#179, In Practice, May/June 2018

Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.

M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 8

In Practice a publication of Holistic Management International

NUMBER 179

Regenerative Agriculture Innovations

W W W. H O L I S T I C M A N A G E M E N T. O R G

save the date ____________________________________________

BY ANN ADAMS

I

had the privilege of attending the Regenerative Agriculture Field Day at the holistically-managed 7,600-acre Paicines Ranch that was a pre-conference event for the 2018 Ecofarm Conference held in Pacific Grove, California this past January. This day-long event featured Holistic Management practitioners Gabe Brown and Paicines Ranch Manager Kelly Mulville as well as soil experts Ray Archuleta, Dr. David Johnson, Ray Archuleta and Tim LaSalle.

Over 100 people attended this field day.

The next day Ray, Gabe, and David offered a day-long Regenerative Agriculture Carbon+Soil=Solutions! Regenerative Agriculture Intensive at Asilomar which was also well-attended. Then on Friday of the conference, I gave a presentation with Spencer and Abbey Smith of the Jefferson Center for Holistic Management on “Regenerative Grazing: Managing Healthy Ecosystem Processes Using Livestock.” It was a great group of attendees at that workshop who asked a lot of good questions about how to actually put into practice these principles they had been hearing about all week long.

What I was struck by during my time at Ecofarm and in talking with attendees and colleagues is just how much innovation is happening right now. It’s exploding! The interest in and increasing understanding of soil is phenomenal. I went to Ecofarm for the first time 12 years ago and again two years ago. It’s a great, cutting-edge conference, but I didn’t really notice that much difference between those two years. This year felt so much difference and perhaps it was because there was so much focus on the concept of regenerative agriculture

and how that does or doesn’t relate to organic agriculture. That is a critical conversation as it moves us more toward really looking at soil health and the practices to create living, resilient, regenerative soils.

With that in mind I’d like to share with you some lessons learned from the conference.

Soil Health Innovations

nurture resilience, build diversity

REGENERATE

2018

Oct 31 - Nov 2, 2018

Albuquerque, NM

At the Regenerative Agriculture Field Day at Paicines we learned about the importance of the appropriate fungal:bacteria ratio for compost from Dr. David Johnson from New Mexico State University who is focused on BEAM (Biologically Enhanced Agriculture Management). The compost is so potent that people are using one pound of it in 30 gallons/acre to spray as a seed inoculate at planting time. One compost pile will yield about 1000 pounds. The compost produces a five times increase in production for a cost of only 25 cents/acre.

We also heard from Ray “The Soil Guy” Archuleta who started his presentation with the ever popular soil demonstration to show how much better a no-till, biologically active soil can hold together in water and yet allow for better infiltration of the water during a rain event. He noted that tilled soil causes the soil to cannibalize itself. Also, the glomalin in the soil only lasts 27 days, so more glomalin must constantly be created through the microbial activity around the root of plants.

This soil structure, along with ground cover, helps to stabilize soil which must withstand the force of a raindrop coming 20 mph. Increasing plants in the soil also help us from “leaking sunlight” by CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Regenerative Agriculture Innovations INSIDE THIS ISSUE The drive to determine how to better incorporate regenerative agricultural practices that work in a given situation or location is on. In this issue you will read the stories of how people from California to New Mexico to Ohio to New York are using Holistic Management to help them create healthy land, healthy food, and healthy lives.

Regenerative Agriculture Innovations

Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.

In Practice a publication of Hollistic Management International

HMI educates people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities.

STAFF Ann Adams. . . . . . . . . . . . Executive Director Kathy Harris. . . . . . . . . . . Program Director Mary Girsch-Bock. . . . . . Development Manager Carrie Stearns . . . . . . . . . Communications &

Outreach Manager Valerie Grubbs. . . . . . . . . Accounting Manager Julie Fierro. . . . . . . . . . . . Education Manager Stephanie Von Ancken . . Program Manager Kimberly Barnett. . . . . . . Administrative Assistant

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Daniel Nuckols, Chair Walter Lynn, Vice-Chair Kelly Sidoryk, Past Board Chair Gerardo Bezanilla Avery Anderson-Sponholtz Kirrily Blomfield Kevin Boyer Jonathan Cobb Guy Glosson Wayne Knight Robert Potts Jim Shelton Sarah Williford

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT In Practice (ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by: Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org Copyright © 2018 Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International

to consider your resource concern and then design the mix around that concern so you CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 address that concern. There isn’t really a good blanket cover crop mix. Gabe is running creating more opportunity to use the solar up to 750,000 pounds/acre of animals and energy through photosynthesis. using cool season then warm season mixes to In addition, the soil organisms in the soil are accelerate biological time to improve soil fertility busy eating weed seed. In fact 10% of weed and productivity. seed are eaten every day by insects. Ray noted Gabe doesn’t worry about having seeds that there are 1,700 beneficial insects for every mixed in the seeder because if some small pest. He also noted that if farmers can learn seeds come through after the large seeds, to work with their soils, they will no longer be he figures that the large seeds make way for tenant farmers controlled by large chemical the smaller seeds. He also includes a plant companies. The technology to help vegetable like safflower in his mix even though the cattle farmers also work within a no-till system is also won’t eat it because he wants the safflower here with Virginia Tech to catch the snow developing a no-till and keep it on his potato planter that place to improve his terminates the cover water cycle since crop and has a subsnow is 30% of soil shank to cut the the moisture they space for transplanted receive on his land. vegetables to be He says he focuses dropped in. on the reality that Lastly, Gabe Brown farm profit relates told his story starting to carbon cycling Katahdin sheep grazing cover crops on with a picture of cattle through their reclaimed annual cropfields. grazing cover crops in farming system.

40 degrees below zero temperature. He noted As Gabe finishes his animals he is looking that the principles for regenerative agriculture for the Brix to be at 25-30. The herd may only are the same regardless of where you farm, but be taking 25-30% of the biomass. 60-70% of the tools are used differently. Gabe also his mix might be sorghum, although he likes to mentioned that what some people don’t realize add plants like plantain which helps support the is that the liquid carbon pathway through the cattle’s health. With that kind of mix he is getting roots of the plants that feeds the soil microbes is as much as 4 pounds of gain per day with a also the source of carbonic acid which breaks gross profit of $435/acre and a net of $350/acre. down the parent material (rock) and makes the minerals available to the plants. Thus, fertile From Annual to soil is a product of photosynthesis and Perennial Innovations microbial resynthesis.

Paicines Ranch Manager Kelly Mulville Gabe noted that he has seen a 20–60% spoke about the work being done on the increase in net profit because of planting crops Paicines Ranch using the practices and together. He can then combine them together principles that David, Ray, and Gabe had and use them as a hog or chicken ration or discussed. In the Paicines crop fields, the sell as a cover crop mix. He says the first step land had been leased and was heavily tilled when considering what cover crop to use is as part of an organic vegetable production

FEATURE STORIES

LAND & LIVESTOCK

NEWS & NETWORK

Holistic Thinking at the Scale of a Wolf

Big Bear Ranch— Producing Grassfed Protein and Wildlife Habitat

Grapevine................................................................ 18

SAM RYERSON............................................................................ 3

Ortensi Farm— Improving Land Health and Quality of Life

ANN ADAMS................................................................................. 7

Coming in the Back Door— Transitioning a Soil and Water Conservation District to Holistic Financial Planning

JEFF GOEBEL............................................................................10

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HEATHER SMITH THOMAS....................................................... 11

Sweetgrass Dairy— A Match Made in Heaven

HEATHER SMITH THOMAS.......................................................14

Board Chair............................................................. 19 Certified Educators.................................................. 20 Market Place............................................................ 21 Development Corner............................................... 24

Holistically-designed vineyards to be able to function on 8 inches of rain/year. system. When the Paicines staff did a baseline monitoring they found no living organisms in the soil. The first year they planted cover crops and broadcast the seeds. The plants that grew had a relative feed value of 88. They then ran cattle and sheep and are working on planting perennial plants near the sprinklers in these fields. They have a total of 68 acres they are rehabilitating and have created 98 paddocks.

Last winter they planted 20 species. This year they have planted 40 species. Their relative feed value was in the low 100s. In order to control the animals they have built electric fencing over top of the sprinkler system. They are now up to a relative feed value of 230 with their most recent cover crop.

The new vineyard on Paicines which is still being developed in phases has been designed as a no-till system. A conventional vineyard often has 25 tractor passes per year. With previous vineyard trials that have incorporated sheep as a biological tool for the vineyard there has been a 90% reduction in irrigation use and a 1,260 pound/acre yield increase with superior quality of grape as well as a $450 reduction

of expenses because of reduced input needs.

Kelly uses a Holistic Design process that looks at creating opportunities by increasing diversity and paying attention to management.

The new vine support system in this vineyard works to get the vines out of the heat and frost zones that are closer to the ground while allowing the sheep to help with pruning the suckers. The vine supports were placed in the direction of the wind to make sure that vines were not blown across the supports. This system also creates more shade for the soil organisms and other wildlife. Kelly also plans to plant other plants among the grape vines to attract pollinators and also hummingbirds, which would protect the grapes against other birds that are more interested in the grapes. They have already seen more green growing plants throughout the summer and not just near the dripline. All the varieties of grapes have been selected for drought hardiness.

While the cost of this system is $1,000– 1,200 more per acre than a VSP (vertical shoot position) system, Kelly believes that the extra cost of developing the vineyard this way will pay for itself in two years. Irrigation is raised up and the hope is that once the soil fertility is increased the vineyard can be farmed dryland on 8 inches of rain/year. There will be no need to run electric fencing to protect the vines from the sheep because of the design. The cover crops that have done well so far are mustards, horehound, dove weed, and milkweed.

The new 25-acre vineyard was placed on a north facing slope as the best place to grow perennials on that landscape. When they planted the new vines they put an application of

compost and then ran 6 ADA (animal days per acre) of cattle and sheep. After they planted the cover crops, they were able to run 67 ADA. They were giving the sheep about ¼ acre paddocks.

The biggest challenge at the vineyard has been ground squirrels attacking the young vines.

However, they are working with attracting more raptors to the area by setting up kestrel boxes.

Mel Preston from Point Blue Conservation Science also talked about all the birds that have been attracted by the farm management practices at Paicines.

I continue to be inspired by this passionate community of innovators who come together to share ideas and encourage each other. I look forward to continuing that conversation at the REGENERATE Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 31–November 2nd (a collaboration with HMI, The Quivira Coalition, and the American Grassfed Association). Be sure to arrive on October 30th to attend the evening Holistic Management reception as a kick off to the conference. I look forward to seeing you there!

Ann Adams, Kathy Webster (TomKat Ranch Foundation), Abbey Smith (Jefferson Center for Holistic Management)

Holistic Thinking at the Scale of a Wolf

BY SAM RYERSON

T

hese are reflections on three years I spent managing ranches in wolf country in western New Mexico, and some ways in which our work involved holistic thinking in practice. Running ranches in the presence of large predators is really complicated—emotionally, practically, politically, and financially. For the last twelve years, I have worked on ranches across the West—most of them range-based ranches in big wild country, many of them holistically managed, all of them home to predators. Everywhere, sooner or later, we lost livestock to predation. Every loss like that was fraught. Usually, predators were not the

biggest practical challenges we faced. Predators are complex, we were mostly just lucky, and there’s a lot more to say than this.

