#193, IN PRACTICE, September/October 2020

In Practice

HMI 2019 Annual Report

Dear HMI Community,

2019 was a year of hard work that helped us build resilience for our organization. In an effort to put as much money towards programs as possible, we decided to sell our building and was able to accomplish that at the end of 2019, having all systems in place for a small rented office and all staff working remotely. Little did we know how much that resilience would be needed in 2020 with COVID19 and the economic challenges intensified by the virus.

HMI’s board and staff continued on our focus on how to maximize program impact for dollar spent. With that focus we were able to increase our net assets without restriction to $459,888, increasing our financial reserves by 33%. We also increased our gross program margin by 70%, and we decreased expenses by 23% with only 26% of our expenses allocated to administration.

Despite the focus on reducing overhead in 2019, HMI was still able to collaborate with over 90 organizations around the globe to deliver 61 days of programming. We also had 141 farmers and ranchers enroll in HMI’s Getting Started Courses and other online training. HMI was also able to increase the total amount of scholarships to over $27,000 to beginning and transitioning farmers and ranchers needing financial assistance. Overall HMI’s programming and global network of over 65 Certified Educators trained and presented on Holistic Management to 5,957 people, while also positively impacting over 11.9 million acres.

On the outreach front, we continue to expand our scope by educating more people about Holistic Management and HMI. By the end of the year, our outreach outcomes included over 22,360 Facebook fans and 16,000+ Twitter followers with almost 19,000 people subscribing to our e-letter.

With the outstanding success of last year’s REGENERATE Conference with over 500 people attending, we have already begun planning with the Quivira Coalition and the American Grassfed Association for the 2020 REGENERATE Conference. “Resilience in Times of Uncertainty” will be held online with a month long series of events leading up to the culmination events on November 19–20, 2020. We hope to see you all there as the opportunities to network with people around the world will be unparalleled with this new approach to the conference. There will be plenaries, breakout discussions, networking events, and opportunities to learn about innovative approaches that are helping people thrive in times of chaos.

2019 Annual Report

The work and results achieved by our Board, staff, Advisory Council, Certified Educators, collaborators, and practitioners continues to inspire and humble us. We appreciate all those who are helping us fulfill our mission of creating healthy land and thriving communities through the practice of Holistic Management.

With gratitude,

Ann Adams - Executive Director Walter Lynn - Board Chair

In this issue, HMI shares our 2019 Annual Report, touching on the key metrics we achieved and thanking our many donors and supporters. Please be sure to check out our infographic on the back page of this issue for more highlights from 2019.

®

Annual Report Financials

Summarized Statement of Activities

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

STAFF

Ann Adams Executive Director

Wayne Knight Director of Strategic Initiatives

Kathy Harris Program Director

Carrie Stearns Director of Communications & Outreach

Stephanie Von Ancken Program Manager

Oris Salazar Program Assistant

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Walter Lynn, Chair

Avery Anderson-Sponholtz, Secretary

Gerardo Bezanilla

Kevin Boyer

Jonathan Cobb

Guy Glosson

Ariel Greenwood

Colin Nott

Daniel Nuckols

Breanna Owen

Brad Schmidt

Jim Shelton

Kelly Sidoryk

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT® IN PRACTICE

(ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by:

Holistic Management International 2425 San Pedro Dr. NE, Ste A Albuquerque, NM 87110 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org

Copyright © 2020

Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International

Interests, net of 154,260 in production expenses Investment Income Unrealized gain(loss) on Investments (Note 3)

gain(loss) on closely held stock (Note 7)

Loss on Investments (Note 3)

income

In-kind (Note 12)

(Note 13)

Change in Net Assets

Net Assets at Beginning of Year

Net Assets at End of Year

Summarized Statement of Financial Position

Current Assets

Cash and cash equivalents (Note 2)

Investments – Mutual Funds (Note 3)

Program Receivables (Note 4)

Prepaid Expenses (Note 5)

Inventory

Total Current Assets

Property & Equipment

Property & Equipment (Note 6)

Less: Accumulated Depreciation (Note 6)

Net Property & Equipment

Other Assets

Stock in closely held companies (Note 7)

Mineral interests (Note 8)

Less: Accumulated Depletion (Note 8)

Net Mineral Interests

Total Other Assets

Total Assets

Current Liabilities Accounts payable

Accrued Benefits & Tax Liability (Note 9) Deferred

2019 GRANTS, SPONSORSHIPS, & DONATIONS

Stewards ($50,000+)

The Community Foundation of San Benito County

Thornburg Foundation

Guardians ($10,000+)

Anonymous

Dixon Water Foundation

Johnston Foundation (Martha Records & Rich Rainaldi)

Regenerative Ag Foundation

Tecovas Foundation

Tides Foundation

Protectors ($5,000+)

Farm Aid Inc

Grasslans Charitable Foundation

Joy Law

Leigh & Charlie Merinoff

Lydia B. Stokes Foundation

TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation

Patrons ($1,000+)

Amy & Joseph Morel

Ballantine Family Fund

Ben & Denise Bartlett

Birdwell & Clark Ranch

Catherine Semrod

Charlotte Ekland

Christine Martin

Christine Su

Clint & Betty Josey

Deaf Smith County Texas Agrilife

Extension

Joan Bybee

Kirk Gadzia

Mary Etta Johnston

Montesino Ranch

Ron Chapman

Sunfire Ranch

Susie Hagemeister

The Nature Conservancy

Tuomas Mattila

Wally Olson

Sustainers ($500+)

Ann Adams

Betsy & Reeves Brown

Cindy Dvergsten

Clove Valley CSA

Community Foundation for a greater Richmond

Drausin Wulsin

George Rodes

Hudson Valley Farm Hub

Jim & Carol Parker

Jim Shelton

Mary N. Adams

Microsoft Office

Molly (Mary) Baldrige

Pete Pulis

Rob Rutherford

Roland Kroos

Sapbush Hollow Farm

Walt Davis

Wayne Knight

Supporters ($250+)

Albert Lowry

Bert Rivera

Byron & Wayne Eatinger

Charles & Jennifer Sands

Dave Waters

David Moose

Dennis & Ruth Demmel

Don & Randee Halladay

Doug & Clare Barnett

Ellen Heath

Frank Hayes

Jack & Teresa Southworth

Jack & Zera Varian

Kathy Harris

Kelly Sidoryk

Kelly Jack

Ken Klemm

Kevin Boyer

Peter Schulze

Richard Teague

Tena Farr

Friends (<$250)

