 So if you have a car and you you get in it and you just hit the starter You're and just keep hitting the start don't let it run. You're eventually gonna run the battery dead Well, that's kind of how plants work like the leaves on your plant is like the all-mater on your car and the roots are the battery Because they store energy the leaves take in this photosynthesis and they store it in the roots So when you season long graze of cows come along and bite it off every day day after day It's like setting in your car and hitting the starter and you're eventually your battery goes dead Your car ain't gonna go nowhere And your plants are the same way you just bite them off every day and every day If your roots will finally die because your battery is dead your storage is gone And so that's why I got away from season-long grazing and went to a mob grazing where they're only graze On a piece one or two days to get moved on I'm Charlie Todd and live here at Chamberlain, South Dakota We've been ranching on this particular place for the last 21 years We raised two daughters and a son here They've all left the farm, but they come back on weekends and help me work cattle and stuff And my wife we've been married for 36 years. I grew up Working for my uncles and they some are followed and plan wheat and That ground washed and blowed every other year. It was just a god-awful thing. I was ever involved Sorry uncles But after I knew that there had to be something better and So when I got a chance to manage some land So it just makes me proud of myself that I'm doing better than what I've seen other people do I guess it's just a self-pride thing that makes me get up and go every day Well, I was in high school Local NRCS person put on a range judging school. And I think it was by luck. I wound up winning the range judging school I guess I can still remember the day and that's been a long time ago So it must have made an impression on me then after we got a high school got married and then this bootstrap program come along and We was in the second group there in the early 90s And it was it was a two-year program and they made us pencil everything out You know, is it gonna it's gonna be good for the families gonna be good for the community Is it gonna pay you know, it's gonna pencil out and it was at a time when a lot of ranches was going broke So it was really good time to learn how to be the most efficient operator you could be And then after the bootstraps program, you know, we went to just a lot of these one-day classes like ranchers workshops and pasture walks and And then we finally went on some bus trips at the NRCS and extension service put on and And when you're on a pasture walk or bus trip, you're you're on the guy's place He can't really lie to you. You can see if it's working or not so a lot of them was you know eye-opening things just because You know, it wasn't in a classroom. You could see what the guy was doing Somewhere in early 2000s. I went to the South Dakota grazing school And and right after the grazing school I started this this mob grazing rotational grazing system here on this place The inner CS and extension service can give you a lot of technical support if you know that You know, if you're gonna start a grazing plan, you know, just how many pounds of grass do you have? And then professional type people are good at coming out and measuring your grass and And giving the idea what what potential your ranch has It made sense to me that You know, you let everything grow up and go to seed and then you graze everything off So the weeds everything plants don't like everything gets eaten Then I implemented mob grazing so that the cattle got an evener diet every day Rather than just turning them out for 20 days on a pasture and making them grow up to the ground And we figured out it only took half as much land to some of the cows So therefore instead of running twice mean cows we extended our grazing season by like four months So now we only feed cows two or three months out of winter instead of five or six And it's because of our management same amount cows in the same place But just the difference in management would gain that much grass that much grazing season This grazing school it It's a lot about plan ID and pasture usage and you know, and how do you How do you get the most out of your natural resources and yet improve them at the same time, you know I mean, it's pretty easy to Overgraze and get a lot of production and it's pretty easy to undergraze and improve your natural resources But hopefully the grazing school teach you you can do both at the same time a quote I got from an old rancher was Utilize what you what you have and manage for what you want One of the Interesting things when you start start watching what cattle eat every day is a lot of things We used to think was weeds is what cattle really like So so we give these Cali's little plots for the grazing school and you expect them to eat Western wheat grass And you come back the next day and they eat the lambs quarters out of the pens Only place that it's really grubbed to the ground is where there might be some field buying weed That's probably their favorite favorite thing And so so like you you kind of you kind of come away with a whole new perspective You know, why would I want to use chemicals spray these weeds if my cows really like them? It's just an eye-opener when you watch cows every day and figure out that What you think is great ain't what the cow thinks is great Yeah, I'm having fun, but it's because the neighbors all talk about me coffee shop, and I enjoy it Passing on a ranch in better shape than you found it But you know no matter as long as it's improved is it's gonna be a great thing It's not sustainable if your land is degrading Someday the world's gonna run out of food. So I mean it's just in a larger scheme of things you have to you have to be protecting your land or We're all in trouble