The Mexican gray wolf was introduced to the Blue Range Recovery Area in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona in 1998. The project brought great hope to some environmentalists, and dismay to many local residents and ranchers. I went to work there in 2010, to manage the ranches a new owner was putting together, between the Arizona state line near Springerville and the Gila Wilderness. It was conflicted country, even before the wolves. It was complicated. It looked like an opportunity.

Ranching in Harmony

One of the new owner’s goals in buying these ranches and hiring me to run them was building a model for profitable ranching in harmony with the ecology of the area. He said, “People are part of the ecology now.” This meant investing in the local economy, coexisting with predators, and rebuilding communities where the kids would want to stay. He brought on as consultants two long-time Holistic Management practitioners and educators, Jim Howell and Zachary Jones, to help him define a holistic context and begin his strategic, land and grazing planning, and who helped hire me.

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The whole under management was big and broad and challenging, and kept growing as we added new land bases to the operation. By the time I left, we had five different ranches under management, comprising over 300,000 acres, with additional leased enterprises, running more than a thousand mother cows and thousands of yearlings.

We planned our stocking and grazing to respond to our holistic context. We reckoned that wolves were also part of the landscape, whether we liked it or not. We started buying local late-bred, moderate-framed young cows and weaned heifer calves to build a resident herd on the first ranch. We bought thin, light yearlings and weaned calves the next spring when we acquired another higher-elevation summer place and turned out about 3,000 of them. We conceived long-term land plans, based on investing in high-volume stock water infrastructure, to maximize our ability to manage grazing timing and intensity. We tried to keep all the cattle on each ranch (at least 500 cows or 1,000 yearlings) in one pasture at a time. We rode horses everywhere and lived in cow camps near the cattle. Sometimes we lived in tents.

We tried to drift across the land to heal the land, to respond to natural cycles as they ebbed and flowed like tides, to prepare for rain and drought and fire and wolves.

Moving cows and calves to new grass at the head of a canyon in the summer range. and our own goals. We wanted to cooperate with the wolf re-introduction program and their Interagency Field Team instead of fighting them.

We worked with the non-profit group Defenders of Wildlife, who sponsored a “range rider” for us to hire. I joined the board of the Mexican Wolf/ Livestock Coexistence Council and with an environmentalist from Tucson drafted a working plan for the group on my kitchen table.

Training Cattle

I kept holistic grazing planning charts for each ranch on my desk and updated them daily, or at least whenever I was home. I kept a daily log of observations on cattle location, behavior, and wolf presence for our partnership with Defenders of Wildlife. We planned our grazing use according to pasture moves, but because most of the pastures were so large, we intentionally located cattle within pastures. We used Elk calf carcass killed by wolves, about 1 mile from the topography of canyons the cows above. and ridges, water points, salt, We wanted to become productive members supplement, and daily riding to move cattle of the community. We hired local cowboys where we wanted. We were managing for who knew the landscape and wanted to work the complex variables involved with grazing with us, and old friends of mine from Montana. livestock on big wild landscapes. We were We hired local contractors to lay pipelines and always watching the cattle, and watching for renovate houses. Most of the land was Forest wolves. We realized we could better manage Service land. We worked with the local district cattle than wolves, but by staying vigilant and offices to meet their protocols and priorities flexible and keeping our options open, we could 4 IN PRACTICE

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respond to the wolves.

A wolf has a big range. Our land base on each individual ranch was not as big as a wolf pack’s territory, but big enough that we were able to begin to operate at the scale of a wolf, in terms of space and time. We planned our cows’ calving season to occur later in the spring in May and June to coincide with the elk calving season, when an alternate source of prey would be available for the wolves. We timed our breeding season to begin in late July, when the Southwestern monsoon usually brings warmseason grass growth.

We rode through all the cattle as often as possible, whether or not we needed to move them, to monitor their health and watch for predators. We trained them to stand calmly, or trail out and move quietly as a herd. We conditioned them to our stock dogs. When we found the cattle unusually flighty or nervous, we thought we might have predators around.

We did all this to try to prevent problems with wolves, but mostly, to manage the cattle the best ways we could. We were trying to plan at the scale of a wolf, adapting according to a sense of place and time.

Sometimes it didn’t work. We lost cattle.

Sometimes they just disappeared. Sometimes we just found a little black hair in some coyote scat. Sometimes a cow showed up after a while away in the brush, gaunted-up, and tight-bagged and balling for her calf, and never came in with a calf again. We sold those dry cows in the fall.

Early in our first summer with the cows in the high country, a dry summer after a dry spring, a

black bear killed two of our calves and some of the neighbors’ to the north. I could see the signs of a bear kill on the freshest carcass—trauma to the neck and back, and the hide peeled back—but there were also wolf tracks nearby. I called the USDA Wildlife Services trapper, and he came out and confirmed a bear depredation, and trapped the bear that night. They shot the bear the next morning. I would rather not have trapped the bear, but I thought I was being a good neighbor.

Coyotes killed some newborn calves every spring. We faced the typical challenges that new, growing enterprises might face anywhere.

Cowboys came and went; bowed up and quit or I fired them. The largest wildfire in New Mexico history burned through most of the pasture our yearling steers were in one spring (we didn’t lose any cattle). We found our herd

I keep in mind my lessons from the wolf country, trying to keep myself open to possibilities; planning, monitoring, and re-planning; staying vigilant and flexible; practical and holistic.

culled the PI-positives, branded the calves, moved them west across the big basin, and then into the higher country.

We had no more wolf trouble that year. We made plans, tested them, adjusted and re-planned. Sometimes we were wrong but we also found some good practical solutions to complicated challenges.

Ranching Around Predators

Jesse moving cows and calves to new grass within a large pasture.

Holistic thinking helped us manage the emotional challenges of ranching around predators by remembering the broader context we were working toward and finding we always had choices. It felt good to have choices. We tried not to get upset about losing individual animals. When human-habituated wolves got too close, we would shoot at them, aiming just under them to scare them off. Most of us carried guns most of the time. Guns also gave us options, even though none of us ever shot a wolf.

It felt good to feel like we had options. We didn’t always test all our decisions according to a holistic framework. Sometimes we just had to make decisions and live by them. Sometimes the framework was, as my employer said, “Make a f---ing decision, then correct, correct, correct!”

But having a grazing plan in place helped ensure that we had alternate pasture options

contaminated by two Bovine Viral Diarrhea persistently infected cows and lost about 15% of our expected calf crop to abortions one spring.

We gathered a stray remnant bull belonging to the previous owner from a neighbor on one of the new northern ranches, tested him, found him positive for trichomoniasis, and had that herd placed under quarantine by the New Mexico Livestock Board. There were a lot of complications beyond our control.

Sometimes we had problems with wolves. At the same time that spring we lost all those calves to BVD abortions, we started to see a lot of wolf sign near the cattle. One day we found a calf carcass that looked like a wolf kill. Wildlife Services confirmed it. We filed the paperwork for compensation. Two days later, we found another dead calf, and sign of a wolf kill, a couple of miles to the west.

We gathered all the cows and calves out of that pasture, brought them up the canyon to the headquarters, tested them all for BVD, vaccinated them, Bear track near calf carcass that showed bear marks.

when we ran into trouble with wolves or wildfires or erratic rainfall. Operating on a larger-scale land base meant that we could usually move cattle far enough to make a difference. That was a luxury. Making grazing plans and following them meant that we might have grass where we needed to go, when we needed to go. We would also know when we might be about to run out of options; out of grass or water.

The worst financial losses from predators are not necessarily the death losses. Depredations are more emotionally and politically complicated, but declines in livestock performance related to stress from the presence of wolves, or management changes to respond to them are usually more expensive. These variables are impossible to quantify and more difficult to plan for. I don’t know exactly how the breed-up and weight gain of our cattle was affected by the presence of wolves. We could see when cattle were stressed from the presence of wolves or bears from the way they scattered through pastures overnight, or their behavior toward our dogs in the morning. Then we gathered them and drove them to a nice meadow or some water and held them until they settled and started to graze or nurse or chew their cud or bed down.

Stressed cattle do not breed or gain weight very well. We tried to manage cattle to keep them happy, to meet their basic needs, and to promote their own thriftiness. Their performance improved every year, in terms of conception rate, weaning weight, yearling gain, and death or stray loss.

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Holistic Thinking at the Scale of a Wolf

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last summer, our yearlings gained 290 pounds over the season, and we lost about 1%. In general, we lost between 2% and 4% of our live calves before weaning during those years in that country. I thought those were acceptable numbers, given what we had to work with and the country we were working in.

We lost more cattle to bears and coyotes than we did to wolves. It was rough country, not good easy cow country and the bigger challenges to our success were broader environmental conditions, broader than the challenges posed by wolves: disease, drought, regulatory restrictions, market prices, and personnel.

Predators undoubtedly got some of them, and more than we could definitively confirm.

We lost more cattle to bears and coyotes than we did to wolves. It was rough country, not good easy cow country and the bigger

challenges to our success were broader environmental conditions, broader than the challenges posed by wolves: disease, drought, regulatory restrictions, market prices, and personnel.

The wolves themselves were challenged by the same conditions. They were victims of political decisions and fights occurring far away from their home range. They also faced complications beyond their control. Their gene pool was limited, some of them had been raised in captivity, the Field Team trapped and vaccinated most of them once a year, fixed many with radio collars, fed them frozen meat near their dens: many of the wolves were very habituated Wolf tracks coming and going along a trail between to humans. headquarters and the summer pastures.

We saw that the best livestock management environmentalists—recognized that an informal practices we could follow to suit that landscape but holistic approach would be necessary to might also be the best ones to manage find common ground and move forward with a cattle in the presence of wolves. The politics fair program to protect wolves and compensate playing out in Reserve and Albuquerque and ranchers. We agreed on healthy landscapes, Washington, D.C. were beyond our control, sustainable wolf populations, and resilient local too. We could recognize that the Coexistence communities. We agreed on a compensation Council was formed as a political gesture toward program to cover the increased cost of reconciliation. managing livestock in the presence of wolves, The members of the council—a group not only the death losses and to incentivize of ranchers, community leaders and livestock management strategies that might reduce conflict. We weren’t always talking in holistic terms, but when we were working well, we were thinking holistically.

As for me, I left that country at the end of 2013. My wife at the time and I decided to pursue our own holistic goal, and look for our own place to lease. Soon enough we found a new group of partners and some new range in southern New Mexico. I don’t know much about the current situation in the Gila. I don’t miss the politics and many of those other challenges, but I miss the kind of country that’s big enough and wild enough to hold a wolf; the community, the people, and the ways we worked. I keep in mind my lessons from the wolf country, trying to keep myself open to possibilities; planning, monitoring, and re-planning; staying vigilant and flexible; practical and holistic.

Buck gathering pairs in the summer country.

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Sam Ryerson runs cattle and manages ranches with his partners in New Mexico.

He can be reached at: 505-220-3440 or sam.ryerson@yahoo.com.

Ortensi Farm—

Improving Land Health and Quality of Life

BY ANN ADAMS

B

ernadette “Berni” Ortensi grew up on an equine farm in Massachusetts that was very different from the 500-acre farm she manages today with her husband, Gregory. Her childhood farm was a full service farm that included grazing and taking care of 60 horses. Berni learned how to care for, train, show, and oversee the breeding of horses on that farm. Horses were her life, and she thought she would continue providing many equestrian services as a key component to Ortensi Farm when she married her husband in 2002. But as Berni learned more about what she wanted from the farm, by taking classes like HMI’s Beginning Women Farmer training, and what the soils needed from her, the focus of the farm has changed and she has begun focusing more on land health and the quality of life on the farm.

cropping to improve our soils and they seem to be thriving.”

