 My name is Andrew Bowman. I'm a fifth generation farmer just outside of Oneida. It was very active in FFA and I continued that with some research I went to the University of Illinois. I got my degree and now I'm running the farm I've got some popcorn our family farm has diversified and that was kind of the Interest point for trying research such as this that we'll talk about and Anyone who participates or if you guys want to wrestle at the end. I've got a couple bags I'd be happy to give away always think it's a good giveaway to engender good will from the audience when we do this Charles, I'll let you yeah I wanted to say just a quick disclaimer. My name is Charles Martin and Just a quick disclaimer Whatever products or equipment that we talk about we are not here to Endorse anything. This is not this is not a sales program or anything like that also You might want to hold off on the questions until the end because we have a lot of ground to cover and Then I want to preface that this the title was originally curaclover into perennial living malt corn into a perennial living mulch and the Convention of other scientists is moving more towards a nomenclature of Perennial ground covers. So that's what we will be talking about that's what we'll be referring to and This is for your benefit also when you go online You might want to type in perennial ground covers instead of perennial living mulches So it should also be noted Charles is not self-promoting But he was a researcher for many years at New Mexico State University before he came back home to this so he adds a lot of You know academic rigor to our conversation when we do this, so we'll go ahead and jump in yeah So this is the agenda. We're gonna go through and I always like to have a presentation that just says these are the things You know, I hope you guys can get out of this and you know Charles said hold off questions Unless you got a really burning one or if you're bored nosing off But we'll talk about why you would want to consider a perennial ground cover What was the you know interest for us to try this you know prior research models and guiding principles We won't spend a lot of time on that but that kind of says okay Where where does this kind of make sense? And what are the principles that would make this a meaningful decision for an operation our test? And then we get down to brass tacks, you know the bottom line for you all what worked what didn't what are some things? You can take home with it, so that's what we'll jump into it should be acknowledged I'll talk a little bit though this came from a grant that we obtained I was real fortunate to get a grant back in 2019 from North Central Sare on this project and So I'm very grateful for their help miss and part of that grant is that we share the results with everybody So we appreciate you all being here and hope that this you know It's not the round table form like that we've that's also being done here at the conference But we hope it's something that can stimulate greater thought going forward another acknowledgement I want to specify that this is exploratory. This is really It's not just cutting edge. This is bleeding edge and It's not a replicated trial if any of you are researchers We don't have real solid replicated Information to share this is all just farmer experience I would like to acknowledge Gabe Brown. Is there anybody here who knows about Gabe Brown? Okay, good. Good. I Was real privileged to attend his one of his sessions and He has been a real inspiration for me along with dr. Kenneth Albrecht who is now retired but this is his research that I Was pretty much based in my project on Yeah, and following in that vein, you know, you ever hear the cliche to a guy holding a hammer Everything looks like a nail, right? Well one thing I appreciate about Gabe Brown is that he's essentially organic, right? But he doesn't get certified because he believes he wants to use every tool in the toolbox, but only when he needs it So I appreciate that and that's you know part colored part of you know The perspective when we were designing the things that we wanted to test here So I'll let Charles kind of talk about this like why would you consider a perennial ground cutter? Yeah, for me the the big importance was the non-disturbance over time and as I will mention later on This will also help to relieve the taking out of the land from Production to grow a cover crop one of the biggest challenges to growers And incorporating cover crops is the fact that they either have to take the ground out of production and either before or after this growing season and this way you're able to grow a cover crop simultaneously with the cash crop and We're going to have to start to find more ways to introduce and reincorporate cover crops with Our cropping system our cash cropping system Because the depletion of the soil over time is just too important to neglect So these are some of the research models these are pictures taken from and Charles can talk but I wanted to point out I forget which picture this one is from but that's Iowa Okay, so that would be I believe it was dr. Cindy Bartles who did research on that And I believe that was an article that was in strip till farmer no till farmer years ago And that was where I was first introduced to this idea. So that kind of got you know, the groundwork running That's a clover, but they they actually did some of their research in sod And you know you take university research with a grain of salt Fred Bilo that was referenced this morning is kind of a You know an oddity because he's a lot more focused on you know commercial viability a lot of research trials are small They're replicated, but that kind of gave proof of concept and said, you know This is exciting on something worth trying. So can you comment on the other models? This research is I want to emphasize this research is not new. I first ran across dr. Albrecht's research going back to 2007 and He's been working primarily with cura clover other people have been working with white clover other kinds of clovers And so you think the clovers that are primarily to come that they're not going to get very tall and They can be aggressive outside of the row hence being here using utilizing strip till as a venue Right or the image on the list is a replica on the left is a replicated trial from dr. Albrecht's research and It's interesting to see in the background He has other treatments plots back there I don't know if those are because of fertilizer or because of They're just a control where there's