 Our research project was in relationship to adapting cover crops to northern region. We are located just north of Duluth by about 30 miles, so in northern Minnesota, south. North of here, a long ways. And so in relationship to that, I'd like to have Abe introduce himself in a little bit about his operation. I'm Abe Mock. I'm from Sturgeon Lake, Minnesota. Ever since I graduated from the University of Wisconsin River Falls, I have been full-time on our beef cow-calf operation. We have strived to market, beamed directly to customers, and as the grass-fed beef market expands, we have begun to do some of that, not all of our genetics match that market. So we're trying to address that, but more importantly, we feel that it's our access to high-quality forages later into the season that is holding us back in that regard. And then my wife and family farm in Barnum, and we do cow-calf, have some of the similar goals to Abe in relationship to doing direct marketing of grass-fed beef, and that really was kind of the interest in looking at and adapting our system into the aspects of utilizing cover crops in our region. In addition to that, one other farmer that we had involved was a more conventional grain farmer. He was located near Floodwood, Minnesota, and was utilizing wheat, canola, and also growing some very short-season corn varieties, and so in relationship to that, he was the third farmer in this process. This is a picture of our field day. We had a, this is the site of our two-year study. The first year we had oats and peas, and we harvested that. The conditions were right, where I made dry hay, round baled it, and then we came in the fall with the winter rye and purple-top turnips. Some of the data collection that we were looking at were things in relationship to nutrients and biology. What implications did the cover crop have on those soils? If we could produce a forage of quality after our primary crop was harvested so that it could continue to produce a crop and sustain quality long enough so that the cattle, as they were consuming it, would continue to grow well and put finish on, and so we looked at yield and quality in relationship to that, and then we put those numbers into a cost analysis. Okay, as I stated earlier, we had the peas and oats, and we came in with the turnips at three pounds per acre, and the winter rye at three quarters of a bushel per acre, and a quarter bushel of peas. That is in 2014. In 2015, we removed the peas because we really didn't see much growth of the peas in the mixture, and so we kept the turnips the same at three pounds per acre, and I apologize. It should be one bushel of winter rye per acre in relationship to that. There were a little bit differences in iterations with the three different farmers in the second year, and in my case, I actually no-till drilled that into the ground, and in Abe, he took a much different approach. Yeah, I had a back injury in the last early summer, so I got backed up on work, and the winter rye kind of got out of hand, and I was like, well, maybe we'll combine it while I couldn't find anyone to do that, so as well we'll cut her with the disk vine, open up that swath real wide, and see what kind of seed disbursement we can get. It worked really well. I raked up the windrows, bailed it, and then I came with the finishing disc, lightly disked it, then came in with the fertilizer, 30 pounds of AMS, 100 pounds of pot ash, with three pounds of purple top turnips mixed in with the fertilizer, broadcasted that, and then proceeded to drag it, and then we got a timely rain about a day later, and it worked very well. In relationship to that, we collected yield data on the growing cover crop, following that basically at time of when we'd get snow, or when we were about to graze that. The data that is presented in this slideshow is data collected at the same time in both the 2014 and the 2015 data. This here's a photo of some peas and oats growing. This would be a primary crop actually at Abe's place, and in 2014, very comparable in 2015 here on our place. In 2015, this photo was taken. It was a picture of us grazing cattle as mob stock, the peas and oats. In Abe's, he actually bailed his up as drive. Yes, that first year in 2014. This here would be an interceding occurring after the peas and oats occurred in 2014, and then that was actually 830 of 2015 this year. Abe pointed out this year as we looked at this. This area had been an area where we had utilized some supplement during its initial grazing, and the cattle had beat up that area, but a majority of it looked like the remaining fraction there of the stubble where it was. Here was a photo. The winter rye and turnips was planted on 830, which I would generally recommend trying to get that done sooner. We had a very unique fall this year in that it was very warm, very moist, and so we had a tremendous amount of growth. The strips were due to operator error, and I give the credit in my case to my son. He did all of the planting in 2014 this year, so I give him a little bit of latitude to do this, otherwise it may not have gotten done. That was a photo of 921 of this year, and then that's a picture of my daughter's feet, and that was on 1010. What was interesting is due to the season it just continued to grow. It was unreal, the growth. That is a photo also on that same day looking up the hill. You can see in the background we had bales in this particular instant set out for bale grazing on the edge. With