When Berni moved on to the farm she realized that while she knew a lot about horses, she didn’t know a lot about soils and plants. “I realized this was a huge responsibility, and I didn’t know anything about agriculture,” says Berni. “I didn’t want to start spreading chemicals so I researched organic farming and what it meant to be an organic farmer. In 2005 we were certified organic by New York Northeast Organic Farming Association (NY NOFA). We’ve managed it that way since then. We grew some small grains, and we had some great crops and

other years it would be loss. Now we are using four cover crops and we have a lot less input costs. We haven’t grazed cover crops yet, but I’m going to do a spring annual crop and then graze it. Then we will do another annual crop in another field and graze it in fall.”

Learning What’s Important

As Berni learned more about soil health and grazing, she shifted the focus of the farm enterprises from the annual grain crops to grassfed protein. Her goal has been to increase soil health and see how she can increase pasture productivity to raise more animals.

Right now she has a product weak link as she had more grazing available when she brought the cattle in December for shipping. She uses temporary fencing and will often graze 3rd and 4th cuttings Transforming in their hayfields. a Farm “I’ve really been Gregory originally able to extend my bought the Ortensi grazing season Farm located in with perennials. central New York Any seeding we are in 1997 before he doing is paying for met Berni. They met the seed and we are because Berni was showing a consistent buying hay from profit on the farm. him. In 2002 they And, we still haven’t The Ortensi Farm focus has shifted over the years as Berni and Gregory have married and Berni maximized cattle gotten clear what they enjoy most about farming. joined in the farm numbers. We’re at management. The about 90 cows and farm had been Gregory’s retirement plan as crop failures. Over the years, we decided we calves. We’ve got 350 acres for grazing and he hadn’t planned on sitting in an easy chair. weren’t going to grow organic grains anymore. making hay. I think we can handle 150 cows The farm definitely needed some help as it had Anything annual we plant now is either a cover as soils get stronger and we have more soil historically been a dairy. crop or baleage. nutrients increasing forage production. That’s “The land had been leased and rented, raped “That one decision has helped make our one of the reasons I pay attention to my grazing and pillaged, for 15 years before he bought it,” farm be more profitable. We had low yields and land,” says Berni. says Berni. “It was pretty vacant and needed in combine crops and we’re a smaller farm.

“I had already been practicing rotational lots of transformation. That’s our mission—get It costs a lot to own a combine, so we’d hire grazing when I took HMI’s Beginning Women our land in a better place than when we bought out our combining. But, being organic is all Farmer course. After the class, I started it. It has been a slow progression with time and about timeliness. We had weed pressure with changing some of my grazing management. money constraints and weather challenges, but different plants wanting to grow in the soil, and One thing I did was shorten up my grazing we’ve made progress. I attribute our progress we couldn’t deal with it because our custom periods and move the animals more. But the to all the things I’ve learned in grazing classes worker might be busy. We couldn’t respond in biggest thing I’ve gotten out of the Holistic and soil and human nutrition. We’ve done a timely fashion. That whole model was a flop.

Management training is thinking of quality of life some amending and used grazing and cover Some years we’d have a marginal profit and CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 N um ber 179

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Ortensi Farm

I looked at my plan with my holistic goal and “As we’ve focused just on the cattle and the sheep weren’t working as an enterprise. We the land, we’ve been able to increase our cattle also had a turkey enterprise which went well numbers. Currently we are selling about 20 and time management. I’m really conscious of when we had a good wholesaler in Brooklyn steers and retaining heifers and also doing what is really important. Now I’m really in the called Good Egg. But, they went belly up. We some culling for the ground market. Eventually frontal lobe, figuring out what’s really important haven’t been able to find a comparable buyer we’ll be able to ramp up to about 50 head for and what is important to me. I make decisions so we stopped the turkey enterprise. Direct sale. I split my cattle that I’m finishing and differently now. It made me stop and think. marketing to the consumer is a full-time job and ones that are being bred. The cow/calve with “In agriculture, the way I have been doing, it’s not one I want. We are 4.5 hours from New the live coverage go out back where there is York City so a good lower production soil. It’s a little wet and there wholesale account is limestone. We can’t really plant annual can work.” fields there, but the cows don’t need as high “We originally a nutrition. I’ve been tightening up the grazing started with an periods to two weeks, then one week, then five equestrian center days. Now I’m down to one day. It’s clear that because of my the increased production and quality is worth background, but now the extra time of moving the animals. I struggle all we do is retirement with more than daily moves. The paddocks boarding. I was doing are 10 acres that I sub-divide for daily moves,” training and lessons says Berni. Right now she has about 50,000# at first but it became stock density with one herd of 25 animals using an issue of time 20 paddocks. management. I like Berni is looking for a spring through fall working on the farm weight gain of 2.5–3 pounds/day and a 1.5–2 in the field, so I don’t pounds/day gain in the winter. She uses free have time for training. choice minerals and weighs her steers every When I was running 30 days. She’s looking for them to be between The Ortensis are developing their herd with a the equestrian center, 1,250–1,350 pounds for shipping.

Simmental/Angus cross.

I was managing a lot The Ortensi cattle genetics is Simmental with I’m on the lower end of profitability. Profit of clients, farm and people, human personality some Angus influence. They AI the Simmental margins are down. It’s a tight margin with our and ‘horsenality.’ Now I’m managing land and or Angus cows when not using a Simmental bull sector of agriculture. It’s really important to think cattle. That’s a big shift in stress. One is not to cover them. They continue to cull any larger on quality of life. It’s easy to run around like a more rewarding than the other, but I was ready frame scored cows. “We are getting rid of any of crazy person. for a career change. We’re managing a lot of the lengthy cows. We want to see the ‘freezer “I also want to do more with the expense acres for the two of us. We’re busy every day of box’ look with a wide and deep cow with no budgets. I haven’t’ figured out anyway to pencil the week.” protruding bones,” says Berni. in the profit I’d like yet because I don’t have a Focusing on one enterprise lot of direct sales. It’s hard to pencil profit with has allowed Berni to really wholesale markets. We were selling to a buyer improve soil conditions and cattle in New York and it was going well. When beef health. “Our cattle health is good,” prices came down, the market went bust. This say Berni. “We test all the nutrition year we were ready to go with them again, in our forage. Because I pay but three weeks before shipping, they weren’t attention to crop harvest, we have going to buy and we had to sell to the sale barn. really good baleage as well as We have organic grassfed cattle so we are forage for the cattle. We’re able to looking for a premium wholesale account and market our high quality forage to make more money on the premium product we the organic dairy guys as baleage. have. We do limited direct sales because it was We’ve sold about 250 one-ton such a hassle and wholesale had been going bales last year. We do some foliar well. Premium wholesale is where I need to spraying with micronutrients, but focus next.” we hope to get away from it as our soils and grazing improves. I will Farm Enterprise Focus also be taking a composting class At one point, Ortensi Farm had a lot of to learn how to create compost different enterprises including cattle, sheep, and compost tea so I won’t need poultry, and the equestrian center. “We used to any other inputs except grazing run other animals,” say Berni. “I had about 50 and cover crops. We have Dorset sheep, but they were getting tough to minerals in the soil; they just need Because of increasing stock density and recovery periods, manage. After the Holistic Management training, to be broken down to be utilized. the Ortensi are seeing increased forage and less need to feed baleage in the winter.

8 IN PRACTICE May / June 2018 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

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Soil Health & Forage Quality

Berni does soil tests every three years. They did do some liming and that helped improve the soil. They haven’t repeated the liming in five years, and they still have the same pH. Berni hasn’t noticed the organic matter shifting as it remains about 7–9%. But, they do continue to improve the nutritional value of their baleage which they sell and feed to the yearlings being finished. 75% of their baleage is sold as they have enough feed for their mama cows. The relative feed value (RFV) is 115–131 and the total digestible nutrients (TDN) is 63.

The focus on soil health has been a result of really looking at how soil management influences animal and human health. “I’ve worked with the Bionutrient Food Association and Dan Kittredge. He had also been involved with NOFA Massachusetts. There he started to question is there more than just being organic.

My organic certificate says that I’m not using GMO seed and not using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides and that’s what the consumer gets,” says Berni.

“Organics doesn’t talk about the quality metrics. How do you create high quality food and nutrition? That’s what keeps me excited.

“But the biggest thing I’ve gotten out of the Holistic Management training is thinking of quality of life and time management. I’m really conscious of what is really important. Now I’m really in the frontal lobe, figuring out what’s really important and what is important to me. I make decisions differently now. It made me stop and think.”

What can I do with my land and my cattle?

Health is directly correlated to nutrition. Because of my work with our soils and grazing I don’t have to call the vet. Our cattle have shiny coats, don’t have illnesses, and don’t have birthing problems. I brought in a young cow with a prolapse. I called the vet and he said ‘Ship her.’ She was a sweet cow. I decided to take a gamble, and see how she would respond to good nutrition. She never had another prolapse. She got the minerals she needed from

nutritious, green forage.”

“We also have a 100% conception rate which I think comes from a combination of the nutritional quality of the feed and our decision to use artificial insemination (AI) as well as live bulls. We do AI with Select Sire. We AI all the young stock, the first-time heifers and maybe about five cows per year. We can’t afford a live coverage bull the way we can in the straw. We AI about 15 heifers per year. We have about 50 brood cows, and we use live bull coverage for about 35 of the brood cows. We’re not interested in line breeding so the plan is to eventually have enough cattle to keep two bulls and flip daughters to another bull.”

Berni is also experimenting with While the Ortensis have to balance quality of life with soil fertility in the family garden. “I’ve soil health, they have worked to increase their stock been experimenting with cover crops density and decrease their grazing periods by in my garden,” says Berni. “I did a subdividing paddocks with hot wire. cocktail mix with purple top turnip.

It grew to platter size—we called it “The Great While Berni is most interested in soil health Turnip.” The fertility is crazy there. That’s what and getting her grazing and genetics to perform I’m talking about and what I want to share with better, she is also aware that she wants to others. It wasn’t always that beautiful. I had share her knowledge and good fortune with crop failures and all kinds of pest problems. I others. “There is life and vitality in the soil and had disease residues. We’ve come a long way animals that I can feel,” says Berni. “I want to by focusing on soil health. We had a wheat be able to share what I have learned. I’ve been crop that was infested with little mites. Those struggling with how to share how wonderful my infestations mean something is not right. land and cattle are, the overall vitality, with my Disease means you’re not balanced. So we community. I’m thinking about how I can connect worked to make things healthy for the long term. with inner city kids. Utica is only a half hour I want to get my system in place. I don’t have to away and it is in bad shape with no revitalization keep an IV drip tube stuck to my land. or opportunities. I’d like to figure out a way to “We also have 150 acres of forest land get kids out to our farm to learn. We have a that has ashbore, and there are projection of big family garden and they could work in it and maples dying here because of climate change. take the veggies with them. It’s critical to get the When I get my compost tea sprays right, I’ll kids on the land, to help them understand and start working on the woodlots next and see if connect with nature. I’m so lucky that I get to do we can get the nutrition right there so they can this and be outside and be in nature, and I want compete against the pests and diseases like our to share it with other people and see how they pastures have. can benefit.”