Anne Ravenstone

Art & Leslie McElroy

Art & Sally Roane

Arthur Young

Barbara & William Scaife

Bean Hollow Farm

Benjamin & Nancy Coleman

Bre Owens

Brianna McKinney

Carl Warrick

Catharine Tyler

CD Pounds

Chip & Ann Fischer

Christine Henthorn

Cliff Schuette

Dave & Karen Baker

Dave Dorrance

David Trombold

Denise Bostdorff & Daniel O’Ro-

urke

Dennis Pufpaf

Derek & Kirrily Blomfield

Diana Kay Speer

Doak Elledge

Don Faulkner

Doug Dockter

Edvard Nordenskjold

Edwin Waters

Elizabeth Wheeler

Emery Mitchamore

Emil & Maryann Casciano

Gabriel Jenkins

Gail Kursel

GaryLee LeGare

Genevieve Duncan

George & Elaine Work

Gerry Rackley

Guy Glosson

Henri Allio

Jacqueline McLain

James & Ann McCollum

James & Geraldine Matthews

James Reining

Jaye Henneke

Jessie Westcamp

Jim Cecil

Jim Peterson

Jimmy Garner

Joe Morris

Joe Williams

John C & Rosalyn G Phillips

John Wernette

Jon & Betsy Elliott

Jonathan Hinkey

Joseph & Carole Glade

Karen McFarland

Karen Taranto

Ken Gallard

Kenneth & Bonita Miller

Kevin Fulton

Kim Pophal

2019 Funding Expenditures

HMI would like to thank all of our donors whose generous contributions help make our work possible.

Donors & Supporters

Kim Stackhouse Lwson

Laura Taylor

Lauren Dillon

Linda Pechin-Long

Linus Meyer

Lowry McAllen

Margaret Newfield

Margy Rogers

Mark & Wendy Pratt

Mary Ellen Gonzales

Meriwether Hardie

Michael Flanigan

Michael Sands & Betsy Dietel

Mike Turner

Myron Dyrda

Network for Good

Oris Salazar

Ozark Hills Insurance, Inc.

Parducci Wine Cellars

Patagonia

Paul & Nancy Ackley

Peter Nakashian

Punchy Cattle

Rick & Kathy Kaesebier

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union

Ron Fash

Ryan Jarvis

Sally Gamauf

Scott Gerber

Seth Wilner

Shaelyn Meyer

Southwest Grass Fed Livestock

Alliance

Stephen Williams

Steve Wooten

Steve & Leslie Dorrance

Steve & Melinda Rich

Susan Ellis Kelly

The B-Bar-S Ranches Ltd.

Tom & Darla White

Tom & Irene Frantzen

Tracy Litle

Twin Mountain Fence Co.

United Fiberglass Inc.

Valerie Taylor

Vicky Holcomb

Wheeler County, Texas A&M

Agrilife Extension

Willard Heck

Agricultura Network

AIRE

Allen Williams

All Things Natural

American Grassfed Association

Amigos Bravos

Arapaho County Fairgrounds

Ariel Greenwood

Arriola Sunshine Farm

Audubon NM

Avery Anderson-Sponholtz

Badger Creek Ranch

Ballentine Family Foundation

Brad Schmidt

Bernalillo County Extension

NMSU

Bernalillo County Open Space

Birdwell & Clark Ranch

Blue Ranch

Boudro Enterprises

Cachuma Ranch

Cactus Feeders

Capital Farm Credit

Casey Wade

Christine Martin

Cid’s Coop

Colin Nott

Colorado State Land Board

CrossRoads Ranch Consulting

CTNOFA

Dixon Water Foundation

Dry Creek Livestock

El Sueño Ranch

Elevated Coffee

Enchanted Circle Taos

Farmhouse Cafe

Fozzie’s Farm

Full Heart Farm

Gerardo Bezanilla

Geoffrey & Stacie Morris

Greg Judy

Grow the Growers Program

Hand for the Land

Health & Natural Resources

Holistic Effect

Jack Seed and Supply

Kevin Boyer

KW Cattle Co.

Lisa Bellows

Dave & Lauri Celella

Log Cabin Livestock Farm

LOR Foundation

Mark Courtner

Merrill Lynch

Mesa View Ranch

Moore County Agri-Life Extension Service

Moore County Community Center

Moore County USDA-NRCS

National Young Farmers Coalition

Natural Resources Conservation

Service/Grazing Lands Coalition Initiative

New Mexico State University

Extension

North Central Texas College

Not Forgotten Outreach

NRCS Extension Service

Ozark Hills Insurance

Pete Pulis

Punchy Cattle Company

Ranching for Profit

Resource Management Services

Robby Tuggle

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union

RSF

Round River Resource Management

San Juan Ranch

Sarah Williford

Socorro Rodeo and Sports Complex

Solar Addicts

Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance

Stockman Grassfarmer

Sustainable Growth Texas

Taos Land Trust

Tecovas Foundation

Texas A&M Agrilife Extension

Texas Parks & Wildlife

The Nature Conservancy

The Quivira Coalition

The Regen Ranch

Thornburg Foundation

Tom & Melissa Bookhout

Trainor Cattle

Twin Mountain Fence

UCONN College of Agriculture

United Fiberglass Inc.

West Texas A&M

Western Landowners Alliance

Whole New Concepts

Wiggle Room

Wild Leaven Bakery

William Burnidge

Will Harris

2019 Income Sources

100th Meridian Ranching

4 Daughters Cattle Company

A special thanks to the following organizations and individuals who have graciously supported our programs.

As a Rancher, I Feed People While Caring for the Land—

So Why Wasn’t I Feeding Myself?

BY ARIEL GREENWOOD

Some years back, I moved to California, far from my North Carolina origins. I moved for a relationship and a new job—pretty standard stuff for someone in their early 20s. But both had dissolved after about six months. So all of a sudden, with no one but myself to worry about, I decided to pursue what I really wanted to be doing: grazing cattle.

This may seem like a niche interest, but for me it made sense. As a kid, I grew up a little feral with horses and free rein in the country, and I’d long craved the expansiveness of grassland. By the time I was 24, I’d been growing vegetables on small farms for seven years. I was desperate for a more unbounded agriculture—one that could coexist with wild species in ways beyond the scope of the average vegetable garden.

Fast forward a few months, and I was neck-deep in what would prove to be a twoand-a-half-year gig grazing cattle on a nature preserve. I lived onsite in a run-down camper— my first time living alone—and experienced a profoundly formative solitude. I spent just about all day out there on the rolling hills with those cows, building electric fence paddocks, installing and moving thousands of feet of plastic pipe to bring water to the herd, zipping around on a four-wheeler.

In the evenings I would huddle in a cold barn office and stare at Google Earth maps to figure out how I’d build the next few paddocks and how I’d lead the cattle to their next grazing cell, meticulously calculating area down to the tenth of an acre.

