haul it home you put it on the shelf for a couple weeks Let it dry Okay, let it dry And you get the neighbor's field and you do the same thing And if they're doing a lot tillage these are easy clumps. They're just laying on top of their surface of the soil, right? It's not a problem And you take them home you let them dry Then when you get done with this you get a little bit of screen a little bit of wire whatever you stick them in a Court jar if you want this is way more cool if you want to do a big cylinder good do it And you put them in there and let the water go back in The ones that have stronger aggregates are going to hold together. They're going to stay together So the infiltration test shows you how much water goes into it The slag test shows you how well your aggregates hold up for the next rain In this rainfall They blow apart So I'll think about all these little holes and all these little root holes and all these little pores that you put Into your soil to try to get water into them. What happens when you have a washout in your field? to the culvert Closes it up that washout closes your culvert up. What do you think this is? This is the same concept that soil is flushing down and plugs all those holes I have 22 ways to kill weeds or to manage them herbicides are only one Yeah, the ones in red are weird those are uh Stolen ideas from other people those are thought ideas steam is the one that really gets people wondering what the hell you're talking about they actually do this In urban areas they use steam To kill them pressure washer basically and you already got a A machine that has a thousand gallon tank with nozzles on it And the steamer at home has got a thermal induction nozzle on it Steam cleaner for the carpet. That's my concept on this. I've challenged growers to build this If you build it first, I will come and see it. I will take pictures and post them on the internet I want to see it That's what I had