“My husband is all about successional Berni knows there is much more that she growth in the woodlots to keep them healthy. needs to learn and she is eager for that We’ve been managing our woods holistically opportunity whether that involves making to keep it growing. We cull wood for our wood compost tea, teaching inner city children, stove, but nothing mature for a saw log. We look experimenting with cover crops, or improving the at wildlife need and see it as another ecosystem family’s woodlot. She is well aware that that works on our farm. We graze our hedge continuous learning is part of her quality of life rows also to manage and maintain them. We are values. “Sometimes we get to the point where always looking for the diversity to come to our we are not thinking and are on auto pilot, land, managing our wooded land for succession missing opportunities and making mistakes. for the next generation and the one after that.

When we think we know it all, then we have our I’m worried about these pests and disease biggest failure. From my perspective, the power looming in our area so I’m going to work on the of observation and the willingness to adapt are wooded lands to see what we can do.” the keys to agriculture—and in life.”

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Coming in the Back Door—

Transitioning a Soil and Water Conservation District to Holistic Financial Planning

BY JEFF GOEBEL

O

ver the 36 years since I first learned about holistic decision-making, I have had many opportunities to successfully use the Holistic Financial Planning process to move clients toward desirable holistic outcomes. A couple of those experiences included a family with four ranches in Texas and Hawaii, where in the course of three years, using the process I was able to help them improve their financial situation by over $2 million annually while attaining the complex social and ecological values.

Another opportunity was when I worked with a large, complex American Indian tribe, where within two years we were able to use the process to double land management at a high cultural and ecological standard while cutting a $1 million out of a $17 million budget. The following year, I facilitated the use of the Holistic Financial Planning process at the request of the tribal business council where we were able to significantly cut costs of operating the government’s 250 programs without cutting staff or salaries and having the budget done three months early. This is the power of the process.

Hometown Opportunities

Three years ago, I moved to Valencia County, New Mexico and bought a small farm.

One of my life’s dreams was to serve on a local Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD).

It just so happened that a board member position was open so I was appointed, then elected by the community to serve. I have made recommendations to our board of volunteers and, slowly, they are being adopted.

I noticed that our financial planning process was merely checking how we spent money the previous month and making sure everything was authorized appropriately. We were basically managing our financial resources by “looking in the rear view mirror, checking what we had already driven by,” instead of also looking to the future for where we wanted to go. Our annual budgeting process was not well facilitated. We recently were able to jump the income significantly by getting community support for a mil levy, which also requires that we show accountability to managing the funds responsibly.

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reports because it didn’t really tell how our spending matched our plan, was our plan holistically goal driven so that we made decisions that were socially, economically, and ecologically sound simultaneously, and how were we managing our cash flow. I expressed my concern and said there was a better way.

There was positive support, though only in words, not action. Finally, last summer, I was able to piece together the financial statements and shared with the board that we were heading for a financial wreck! By mid-2018 we would be out of money! I offered again to share the Holistic Financial Planning process and this time the words turned to action.

Since the board is comprised of volunteers who have other things they do with their lives beyond serving on the board, getting trained to new processes is difficult to do. Without a lot of background information about holistic decisionmaking, I needed to make the transition simple, safe, and understandable. We have developed a rudimentary holistic goal (context), however, some of the board members don’t really see the value in the holistic goal (context). Some feel that we don’t need complicated processes to make decisions, so moving forward with this process required thinking very clearly about how to be successful and keep it simple.

Keep It Simple

The first thing that we have done is to identify the “enterprises” where our board is spending money and time. The District Manager has a good handle on the current accounting process and a willingness to do this process so the transition is moving well. Next, we populated the 2017–18 spreadsheet with what we agreed in our budget at the beginning of our fiscal year (July–June). These are our planned income and expenses. Next, we are populating the spreadsheet with actuals by month. We will also automate the difference by month and the cumulative difference by year.

This is our first steps toward moving toward holistic decision-making. We are using the tool to create awareness about our financial management process and what we can do about this to be successful as a board. The next steps will include using the spreadsheet and especially the control sheet for the rest of our fiscal year. We had a financial planning

board meeting in January to evaluate the mid-year financial situation. We will also make adjustments as we finish the year and build our new budget.

This process is already allowing us to identify our financial weak link, which is handling capacity. There are many grant opportunities to do work that we want to do and aren’t currently doing, yet we don’t have the staffing to obtain nor manage new funding and projects. I will be able to guide “testing” toward the holistic goal so the board can get a better idea about how we make our decisions and what is the “right” investments to make in the SWCD. In addition to working with the Financial Management task force, I am also leading the Land Use Plan. This is another opportunity to practice holistic decision-making at the conservation district board level, though the action to do this has been slow. We are now picking up steam as we begin doing GIS analysis.

An interesting pattern showed up when we first initiated the Land Use Planning two years ago. We brainstormed all of the resource concerns (natural resource problems) in the District. The previous Land Use Plan, called a Long Range Plan back in 1997, had exactly the same resource concerns we have now. In other words, we didn’t solve any of the problems from 20 years ago.

I have rearranged the resource concerns into where they fit in the holistic decision making framework. The new table of contents and body of the document uses the framework to guide decision making. We are making great progress now with this new approach and will be able to tie the two processes (financial planning and using the Land Use Plan through the holistic framework) together to allow us to make better decisions holistically.

We are using the Land Use Plan to develop policy that supports a holistic plan for conservation in Valencia SWCD, which is all of Valencia County and parts of three others. Two pueblos, Laguna and Isleta, are in the SWCD boundaries as well. We have already used policy analysis with state-wide conservation district resolutions, which allowed us to realize the need for a Soil Health resolution for New Mexico. We passed the state-wide soil health CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

LIVESTOCK

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Big Bear Ranch—

internal fences or roads, and the place is three by three kilometers.

We needed some roads for access to animals in the back part of the ranch, so we had to put in a lot of

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS infrastructure,” says Rainer.

“We got 106 cows our first year rom early days as a landscape architect in Germany, Rainer here on the ranch, but the only Krumsiek has developed a growing market for the grassfed meat thing I knew about cows was what I he produces on the 2,200-acre Big Bear Ranch near Horsefly learned as a kid going to my uncle’s in central British Columbia. Ranier and his wife, Gigi, and their dairy farm during holiday. After children came to Canada from Germany in 1995, where she was a we got our cattle for the ranch, I physician’s assistant and then worked in the landscaping business. In learned a lot more about cattle, and Ranier Krumsiek Germany, they also had a huge garden and raised their own vegetables, how to handle them with low-stress raised chickens, and hunted wild game. methods,” he says.

“After 25 years in that business, however, we felt burned out. We Grazing management on this ranch had to be adapted to the previous worked for people with high incomes, doing private gardens, and we never owner’s logging activities. After he logged the land, he pushed and piled had a break. They would call us at 10 pm at night and on the weekends. all the logging leftovers (stumps, rock, etc.) into more than 50 windrows Our clients worked hard and didn’t have time to consult with us at regular between 300 to 1000 meters long, not counting the smaller ones, to 10 to times!” says Rainer.

30 meter wide.

Eventually Rainer and Gigi decided to do something else. “My wife and Rather than try to remove these massive windrows so the pastures I had spent several holidays in Canada with our three children and a dog and fields could be completely cleared, the Krumsiek family left them there and found it was cheaper than our holidays in Scandinavia as we’d done to serve as windbreaks and natural shelter for wildlife. With good grazing previously. So we decided to move to Canada, and thought that with the management, bio-diversity improved within the area and the windbreaks money we’d get from selling our house and our business we could retire. have also been beneficial for the cattle. Body heat loss in cold weather I was 47 and thought this would be a good time to retire, and live off the is reduced because the animals have shelter from winter wind. This also land. Our dream didn’t work out quite that way, however,” says Rainer. helped reduce their nutritional needs and winter feed inputs for the ranch.

They immigrated to British Columbia (BC) from Germany in 1993 with The windrow berms also hold moisture, with slower run-off for snow melt their children Florian, Inga and Arne, and looked for land to buy. After in those areas. Moisture retention improved forage production. searching for two years for the ideal Rainer and Gigi invested a lot of place, they purchased the Big Bear effort and money building 70 kilometers Ranch but struggled with the financing of permanent electric fence. Electric of an operation they had not intended fence makes it possible for planned to own themselves. Due to a partner grazing movement among the windrow backing out, they ended up having to take configurations as well as in the out a mortgage and beginning the work of open pastures. creating a ranch.

“A few years later we invested another $100,000 to put in an Developing Grazing underground water line with 3-inch pipe.

Infrastructure This allowed us to have water in every Big Bear Ranch was homesteaded pasture, with movable water troughs.” in 1950 and everything had been logged he explains. and most of it cleared. “There wasn’t Funding from the National Water much fence, except a perimeter barbedSupply program helped with the Ranier has developed his grazing strategy to include wire fence, and no way to do intensive expenses of installing over three multi-species grazing. The different species utilize forage grazing management. There were no CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 differently and have helped to improve pasture health.

Producing Grassfed Protein and Wildlife Habitat

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the pastures. Other ranchers began to notice what was happening. In 2010 the ranch was nominated by a neighbor for the British Columbia Cattlemen’s Association (BCCA) environmental stewardship award. For a kilometers of number of years the BCCA has awarded the Environmental Stewardship water line—to Award to a ranch that has shown commitment to operating in an pump water to an environmentally friendly manner—either in general or by making specific elevated 5,000 changes to enhance the environmental compatibility of their particular gallon storage operation. After being nominated, the Big Bear Ranch was chosen as the tank. Water recipient of the 2010 BCCA Environmental Stewardship award. from that tank is “Our neighbor who nominated us is not your average rancher and gravity fed back has been to lots of grazing conferences, but he still feeds his cows hay 6 to standpipes months of the year while we are down to 3.5 to 4 months of feeding hay,” which supply the says Ranier. water troughs One reason the Big Bear Ranch received the award is because the (in winter and Krumsiek’s management is pro-wildlife. The uncleared half of the ranch Low-stress livestock handling makes for healthier summer) located is untamed, natural wildlife habitat. Only about 46% of the total acreage animals and reduced stress for the producer. Big all over the has been cleared for growing hay and pasture, and about 5% consists Bear Ranch’s customer base is also interested in property. The of ponds and riparian areas. The ranch is a patchwork mix of forested humane treatment of the livestock. frost-proof water and cleared land, which provides habitat for many plant and wildlife distribution system makes optimal pasture management possible, while species. Ranier believes in environmental sustainability and regenerative limiting livestock access to riparian areas. agriculture, and is committed to the protection of wildlife habitat, water With the help of the cost-share program (funded in part by Duck’s quality, soil conservation, trees and fish through responsible land Unlimited) three Thermosink waterers were installed (utilizing belowground management practices. Wetland and riparian areas are spread over the storage that circulates the water and helps keep it from freezing in winter). entire ranch. Wetland areas have been fenced off to maximize water quality protection and maintain waterfowl habitat, but they are grazed to Changing Practices appropriate levels at certain times throughout the year.