no no cura clover but It's you'll see that it's interesting to see the differences there and we'll see that later on too Well, one thing you'll see is intuitively we know this is better Assuming we don't have a bunch of in row competition We'll talk a little bit about that but intuitively you're shading the soil if you get a dry condition I mean, I don't know about you guys been on our farm We're seeing and I'm not a climate change, you know proponent or opponent I feel like things are cyclical, but I think we are in a new cycle for whatever reason of Fewer rains, but more intense when we get them, you know my tile lines this year We installed 200,000 dollars worth of tile on a farm We just bought this year and we put 15 inch mains in which some of you probably think that's huge Some of you probably think that's small depending on where you farm for us. That's pretty big They have hardly run all year and normally, you know in March when they were putting it in it would have been a day loose Just shooting out so we've been dry But then we've had a three inch rain and a two inch rain and an inch and a half and we have very good soils And we've been able to you know, I think we're gonna have a near record corn crop because of those rains They're timely, but I one thing I do know is when you have Plants covering the surface. You're not losing that water. So intuitively we know this is good. How do we make it commercial? How do we get these corn plants to look like these corn plants? So, yeah Andrew is right. I feel confident in this system because it's based on sound soil conservation principles again, I learned these principles from Gabe Brown it's based on No till or minimum disturbance of the soil and that's what I like about strip tilling is that you can not have to disturb the entire surface of the soil and You you want to have armor on the cover or cover on the soil and that's why we had go with the perennial living mulch you want to have diversity both in above ground and below ground and Living print plants the perennial living mulch system is what I consider to be Kind of like the epitome of a continuous plant living plant a year round And you have to take into consideration the farmers concept. Yeah, the only thing our project doesn't address is livestock the cows and pigs left my family farm in the 1970s before I was born Back when a robot said get bigger get out my grandfather took the message and diversified elsewhere But I I do think a PGC is going to be excellent for incorporating livestock going forward How many of you guys are also livestock farmers? Okay, so this would really fit for your system A curclover is bloating by the way, but if you incorporate it with grass, maybe a blue grass or something like that Which they are researching also as a perennial ground cover Then that was another one of the goals that I had was to integrate this Livestock with it. I'm not going to spend too much time on These other principles You pretty much know about the value of species diversity from an ecological standpoint and also Mutualism, which is a relatively new concept That people have learned since no till first got Really popular But the mycorrhizae and the other Micro organisms in the soil will actually link up and connect with each other And they will exchange nutrients. They'll exchange hormones and things like that Uh, I do want to show that Mycorrhizae is an ince in the central part of this program Uh, this is a picture I downloaded from the University of Florida And uh, what I really want to emphasize is not just the drastic difference between the mycorrhizae inoculated, but also if you see The mycorrhizae reached over into the control plot And you can see that all along the strip And so in each one of those treatments You can see that the mycorrhizae extended out at least as much as five or six feet Uh, which really struck me when I first saw that and I don't know that everybody noticed that but you're really I really noticed it Okay You know preaching to the choir. I think it's worth resetting the table though for this You know, why do we want to strip till it's going to reduce erosion? You're going to have warmer soil in the spring Reduce compaction saves time conserving fuel The big two that we've talked about down here for purposes of today's discussion on a perennial ground cover living mulch Is improving your soil health and the better adoption of cover crops So we don't need to harp on that. Let's jump into our two projects because we had two different serigrants. So mine, you know, I was trying to Get the farm organic and I had it for a few years and then the popcorn business grew and we're not organic now But I was very interested in using a perennial ground cover to Be essentially my weed control and we'll talk about why it didn't work Where I think it can based on our research here And I did a wide row comparison thinking, you know, if I have a 60 intro because that's some of the research That would also allow for mowing, you know as a different control mechanism if the weeds got Out of hand just like in a thin stand of alfalfa as time goes on you'll have weeds come up in it But I've also You know, I mentioned that I grow popcorn. That's another reason I'm interested and maybe backing up to the concept of mutualism in these plants I don't have the budget to do all of the testing I'd like My popcorn is red and blue. How many of you new popcorn came in colors other than yellow? Okay, right. Yeah. Yeah, most of the time when I give a presentation people are confused group of farmers I shouldn't be surprised So my popcorn is going to taste different just by virtue of being a different hybrid just like a jonathan apple versus a granny smith and so on I believe well, I I know I can't prove it but from anecdotal experience that it already tastes better I think that's because of the strip till putting the nutrient density where it's at I think the next step is adding the biodiversity that this project could do so charles I'm not gonna we're not going to talk too much more about my project Because it's already posted online You can go to the saruh website and find a more complete in detail project report And so I would much rather we're going to be concentrating more on Andrews because also the strip tilling is more relevant to This program. Sure. So this is charles's farm Just gives you, you know, he's got a lot of elevation change around his house. That's why that's pasture But it's this I can use the laser pointer like a real professional here This is the area that's nice