this high quality of feed we actually strip grazed it, allowing them to consume hay and a portion of the field as a supplement to the hay to boost the protein. I think that the key to helping make this work even better is that the material is very, very high in moisture, very high quality, but utilizing it as a supplement to hay to get the animals to be able to consume enough dry matter at the same time is extremely valuable in relationship to that. This photo taken on the 23rd of November when we started grazing, so we had just pulled them off of some other pasture, brought them in and would give them the equivalent of two days of feed. This morning I did some calculating and they were consuming on average of approximately three to four pounds of dry matter of the winter rye and turnips and approximately thirty to thirty-five pounds of dry hay at the same time through this process. We would strip all the way across the field perpendicular to the hay and basically move them every other day in that process and was able to manage that pretty nicely in that manner. 2014, you want to cover the yield, say? On the Salzer Farm, Troy's got quite a bit better nutrient availability, higher fertility in his ground and it's very obvious there is total dry matter, three point four six tons per acre. On my place, we had two point seven seven on Peterson's, one point four eight tons per acre. Dave also hosted a tour in the fall of 2014 and a component that Abe's quite modest. I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to work with Abe in this respect, but he did something kind of unique on another portion of a field. He went ahead and planted a similar cover crop, but what he did is he went out there with just garden rain birds and he put on about an inch of rain on that area and for me it was extremely interesting in that it increased his cover crop yield, which would be this column here, that's the yield of the cover crop. This was the primary crop and in Abe's case he increased the yield of the cover crop almost to four, it was like three point nine two tons of dry matter per acre with one application of rain, water, irrigation and so I think that the folks out there that do have the opportunity to irrigate stuff have two distinct advantages. One it allows you to plant perhaps later and still achieve very very respectable yields in that process and secondly to get those sort of yields also gives you a significant advantage in relationship to the potential to produce forage late season of very high quality and allow you to extend your grazing season in that process and I think that in some respects that shows through in relationship to how our yields turned out in year two or 2015. Okay again on the Salzer farm, Troy old performed both the Mock and Peterson's with 4.94 total tons per acre and on our farm around three ton per acre of Peterson's corn was a 3.39 tons per acre. Salzer had oats and peas, we had winter rye, Peterson corn. Part of Scott Peterson's situation is that he utilized the corn, was going to graze it off and he grazed it at that sort of yield but it pushed back his planting date on his cover crop so far that in essence the stand was very irregular, there was a few spots that were very good but a majority of the field was not very good in conjunction with that they had received several rain events throughout the course of the fall and we have a soil moisture meter and when I was out soil testing in fall at Scott's place it I think only one spot did it not peg out and that means that it's over 50% moisture in the ground and so in essence it was flooded a majority of the time that he had that seed in the ground throughout that whole fall growing period and so that was partially due to that I would say most likely contributed to what I would consider nearly a crop failure in that particular instant. In regards to the economics in 2014 the yields there are repeated for the cover crops 1.14 ton, 1.2 ton at ABEs, Peterson's at .3, cost per acre that $43.40. In ABE's case I give ABE a tremendous amount of credit he keeps very detailed records of the amount of time it takes him to prepare fields, the cost, the fuel all of those sort of components are calculated in there and his cost was almost $54 whereas in our case and in Scott's case we use the Iowa custom rates numbers in relationship to what our seeding costs are at the bottom those are the averages with Peterson's with Scott's included and without I think it's important to look at both of those and that's why we included it on the slide because failures happen and so therefore it's important to take that into consideration. ABE pointed out something that I think is really critical as we look at these opportunities to grow cover crops I think it's important to understand that if you can have a little bit better fertility in your soils the rate of success will increase in that perspective so take that into account. One thing I struggle with on our farm is we've got very sandy forest soils what I've noticed is that our commercial dry urea fertilizer that plant isn't there to take it up we get a rain it's lost so we're just seeing where a manure is the preferred nitrogen source on our farm and that's what and I just I can't emphasize enough have the fertility there if you want to capitalize on this cover drop practice just it seems like common sense but have the proper there in the proper form that you can utilize it because it's such a challenge