After the disaster with the mortgage, the Krumsiek family finally saw Many things have to be done a bit differently on this ranch because of some light at the end of the tunnel and were doing fairly well. Then in its unique environment. “In other regions ranchers stockpile pasture grass 2003 Canada experienced the problem with Mad Cow Disease and the to graze later in the season and save hay. Stockpiling doesn’t work here, crash in cattle prices. “At that time we had 250 cow-calf pairs and were however. We can graze for a while, because the cows can easily graze running the ranch like everyone does with a cow-calf operation. The only through a foot or more of fresh snow—until it becomes dense and crusted. difference was that we kept our calves and grazed them the next year, to We get warm winds and the snow melts on top then freezes again. It sell as yearlings. We were making more money. Growing them bigger, we snows again and then you have all these ice layers. Even if it’s only a got more money for them as yearlings, which more than paid for the extra foot or so deep, the cows get bloody noses and don’t want to graze. We feed,” says Rainer. usually have to stop grazing sometime in December,” he says.

“When we lived in Kelowna, British Columbia the first two years in “We also have so much snow that even if you leave a nice stand of Canada, I learned about Holistic Management through grass in the fall Allan Savory’s book Holistic Resource Management. for winter or early Reading an article in the Western Producer about a farm spring grazing, at Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, made us curious and it becomes so we went to visit that farm. These people were so amazing. compressed that They had attended a Holistic Management course and in the spring practiced it. That farmer gave me a present of Allan when the snow Savory’s book on Holistic Management!” says Ranier. melts away, the After reading the book and attending a Ranching for grass is totally Profit School he told his wife that they needed to sell all gone.” Pressed their haying equipment, and do custom grazing, and buy against the the hay for their cows. His wife thought he was crazy ground all winter, since they had just purchased a full line of brand new the grass is eaten haying equipment. While they would lose money on the up by soil life equipment, they could buy the hay for the same cost of and earthworms.

Ranier has worked to retain the best genetics in his herd to putting it up without the added cost for an employee and Because of the improve the herd’s ability to gain well on the forage grown in Big worrying about the weather and having the hay rained on snow protection Bear Ranch. His replacement bulls are mostly Galloway. during harvest. and insulation, They sold their haying equipment, and from 1999 until 2004 they did a the worms are able to work at the soil surface. lot of custom grazing. “We took in between 500 and 800 animals, grazing When the snow melts away, there is no grass left—just a layer of them for cattle buyers or other ranchers. That income was more than earthworm droppings/castings covering the soil. This is tremendous enough to buy the hay we needed for our 250 cow-calf pairs,” says Ranier. fertilizer; the grass regrows beautifully, but there is no old grass to graze.

With grazing instead of haying, steady improvements were made in 12

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Developing Grassfed Genetics

After struggling with grazing their own cattle (Hereford-Angus cow-calf pairs) on crown range (government pasture), in 2003 they got approved for a feeder loan to buy 500 head of yearlings to graze on their place in the summer instead of doing the custom grazing for cattle buyers.

“Even though our loan was approved, we got cold feet and only bought 250 head. The yearlings cost about $1,000 per head, and after they’d been only two or three weeks on our place the BSE problem emerged, and you couldn’t even give them away because the trucking cost more than you would get at an auction! The timing was very bad,” he says.

They then attended a conference hosted by Stockman Grass Farmer with Gearld Fry (a stockman in Arkansas who has studied cattle nutrition and genetics) about linear measurement. There was also an article in Stockman Grass Farmer about linear measurement and how you can tell from the hair coat about the butterfat in the milk, etc. “According to what we learned there, we selected from our 250 cows just 20 that had the

Big Bear Ranch was awarded the British Columbia Cattlemen’s Association (BCCA) Environmental Stewardship award in 2010 for their efforts in improving wildlife habitat on the ranch. The ranch is a patchwork mix of forested and cleared land, which provides habitat for a many plant and wildlife species as well as good windbreaks for the livestock. proper frame and body type to be able to finish on grass. We sold the rest of the herd, and these 20 cows were the start of our new adventure in cattle raising,” says Ranier.

Since then, he keeps all the good heifers, to increase the herd again, but sells the rest of the calves (cut and wrapped and frozen) by the pound to private people. The ranch has been doing direct marketing since 2004.

The cattle had been grassfed since 1999, Certified Organic since 2004 and Animal Welfare Approved since 2014.

Cattle on Big Bear Ranch have also been improving the soil. The first four years, from 1995 to 1999, the ranch used commercial fertilizer according to the results of soil tests. “Then the Ranching for Profit School opened my eyes to all the problems connected with salt-based fertilizer, and the fact that we could improve our soil just with proper grazing by cattle. We got certified organic because that’s how we were raising our cattle after 1999,” he explains.

He started using Galloway bulls on the Hereford-Angus cows about 15 years ago. “Since then we’ve only purchased 2 new Galloway bulls because we’ve been raising our own replacement bulls. Right now, both bulls I am using are from my own herd. They are 7/8th Galloway, so their calves are now 15/16 Galloway and the Hereford and Angus influence in

our herd is diminished. Some of the cows still look like a Hereford but they have the Galloway frame—short and deep bodied. If you look at them from the front they are round, like a circle.” They are very efficient and have a big rumen.

“Today we are able to finish cattle on grass in 24 to 30 months, partly due to the high plane of nutrition in our naturally grown forages, but also their genetics—something that is not possible with big-framed, inefficient cows. We raise cattle that are adapted to our climate and our forage,” he says. Ranier strongly feels there was a reason for all the different livestock breeds in Europe where each one had adapted to their local environment over a long period of time.

Direct Marketing for Profit

The Krumsieks also got into direct marketing grassfed protein early as a way to improve the profit per acre. “We have steadily increased our meat business since 2004, selling direct to customers,” says Ranier.

“It’s similar to what we were doing in Germany with our landscaping business; again we cater to people who put special emphasis on either their surroundings or their food—different than the average consumer.

They are more aware of what they are eating and putting into their bodies—concerned about all the negative things in the food they get at the regular store, including meat. Obviously our marketing efforts are working because we now have about 600 people on our e-mail list.

Some of our customers have been with us since 2004 when we started by delivering house-to-house. Since 2009 we have meeting points where they pick up their order.”

“In the beginning we had a flat-deck trailer loaded with seven freezers, and it was a big mess if it was raining when we arrived in Vancouver to deliver the meat. We also needed 12 big freezers here at home because we only went three or four times a year,” he says. Now he is delivering meat every four weeks and has expanded the marketing territory into the Okanagan. This makes each trip (which was a six-hour drive) an additional three to four hours, but he has enough customers there to make it worth doing.

He also sells lamb and pork. The ranch raises heritage pigs (Tamworth and Large English Black crosses) that stay on pastures year round except when farrowing. The sows stay in the barn in winter the first three to four weeks after farrowing. “I have a Tamworth boar and a Large English Black boar and two sows from each breed. I cross them so all the pigs I sell are this F1 cross, which is supposed to grow better and faster,” he says. They live their entire lives free-ranging at pasture and are fed certified organic hog grower in addition to eating natural things they find rooting. The lambs that are raised and sold as meat are a hair sheep cross and are also pasture-raised.

“I have asked some of our customers how they find out about us and what is their reason they want to buy from us. Most of them hear of us through recommendations and our webpage, and the main reason they want to buy from us is because of how we treat the animals.” This seems to be even more important than being certified organic.

“The Animal Welfare Approval (AWA) certification is more important to me than being certified organic because the AWA really looks closely at what you are doing with your pastures and pasture management and also inspects the butcher facilities,” he says.

Lifelong Learning

The Krumsiek family enjoys lifelong learning. They have attended many schools, seminars and conferences over the years, mainly organized by the Stockman Grass Farmer, Acres USA, Dick Diven, Don CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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Campbell and the Agricultural Ministry of British Columbia.

Ranier believes that raising the best animals for high quality food starts with high quality soil. His holistic approach focuses on a balance between the land, plants, animals, and people, and he stresses the importance of humane and respectful treatment of the animals.

“If the pastures are grazed down like we did in the beginning, leaving only about 30% of the plant, then it takes longer before we can come back to the same pasture,” says Ranier. “I figured out that if you take the cows out two or three days earlier, and leave more than 50% of the grass, you can come back in four weeks instead of six weeks. It looks like a lot of waste and trampling, but the production is so much higher.”

“The problem I have right now is that some of my land is degraded because we don’t have enough animals anymore. You can really see a difference; to be productive, the land needs the impact from grazing animals. During the years we had 500 to 800 head of custom cattle and moved them across the whole place, every day they just got the area they needed for that day, and were moved daily, and we had excellent growth on all the fields.” Now that he only has the cow-calf pairs and grazing only the fields needed for them, those fields are still very good, but the other fields are declining in productivity.

“I really think that industrial agriculture is on the way out. More and more people are realizing it is not sustainable,” says Ranier. In the past 60 years people came to depend on technology rather than natural, healthy ways to grow food, but there is a movement today to get back to doing things in healthier regenerative ways.

Organic, natural agriculture doesn’t mean choosing between environmental benefit and financial benefit. Ranier believes that organic agriculture can feed the world, and you make more money at it because the cost of production is so much lower per acre. You spend less on fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides, and yield is higher.

Ranier has found that multispecies and planned grazing are good ways to keep the animals and the land healthy. The parasites of one species won’t survive in the other species, so rotations break the life cycle of the parasites. The soil is also healthier with natural fertilizer from the animals.

Sweetgrass Dairy—

A Match Made in Heaven

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

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ocated at Fredericktown, Ohio, Jacob and Elizabeth Coleman’s grass-based dairy is relatively new but already has a growing number of herd-share customers for their poultry, pork, beef and milk. Their journey into grass farming has been an interesting one.

Jacob didn’t grow up in a farming family, but dairy farming became his dream early in life. When he was 13 he got a job on a grass-based dairy farm just down the road from his parents’ place in Indiana.

“We lived just outside the little town of Thorntown. That summer job was my introduction to dairying. I worked there all through high school and took on more responsibilities as I got older. That dairy was practicing a traditional New Zealand style grazing method. So I came into farming with a very open mind, willing to learn and explore methods that were a bit new or just coming into use in this country. I didn’t have the mindset of ‘Dad did it this way’ to hinder me,” says Jacob.

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When the sheep are in the barn over the winter their feces and bedding builds up to a two-foot layer that is moved outside in the spring. The pigs dig in this material and move it around, and it creates excellent compost to apply on the pasture.

Improving the land and forage in natural ways is not only healthier, but cheaper. “I learned this from my own experience. The first years from 1995 until 1999 when I fertilized my hay fields, I spent $50,000 each year on fertilizer, and only fertilized half of our hay acres. At that time we were putting up hay on 1,000 acres and each year we fertilized about 500 acres. We needed 3.5 tons of hay per cow-calf pair for winter. Now, without fertilizing, I need only 2 to 2.5 tons per cow-calf pair. There is so much more nutrition in organic hay; it makes a huge difference,” he says.

Sharing Knowledge

Ranier tries to help other people understand the principles of Holistic Management and taking better care of the land. Each year, Big Bear Ranch hosts a field day for the class of sustainable agriculture of Thompson Rivers University. “They come here for a week each semester to learn about plants and animals, etc. One of the students wants to do a project about sustainable agriculture, and the teacher approached me to see if I would be willing to mentor this student. I don’t have a lot of spare time, but on the other hand I feel it is very important to help, if people want to learn about this. They can see that it is doable, fun, and so different,” he says.

“People who come to our place are overwhelmed and say it’s like a park; it looks so beautiful! Here are all these pigs and it doesn’t smell bad!” If they can see it firsthand they can begin to understand the benefits and values.