All of this was in the interest of making sure cattle were sufficiently fed, while simultaneously impacting the landscape in the way I wanted: effectively grazed or trampled. That’s why the

herd was there, after all—prairie environments co-evolved with disturbance. Absent the regular fires and streaming herds of migratory animals, the preserve needed thoughtfully managed livestock as a stand-in to sustain the health and diversity of its grasslands.

That job was full of incredible highs and lows, and I learned to conjure an inner resourcefulness that I rely on today. At one point, I remember explaining to my Mom over the phone how many hours I’d been working each day, totally and blissfully in over my head. “If I died tomorrow, I would be happy,” I told her. “I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing!”

re-arrange made something click in my mind, and I began to interrogate all the days I left the cow camp to go work in the hills without bringing enough food along, relying on pure passion for fuel. The days when I’d make popcorn instead of investing the time in a real meal to compensate for the many calories I’d spent in service to that land.

There was something plaguing me besides the usual cocktail of female insecurity, and I think it was rooted in my environmentalism.

I’d spent so much time thinking about feeding cattle, grass, and the microbes that live in the rumen and the soil. Why wasn’t I feeding myself?

For me, the answer might be two-fold. Part of it is a simple aversion to taking up space—a woefully common complex shared by many women in the Western world that impairs our ability to recognize our bodies and ourselves as worthy of time, energy, resources. Due mostly to genetics, I’ve always been a skinny woman, without a lot of caloric buffer. But even though plenty of people have called me “tiny” with a shade of incredulity and concern, I’m also nearly six feet tall, and have spent a lot of my life feeling oversized.

relatively stable existence. I still live in a camper half the year—as nomadic ranchers, we move around depending on the season to serve our goals of making a decent living while caring for cattle and rangeland. I’m far from rich, but I can go to the dentist or chiropractor if I really need to. I have just about all of the resources I need to do my work, and, best of all, a committed relationship with a fantastic human. But, back then, I was so invested in the land that I couldn’t see the ways my work sometimes came at a personal cost. Alone much of the time, I neglected the basics—things like making enough money to buy work clothes, maintaining my vehicle, and eating enough.

Food in particular was a challenge. I’ve never thought of myself as having an “eating disorder.” The term seems like such a cursed, cumbersome thing. But recently I heard the phrase “disordered eating.” This grammatical

Still, there was something else plaguing me besides the usual cocktail of female insecurity, and I think it was rooted in my environmentalism.

Being a food producer, especially one who raises livestock with minimal outside supplement, is a gift and a curse. The work immerses you in natural systems and substrates unlike anything else. Yes, you watch the weather and depend on the mercurial forces of heat, wind, rain. But on a more fundamental level, you spend a lot of your life physically immersed in organic materials. You wade through tall grasses (in a good year), you climb hills, you search for cattle in forests and arroyos. Animals are born or die in your arms or by your hand and they kick, cut, bite, feed, love, or tolerate you in return.

Food production brings you to your knees, down onto the soil to which we are truly beholden. Working in agriculture doesn’t give you a reverence for nature—reverence is for people who live removed from nature and go and visit

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

Overlooking a field of cattle in Roscoe, Montana

As a Rancher, I Feed People

it on weekends. Rather, working in agriculture brings you into the fold of family, where you may curse it, and it may kill you, but you never for a second doubt if it’s where you belong.

After a while, living and working with the land can cause your sense of self to expand beyond your body and begin to encompass dozens, hundreds, thousands of acres around you. Droughts don’t hurt just the pocketbook—you feel it in your whole body, on the surfaces of your skin and even in your teeth and bones.

Once your sense of self extends across so much space, to produce food differently and better then becomes more than an act of stewardship. At times, it’s a desperate act of self-preservation.

We try to fairly pay anyone we hire, but what about the folks who picked the bag of oranges we bought from a guy selling them out of his pickup in town?

Back in my California days, I remember wandering the aisles of the grocery store, a few hundred dollars in my bank account on a good day, trying to determine how the hell I could buy the food I needed without feeling miserable about the land and animals impacted by my need to consume just to stay alive. This predicament often meant I walked away with too few, tooexpensive items that I would ration over the next couple weeks.

I began to interrogate all the days I left to go work in the hills without bringing enough food along, relying on pure passion for fuel.

It seemed like I was stuck with two options: betray myself by not procuring the resources I needed to thrive, or betray other land, animals, and people. But feeling so connected to nature meant that either option felt like a personal transgression. There just seemed to be no

I wonder, now, why I didn’t decide my ecological activism in the field was enough. Why didn’t I cut myself some slack, and go buy some cheap food so that I could at least make sure I was getting the calories I needed? Or why didn’t I sign up for food stamps like a lot of my food-andfarming-activist peers? (Ironically, farm workers of all stripes and political persuasions in the U.S.— the people who produce our food—are often on food stamps). If I didn’t have access to a freezer full of nutritious frozen beef, I hate to think of what the state of my health would have been.

perhaps still do today, the best I can describe is some sort of one-way psychic enmeshment. I identified with the land on a fundamental level. But what good is it to feel one’s identity bound up in some vaguely defined expanse, if that expanse can’t really feed me, not completely?

Maybe my investment and devotion to land is itself natural, the result of my brain duly reorganizing itself after so much time amidst the stimuli of soil, sun, rain. But if these feelings I’m prone to are healthy, they may also be tragically outdated: adapted to lifeways that have mostly been extinguished in civilization’s march towards modernity. Perhaps this strong identification with the health of land would have been an asset if I had lived in a culture truly organized around both the use and stewardship of natural resources, one that valued site-specific expertise as much as the efficient extraction of commodities.

Besides, in our context, it can feel futile to manage land for things like water quality and wildlife forage: the water is often polluted by the time it flows onto our ranch lease, and the elk always seem to belong to someone else. And so this connection, a passionate vocation in theory, can feel like a burdensome fixation in practice— one that’s partially at odds with the roles and responsibilities inherent to ranching and land management today. Viewed from afar, it may seem noble and rare to some (and maybe a little precious to others). But a second glance shows my affinity to be debilitating.

This is the part where I’m supposed to offer some clarified and healthy understanding of how to relate to land. A way to expand my connection to nature without compromising myself. Maybe the answer could be easy or simple, found in aphorisms throughout the ages, phrases like “don’t put the cart before the horse,” or “you can’t pour from an empty cup.” The self-care movement has made it clear that we can’t care for others if we’re not taking care of ourselves. And it has plenty of products for sale to help us do so.

And I think this was my trouble. Working in agriculture with all of my high-minded ideals of restoration, of healing the land, called into question the merits of every product I might eat, wear, slather on my body, or otherwise consume. The land I graze makes me wonder about every other acre that yields nutrition and calories.