and flat where we actually did the test. Yeah More than oh go ahead more than 80 of my fields Are highly erodible and so I was really especially interested in erosion control And infiltration managing the infiltration so that we don't get the runoff Uh, so you can see it goes down through the pasture this is this Left corner is a pasture and you just see how eroded it is Yep And here's mine. This is just a screenshot of where it was at. It was in this general location The big thing, you know, we have a 137 pi I mean every state has a slightly different productivity index in Illinois. I believe the highest is 141 So I would call our soils a minus like they're pretty buffered and resilient I don't necessarily win in the coffee shop, but we almost never have a problem We've got pretty good soils. The other thing I'll tell you And I'm going to use this phrase so about 10 years and 70 pounds ago I was a cca walking fields, you know, and then we had kids and I decided I Want to be at home during the summertime And I like to use the phrase agronomic hedging, right So I bring that up because this system as we talked about what worked and what didn't I think you're going to find that I personally don't believe that this is something You would want to adopt on every single acre just in terms of logistics and so on But for us, you know, it's taken five generations, you know, 147 years now But we now have 960 contiguous acres in one big chunk, you know, that's, you know Half of what we farm So I have the opportunity that I can give quite a bit of TLC to certain acres because everything's close And I'm not suggesting that, you know, I don't want to be the type of person that comes up with a great idea or executes on something really well And then, you know, joins forces with the regenerative mafia and says everybody needs to farm this way I don't think that's going to be realistic So I like to say agronomic hedging, how can we apply this? But I think that's an important caveat when you guys see what we're talking about So here was the setup and, you know, charles had it in a perennial already established Mine was to simultaneously seed the cover and the cash crop at the same time Okay, so and I think you put those two together the idea would be you get a perennial established And then you would do the simultaneous seeding You know periodically as you're planting as you're going into it to re-seed it And the cover crop species matters charles did some research years before on Balansa clover, yeah, which creates hard seed and and re-seeds itself I think that that's has some merit doesn't leave a lot of carbon, but it is a very good smother crop Uh, I will say one thing. Uh, cura clover is slow to establish. Yeah, it really takes about three years And it was not the most appropriate selection for a project like this because this is only one or two years It took me two years before to build up the Organic matter through cover crops before I even attempted to plant the cura clover And the cura clover is it was wet It doesn't like wet soils. It doesn't like to have its feet wet So we didn't really have much luck with that. Yeah So here's what our theory was and what we did and again, I'm going to say It didn't work, but I'm pretty confident why it didn't and what we're doing going forward So we established it So here's the next part we used a flail chopper to create that mulch effect to hold back weeds Then we stripped till the medially after flail chopping and then we came back with the planters We'll jump into it now. These are videos. Um, I think I'm just going to mute them because we can narrate because they're kind of Kind of wonky on us as I said the first year We we established cura clover and most of it Drowned or this was in the spring of 2019 If you remember that year and I can't remember. I don't know anybody who doesn't remember that year It was very wet And so who all had a lot of fun in 2019 how many people had prevented plant acres We didn't but there were times. I thought we should have wasn't a lot of fun so I went from Cura clover a pure stand to a mixed stand of different other clovers. This is balanza white clover I tried to incorporate some grasses. There's some mustards in there. You can see yeah and some wild mustard But we got a decent enough stand to be able to do the project I'm going to skip these two. These were um, some of the older Um, those were some of the older stands that he had That was a slide we pulled out that previous video just showed the benefits of cover crops and what kind of good tilt you can get from growing them So this was year one at charles's and he had a poor stand no till drilled So you find out what what's the other cliche that we talk about it year one? It sleeps year two it creeps year three it leaps. That's what we hear a lot of So I think those either raise your hands that were livestock producers probably have Quite a bit more opportunity I mean it's more work and you guys already do more work with chores and livestock but if you have You know a paddock system where you can You know give up a portion of a field and not the whole field to start establishing things I think there's a lot of opportunity here for you. Yeah, it didn't fill in nearly fast enough You can see the yellowing down there. I think that was because there was a old Inoculum it's species specific inoculum It's slow to grow one benefit of curaclover is its rhizomatous So even if you can get it established over time it will gradually fill in So here's your two you can see, you know That that's not what we would call in commercial ag a homogenous stand But it is very pretty and I think there certainly there's plenty of diversity in here You know legumes forbes grasses the whole nine yards But he tilled in a finer seed bed for all that So here's a video and I'm going to tell you right up front This is what we did wrong Anybody have any guesses what went wrong the mulching effect? What's that? Didn't let it get tall enough I was too impatient, you know, my wife's nickname for me is uh, you know I Considered getting on our school board. She said you don't have enough time for that. She said more than that You're a ramrod. You're not patient enough to deal with other folks and everything else. I said, I guess that's fair Now this looked beautiful And it did leave a nice mat, but I still had the mindset when we did this that Make hay while the sun shines, right? So I said I have time to do it. I'm going to go do it now that way I can get the planter and everything set up I should not have done