“Every year on the first weekend of July we have an open house and invite our customers and friends, to learn about what we do. There are people coming from Vancouver (a six- or seven-hour drive) to our field day, and many come a second or third time because they really enjoy it.” It’s an educational experience, when people can see with their own eyes (and nose!) what is actually going on and how it looks. “People can also come any time of the year, whenever we are around.”

This sharing of knowledge is critical for regenerative agriculture to expand. Whether teaching a consumer about the benefits of grassfed beef or explaining the importance of planned grazing to a grazing mentee, Ranier is determined to keep learning and help others do the same.

Farming Values

During high school he read some of Joel Salatin’s books (including his You Can Farm series) and this ignited his interest in direct marketing. “I raised some pasture poultry and rotationally grazed some grass-fed beef at my parent’s place,” Jacob says.

After high school he wanted to continue in agriculture, even though his parents couldn’t see a future in it. “I had no interest in college; I just wanted to farm, though Charlie Carter, the farmer I was working for, wanted to see me go to school. I told him I had three requirements for a college. It had to be affordable, it had to have an ag program, and it had to have a Christian background. I thought this was an impossible mix, but Charlie discovered a school in Missouri called College of the Ozarks.

While students went to school there they worked on a campus job, to pay all the tuition.”

Coleman worked at the school dairy farm’s processing plant, and also as a herdsman. “With all the students working part-time jobs, there were 30 people working on the school farm. To schedule 30 people to get those jobs done was a logistical nightmare at times!” he says.

After college, he still didn’t have a way into agriculture. “I was looking

for some land to rent or take care of in Missouri, but it just wasn’t ground because he didn’t practice proper grazing. There was about 60 happening. I couldn’t find the right opportunity.” acres of nothing but poison hemlock, for instance.

So he moved back to Indiana a year and a half after graduation and “We looked at the cows, went back to Pennsylvania and found out that started working for Charlie again part-time and also helping several we didn’t have the part-time work on my wife’s parents’ farm anymore. The conventional row-crop farmers. “I was hauling grain, driving semis and cash flow to continue building our operation up there was at a standstill. doing a little bit of everything—cleaning out fence rows and this and that.

So our plans took a different direction. At our visit to this farm here in Ohio, I still hadn’t found a way into agriculture and I also hadn’t found anybody we found out that the widow wanted to rent it to someone who was willing who was serious enough about life to start a family with, so my mom got to continue as a grazing-based dairy and take care of it. We called her and hold of me and encouraged me to join e-Harmony. That’s how I ended up told her we thought we could do that,” says Jacob. meeting my wife, Elizabeth,” says Coleman.

The previous renter had gone bankrupt because he hadn’t taken care Her family had a dairy in Pennsylvania. “Her e-Harmony profile said of things, so in the transitional process the widow’s son had come back she had three requirements for a husband—that he wanted to farm, to his father’s farm to run it for a year and had a nice herd of Jersey, wanted to have a Ayrshire, and family, and had to Shorthorn crosses be a Christian. I that he was milking. thought this might be “We purchased the a good fit. She was springing heifers from northwestern from that herd, Pennsylvania and and also found we communicated a closed line of through e-mail and Friesians in northern letters for about Pennsylvania and three months and bought 20 springing then in January 2011 heifers from that I went to visit her. herd, to bring to the She had a number farm. We moved of siblings who were to the farm here already grown up in central Ohio in and gone from home.

March 2013.

Her family milked The dairy herd about 120 cows was started with at a conventional about 40 springing confinement dairy heifers, and that was With a combination of Jersey, Ayrshire, and Shorthorn crosses, the Colemans have been farm,” he says. a challenge. “I don’t able to build up a strong direct market business for raw milk and other farm products “We really hit it off know if we’d ever to over 200 customers. and her desire was to want to repeat that, continue in farming on starting with a herd her parents’ operation, and they saw themselves retiring at some point and of cows that had never been milked, and a parlor they’d never been in. It having us take it over. I knew from the beginning that a confinement dairy was an interesting experience!” says Jacob. wasn’t my cup of tea, but Elizabeth and I had a good relationship and we “I was approaching grazing with a very New Zealand mindset, with ended up getting married the summer of 2011. By then her father realized much shorter rotations, much less residue, with a maximum of 28-day he had an extra worker and he wasn’t quitting any time soon!” recovery (more of a MIG system—management intensive grazing). We had the desire to be 100% grass fed because that idea was starting to Creating a Grazing-Based Farm become popular—and we created the perfect disaster. We had MUN (milk Jacob and Elizabeth soon realized they weren’t going to be taking urea nitrogen) test results as high as 30 because the cows were grazing over that farm and started exploring other options, trying to get back to a so much protein in the lush green grass, and we weren’t supplementing grazing-based farm. “I started reading and traveling—taking Elizabeth with them with any grain for energy to balance that diet. The cows were very me—to other grazing dairy farms in northwestern Pennsylvania. We had a short on energy,” he says. little bit of land ourselves, north of her parents a few miles, and we began The MUN test is a measure of urea in milk samples. Urea collects in the process of building our own farm there,” he says. the milk when excess ammonia leaves the rumen and gets converted into They also began a search for smaller-framed grass-based dairy cows. urea in the liver. The urea produced in the liver gets into the bloodstream In that search they came across some cows on a farm in central Ohio, and and into the milk and urine, excreted from the body as a waste product. came to look at them.

Excessive ammonia leaving the rumen is wasteful from a nutritional “We found out that this farm had been a perennial sod-based standpoint, and conversion of ammonia to urea in the liver uses energy farm since 1991 and had been certified organic for almost 10 years,” that could have been put to use making milk. There is an imbalance says Jacob. between the rumen soluble carbohydrates and the protein needed for The owner had converted it to a grass-based polyculture and then was microbial synthesis. A low MUN value is the result of either too little soluble killed by a bull on the farm a decade later, in 2001. His widow had rented protein in the cow’s ration or an excess of soluble carbohydrates, while the farm out to a fellow for about 8 years, but that fellow had run it into the CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 N um ber 179

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Sweetgrass Dairy

of a lot of the other things. The conference was in April so we got things together so I could go for the three days. That’s where all the answers that we were looking for—in terms of holistic grazing—started coming together. a high MUN means there is too much soluble protein or too little soluble This was not a full holistic course; it did not include life management and carbohydrates. Excessively high MUN values have been associated with farm management, but it focused on how we can holistically approach poor conception and early embryonic deaths. grazing cattle and harvesting energy. It focused on feeding the soil “My non-farm background was a good thing and a bad thing. I had an and feeding the grass, looking at cow management as a whole—with open mind about farming methods, but although I had been around cows, everything taken into account,” he explains. had managed cows, and managed pastures, I had not been completely “This world was designed to work in a way that builds soil fertility, but involved with or responsible for the total nutritional needs of the cows,” we as humans have destroyed that system in just about every possible Jacob explained. He had to learn the hard way about some of the way. We keep taking from the soil without putting much back,” says Jacob. important basics of dairy cow nutrition.

“Those light bulbs came on for me. Those three days were just “Our high MUN levels didn’t help because we had some breed-back overwhelming with all the answers I was looking for. I was trying to issues and some pinkeye, but it didn’t break us. Yet the openness of reprogram everything I knew about grazing, because these answers were mindset helped me. In the back of my mind I knew that something wasn’t contradicting the traditional view of not wasting any grass (grazing it down right, and was seeking to find a way to resolve the problems. I had to two or three inches). Here were the answers we needed and I came always pondered how buffalo thrived on the prairies eating nothing but home the end of April at the beginning of our grass here in Ohio. I came grass. I’m not sure where this inkling came from, for me, but this is what home with fresh knowledge and we saw immense changes that summer began my quest for in the energy greater knowledge intake and health about grazing of our cows, grass management,” recovery, grass says Jacob. growth and the bank of forage that we Improved were able to build for Grazing the fall,” he says.

Practices The cows were Jacob wanted to a lot healthier and find something that no longer stressed was more natural for trying to sort through the animals—that all that extra protein. would work for a “The cows were grass-based dairy. more comfortable In his research and more at ease all that winter, he and summer long.”

Elizabeth read about While the tall grass grazing.

Colemans have not “The information yet gone through we found led us to a full Holistic The Colemans raised chickens and turkeys to increase soil fertility and experiment with a Management training decrease insect pressure. piece of the farm and they note it is on let it grow and not their list of trainings. graze it until late summer. We tried that, the second summer. That didn’t “But the holistic training and reading that we’ve done has really changed work either because the grass got so thick and tall that it began to selfthe way we look at our farm, the soil, and the products we produce. We smother. When we were grazing out there, however, we did see a more now understand that there’s a circle to life. When we can give back to all balanced cow pie and some good things for the cows. They were doing parts of it, everything comes out ahead, from the microbes in the soil, to better,” he says. the grass plants, to the cows, to the customers who buy our food, and “The grass regrowth after that was very poor, however. After grazing to our pocketbooks. Each entity is excelling to a much greater degree, the tall grass it really opened up the soil surface. We saw a lot of weeds though there is still room for improvement,” Jacob says. coming in. So this method had a couple check marks of good and a couple X’s of bad, and we continued our quest for knowledge of better grazing Direct Marketing management,” he says.

Jacob notes that their production is so much better than their first two By the spring of 2013 they had a subscription to Acres USA and came years of farming. “It’s a work in progress, and we are moving toward our across the articles written by Ian Mitchell Innes from South Africa. They goals,” says Jacob. “We are certified organic and a Grade A dairy. We ship also discovered a conference about holistic grazing in Tennessee on the some of our milk to Horizon, an organic milk company, and also participate Piney River Ranch run by Lee McCormick. Elizabeth thought it would be in herd sharing with private individuals with a raw milk product. This is good to send Jacob to this conference. the balance we have, at this point. We don’t know what the future holds “We don’t get off the farm very often, but we felt this might be with Horizon being purchased by Dannon, but right now we are balanced important. I am the grazing manager on our farm and my wife takes care between the herd share program and Horizon.”

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The first years on the farm they also started raising chickens. “As we were reading about ecosystems we realized that they contain more than one creature. There are more than just cattle on a prairie or an African savannah. We started introducing some broilers and some pigs, laying hens and turkeys. That first summer we raised about 50 chickens.

We didn’t know anyone when we moved here, but slowly gained some customers for our food products,” says Jacob.

The first herd share customer approached them, about the time they were wondering how to get into direct marketing. “About a month after we moved here, we had a knock at the front door. This fellow saw our cows in the front pasture, came to our door, and wondered if we would participate in a herd share agreement. That was how we began our journey into direct marketing; our first customer came along and wanted to do it. He told a few people, and they told a few more people, and it grew from there.”

Their Sweetgrass Dairy Farm now has about 200 families who come to the farm regularly for herd shares for their poultry, pork, beef and milk.

“We also have a little help-yourself store where people come to pick up their goods and drop their money in a jar. Everything works on the honor system,” Jacob says.

Passing on the Knowledge

“After we started seeing such wonderful results from our changes in grazing management we wanted to share these results with other grazers here in Ohio. There’s a large number of grazers across central Ohio.

The Central Ohio Grazing Conference has about 1,200 attendees every February. Many of these farmers practice a MIG style/New Zealand style of grazing. We drive by some of the farms and see burned up pastures by July, and we developed a desire to see the missing link passed on to as many people as we could,” he says.