I know I try to treat animals well, but what about the ones I’m not raising? I know I try to take care of the soil, but what about the soil that produced these bagged salad greens I’m buying? Did the corn kernels I like to pop in the evening and drizzle with salt and butter only worsen the problems of topsoil erosion in the Midwest, and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico?

We often talk about a strong connection to nature as something to be admired. Yet we don’t say this about connections we form with other humans. We have all kinds of adjectives to describe the vast, varied constellation of relationships amongst people: toxic, antagonistic, selfless, devoted, maternal. Yet when we speak about nature, we typically just use vague, wholesome-sounding words like “belonging” and “connectedness.” It’s almost as if we’ve never considered that one’s relationship to nature might be complex, or something other than restorative and benign.

When I consider the particular form of connection I had with nature back then, and

But that’s the trouble. When your sense of self encompasses so much land and so many beings, seen or unseen, where do you draw the line between yourself and the world beyond?

The question seems to hinge on how we define selfhood. And as dysfunctional as my own approach has been, I don’t think the Western legacy of commercialization and disconnection offers many good alternatives. Yet neither does pretending that all our feelings towards nature— as long as they aren’t overtly destructive—are somehow simple, healthy, and good.

How do we feed ourselves in the world we have now?

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

Ariel and her partner Sam Ryerson spend their summers up north in Montana for the grazing season—one truck and trailer carries six horses, and seven dogs.

Photo Credit: Nancy Ranney

On-Ranch Research Shows Management Results

BY WAYNE KNIGHT

Last year I helped my oldest son, Gary, work on his Grade 10 science project. The theme of the project was “research an innovative idea that could change the world.” Gary has been immersed in Holistic Management all his life. With shortages of water being a very real and persistent issue in South Africa, we decided to look at ways to improve water infiltration into soil. This focus is in stark contrast to the usually published advice

We looked at management techniques that would improve water infiltration rates into soil as the basis of improving water availability in a catchment area. This approach to managing water capture is much more progressive than saving existing water. Our research looked at comparing water infiltration rates on our property’s soil versus those of our neighbors. We have been practicing Holistic Management/ Adaptive Management Practice for over 40 years on our property. We compared water infiltration rates across the fence and in areas around our yard that are never grazed against those of high density grazing on the same, adjacent soil types. Here’s what we found.

Project Introduction

We have a water crisis in South Africa. World Wildlife Federation notes that in 2016, 8 of 9 provinces in South Africa were declared disaster areas because of lack of water. Many ways to save water are proposed. But what if we could improve the catchment and retention of water through better management of the land? All land should be managed so that optimal amounts of water are absorbed into the soil and released slowly or retained in the water table.

Many publications have made suggestions that the presence of livestock is responsible for desertification, flooding and

general degradation of the environment, which ultimately leads to loss of water. If we could radically change management of vast areas of land, what could the improvement in water availability be?

Hypothesis

We chose the following hypothesis: “No animals on a given piece of land is the best management system to prevent erosion, promote water infiltration into the soil and provide optimal aquafer recharge.”

This hypothesis was chosen because a radical change in land management is needed to reverse the current rate of land degradation around the world. Most scientists argue that domestic animals are the reason for this degradation. In looking for management that is very different from what is practiced, no animals seemed to be the biggest change from current use patterns.

The visual results of the infiltration rate tests show the amount of runoff in the mug beside the bottle. Note the amount of runoff in sample 6 (middle) which was the continuous graze. There is no percolation there. However in sample 3 (right), which is from planned grazing, you can see significantly more percolation at the base of the bottle.

Water Infiltration vs Root Depth Chart.

On-Ranch Research Shows Management Results

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

Field Study Method

To prove the project hypothesis, various management techniques and their impact on water infiltration near my home were analyzed. Four distinct management systems were identified:

1. Low stock numbers with low levels of management. A game farming environment.

2. High stock numbers with high level of management. Intensely managed cattle farming operation using planned grazing. The aim is to have animals present for a short time followed by a long recovery time where plants can regrow.

3. High stock numbers with high level management including the use of fire.

4. Exclusion of grazing animals—no animals present

3. Observations of soil surface condition: Is the soil covered with organic material or partly covered or bare? If bare, is it capped or uncapped?

4. Biodiversity—measure the number of animals or signs of animals present (large and small)

5. Inter-plant spacing. From a central point in the sight, measure the distance of the closest 10 plants to the central point. Calculate the average distance from the central point.

6. Root Depth—dig up each of the 10 plants and measure the actual root depth.

7. Plant analysis. Distinguish between annual, perennial, scrub, forb or tree. Record palatability and utilization level of plants identified. Identify and record the botanic name of each of the plants.

Laboratory Study Method

To analyze the true infiltration rate of soils from each of the three management types being accessed, soil samples were taken from each site.

An experiment was devised that would

measure three variables of what could happen to rainfall once it reached the soil surface: water run-off, percolation through the soil profile, and water held in the soil.

Results Summary

When taking soil type into account, it appeared that without exception, infiltration rates where fastest with Planned Grazing management.

When comparing the different management systems combining the Laboratory and Field Studies, then it is clear from many points of comparison, Planned Grazing Management results in more effective soil and plant function than either Continuous Light Stocking or Zero

The following parameters were measured to determine which management had the best impact on water infiltration and environmental health:

1. The time it took for one liter of water to be absorbed by the soil on a site in each management area.

2. Determine from observation what the soil type is: sandy, clay, clay loam. The experiment was conscious to measure across boundary conditions on the same soil type to determine the difference only in management.

Recording water infiltration rate. Site 3. Sandy Soil. Planned Grazing management.

Infiltration with Annual and Perennial Plants Chart.

Site 1 GC. Clay soil. Planned grazing Management. Gary Knight doing field observations.

Site S2a, Sandy Soil. Planned Grazing Management.

Animals Management Systems.

Planned Grazing management favors perennial grasses. Perennial grasses are a result of good management. They are deep rooted, high yielding, drought resistant and more palatable, in general, than annuals. Grazing animals tend to favor eating these plants over annuals as they are more nutritious. Perennial plants create a moister microclimate. Where these plants dominate, there will generally be more biodiversity and a higher biomass of living matter than where annuals predominate.

Water Infiltration Rate vs. Plant Root Depth

In all sites, where root depth is deeper, infiltration rate is faster. Looking at the management system results, Planned Grazing management has the fastest infiltration rate per soil type and the deepest root depth (See chart on page 7).

Infiltration vs Animal Grazing and Periods

In the chart to the left, the aim is to observe each management systems’ control of animals’ presence or absence and how that influences water infiltration

Neither continual grazing nor continual exclusion of animals is optimal for water infiltration. What appears to be best is a relatively long period without animals, followed by a short period of animals at high density—as provided by Planned Grazing management.

