 Well thanks everybody for coming this morning I'm Donnie Ferring and I'm from Beach, North Dakota and my wife Trish is here too. We applied I guess a couple years ago for this Ceregrant and we're fortunate enough to to get it. Ours is entitled utilizing cover crops to increase productivity and health on vigor on tame grass and I guess I'll give you a little history about our my wife and I we we got married in 98 we both grew up on cattle ranches but we when we bought this property I guess I'll move on to the next slide here I'll give you a little history about us but it's my wife and my two kids in 98 we got married we moved on to having cattle on shares of my father-in-law then in 2007 we moved to Beach, North Dakota we're fortunate enough to get on to this section of ground that we're on we're releasing it 2009 we were be able to buy it we moved on into 10 and 11 and 11 and 12 that the years were very different and day and I'll show you some pictures here I guess here it is talks about a description of our Ceregrant we wanted to rejuvenate the brome grass but this was a picture of our property before we owned it I guess and that to the I don't know if we can see but this would be right in here where we did our our Ceregrant project it was farmed prior to 1983 and in 1983 it was seeded back to pretty much brome alfalfa and Western wheat well it's been grazed by horses and cattle and the production went down on it and so like in 2011 I'll get this is our picture in 2014 I guess of overview of it then we move on 2014 we took some transact spots where we got some soil samples and you can see that there and we move on to our next one this is another one in 2014 you can see our 2004 excuse me the different types of the soil imagery 2009 you can see where the this video slide here shows a lot about where the water was and you can see the the veins for the horses and the cattle making veins and these are kind of gullies or washouts I wouldn't know if I call them gullies I just call them washouts but we call them proper areas and like field area was talking about last night about filling in the bare grounds I guess that's what we look at these white spots on here as bare ground and we just have to get more covered on them so 2014 this is identifies our spots I guess where we where we did this is the two 20 acre past our pastors are the projects that we did we did see to this 20 acres in 2013 this one in 2014 and now you can see where we put our put our our house our building the cross fences and the trees and everything that we're doing there but as you can still see there's still lots of areas where we need more more cover and more I guess we call it organic matter we need to put on the ground we were in with nrcs with the CSP program so we do photo points this is a photo point we took in 2012 and as you can see by this picture there is pretty good cover on the ground but we would like it to be better 2012 was a really dry year for us we probably didn't even have six inches of moisture probably that year a lot of the bromagraphs on this field and project got three to four inches and never even headed out so that's what got us kind of driving into this their grant or into this project is that we needed to get more production of it and for us we don't own any hay ground so we want to utilize as much grazing as we can throughout the whole year so we had to look at different ways and and we sat down with nrcs and county agent and that's how we kind of come up with Sarah Grant so we and we were traveling around to some other meetings like this and got that idea I guess for cover crops you can see there's some weeds there there's different things and not a lot of just activity everything's kind of dead and brown and I'll show you as we go along here with their photo points this is a just a overview again of it in 2012 and I think it was taken probably in the fall probably the end of October 1st November that fall we started an early winter after we wean we're doing some bale grazing this is just a picture of some of our our heifer calves using bale grazing some more you know a lot of people talk about you know is that waste or is it you know I have neighbors that just scream at me like I'm wasting too much hay but we look at it as we're putting more organic matter on the ground and more material so this is a breakdown I guess of our cost and expenses that we entailed in 2013 we went ahead and sprayed it 30 ounces and we seeded it this is our cover crop that a mix that we used we had Gabe Brown I guess from Bismarck and Kenny Miller from Bismarck kind of help us with the different varieties and what we want to try to accomplish with it we that year this is the seeding that we did in the rate as you can see the canopy we we didn't have you know in the brome 22% versus our native we tested patches you know around there as you can see we just don't have bare ground was that 40% you know litter 23 we just didn't have the cover on there that we'd like to see and we just soil test and I don't think we did another one just put on here but our infiltration does another thing we wanted to try to keep more water on our property and not we have it all go down to the creek or to our neighbors and as you can see on this we need some work because we only can take an inch per hour and versus the native it's you know a lot better so and you can see our NPK where we're at there and per acre so there's people that thought you know that this is awful expensive way but if you were going to break it up and farm it for two three years you got a lot of expense into that too so and at the time hey wasn't cheap either so we're just trying to find different ways and make this property work so if you guys have any questions at the end we can talk more about that this is in July that same year we had a little over three inches I guess and probably I think about 45 minutes and as you can see this is part of the field that we seeded and what the water is doing and it's it's going down to the creek and to our neighbors and that's something that we're working on we wanted to try to get more organic matter to get the water to stay stay on our property instead of going to the neighbors and it just that we were pretty nervous I was going to take our road out that's our driveway luckily it didn't but it made our road a little more narrower but and then this was after the rain as you can see here this was cover crop was just seeded the end of June but this is the field here the darker spots were places that I bail grazed that winter you know there's just more more material there and you can see where we sprayed and and it's kind of we didn't get the best best probably killed job on it but we didn't really want to kill the broom all