this until that biomass was Waste high. Yeah, I believe that was the single greatest failure of this experiment, but Let's talk a little bit about why we chose a flail chopper The reason I wanted to flail chop is because you're doing that vertical You know cutting I think that creates a better mulch effect than you know horizontal cutting like a typical bat wing I think the bat wing would work if you had the right tillage setup. Excuse me strip till bar But I believe as it gets taller, you know the bat wing becomes more of a problem because the flail is going to Chop it into smaller chunks. It'll break down faster, but then you're going to be able to get your strip till bar through it But you can see what we did This is the result in the evening after yeah, and and we'll narrate it instead But you know Charles is taking the video, but I will say we do have a couple of clods, but This was the most beautiful strip tilling I had ever done I mean the aggregation and again, I mean, I hope this doesn't sound like we're bragging about those You know crazy illinois farmers that have great black soils and we do But they're easy to screw up right or I shouldn't say that they're not easy to screw up But they're easy to take away this nice aggregation and all that wonderful biology This is what gives me hope for this system And I hope gives you all hope to consider trying something like it because that is the most beautiful strip Just in terms of tilth and how it felt how it smelled everything All because we had that perennial cover set up there at charles's got a question Yes, this is year two No, no not at his place at my place because we were doing the Simultaneous seeding and the simultaneous seeding didn't work And what I'm finding is I think the simultaneous seeding that we'll show you has a place But it should be reseeding helping it out Not, you know your primary establishment. Yeah, that is a spring strip You'll we'll show you here. There it is This isn't mine. We had a collaborator That had a gladiator. I liked how the gladiator worked I actually bought a landlover last year that I think Has some things that are better than the gladiator some things that are worse The only reason I picked it was no one was bidding on it on del peterson's auction And it was heavy and it was heavier than what I had My personal strip till bar was a nitro systems at this point And I knew it would not build the same berm I mean mine was a poor man's strip till it got me started in 2013 On the cheap, you know, I've only got 40 some thousand in my bar That bar, you know, is a 90 thousand dollar bar And it does a beautiful job. It really did. But I think The type of bar you've got Personally if I had a heated shop I could take an idea from three or four of those guys that were out here and make my own I'd probably start with You know the gladiator the orthman frame and then there's ideas I would take from each one, you know, the landlover I think kind of hybridizes certain things, but Yeah, anybody have any experience going through really thick vegetation with a strip till bar? What's your business? Oh, well good Yeah, well we flail chopped but I could see it now. You can certainly see it Talking about the tilt on this one going on with the mixture of covers that charles has you can just see this beautiful structure But look We shouldn't be able to see that This is a good soil type to begin with I mean, we do have some chunks here. I like that I'm gonna recommend that danieline is good for the pollinators good for diversity as it's happening I think that would be very helpful But we have a nice berm that can settle after that one-inch rain and then plant into it Now the key will be even with the good gladiator that's been set The planner's gonna need to have you know floating residue managers to kind of That's a good point here. I think you need the floating residue to even it out Would you do it go into something like this because you're no doubt it's seen it take that off And then you're still gonna have a little bit of unevenness here. So this here I don't wait So this was the setup and I take a picture of that and it doesn't do it justice, but Um, I want you guys to see how busy this got right? So our partner at the time had an eight row plot planner and this thing was $120,000 plot planner because he was a precision dealer and it had every single bell and whistle Every single toy furrow fours conceal whole nine yards But then that wasn't enough so we you know in our infinite wisdom wanted to add And we put there's the corner and there's more pictures of it of the valmar 60 56 the grant allowed us to pay for this And that 60 56 is essentially a cover crop seating box You could use it for dry fertilizer and only hold 60 bushel though And that's what these tubes are and these tubes go to the back and there's a diffuser And that was how we were trying to intercede. We were broadcasting between the rows Now I think this would have a lot of merit as I said receding But you can see how busy this gets that caused a problem because the tractor we had was a john deere It was a class six. I forget what Uh model number it was but it did not have the hydraulic poop to do the job So we had to make two passes. So it was inter It was simultaneous But I made a pass the plant and then I Used the same a b line and came back and simultaneously seated because it was just way too much stuff going on You know high tech's great when it works That's what my old math teacher used to say and why I we should learn not to use calculators He could have just as easily been talking about a farmer doing too much stuff with a That's an important point, uh, and who made is this is going to take a lot of power I mean by the time you get the cedar and the strip tiller and everything all together Um, it needs a lot of horsepower. It needs a lot of hydraulic power. Yeah, did you have a question? I'm sorry Okay Yeah Can you I'm sorry I can't hear I think that a I think that a colter machine would work better if you were doing a one pass in the spring. I do think that However, if you had a stronger stand that was very rise autonomous, you know, like the like if the curl were in year five And it was a lot more robust You could make the argument that the shank would be better because it would actually, you know cut through You could also argue that that would cause more problems because now it's going to ball up That's why I sort of think that the way to do this is to strip in the fall and then come back And refreshing it because then it tries growing