Infiltration Rate vs. Average Plant Spacing

Planned Grazing management had the best result for encouraging tight plant spacing. Tight plant spacing is highly correlated with fast water infiltration rate. In all analyses, except where fire was used, continual grazing and zero grazing management were the least favorable to both plant spacing and water infiltration (See chart on page 7).

Water Infiltration Rate vs. Annual or Perennial Plants

The chart on page 8 shows that water infiltration rate is best were there is a high proportion of perennial plants relative to annuals. In all cases Planned Grazing management appears to favor perennial plants and corresponds with fastest infiltration rates.

Management Effects Chart

As noted in the chart above, Site 3 with Planned Grazing management holds the most water, passes the most water to the subsoil and has the least surface run-off.

Site 4 with Continuous Light grazing has the highest surface run-off, the least percolation and the lowest water retention of the 3 samples Site 6 with No Animals has low water percolation capacity, high surface run-off and reasonable water holding capacity.

When examined in conjunction with the field assessments, Planned Grazing is the best management type.

Wayne Knight is HMI’s Director of Strategic Initiatives. He recently relocated from South Africa to Texas

Infiltration to Recovery/Graze Chart.

Management Effect on Soil Run Off and Water Retention Chart.

Site 4 SS. Sandy soil. Zero grazing. Lots of dead, moribund perennial plants.

Site 6 RP: Clay-loam soil. Continuous light grazing by wildlife. Game farming management.

& LIVESTOCK

Arrow 6 Ranch— Building an Operation from Scratch

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Rob Kramer purchased the Arrow 6 Ranch near Denbigh, North Dakota in 1987 at the age of 22 and built his current operation from scratch. Today he has a cow-calf operation with about 100 cows and 50 yearlings, and also runs 190 sheep. Early on he became interested in Holistic Management, and started focusing on high-density grazing with cattle and sheep (utilizing electric fencing), bale grazing, windrow grazing, seeding legumes in tame grass pastures, and reducing invasive bluegrass to allow native plants to recover and grow from the seed bank. He uses sheep to manage leafy spurge. His primary goal is to keep improving his land while operating with minimal inputs.

Early Start

Rob knew he wanted to be a rancher from the time he was very young. “My folks didn’t have a ranch, but we always had a few critters. As a young man I tried to find a few places to buy but luckily I didn’t get any of them because later this ranch became available. I bought nine quarter sections of beautiful sand hills, covered with leafy spurge and trees.

“Along with the spurge we have a big problem here with Kentucky bluegrass taking over and pushing out all the native grasses. I have been working on the bluegrass problem for several years now, with some success. As long as you don’t follow the traditional rules about letting grass get a good start before you graze it—and instead put the cows out there as soon as it greens up they graze down that Kentucky bluegrass. Then I let the pasture rest for a year. I’ve been doing that on quite a few pastures for several years and the native plants are coming back from the seed bank. I’ve been pretty impressed. Sand bluestem and prairie sand reed and other native grasses and forbs are coming back and I’d never seen those before--until I started grazing those pastures early to set back the Kentucky bluegrass.

I’ve got a long ways to go but this is a good start.

“I have a serious problem with electric fences in that I like them too much. I enjoy moving fences and most people think I am crazy. I do some fairly high-density grazing and I sometimes do get up to 100,000 to 120,000 pounds of cattle per acre, but usually about 60,000 pounds. This soil is mostly yellow sand though there is some heavier soil in some areas of the ranch. It’s a tough place to make a living, but this is where I was meant to be and I make do with what I have. This is home.”

Breeding Seasons that Work

Rob has worked hard to develop a ranching operation that works well on his land as a low-input operation. “I only run about 100 cows because that’s all this place will comfortably handle, and I keep all my heifers over as yearlings, and sometimes the steers as well. I breed all the heifers for 22 days and just keep the ones that get pregnant,” he explains.

“I have been doing this for six years and would never go back to a longer breeding season. The cow herd is Angus with some Hereford influence. I have never wanted big cows but some of mine are a little too big and I try to buy bulls with smaller frames. For the most part my cows average about 1,150 to 1,200 pounds and that’s about where I want them to be,” he explains.

Rob’s cows start calving the first of May. “For 22 years I calved in March and I can’t imagine ever doing that again. The weather is better in May and I’m not feeding hay by then. I buy about half my hay and put up the rest. One year, however, I couldn’t find any hay to buy. I had a little more problem with fertility/breed-up that year because I was buying old hay, old straw—anything I could feed to cows—and then we had the winter from hell. It was below zero for 45 days. I didn’t have a very fertile herd that next year when I preg-checked the cows! But it wasn’t their fault.”

2019 was a lot better. “I still didn’t have very much hay, but I had enough, even though I wasn’t able to graze as long as I’d hoped. I try to graze for eight months of the year. I’ve never made it for a full eight months; I’ve made it to within a week, but never quite the full eight months.

Rob Kramer has known since the age of six that he wanted to be a rancher when he bought his first calf.

Last year I didn’t make it because we had ice on the pastures. Usually we don’t get ice this far north in North Dakota, though the southern part of the state gets it. A lot of my pasture got knocked flat on the ground and iced over and the cattle couldn’t graze it,” he explains.

He generally grazes windrows for part of the winter but had to go to the windrows a month early because of the ice on his other pastures. Then he had to start feeding some supplement because he knew he wouldn’t have enough feed. “We made it through until spring and the cows and calves look okay,” Rob says.

Rob’s cow herd started with one calf when Rob was six years old and his dad bought him a black baldy heifer calf, hauled home on his lap in the back seat of the car. After she grew up, he kept heifers from that first cow and gradually built a small herd. “I bought my first bull when I was 17, after my herd had grown to about 18 cows. Up until them I relied on some good neighbors who let me put my cows in with their bull to get bred,” Rob says.

“I rented pasture here and there, and actually rented part of this place at one time, before it came up for sale. I had 26 cows when I bought this place. I’ve always used Angus bulls except for a couple of times when I used Herefords. When I got this place I bought another 60 cows, but when you buy cows you never get exactly what you want.

“I haven’t bought a cow since 1988. I have many generations from those original cows and some of them come from that heifer I hauled home on my lap when I was six years old,” says Rob.

Later, Rob started raising sheep. “I should have done it sooner but I didn’t want to. The sheep became a necessity however, because this place was totally covered with leafy spurge. I tried spraying it. I was working off the farm at the time, and most of my job was spraying. I did so much spraying that it’s amazing I’m still alive! Then I tried flea beetles because they eat the spurge. They work fairly well for controlling spurge on the better soils but do not seem to work on sand,” he says.