“We are not yet to the point where we can sponsor this as a free event, but we’ve hosted a grazing workshop here for the past two summers. It’s a cost to us for us to host Ian Mitchell Innes here at our place, and we supply food that we grow here on the farm. We had about 15 attendees the first summer, and about 27 here this past summer. It’s been exciting because we’ve kept in touch with many of them, and have heard many great success stories about changes and good things happening on the farms that have taken this information home,” says Coleman.

This past July they had a three-day workshop, with Ian doing part of it, and Mark Bader (Free Choice Enterprises) doing part. “Some people feel that a cow is able to determine what nutrients she needs. When she grazes a pasture she eats the tops of the plants and selects the plants with the most nutritional value for her. In a 50-acre fenced farm, she can’t wander far enough to find the balance of minerals she needs,” he says.

Some soils and some plants are lacking in certain minerals. Some pastures don’t have enough plant diversity or enough soil diversity to have all the necessary minerals in adequate amounts. “What Mark Bader has done, with Free Choice Enterprises, is formulate some macro-mineral blends and some micro-mineral blends. There’s a 16-choice mineral program the cow can go through and choose from. We have a box out there in the lot where the cows come and go from the milk parlor and they balance their mineral needs from those 16 choices. Some of those are a micro-mineral blend with multiple minerals mixed together, otherwise there would be dozens of different choices.”

Free Choice Enterprises has worked with those formulas to determine what would be needed. “The cow needs a balanced diet. We have to balance a cow’s energy needs with her protein needs, as well as the minerals. When a cow’s diet is too high in protein, the absorption of certain minerals doesn’t happen at the same rate. Trying to let the cow balance her mineral needs in that situation doesn’t work because she eats mineral

and can’t absorb it in her body. When we are grazing in an optimal way, where the energy needs are balanced, the absorption rate for nutrients, including minerals, is highest.”

“Cows will readily change their mineral eating needs from field to field.

We have some wetter ground here on our farm, and the cows’ mineral consumption rate changes in that box as we go from one soil to another, and from one grass species to another. It’s amazing to see the cows’ consumption rates change as they graze different things around the farm,” says Jacob.

“At the workshop, Mark and Ian tag-team the topics of animal nutrition and soil and grass management. They help break it down in simple terms and explain why grazing short grass doesn’t work and why grazing forages in a taller stage (more energy) rebuilds the soil and sequesters carbon and balances the cows needs while feeding the soil. They tie that loop of nutrition together and it’s very interesting,” he says.

The Colemans hope to do another workshop in the coming year, but that’s still up in the air. “We feel it is an investment in helping the land, helping other farmers, and all in all an investment toward the world, in providing more acres that are being managed properly. That’s our hope,” he says.

To learn more about Sweetgrass Dairy of Ohio and about their grazing school, go to: www.sweetgrassdairyofohio.com or jacob@sweetgrassdairyofohio.com.

Jacob and Elizabeth Coleman

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GRAPEVINE The

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people programs projects

N E W S F R O M H O L I S T I C M A N AG E M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L

Western Canada Holistic Management Conference

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ongratulations to Ralph & Linda Corcoran and their Holistic Management Group for a very successful conference in Moosomin, Saskatchewan with 150 adults and 30 children on February 3rd and Conference attendees enjoyed 4th. This conference came together many networking conversations quickly under their leadership and as well as opportunities to learn with the help of many willing hands. from regenerative leaders.

The theme of the conference was “Learning from Regenerative Leaders.”

The conference began Friday evening with a well-attended wine and cheese reception. Saturday morning began with Kristelle Harper presenting on the Brookdale project located north of Brandon, Manitoba. This project is comparing a Holistic Planned Grazing system with a continuous grazing system. This project has run two years and already some differences are observable. In addition there were producer panels discussing experiences with running field days, leadership, and cover crop production practices.

There was also a video presentation from Dr. Richard Teague of Texas A&M. Dr. Teague spoke about the research project he is part of, where 18 holistically managed farms across Western Canada are being paired with 18 conventional management farms. The researchers are looking at economics, soil biology, soil carbon, grassland birds and plant diversity.

Sunday morning began with Holistic Management® Certified Educator Blain Hjertaas presenting on how the earth cools itself and how our management of the surface of the earth over the last 10,000 years of agriculture has altered the cooling system of the planet.

Phil Rose, a graduate student at the University of Regina presented on the importance of grazing lands and how different grazing strategies encourage or discourage different species of grasslands birds.

The last speaker of the conference was Dr. Christy Morrissey from the University of Saskatchewan. Her topic was resiliency in farming systems. Her research explores innovative and profitable ways to encourage resiliency on large grain farms.

The Moosomin conference was an outstanding success and achieved the goal! Many thanks to all who helped out in any way including the following sponsors: Upper Assiniboine River Conservation District, Souris River Conservation District, Kelsey Nagy-Investor’s Group, Back to Your Roots, Lower Souris Watershed Association, GBT Angus Trevor & Cheryl Branvold, Nerbas Brothers Angus, Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association, Timeless Fencing, Sharpe’s Soil Service, FCC, and Saskatchewan Stock Growers.

New Staff at HMI

HMI is excited to announce our new Office Assistant, Kimberly Barnett. Kimberly graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2013 18 IN PRACTICE

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with a degree in Sustainable Food & Water Resources – a curriculum she fashioned for herself in the Bachelor of University Studies program. While in school, she absorbed everything she could about food and watershed management, local food ecosystems, and sustainable agricultural practices.

Kimberly Barnett She grew vegetables on her family’s ½ acre farm in Bosque Farms for 6 years before migrating back up to Albuquerque. She gained non-profit and admin experience working with the New Mexico Technology Council and then found her way to HMI. Kimberly is excited to explore the convergence of her organizational skills, love of land, and hope for the future to help HMI grow and thrive in the coming years! Welcome, Kimberly!

Regenerative Agriculture Offers 78% More Profit

Recent research (https://peerj.com/articles/4428/) by Claire LaCanne and Dr. Jonathan Lundgren notes that while regenerative agriculture may have lower yields (29% on average), the profitability is consistently higher—with an average of 78% greater profit.

Of particular interest, regenerative agriculture also provides greater ecosystem services which also allows them to create pest-resilient systems that outperform farmers who are using chemical treatment. In fact, pests were 10-fold more abundant in insecticide-treated corn fields than on insecticide-free regenerative farms.

The research notes that to attain these kind of positive benefits requires “a systems-level shift” on the farm. In other words, if producers apply certain regenerative farming practices within their current production system, they are unlikely to produce the same results as noted by farmers who have achieved the results noted in the study.

New HMI Certified Educator in Finland

HMI is also excited to announce that Tuomas Mattila from Pusula, Finland just successfully completed his Holistic Management Certified Educator Training.

Tuomas is a farmer, scientist and consultant. He has a Masters of Science in Agriculture and Forestry, a Masters in Science in Chemical Engineering, a Doctorate of Science Technology in Systems Analysis and Operations Research, and 10 years of practical experience on managing his family farm. For the last three years he has been helping other farmers to regenerate their soils and improve their lives. Exposure to Holistic Management has been a key issue in wrapping everything together and moving things forward in a way which is truly sustainable, whole and fun. He is particularly interested in the application of Holistic Management to forestry, crop production, and to non-brittle temperate and boreal climates.

Tuomas has helped people and companies learn Holistic Management and implement on their farms. In addition, he offers consulting on soil management, nutrient management, minimum tillage and agroecological farming methods. Congratulations, Tuomas!

Nurturing Soil

BY DANNY NUCKOLS, PhD

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very parent, child provider, knows that you do not wait until young adulthood to provide nurturing mental and physical care; attention is needed to help stave off future youthful challenges and actions pertaining to assorted illnesses, learning disadvantages, and yes, even entering a school to shoot-down one’s fellow classmates. In fact, it is difficult to discover examples that argue against early intervention/study, no matter the context. For those who practice agrarian Holistic Management, the corollary centers on the need for the early nurturing of the soil. Poor soil, poor everything.

In his monumental text, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, David Montgomery acknowledges that single-bullet theories for why civilizations fail are always suspect, whether from disease, deforestation or climate change. It seems to be more prudent to argue that it is always an interplay of social, economic, political and environmental forces for why a culture fails. Little attention is given, unfortunately, for how the state of the soil affects a country’s wealth, and how the opulence of future generations demands intergenerational soil stewardship.

And although the acknowledgement of the importance of soil has improved, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that “millions of tons of topsoil are eroded annually from the fields in the Mississippi River Basin. Every second, North America’s largest river carries another dump truck’s load of top soil to the Caribbean. An estimated 24 billion tons of soil are lost annually around the world—several tons for each person on the planet.” Montgomery goes on to assert that undoing damage caused by soil erosion would annually cost the U.S. $44 billion and approximately $400 billion a year globally.

Those who engage in Holistic Management know soil organic matter must not only be prevented from eroding, when possible and

prudent, but also built-up. Such soil organic matter originates from many areas, being the remains of dead plants and animals and their excretory products in various stages of decomposition, the final stage being known as humus, as cited by Joan Gussow in her book, The Organic Life. Gussow explains how “nature—represented by billions of organisms—is passing what she’s been offered through the cells of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, mites, springtails, worms, and other organisms. As these organisms cycle chemical elements and energy, they help knit the clay particles into porous mesh through which air and water can percolate, and roots can stretch and breathe as they search for the nutrients that will grow plants.”

Citing the work of Christine Jones, an independent soil scientist in Australia, Courtney White, in his publication, Grass, Soil, Hope, strongly proclaims that continued delays in taking a more holistic approach to land stewardship will see ever increasing losses in soil carbon and soil water. Such a myopic approach only exposes farmers and ranchers to continued increases in all sorts of production risks—from escalating costs in the factors of production, to vulnerability to climatic extremes.

As Jones espouses, “it’s time to move away from depletion-style, high emission, chemically based industrial agriculture and get serious about grass-roots biologically based alternatives.”

HMI and its Holistic Management training has proven that every land manager can benefit from improved early soil health management in general, and carbon sequestration in particular—all leading toward more nutrient enriched food. The result will be a more robust profit margin for one’s agricultural operation, not to mention healthier children with emotional well-being.

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• Profitable Grass-Based Livestock Production Coming in the Back Door

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

resolution unanimously in October 2017. We will also use the Land Use Plan for awareness of the resource base in the SWCD and to do holistic analysis for problem solving, such as with endangered species or weed management, erosion and flooding abatement, cleaning up water quality issues, etc.

I am excited about where we are heading as a Soil and Water Conservation District. Other board members, as they see and learn from the work, are also excited. My hope is that we really develop a plan that lends itself to full disclosure to the taxpayers of the District about how we make decisions and how we implement and monitor our plans. If we are successful here, then it’s possible to spread our work around the state of New Mexico. I also serve on the New Mexico Association of Conservation District board. Stay tuned!

Jeff Goebel is a Holistic Management Certified Educator and Director of the Climate Consensus Institute and can be reached at: goebel@aboutlistening.com

• Management-Intensive Grazing • Multi-Species Grazing • Direct Marketing Tips • Grass Finishing • Producer Profiles More profit from your pastures starts with a subscription to SGF!

P.O. Box 2300 Ridgeland, MS 39158-2300 Joel Salatin, Editor

Call Today!