over and then you you beat it back Yeah, but I think you would definitely use a colter system in the spring with a refresher no shank I think uh, given the given the density of the of the sod That the cover crop I really think you need that shank to get down there and break up the soil So this video just kind of shows just how complicated the stuff gets and I was just talking through Some of the the things that we had because I mean you had our clean sweep We had the next gen precision playing monitor and the tractor I don't know how I can speed that up because at the end of the video it shows what I'm looking at and that's Where you're going to see how complicated it was and again A lot of people and I forget. I don't think it was chris. It was one of the other speakers said You know the kiss principle keep it simple stupid, right? So some of this we over complicated How do we simplify it so you guys can take this home? And use it and that's the principle, but I don't know has it turned around yet. So But you can see Here's the other thing we didn't play two days after So we tilled and we came back two days later right after a rain Yeah, yeah, and we did get a rain which kind of mellowed things a little bit further um Here this is what I wanted to show you because now You'll see here. There's the backside of the valmar and we pushed the hydraulics to the back And that made it difficult We needed a cab camera here because I can't see at the back of the tractor now There's a lot of busy stuff going on Did you want to hear this? No, I wanted everyone just to see how what we were trying to do. There's the tubes that come out You know, this was me kind of explaining why we had a problem And that the problem was we didn't have enough hydraulics to run all the bells and whistles of what we had should be noted Gentlemen, one of the classes I went to yesterday was I forget his name now, but he had one where he had made his own Very impressive. He was farming with 40 series tractors strip tilling made his own rigs I think you could do that with this too. I don't think you need all these bells and whistles It was just a lot easier to use an eight-row plot planter that had all those bells and whistles Um, I will say that the hydraulic downforce that was on this I think was important. I think that that really evened it out because I mean the soil is going to be more robust to compaction We saw that in a presentation yesterday when you've got living roots, you know, you're not going to compact as much That also means that it's just going to be a little bit rougher So I think you'd want hydraulic downforce. I don't think it's a necessity though I think you could get by you're just going to have to accept you're going to plan a little slower That's okay too. I mean if it's a difference between spending 50 grand and not Maybe we should just drive slower Well, my yeah, my neighbor who has a who planted the sweet corn for me in the sweet corn portion He has a row cleaners and I think he did a real good job of moving that all aside And then left a nice cleaner strip there Too bad. We don't have a video for that Well, what I will say on that point I'll get to your question, sir You'll notice we we depressed a little bit here But we didn't collapse it. So that tells me that This system can work. It's just going to be how do you fine-tune like a ham radio back and forth between If we would have had all of the biomass we want like you would have in the red clover How do we get through it? And I think, you know I honestly think it would probably be easier to do in a modern red clover versus An antiquated alfalfa that you were talking about or a cure clover that's very rise-o-matis So I think you could figure that out and it might be something as simple as Adjusting the heck out of the down pressure. Like that's one thing I'm impressed with the soil warrior out there Just do you guys see the size of that airbag that's on that machine? I mean that can really chop through quite a few roots But I think you're onto something having a colter go ahead and kind of chop before you had a shank I also think after hearing Jody's presentation on soil compaction that the A straight shank versus a parabolic is going to be critical in this Yeah, this is just showing some of the stuff we put on just to try again just emphasizing the biology. This was a corn blend You know Charles went through in with this The jury is still out on whether these actually are effective Um I'm a I'm a believer in them. But uh, if you talk to de gay brown, he says, oh, it's a waste of money I figure my response is we got into this earlier and my response to Andrew's comment about Is it really going to be beneficial? Is it if you invest in all that equipment and all that computer technology and things? Why not just go ahead and invest in the biologicals as well? Yeah, especially because typically they're cheaper too This video it's shorter But I like to show it because you can see there's a diffuser and there's the seeds coming out It's kind of hard to tell but we had a diversity of mixtures That we're going in there and obviously i'm not on the road That was just kind of getting a video of it, but you can see the seeds right here one of the reasons to oversee is because um Even though strip tillage Is a minimum disturbance. It's still disturbance As a soil conservationist pointed out to me strip tillage is still tillage and When you go in there and you disturb that soil You make an ideal seed bed for the small seeded weeds like mare's tail like Water weeds water hand all those small seeded seeds and we did get a Plush of those which is one of the reasons why It was not quite one other thing i'll point out like this was 2019 and we all Commiserated on how bad that year was across the corn belt Um, I also think that this would have been very different. I mean that aggregation is good. You see there This was june first week of june typically a good planning date in our area is going to be You know the 20th of april third week of april for corn and beans So this was a lot later. Everything was late that year. Don't get me wrong I think the results would have been very different had we got it because I remember vividly we finished And I joked that my brother-in-law who's not here. He's uh He's every bit as smart as me, but you never know it He's just rough around the edges and I joked his superpower is ingesting nicotine and red bull to stay awake for 50 hours And we did that in 2019 and we planted 1,800 acres in 40 hours It was it was a rat race and then