“My cousins have always run sheep, and one day one of them called me up and told me they were going to go to South Dakota to buy a bunch of ewes and asked if I would like some. So I bought 100 Rambouillet ewes, and that was 20 years ago. They are an annoyance at times but they are still out here eating spurge. I also have a guard dog because we have a lot of coyotes and an occasional wolf or mountain lion passing through. My dog is a Great Pyrenees named Bubba. I’ve had some really good guard dogs and some that didn’t work at all.”

His ewes start lambing the first of June and lamb out on pasture. “When I first got my sheep I was lambing in May. Then I tried February and that was an absolute disaster because that year it never got above 15 below zero and I had a 40% lamb crop. Then I went back to May. But when I finally got smart enough to switch my calving to May I moved the lambing to the end of March. The first year didn’t work very well, then the

second year it was phenomenal with the best lamb crop I’d ever had— and the lambs weaned off at 110 pounds. But that year the weather was great and it was about 40 degrees every day. The next year it was below zero every night and I ended up with a 70% lamb crop and I had to do something different,” he says.

His cousin has a large flock of sheep and had switched to June lambing. “I decided to try that, because in May I was just too busy doing other things and couldn’t spend 12 hours a day in the lambing barn. The first year that my ewes lambed in June it didn’t work too well, but it’s been getting a little better every year, as I get rid of the ewes that don’t breed. The biggest problem with June lambing is that they are breeding so late in the season, in the winter, that they have almost stopped cycling,” he explains.

He turns the rams out on the 6th of January and by then the days are starting to get longer and some of the ewes are no longer cycling. “They start cycling in the fall when days are getting shorter and the weather starts freezing in September. October is when they are the most fertile and their fertility goes downhill from there. But these past few years it’s been getting better on their breed-up,” he says.

Adaptive Management is Key

Rob has been interested in Holistic Management for a long time and done a great deal of self-directed learning. “I have read most of the books,” says Rob. “I am an avid reader and spend a lot of time trying to learn everything I can through books, magazines and YouTube. I have learned more in the last 15 years than I knew before, that’s for sure, and I’ve met some great people who can teach me many things.

“I was lucky enough to get to spend a couple days with Greg Judy a couple years ago and that was an amazing experience. He is so knowledgeable and so open to telling people about what he does. A lot of the mentors in our North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition have also helped me; I’ve talked with many of them. You can learn something from almost anyone. I make lots of mistakes, and people can learn from me about what not to do!

“Sometimes I have to make the same mistake twice to see if it actually was that bad, like with March lambing. My sheep pretty much do it on their own now. I used to try to do a little too much and now I try to make things easier. One year I was unable to do much at all, after an injury, and almost had as good a lambing percentage as I did the year before when I micromanaged. Sometimes you can work yourself too hard when you don’t really need to.

“I don’t use any herbicides anymore and try not to use any pesticides. I haven’t dewormed cows for about seven years. Pasture rotation takes care of most problems and is better than using chemicals. The sheep are

Rob uses his Great Pyrenees guardian dog, Bubba, to protect his flock of Rambouillet sheep.

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a little hard on things sometimes and also harder to keep free of internal parasites because they like to graze close to the ground, but I haven’t dewormed the whole flock for two years now. I didn’t worm any sheep last year. I did deworm a few the year before but most of those died anyway because I waited too long. I am trying to build up a resistant flock, because most of the worms are now becoming immune to the deworming drugs and those drugs don’t work anymore anyway. The flies are also becoming resistant to just about anything that people use for killing them.

“I put up some tree swallow houses, since the swallows eat a lot of flies. Greg Judy had a YouTube video on how to build the houses, so I built some. I put up several of them and already have swallows living in them. We also have cow birds. If we have a big batch of flies hatch out, the cow birds move in, and the dragonflies, and within about two days the flies are back to manageable levels,” Rob says.

“I know a retired entomologist who lives about 40 miles away from me and he spent his life studying dung beetles. He has been down here to my place and he said I have a lot of beetles but none of them are native. These kinds were all brought in. The roller (tumbler) beetle is one

I’ve never seen, even though it’s the one that was here in earlier times, following the buffalo around—but we killed them all with our pesticides and dewormers. I am getting a lot of beetles back, but not those—until recently. The retired entomologist was out at my place this spring and actually found some rollers. These were the first he’s seen in northern North Dakota. It makes me think I must be doing something right.”

Winter Fed Strategies

For winter grazing Rob uses windrows at first and then piles of loose hay—similar to bale grazing. “I don’t own a baler. Everything I put up is either in a windrow or in a stack of loose hay. I occasionally buy some bales, but I also graze the stacks of loose hay, which are in amongst my bale grazing,” Rob says.

Rob has used windrow grazing for 15 years and last year was the only year it didn’t work. “We had seven inches of rain in September and usually we get maybe an inch maximum at that time of year. When you have seven inches of rain on top of windrows, they lose all their quality. A lot of the hay was also bad, even though it was in bales, because the rain soaked in a long ways and ruined it. The cows still ate it but it didn’t have much nutrient quality because the leaves were all gone,” he says.

His cows have been grazing windrows in the fall and early winter their whole lives and usually do very well. They may not be able to see the

windrows in deep snow, but they seem to know where they are, possibly by smell. “They dive their head into the snow and come up with green hay But, I don’t recommend anyone trying to do it with novice cows that are not accustomed to doing this.”

Rob is quick to point out that each place is unique and a management technique that works well in one place might not work well in another. “Every place is unique,” says Rob. “Even someone just five miles away might have totally different conditions. I try to stockpile grass for November and December and most years it works, but I didn’t get to do it in December last year. I try to have the cows back out on pasture the end of April or even the middle of April if it’s starting to green up early, to get after the bluegrass early. Grazing sets back the bluegrass and it’s also a lot cheaper for me if my cows are out grazing instead of me feeding them hay that time of year.

“I was talking to several ranchers this spring and they said they were going to keep feeding hay for another month because they had enough hay. That’s fine if that’s the way they do it, but my cows have to work. I don’t like feeding grain. But last year I couldn’t find any hay so sometimes a person has to do whatever they have to do. This spring is looking better and the cows are doing well, even though the grass isn’t very tall yet. The bluegrass is heading out about a month early but it’s been pretty dry here, and the cows will eat it before it goes to seed.”

Rob focuses on making his livestock work for him, including using the forage he has. “Leafy spurge can be utilized as a forage—even though it is a noxious weed and you can get in trouble for not spraying it. My sheep take care of it, and it’s a major part of their diet. I don’t really want it completely gone because they can eat it, and it’s no longer a problem. The sheep keep it under control on pastures and I also hay it and the sheep eat spurge most of the winter as hay. They also go out grazing before the cows do because they can paw through snow and the cows can’t. The sheep were out grazing in March. I feed them a little grain and they paw through the snow and get to the grass. Sheep are actually a lot more resilient than people think they are, unless it snows the day after you shear them!” says Rob.