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Educators

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COLORADO Cindy Dvergsten 17702 County Rd. 23, Dolores, CO 81323 970/882-4222 • 970/739-2445 (c) wnc@gobrainstorm.net Katie Miller 22755 E Garrett Rd, Calhan, CO 80808 970/310-0852 • heritagebellefarms@gmail.com

Ralph Tate 1109 Timber Dr., Papillion, NE 68046 402/932-3405 • 402/250-8981 (c) Tater2d2@cox.net NEW HAMPSHIRE Seth Wilner 24 Main Street, Newport, NH 03773 603/863-4497 (h) • 603/863-9200 (w) 603/543-7169 (c) • seth.wilner@unh.edu NEW MEXICO Ann Adams Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 • anna@holisticmanagement.org Kelly Boney 4865 Quay Road L, San Jon, NM 88434 575/268-1162 • kellyboney_79@yahoo.com Kirk Gadzia P.O. Box 1100, Bernalillo, NM 87004 505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com Jeff Goebel 1033 N. Gabaldon Rd., Belen, NM 87002 541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com Kathy Harris Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 • kathyh@holisticmanagement.org

MICHIGAN Larry Dyer 1113 Klondike Ave, Petoskey, MI 49770 231/347-7162 (h) • 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com MISSISSIPPI Preston Sullivan 610 Ed Sullivan Lane NE, Meadville, MS 39653 prestons@telepak.net 601/384-5310 (h) • 601/835-6124 (c)

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MONTANA Amy Driggs 1551 Burma Road, Eureka, MT 59917 208/310-6664 • adriggs@ldagmachinery.com Roland Kroos 4926 Itana Circle, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/522-3862 • 406/581-3038 (c) kroosing@msn.com Cliff Montagne Montana State University 1105 S. Tracy, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu

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NEBRASKA Paul Swanson 5155 West 12th St., Hastings, NE 68901 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) pswanson3@unl.edu

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WISCONSIN Heather Flashinski 16294 250th Street, Cadott, WI 54727 715/289-4896 (w) • 715/379-3742 (c) grassheather@hotmail.com Larry Johnson 453 Woodside Terrace, Madison, WI 53711 608/957-2935 • larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com Laura Paine N893 Kranz Rd., Columbus, WI 53925 920/623-4407 (h) • 608/338-9039 (c) lkpaine@gmail.com

OREGON Angela Boudro PO Box 3444, Central Point, OR 97502 541/ 890-4014 • angelaboudro@gmail.com SOUTH DAKOTA Randal Holmquist 4870 Cliff Drive, Rapid City, SD 57702 605/730-0550, randy@zhvalley.com

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TEXAS

Bellows *NorthLisaCentral Texas College

1525 W. California St., Gainesville, TX 76240-4636 940/736-3996 (c) • 940/668-7731 ext. 4346 (o) lbellows@nctc.edu Deborah Clark PO Box 90, Henrietta, TX 76365-0090 940/328-5542 • deborahclark90@sbcglobal.net Guy Glosson 6717 Hwy. 380, Snyder, TX 79549

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For more information about or application forms for the HMI’s Certified Educator Training Programs, contact Ann Adams or visit our website: www.holisticmanagement.org. associate educators provide * These educational services to their communities and peer groups.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

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KANSAS Bill Casey 13835 Udall Road, Erie, KS 66733 620/423-2842 • bill.caseyag@gmail.com

NORTH DAKOTA Joshua Dukart 2539 Clover Place, Bismarck, ND 58503 701/870-1184 • Joshua_dukart@yahoo.com

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U N I T E D S TAT E S Tim McGaffic P.O. Box 1903, Cave Creek, AZ 85327 808/936-5749 • tim@timmcgaffic.com CALIFORNIA Lee Altier College of Agriculture, CSU 400 West First St., Chico, CA 95929-0310 laltier@csuchico.edu • 530/636-2525 Owen Hablutzel 4235 W. 63rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90043 310/567-6862 • go2owen@gmail.com Richard King 1675 Adobe Rd., Petaluma, CA 94954 rking1675@gmail.com • 707/217-2308 (c) 707/769-1490 (h) Kelly Mulville P.O. Box 23, Paicines, CA 95043 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com Donald D. Nelson 11728 Shafer Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080-8994 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com Rob Rutherford 4757 Bridgecreek Rd., San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 805/544-5781 (h) • 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com

806/237-2554 • glosson@caprock-spur.com Tracy Litle 1277 S CR 305, Orange Grove, TX 78372 361/537-3417 (c) • tjlitle@hotmail.com Peggy Maddox 9460 East FM 1606, Hermleigh, TX 79526 325/226-3042 (c) • westgift@hughes.net Katherine Napper Ottmers 313 Lytle Street, Kerrville, TX 78028 830/896-1474 • katherineottmers@icloud.com CD Pounds 753 VZ CR 1114, Fruitvale, TX 75127 214/568-3377 • cdpounds@live.com Peggy Sechrist 106 Thunderbird Ranch Road Fredericksburg, TX 78624 830/456-5587 (c) • peggysechrist@gmail.com

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The following Certified Educators listed have been trained to teach and coach individuals in Holistic Management. On a yearly basis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with HMI. This agreement requires their commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives and to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management.

ARIZONA

NEW YORK Craig Leggett 6143 SR 9, Chestertown, NY 12817 518/494-2324 (h) • 970/946-1771 (c) craigrleggett@gmail.com Erica Frenay Shelterbelt Farm 200 Creamery Rd., Brooktondale, NY 14817 607/539-6512 (h) • 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com Elizabeth Marks 1024 State Rt. 66, Ghent, NY 12075 518/828-4385 x107 (w) • 518/567-9476 (c) Elizabeth.marks@ny.usda.gov Phillip Metzger 120 Thompson Creek Rd., Norwich, NY 13815 607/334-2407 (h) • pmetzger17@gmail.com

AUSTRALIA

Judi Earl “Glen Orton” 3843 Warialda Rd. Coolatai, NSW 2402 61-409-151-969 (c) • judi_earl@bigpond.com Paul Griffiths PO Box 186, Mudgee, NSW 2850 612-6373-3078 paul@holisticmudgee.com Graeme Hand 150 Caroona Lane, Branxholme, VIC 3302 61-3-5578-6272 (h) • 61-4-1853-2130 (c) graemehand9@gmail.com Dick Richardson PO Box 341 Balhannah SA 5242 61-0-42906900 (c) dick@dickrichardson.com.au Jason Virtue P.O. Box 75 Cooran QLD 4569 61-0-754851997 • jason@spiderweb.com.au Brian Wehlburg Pine Scrub Creek, Kindee, NSW 2446 61-2-6587-4353 (h) • 61 04087 404 431 (c) brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au CANADA

Don Campbell Box 817 Meadow Lake, SK S0X 1Y6 306/236-6088 • 320/240-7660 (c) doncampbell@sasktel.net Ralph Corcoran Box 36, Langbank, SK S0G 2X0 306/532-4778 rlcorcoran@sasktel.net

May / June 2018

Blain Hjertaas Box 760, Redvers, Saskatchewan SOC 2HO 306/452-3882 • bhjer@sasktel.net Brian Luce RR #4, Ponoka, AB T4J 1R4 403/783-6518 • lucends@cciwireless.ca Noel McNaughton 5704-144 St NW, Edmonton, AB T6H 4H4 780/432-5492; noel@mcnaughton.ca Tony McQuail 86016 Creek Line, RR#1, Lucknow, ON N0G 2H0 519/528-2493 • mcqufarm@hurontel.on.ca Len Pigott Box 222, Dysart, SK, SOH 1HO 306/432-4583 • JLPigott@sasktel.net Kelly Sidoryk Box 72, Blackroot, A B TOB OLO 780/872-2585 (c) • 780/875-4418 (w) kelly.sidoryk@gmail.com

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FINLAND Tuomas Mattila Töllintie 27, Pusula, 3850 +358 40 743 2412 • tuomas.j.mattila@gmail.com KENYA Christine C. Jost Box 30677, Nairobi 00100 773/706-2705 (c) • 703/981-1224 (w) cjost@usaid.gov NAMIBIA Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii P O Box 24102, Windhoek 9000 264-812840426 (c) • 264-61-244028 (h) kandjiiu@gmail.com

Colin Nott PO Box 11977, Windhoek 9000 264-81-2418778 (c) • 264-61-225085 (h) canott@iafrica.com.na Wiebke Volkmann P. O . Box 9285, Windhoek 264-61-225183 or 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na NEW ZEALAND John King P. O. Box 12011, Beckenha Christchurch 8242 64-276-737-885 john@succession.co.nz

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SOUTH AFRICA Wayne Knight Solar Addicts, P.O. Box 537, Mokopane, 0600 South Africa 27-0-15-491-5286 +27-87-550-0255 (h) • +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net Jozua Lambrechts PO Box 5070, Helderberg, Somerset West, 7135 +27-0-21 -851 5669 • +27-0-08-310-1940 Ian Mitchell-Innes 14 Chevril Road, Ladysmith, 3370 +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za UNITED KINGDOM Philip Bubb 32 Dart Close, St. Ives, Cambridge, PE27 3JB 44-1480-496-2925 (h)+44 7837 405483 (w) pjbubb99@gmail.com

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22IN IN PRACTICE 22 PRACTICE

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N um ber 179

h IN PRACTICE 23

Nonprofit U.S POSTAGE

PAID Jefferson City, MO PERMIT 210

Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.

a publication of Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 USA

RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED

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DEVELOPMENT CORNER Creating Healthy Land, Healthy Food, and Healthy Lives

BY KIRRILY BLOMFIELD

I

love the power in Holistic Management to make us sit back from our daily activities and ask how we want our lives to be—our communities, our finances, and our landscapes. Then we make decisions to take us toward this goal.

My husband and I trained in Holistic Management together in 2007—and training together with a business partner or spouse is a must. At the time we had young children, and part of our goal was that we would have plenty of time to spend with the children—that my husband would be in to share dinner with us each night. We wanted a healthy farm, free of chemicals, on which to live and have children grow and play safely, among other things.

We have a 2,500 acre-property in New South Wales, Australia, with breeder cows, of which the offspring are sold as yearlings into our direct beef sales under ‘The Conscious Farmer’ brand. We also have some trade animals as well as some agistment/contract animals that we can easily move on and off the farm as seasons permit.

A big part of the activity changes we have made on the farm since our training, is the planning of our grazing—ensuring recovery of plants before their re-grazing. This has created some great results. We have seen the natural regeneration of trees, great improvements in ground cover, a move away from drenching animals, the regeneration of eroded gully areas, positive species change, and clear water runoff (when runoff does occur, which isn’t often). The planning of our grazing means that we feel confident with the number of stock we are running, how much feed they have ahead of them and the condition we can keep them in.

The changes that we have made since training in Holistic Management have meant we now have a chemical-free farm and animals, and we are building the land and soil as we go. These are all things that conscious consumers value when purchasing, yet our animals were ending up in the melee of the local saleyards. Realizing

that people value these attributes, we began direct marketing our beef as 100% grass fed, chemical-free beef. As part of our planning for a profit, we determined what was necessary to double our gross margin return from each animal, and we set our prices accordingly. Changes in the beef market since mean there is currently less premium, but for us, it is worth the challenges (and there certainly are some!) that come with it.

We contribute to Holistic Management International both in cash and by volunteering our time, such as hosting an Open Gate day at our farm and as being a Director with the organization. We want as much community exposure to Holistic Management as possible, so that others can create balanced, fulfilling lives and healthy landscapes, but also because we know it will create a better community and environment for us and our family to live in.

Kirrily and Derek Blomfield from New South Wales Australia love the power of Holistic Management to help them create quality products for their customers.

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