we came to do this So we were tired and I remember the reason we pushed so hard was a it was late and b We were afraid there was another inch or two of rain in the forecast. Well, I'll be danged We got all that done and then the rain didn't happen. Now. Luckily we didn't push it in mud But you know the guys that were getting eight hours of sleep weren't any further behind than us So that was frustrating, but I tell you all that because This would not be typical of our planting conditions I told you we need I think we need to wait to let that get tall if you were to flail chop it So we would still be planting later I think for us if we were in this system and we are gonna I'm gonna show on the very last slide what we're trying going forward I would think you know, maybe three weeks later. It's the second week of may You know let it get tall, but then it's still going to be a little bit more mellow You're still going to have more rain events in may than you do in june I'm sure you can't see it all can can we back up? Yeah You can't see them There it was about 11 different species in here Uh, well, you can see there, you know, there's one. There's one. There's one. There's one. There's one I mean we you can see the diversity we had Yeah, and again for an overseeding reseeding I think that's the ticket, you know, if you get a perennial established I think this is a mechanism that would help quite a bit. Some people have gone to uh, like spring tine um Tines to to kind of rough up the soil after like a spring time. Yeah, yeah So this just kind of shows the plan are going through and again I like it because it shows how busy it was and we were not utilizing conceal On this we could have I think that would help too, honestly We were trying this to be organic and we didn't have enough product to do what we wanted to do there, but You know, you can see I've got my level there But you can see it just flies right through Yeah, we don't there's no narration in this one. Anyway, Charles, so it's okay But as it's coming, you know, and again 20 30 years ago when I was a really young pup We never would have thought about oh that planner it's level in that field Well, now that we have the technology with load cells and everything we can tell that you're moving So you can watch and that's where that hydraulic downforce comes in. I'm not going very fast I'm I think I planted this at five mile an hour. It's not like this wasn't a high speed setup, but I think you're going to need, you know, some pretty aggressive downforce system with a pgc I really do But again, I'm a farmer too. I don't want to spend a Crap ton of money. I think it's okay to have an air force system and just go a little slower Look at how the strips were freshened as the planner went over it. Yeah, you can see the other thing You just see how beautiful those look But this except for the row not being uh thick enough for the mulching effect This was exactly what we wanted. I mean, we were it was late. We didn't like planning in june, but everything was late We didn't like we didn't realize that that was as big of a problem. But the way that looked This looked beautiful for the first half of the season. It really did You know, that's just more about how the tilt was after we planted I'm gonna skip forward watching our time. But this is what it looked like. So we've already planted and as I said We had to go over it again because of the hydraulic issue so that we could do the inner seating on top of it But that's a nice view just seeing what you've got. I mean Call me a romantic I just think that's gorgeous. Now. That's how I would love my fields to look every year if I could figure this out I think we'll get there. Yeah Do you want to do that? Um, we're we're we're on time. Okay, I think we'll just skip that because they've heard me talking enough Let's do it. Let's get to the results. Yeah This is actually a photograph from the sweet corn Churra clover trial and you can see the real importance of having precision guidance the Neighbor who planted this did not have any kind of precision guidance system. So you see that the corn is coming up off center and then also you see how yellow it is and We're going to have to continue to fertilize use fertilizer because This is actually two crops. This is a cover crop and a cash crop Right. I think the other thing to bring up is the type of bar the width of your berm I mean, these are things that we all know be able to strip till conference But you know the wider your berm the let the more margin of error you've got So I think if you've got a rig that creates a wider bar you can get by with The gentleman who had the 40 series tractors and I mean he had RTK so he would have been okay But my point is the width of that berm gives you a certain amount of margin Charles did a really cool study on this on his too. So As I said earlier, the soil health is a real important criteria for me So I did some soil measurements. I did a soil infiltration um Both in my neighbor's conventional Plot that did not have any cover crops whatsoever. It was conventionally tilled He plowed he dissed and everything and then the 2019 corrupt planting that did not have very much survival and then the better planting in 2020 And you can see even though this is not scientific. It's not replicated The results are consistent. They're always higher in the conventional Yeah, and i'm skipping ahead just to show you this is the slide of the infiltration system that charles did That's another reason that it's very exciting to consider this system So I go back to what I said in my area, you know, I don't have any subsurface moisture And I've got a record crop possibly because we've gotten big rain events And I don't have covers on everything but You know, we've been fewer rain events higher intensity That's going to become more important This type of information on water infiltration rates become more important as we get that type of lower frequency higher events Especially on highly erodible land if we can get that kind of infiltration without having run off I think we'll be really years ahead So charles had these uh, was this a hainy test or I forget exactly what this was The ward laboratories does a microbial analysis So I'm not going to talk about the hainy test. We did do a hainy test But more importantly for me was a microbial analysis and I highlighted the ones that are most important to me the plfa phospholipid fatty acid And the fungal to bio fungal to bacteria ratio the positive to negative means the the It's more of a one-to-one