Rob has doggedly kept working at improving his pastures and farm management and making things work. “When I first started on this place a lot of people thought I wasn’t going to make it five years, but nearly all those people are gone now. I am stubborn and careful and don’t spend a dime more than I have to,” says Rob. With his focus on continued learning, adaptive management, and reducing his risk through a low-input system as well as a lifetime passion for ranching, Rob continues to develop his land, his animal genetics, and his grazing strategies to keep Arrow 6 Ranch a viable enterprise.

Rob’s herd of 100 cattle are primarily Angus with some Hereford influence.

The Bench Ranch— Growing More Grass in Montana

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Tom Heyneman has been using intensive grazing to improve grass production on his ranch near Fishtail, Montana. Tom’s parents bought the ranch in the 1950s and they had sheep, dairy cows, and raised registered Red Angus. “They did that for many years, and then in the early 1980s they learned about Allan Savory and went to one of his seminars. By the mid-1980s they were utilizing some Holistic Management principles and Wayne Burleson, a Holistic Management Certified Educator, began helping them do a lot of cross-fencing. They became proactive in utilizing holistic resources,” says Tom.

At that time there were several people in Montana practicing Holistic Management and some of them gave tours and workshops. They leaned on each other for moral support and encouragement. “In the 1980s and 1990s this was such a new concept that many people thought these were radical ideas. There was a lot of skepticism among other ranchers. The nickname for Holistic Management was RMD—Ranching Made Difficult,” says Tom.

Grazing for the Land & Quality of Life

Originally Tom’s parents ran about 150 cow-calf pairs, when Tom was still in high school. Later, with the cross-fencing and intensive grazing, they increased their grass production and cattle numbers. In the late 1980s they dispensed with the registered cattle and just had a commercial herd with a Red Angus base. “Then in the late 1990s we sold the cow-calf pairs and leased the ranch to a non-family member for several years,” Tom says.

Tom and his wife Karen came back to the ranch in 2010 and at that point started doing custom grazing. This was easier, not having to winter any cattle or feed hay. “This has worked out very well,” says Tom. We can decide what class of animals we want (yearlings, or cows with calves), and for how long. From a grazing standpoint, for what the pastures need, this has been very helpful.”

Throughout the past decade they have maintained Holistic Management practices and used fast moves through most of the pastures. “There are a couple pastures that are larger—about 400 acres—that we don’t divide, and the cattle stay in them a little longer, which give us a little break from moving cattle. Instead of moving two or three times a week, the cattle can go a week or 10 days in those pastures without being moved,” he says.

Tom and Karen work together on managing the ranch and cattle. Their children also helped, while growing up. “Part of the challenge with doing custom grazing as the main enterprise is to find something else to do during winter. Some of our kids would love to be here on the ranch, but we are still trying to figure out how to make that happen,” Tom says.

The custom grazing does make life easier, however, only having to move cattle around from pasture to pasture during summer. There are no winter chores—no cattle to feed—and no hay to put up for winter feeding. “With the custom grazing we can choose when we want to have cattle here,” he says.

“Some years we also buy into a project and buy some bred heifers to calve out, or some yearlings. One year we bought short-term cows and calved them out. We usually select cattle that will calve in April-May. Other years we just custom graze for someone else. The advantage we have is lots of flexibility, so we can do a variety of things depending on what the

cattle market is doing. If there is an opportunity we might buy some cattle that we know will make some money, and other years we don’t have to; we just custom graze for someone else.”

There are several options, and in a drought they can destock if necessary. “Karen is good at stating the terms of our custom grazing contracts and this includes a statement that we can destock if we see fit. So far, we’ve never had to, but we always have that option in our grazing contract,” he explains.

Soil health (as well as grass production) has improved on most pastures during the past 35 years. “We still battle a few weeds, and we haven’t done any soil monitoring so I don’t know the carbon levels or how much organic matter we’ve added. That will probably be the next step to determine those levels.”

The Value of Monitoring

Wayne Burleson has been the primary consulting and monitoring support for the Bench Ranch. “When Wayne started helping my parents with the original cross-fencing, he was freshly out of school and excited about all these projects—and he is still excited about intensive grazing. His enthusiasm is contagious. He did a lot of work here and has always been a friend of the family.” Burleson is now a soil health and Gardening for Life consultant, as well as a holistic educator.

Wayne has been closely involved with this ranch and several other ranching operations around the country, and in recent years has also traveled to other countries to help people learn more about improving their land. “I used to be one of Allan Savory’s registered educators, years ago,” says Wayne. Today Wayne still does a lot of consulting for farmers

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This photo point in 1985 (above) and 2015 (below) show the forage improvement that has resulted from planned grazing.Photo Credit: Wayne Burleson

and gardeners and travels to developing countries to help people learn more about caring for the soil and growing food. He is involved with CNFA (Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture) and VEGA (Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance). He is a passionate volunteer, having completed more than fourteen assignments with the Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program in the last decade, many times with his wife, Connie, who is also a F2F volunteer.

Tom Heyneman has greatly appreciated the help that Burleson has given his family’s ranch over the years. “He’s given tours and pasture walks here and hosted classes and workshops. We’ve always had a great relationship with him,” Tom says.

These pastures have been monitored for a long time, and the photos taken early on by Burleson are a great way to compare the land at that time with what the pastures look like today, documenting the progress in grass production. There is an obvious contrast. “It’s easy to forget what it looked like earlier because the changes are slow and subtle, but when you look at photos from 20 years ago or longer, you can see a big difference,” Tom says.

Twenty years ago they fed some big round bales on some dry benchland during the winter, so the cows would stomp out the sagebrush—which had become very dense on that high, dry area. “Something happened, and the cows broke the electric fence and got into all the round bales that had been put up there,” says Wayne. “They trampled all the hay into the soil and deposited lots of manure and urine on one area—creating a sort of sheet compost.”

Today you can still see where the cows created that natural compost; the grass is about three times higher than in the areas they didn’t stomp it in. “The amazing thing this documented, 20 years later there is a lot more tall grass, green needlegrass, still growing on the trampled area and the sagebrush is less. The area next to this spot—that didn’t have the cattle impact--has almost no grass except a few tufts of Idaho fescue and a lot of healthy sagebrush,” says Wayne.

Wayne took photos of that area the first few years, and even though the photos are just one or two years apart, they clearly show that this area went from sagebrush and short grass to almost all grass, and the sagebrush was dying.