we wanted to do was just kind of set it back this was taken in September that fall we had a our county agent and an NRCS kind of had a Golden Valley cover crop tour we went to three different locations I guess in the county and this is our stop on our 20 acres that we did that year and as you can see back where we were headed to there these darker spots is where I bail grazed and there's more organic matter there and just more litter and more nutrients from the cattle so and what we grazed there I guess that fall we had 14 yearling bulls on there for basically 41 days and on the cover crop and then after that November 20th it started getting cold and and we thought they had most of it grazed off pretty good so we started supplementing and and this is our CSP photo shoot for that next fall and this is after we bail grazed some of there so you can see the darker darker rings here this would be where we probably bail grazed there's a lot more vegetation our rainfall probably was double or well probably almost triple in 2013 to versus 2012 and you can see the brown grass got a lot thicker but there's a lot more plant vegetation there so so we are making improvements at least we feel like we are but it's a long road ahead of us yet we think back you know they farmed it until 1983 you know and didn't do a lot I think we've been in a take-take mode so now we're trying to be more proactive the other way so it might take us 30 years to get it get it back this was taken last winter or spring I guess this is another part of the property there where we're bail grazing and my wife just thought it was kind of a neat picture how them bulls were laying down and where we were bail grazing and they used that for their bedding I guess this is part of our crew here it's hard and Taylor our two daughters I guess we're all hey and that's part of it too why we why we're doing some of this it's for them in the future but this is another one in the spring I guess I should go on to 2014 what we did we we're at a conference I guess what with Dr. Hubert and talked about roundup and so next year the negatives of it so we thought well let's try something different let's just use our cattle so in the May of 2014 we just grazed it we moved 50 pairs on there for I think 10 days and we just grazed the property down and as that's what the cows and calves are doing out there now we just wanted to set the brown grass back and go in and seed it so June or another one May we're out putting mineral out for the cattle and all this is absolutely apple cider vinegar too we were putting out for them but me and the crew then this is a picture that we take to of dung beetles as you can see there there's quite a bit of action going on in there you know kind of exciting the kids they really enjoy it we call us our field tour they're excited about digging through dung beetles they're looking for them and they think it's pretty cool you know it's like they've gone from one dung bile to the next and they want to they want to find out you know and so they're six and four so it's everything to them is pretty new and exciting you know so 2014 this is what we did we decided to go a little earlier we wanted to get more out of our cover crop I know people say you can see that later but we wanted to go earlier and get see if we can get more growth more production out of it so we went a little earlier May 25th we we did the 40 pairs of high stock density and then we took them out of there I think on the 7th of June it was on the one side the first 20 acres we seeded on June 5th the other 20 acres we did on June 10th we had our local Golden Valley County Soil Conservation District do it as you see our costs are a lot less this year just due to the fact we didn't have to spray we didn't have to hire somebody to spray the roundup and buy the roundup we changed our seeding a little bit we tried some grazing corn and the hairy vetch and kale the terms from rasters were the same the year before we tried cow peas didn't really see much growth there with them but but the rest of those we did see something out of all of them and this is June 5th this is what it looked like before we were seeding it kind of this is the West half of the 20 acres as you can see there I just just point out here this is Southwest water come through and plowed a trench through there so you can see the bare ground there but here there's also other bare ground spots so that's our thing we're trying to work on I guess trying to get get it to grow better there's our soil conservation district seeding it yes give you we still had some chemical residue I guess to that's another thing we wanted to see on this slide you can see the strips where parts of the brome grass is still I guess desiccated or dead from the roundup from the year before another picture of it pointing the other way this is to the north and we we didn't want to kill the brome grass I guess just more I set it back and we feel like it was set back fairly decent to guess another picture I guess of the our soil conservation district this was taken a month later and we're checking out our cover crop what's coming and she's pictured there by a soybean I thought we were kind of crazy for putting soybeans in there I didn't think they could grow that far west but you get enough moisture get the right things growing they'll still grow and they actually did fairly quite well for what I thought they they didn't get really you know no ice but you know three three four inches you know so we were we were excited and I you know they're really good for the cattle and good for the land so it's a picture of the harry betch cattle just they love harry betch and I think they do very very well off of it so picture that and you can see kind of some of the litter on the ground and we're trying to get more of that on that this is another picture taken from the west half as you can see the rows of the some of the corn coming you know some of this other stuff it's harder to see but you know we did have a good sweet clover year last year so you can see some sweet clover coming in there another picture bigger overview of it this is kind of more on the east side of it but you can see some of the soybeans and some of the corn and other things coming in granted I mean it's not like you guys down here where you get corn 8 10 12 feet high but for us it's what's exciting this is a trouble spot that we have with bare ground it's hard pan I guess like they were talking about last night this excites us too because we did some bail grazing on it in the spring and just goes to show we need to do more of it but how the cover crop or the soybeans and the in the hairy vetch was was trying to come through there and that's that's good because normally it