and the bacteria the the good bacteria the anaerobic I'm sorry the aerobic bacteria. No Yeah, grand positive Thank you. Thank you. And then you should be up here, you know But yeah, charles was good to highlight these red ones And again not replicated not scientific but diversity more is better, right? So the concepts ring true And we have anecdotal. I'll call it anecdotal because it's not replicated, but clearly Moving in the right direction Even though this is a snapshot Ward laboratories has what they call the soil health index Which is a combination of the biology the chemistry and the physical properties of the soil and you can see that in the conventional it is less than Then sorry, I mean hit that you can see how significantly higher it is. Yeah Right there. I mean you can see we've got some weeds coming through I attribute that to mulching too soon Okay That corn looks pretty good June planted I mean I had relatively high hopes because this was this was like an organic trial. I was not shooting for 250 You know like I wouldn't a normal year Our aph's are 220 and 65. So we'll we always shoot for 250 and a lot of times we can get it I would have been happy with 185 or 90 on this I think we were on our way until later on That's what I wanted to share on this slide Now I want to unpause and We'll just click through Because we're getting close on time. Okay, bottom line. Let's talk about what worked. What didn't we've kind of already hit on it The strip building. I'm going to say that the perennial ground cover makes an absolutely beautiful tilt Notwithstanding the consideration that some of you guys have been great to contribute on questions like how you get through the root mass and the root balls I think it's worth the effort to figure it out. This is an absolutely beautiful berm You need rtk guidance. I think that's almost a just a given when you're doing strip till but I think it's just emphasized that And I appreciate what the gentleman who farmed with the 40 series tractors was doing he said I don't need new stuff. I just need the new technology. I really appreciate that Put rtk on an older piece of equipment and run with it I think it's quite obvious on the soil health. I'm standing in front of you Charles. I apologize the The results he had again, they were anecdotal. They were not Replicated clearly the soil was healthier clearly. It was better Well, the yields were disappointing. We're not going to hide that Clearly, but we've talked about why and it was really weed suppression You need to let those covers get tall before you flail chop You need to be patient if you're going to do it this way now there is research and I wanted to bring this up There is research being done I forget where I haven't saved it But I have seen it where they are some that are instead of doing like a flail chop They're letting it get tall and using something like a citric acid or even a glyphosate if it's really well established To kill it back in it and you know I you've always heard of kudzu the scourge of the south, you know I've heard glyphosate doesn't do anything on that it kills the leaves and then it comes back That's the concept and that would be another way to do this, right? I think the flail chopping makes sense for those of you that raised your hand as livestock guys because then you've got A machine that has more asset utilization because you can use it in multiple ways This next slide really might be more of a discussion kind of like we've all been having up to this point What are some of the considerations? You know I'm open minded that I maybe need to change on my farm doing more spring strips instead of fall fall I just Feel like i'm hedging my bets. I'm getting it done. I feel good about it But for this system, I think I would do fall But then I would like to come back just kind of like some of the conversations we had But if you're a livestock guy, when are you more or less busy, right? And I feel like You know, that's a consideration that needs to be taken care of You know the horsepower. I mean, that's something that's always a consideration I think it can be done on a smaller scale. I mean, I was talking to the orthman salesman. I said, well, Fortunately, I'd already bought, you know, my landlubber last year at auction He said, well, you can you can get by with an eight row and that wouldn't help him Like if I had another person to run it But but again, you know horsepower and these other considerations can can factor into it as well You know the initial cost that was the one reason for the flail chopping And again, if you're a livestock guy, so something you probably have asset utilization, right? And then lastly, we already talked about the guidance So again, I've already hit all this but for us West central northwest central Illinois To make this work I would probably start with a perennial that also had something that I knew was going to get going Probably a reseeding like a balanza clover mixed with red clover You know, maybe oats. I don't know something that's just going to create good biomass get that in the fall Do my strip till then I would come back and I would strip freshen after I mowed or sprayed I'll probably spray now that I'm not sort of researching organics And then plant immediately afterward I think that it can be done And to that point, this is my farm this year and it's these aren't these over here are not perennial You know, we honestly we've tried cover crops for a couple years. This was the first year We tried it on a big scale. Why because when we had bought that valmar for the sera unit, we completed the grant Then we had a windstorm Well, that sucked. What are we going to do because we are no till strip till we don't have anything We found a john deere 26 23 We bought it relatively cheap for 20 grand put another five or six ground in our own sweat equity and fixing the blades And now we had I mean, it's a disc, but it's more less of a disc and more of a vt bar My brother-in-law can weld the crack of dawn We fabricated a bracket and put the valmar on top of it Last year we tested it on all of our acres half of the bean acres got cover crop This was what it was like planting into it that cover crop before the planner went over it was this tall I did some cuttings and I estimated that it's around 7,000 to 8,000 pounds of biomass I came back now I planted too deep I went two inches thinking that I want to make sure because the soil temp wasn't quite where I wanted it to be I didn't I didn't want to fluctuate My stand was uneven didn't look good. Now you