to build organic matter on these sandy soils there's nothing if you're not growing anything it's going to be really hard to do that. When looking at the cost analysis on average with the cost of the seed and such we took into consideration what the local market was for the sort of quality that we saw here and as a standing forage we valued at $80 a ton for dry matter and it looked in our cost analysis to be a net revenue of approximately $27 an acre that doesn't include the value that it's contributing to soil health and or potential soil loss in this process and so I think that those things need to be also considered. The economics for 2015 similar yield ranging from no real yield up to 2.28 tons and our costs were slightly lower in our region for winter rye seed this past year and we had taken the peas out of there and so overall you can see that the cost per ton of dry matter had gone down and so therefore our net revenue per acre had increased to approximately $61 an acre. Now the other thing we didn't have a frost even though we had snow November 23rd thereabouts that snow left and we never had a terminating frost in relationship to our turnips in winter rye virtually until December 14th I'm young old and I don't ever remember a fall quite like this and maybe Abe would be different and so that yield I would not consider normal by any stretch of the imagination it just kept growing and growing it was awesome it was so much fun and so I think this may be an anomaly but I think that it's important to look at or consider those components. In relationship to crop analysis these were scissor cut clippings taken and that's how we analyzed all of our yield data. The scissor cut clippings ranged in protein from about 16 to 21% crude protein very very high our digestible dry matter was about 70 and our relative feed value was in that 200 range and then this year it would be pretty comparable about 18% crude protein 70% digestible dry matter and about just over 200 relative feed value extremely good should be considered a supplement and then finally in relationship to our soils data the F9 is our field and EH is apes and then that's treatment and control and probably the thing that I would like to point out is if you look at nitrate nitrogen availability in the treatment at our place 41 versus control where there's no cover crop growing 56 that's 15 pounds of available nitrogen after a very wet rainy fall where there was probably a lot of nitrogen moving through as it is we are seeing basically an uptake by the crop and then the same is true of the sulfur and so in relationship to that I think it's really critical to think about what we're doing in relationship to environmental benefit in regards to those components the other thing that we still are not fully aware of in the salvita or the carbon dioxide burst test we had excessive numbers we went back to the lab and said is there a decimal place that moved here or something and they said no that that was the case and so honestly that is something that we really need to look further into those numbers are huge and so that's something that we would love to get feedback from or have interest in regards to that with that we'd be happy to take any questions so the question was in relationship to the nitrate nitrogen level when looking at that and comparing those components what is that demonstrating and so as I look at this data it was a soil test that was collected at the same time we were collecting the scissor cuts in fall and so with that in mind there was less potential nitrogen in the treatment where the cover crop was growing available for it to be washing through the soil and the same is true of the available sulfur in that top 6 inches of soil the other component is as we dug down we had roots that were 16 to 18 inches deep on that winter rye and turnips this fall and so it really did grow well the question was did we look at compaction in association with grazing versus the components of just harvesting naturally with harvest equipment and I would say that our soils are significantly different between apes and mine and scots and so I would say that our bulk densities on the lab report were not of what I would consider compacted soil so I can't really address that between our different options for me I don't have equipment to harvest forage and Abe and Scott have that opportunity and so we just don't manage it as such but that would be an interesting component to take into consideration so the question was did we calculate the economic benefit of the forage production and I would say we didn't calculate it directly but indirectly when comparing it to what the local hay markets were and utilizing a figure of 80 tons of dry matter per ton of dry matter yes it's scissor cuts and so I know that that is artificially higher than what you would harvest with livestock but even if you're looking at 75% of it the range was about $27 of net benefit to that $61 of net benefit in my case the production was rather low and then combined with the wet conditions and wanting that winter rye to establish and come back in the spring I chose not to graze it because there wasn't much tonnage there and I didn't want to destroy the field with the traffic from the cattle so in that sense we weren't able to capture what Troy was able to with grazing his cattle getting into the beneficial aspects of what we're doing with the soil, the microbiology, we don't really have a handle on that yet