would just be bare bare dirt and we don't want that we don't want to be losing it and and so we're we're pretty excited about this picture and it's a photo point that we can watch for years to come another one here you can see where we bail grazed here we had oats and peas and there's some voluntary oats coming there so and it's a lot better more thriving there than where where it isn't so another picture too towards the north there to our place we showed you before how it was dead or desiccated there and now it's filling in and you can see some of the sunflowers coming you know they don't get very tall but the cattle they just love them they do really well I'm be surprising when we dump them out in the cover crop they kind of I don't know we were first couple years we did cover crops and we turned cattle out we were worried about plastic acid or or bloat or whatever but they really they adjust their diet I guess to it and they like the buffet style one day they'll eat the millet or next day they'll eat the sunflower and I think cattle are livestock as a whole are a lot smarter than what us humans give them credit for I think sometimes maybe we're the ones that cause problems this is what we did in 2014 we grazed 28 yearling bulls there from October 13th to the 7th and then we started supplementing them you know maybe wouldn't have had to start supplementing them but we had our sale in November 22nd so we're trying to get the bulls still in good you know sale conditions so so we did for 25 days and they could still go out there and and still graze the cover crop but they also come in to eat to eat the hay too then September we had the North Dakota Grazing Coalition came to our place and we did a pasture walk we had roughly about 35 producers there this is just a picture of some of that they're not really on the cover crop they're on some pasture that we graze and we did a high intensity grazing there and so there people are standing around talking I guess and visiting what what we saw and what we didn't see this is a picture in the fall more of our bale grazing and we brought the bulls home there and the girls are seeing how tall she is I guess here this is our photo point again for CSP this would be taken again I guess in the fall and you can see some of the bale rings again where we bail graze where they're a little darker greener where it isn't I know I need to get probably GPS and be more point-specific I guess but we're you know pretty close every year where we're at but but there's definitely getting to be more different varieties of grass there it's not just bromide it's a lot denser this oil this is a picture of some of the tools I guess we'd like to use in our ranch in our place some portable windbreak has been a wonderful asset for us because it just opens up our grazing we can I take the loader buckets and I can take them anywhere I want to and and set them down and it's a tool I think we're going to use for a lot more years too so it and this is our picture of our tanks one of our frost free water tanks they are completely energy-free the number of cattle that you have on them makes a difference you know if it's 10 below you will get some ice if you're under a hundred head we have one to the east where we run our main cow herd I guess of 120 cows but she'll stay pretty open until it's probably 10 15 below because there's enough cattle drinking there and every day it gets a new flush of water in there so and it's kind of pointed to the southeast where it still gets some sun so and then this is a another picture I guess a slide of kind of where the dark green spots I want you to see where we've been bail grazing and intensifying and getting more organic matter on the ground this is a kind of a waterway like we saw in that first one that was deep and there wasn't much litter there and so we're working on those these here too are some places we fed last spring and trying to get more organic matter and more productive and I think this whole deal I think if we get more nitrogen and more organic matter on the ground it's more surface I think the blown grass and everything will rejuvenate better so but I think we took for 30 some years or 50 years and we have a farmer I guess north of us he's always asking me about cover crops and he he says well what do you think and he's like well I think he wants us to be a genie in a bottle like I'm supposed to give him the answer and just poof you know it's gonna increase his wheat by 10 more bushels you know I don't have that answer so it's not a not a cure all but I think it's another tool in conclusion I guess like I've been talking about we need to increase our organic matter and keep bail grazing and keep utilizing cover crops and the verdict is still alter I guess on the broom and what will happen to it but you know I we're okay with the broom being in there and we're okay with whatever else has been coming in there so when we did I I didn't tell you that but on that east side where we did more of the intense grazing last spring we did start seeing some Western wheatgrass coming and so it just shows that the seed was there and it's it's in the ground there just needs to be able to compete with the broom and get a chance to come is this is why we do it it's for a four-year-old and six-year-old so we can spend more time for our turtle hunting so but we like to thank the Sarah Grant people I guess for us given the opportunity to try this project and we're still learning a lot and have a long ways to go and our ranch is needs a lot of work but you know the Roman Empire wasn't built overnight so we we feel like we are making baby steps I guess the question was can you see difference where we sprayed the roundup and where we didn't yes it just didn't have to compete quite as much with the with the broom where we did spray the roundup it probably come up and emerge a lot faster on the east side where we did not spray any of the roundup it was interesting the soybeans did quite well there we didn't see a lot of height but you know three four inches but they still competed with the broom I the verdict is still out there I guess I don't know I think it still needed something to set that broom back but we didn't want to farm it we didn't want to plow it up I guess maybe to answer your question but but I still think it comes down to the tool that maybe we don't even need to spray anything the tool is there we need to use the cattle maybe more and put the nitrogen and the poop and the manure down on you know use our livestock and and not worry about the chemical and with the roundup you probably could get faster results you know you could probably get there faster but you know yeah I'm not saying you need to use it did that help answer your question or