wouldn't know it. I mean, they look really really good So I tell you the lessons we learned on this are applying to an annual cover crop and The benefit of the grant still applied because we're doing something different Here's what I want to emphasize for today There's my family farm where I grew up and if you turn around facing this way You would see pilot knob. That's the name of our popcorn. That's the big hill that overlooks our family farm It's a major watershed divide water on the north side goes the alnoy river water on the south side goes to the Mississippi So it's right in the middle of where that 960 acres is at. It's only one acre Looks kind of rough here This is a mixture of native alnoy perennials and I had the list Can't find it. I forgot where it's at. I've got it hidden on my computer I was going to put it up on a slide But it's uh, one of them was cone bundle flower and there are a few others But there's legumes grasses all sorts of things. It's part of a grant with the land institute And they had a couple of farmers one of them's an eastern alnoy. I think it's will glacic over there organic farmer And five or six of us and they wanted to have native perennials Doing this So we're going to try it again The difference is the grant allowed me Basically, I'm going to take a year off. I know that's not feasible You know in the real world, but right now Let's see if we can make it work and then we can come back and I'm tickled with what you were saying with the red clover because That's something that can be done with Let's just plan a two three bean early bean and get in early as heck and get that clover established So but if we can get the concept to work here and I've already mowed this is right before I mowed it Uh, or my brother-in-law mowed it. We had a bunch of ragweed on one side and the way I seeded this I used that same vt bar with the valmar cedar. So it wasn't drilled. It wasn't perfect You know that bar is probably set a shade deep. It's an inch and three quarter We don't go that deep, but you know, like jody had said in the other room you should really only be going an inch But the stand I got here Part of me is like I don't really want to change that that was beautiful But this is what we're trying and Since it's close to my farm I'm going to get the strip till bar out this fall after I mow and after there's good biomass I'm going to put strips in and then I'll do it again in the spring And we're going to plant corn in it and see where we end up so one of the exciting things for me about getting this information out is because after I put out a press release uh in 2020 I got an email from a researcher at the land institute in selena kennedy says Uh, I've been working with cura clover and I'm really interested in your projects So that's how this collaboration Develops with with andrew. I told him he wanted to do it with me and I said I don't have the equipment, but I turned it over to andrew and he has the intellect. I have the machine So there's there's that it's a team effort when you try and learn new things So this is some of the future work, uh, that for us moving forward You know, iowa state and then charles talked about here at the land institute um Can we back up a little bit? Yeah uh, brandon in turn introduced me to Raj Who had gotten a grant a sizable grant? multi-million dollar grants for a kind of a long-term study of perennial ground covers And he has gotten other researchers from wisconsin minnesota Illinois iowa and missouri All to work on this and so it's kind of having a ripple effect Here's the last slide That right there doesn't look too bad The corn does not look good And that's because we It was later planted and the the corn was not competing like if we would have had a better multi-effect I bet this still would have looked about like this. I bet the corn would have been a lot more I also think if uh, if we would have had Fertilizer on the plan or I think that would I mean there's other little things but You can see how quickly it changed from really good to not really not very good at all But we were we we were on to something. I mean I showed you that one picture so one of the things I learned from brandon was that he said that The green will reflect from the cover crop up into the crop And it will change the physiology of the plant and will stunt it Not just stunt it, but will set back the formation of the of the ears later on and hence if you Stunt it with a mulch and then it grows back later once it's further up less of that damages So what brandon does is he just goes over and Kills it doesn't kill it, but he sprays it with roundup to turn it brown You can use a roundup. You can use liberty Maybe I don't know anything else. Yeah, whenever I try something different I try and figure out I also sell crop insurance So I'm a risk manager by trade and one of the things I try and do is say How do we make this? at worst revenue neutral You know And I'll give you an example and then tie it to this So when I first started stripped till I said, okay, this is going to cost more Obviously because I've got a bar my bar wasn't as expensive that I said this is going to cost more than what we have been doing So I need to cut my fertilizer rate at least enough to cover that extra cost So that was one of the things I did and since then I'm only putting on 25 30 of university rates. I soil test every four years and then I don't I haven't had to vrt anything since So I tell you that because to your point and when we're doing this What are our expectations for this system? How do you define success and that's going to be different for each of us whether you've got livestock or a grain only For me success would be, you know If I'm making more money at 200 or 210 bushel corn than the guy at 280 With fewer inputs, you know, that's success. So the expectations, you know, how are you going to define success for me? If I'm creating more biology and I can reduce my inputs and you know Not need to go out there with an herbicide or I go out with glyphosate only and I don't need a residual We use Zidua pro on our beans. I mean that's A good chemistry. It's expensive though. Obviously We use Corvus and Laotis on our corn because it's safe for my popcorn. It's expensive Well, if you had a system like this, yeah, my yields are lower But if I'm saving depending on where you buy your chemical between 15 and 30 dollars an acre You know, and then you start adding up the soil biology and the resiliency long term Maybe 200 is better than 250 But again, how do you define success?