Wayne says the changes in the soil are quite significant on the Bench Ranch in certain locations. “One such area is in a corner of a pasture where the cattle had to come to one point for water from an irrigation ditch. They concentrated in this one flat area (about four acres) for three days or so and trampled all the tall grass down into the soil and add their manure and urine. This becomes a layer of sheet compost. The area used to be short grass but after a major fencing project with electric fence which concentrates the livestock, it has now become tall grass. We have before and after photos of this pasture over a 35-year span.”

The ranch uses Holistic Planned Grazing spreadsheets, which is a way to treat each of their many pastures as needed to accomplish a Holistic Landscape Goal. Livestock can be a good tool for improving the soil.

The cattle create a thin sheet of chopped up compost with the combination of hoof action and their urine and manure. “As an experiment one time, I tried just putting chopped up grass on a pasture that I owned, and it didn’t work without the manure and hoof action. For best results we need all of those factors,” says Wayne.

Currently, the Heynemans can look at photo points and pictures and see overall trends and changes. “We keep accurate records on stocking data and I can see trends with that, then base next year’s grazing plan

on what we did the last few years. We have monitored the grasses and use a modified Land EKG formula. Charley Orchard (Bozeman, Montana) developed this formula, and a modified version of it works for us,” Tom says.

When doing research Charley discovered that 60% of Holistic Management practitioners did some form of monitoring, whereas less than 1% of the other ranchers in Montana did any monitoring. He created Land EKG as a way to take the intimidation out of monitoring. The Land EKG method he devised uses 200-foot permanent transects and four fixed points. He said that with practice, it takes about 20 minutes to record the data at each point.

Steady Progress

While there is still work to be done on improving land health, Tom believes they are continuing to make steady progress on the Bench Ranch. “We still fight some weeds,” says Tom. “I’ve seen videos of Allan Savory turning bare dirt into grasslands and we’re not actually doing that, but we’ve seen a lot of improvement. It’s a matter of stock numbers, density and timing. I think our soil has improved; looking at the photos it would be hard to argue otherwise.

“We still have a ways to go; we still have some upland fields that are primarily sagebrush, and I would like to get more grass density on those. There are still some challenges to meet our goals. What we are doing here is not the end-all, be-all. It might work for some ranchers but not for

These photos were taken on the top of a rocky bench that prior to 1999 was dominated by sagebrush, stunted grass plants, and bare ground. In the winter the cattle were fed hay bales, incorporating much of the organic matter into the soil. Four years later the landscape was functioning better with the improved soil health.

Photo Credit: Wayne Burleson

others. Our methods are labor-intensive and not for everyone.”

There has been a progression of learning experiences, from the beginning. “In the early days this was just a small farm with sheep, pigs, dairy cows and the Red Angus purebred herd—and later a commercial herd. When Karen and I came on board (after the farm was leased out for a few years) we focused more on the grass and custom grazing. We call ourselves grass ranchers rather than cattle ranchers. Grass is what we grow and everything else depends on it. We harvest the grass today with cows,” Tom says.

The lifestyle is very satisfying. One of the things he and Karen enjoy is riding their mules. “We use them for all our livestock moving. We actually use a combination of moving the cattle with our mules and/or a side-byside.” The cattle are easy to move because they are always eager to go to the next pasture. Tom and Karen practice low-stress cattle handling.

Fencing Strategies

Today, as he starts replacing some of the older fences, Tom is taking out many of the electric fences that have been requiring a lot of maintenance and has been putting in three-strand barbed wire fences. There are many elk in this area and they make it harder to keep fences intact—often tearing down electric fences and permanent fences.

Tom makes the three-strand barbed wire fences low enough that the elk will usually jump over them instead of crashing through them. “When we get a herd of 300 elk going through the place, they can flatten a half mile or more of fence,” he explains.

“I’ve had to track down so many shorts in the electric fences that I decided to replace many of those fences. It can be a big challenge keeping them working, especially on our upland pastures (with a lot of wildlife), or in hayfields where the forage is tall. I haven’t evaluated the price difference between a new two-strand electric fence and a 3-strand

“It Can’t Be Done Here”— Regenerative Lessons from the Heart of the Dust Bowl

BY MICHAEL “STORM” CASPER

We farm in southeast Colorado, in the state’s semi-arid, 15-inch rainfall area. The elevation is around 4,500 feet and our relative humidity is dry most of the time. Typical dryland crop rotations include wheat, grain sorghum, and summer fallow. Corn is also grown on dryland along with various other crops including sunflowers, feed, with a few acres planted to oats, triticale, and millet in some years.

Dryland Farming Successfully

We took over a dryland farm in 2018 where the crops from the previous year appear to have been abandoned and left standing in the field. The field was also being terraced by the previous owner in an effort to slow down the field runoff generated from a tilled system with a sloping drainage running through the middle of the field.

The spring started off fairly dry while the wheat from the previous failed crop had volunteered. Between the terraces the residue was fairly good; however, all of the residue was removed where the terraces were installed. In late May we sprayed out the volunteer wheat and waited for an opportunity to seed a crop. Within a couple of weeks, it began to rain a

barbed wire fence, but I’m now leaning toward having more permanent barbed wire fences just because of the time savings on down the road,” Tom says.

“We’ve nearly quit doing temporary fences. In earlier years we used to do a lot of those, moving fences often, but today we only occasionally use temporary fence. Many of our fields are small enough and have now been divided enough that our stock density is high enough that cross-fencing them isn’t really necessary. Some of the bigger pastures (300 to 400 acres) are working the way they are, and we haven’t cross-fenced those. At some point maybe we will, but it’s not an immediate goal. It’s always a balance between quality of life and the work required,” he says.

bit more and then by the middle of June we received average moisture by June 15th. On June 22nd, a large rain and hail storm with over two inches of moisture came through and filled the terraces with runoff and hammered the residue flat. Knowing we had fairly good sub-soil moisture from the recent rains, we late-seeded grain sorghum without any starter fertilizer in a field that had not been fertilized in a few years.

Precipitation was 38 percent of normal following planting as the monsoon moisture never developed.

The Execution of the Plan

Shortly after seeding in fairly wet conditions, we received 0.6 inches of rain before the end of June which ensured that we would get good germination from our recent planting. On July 2nd we received nearly 2” of rain overnight and the terraces were brimming full from the runoff once again. We seemed to be set up for a good crop year on these acres

On the bench, native grasses like this Western wheatgrass, as well as Idaho fescue, and needlegrass moved to a healthier expression after the animal impact treatment on the bench. Photo Credit:: Wayne Burleson

despite our setbacks with the terrace installation and the intense hailstorm prior to planting. It seemed that if we could get one more good soaker in the next 30 days, the crop would be made.

Unfortunately, the weather pattern changed overnight and the remainder of July was hot and dry with no further rain. August is normally reliable for rainfall however it started off hot and the rains stayed away. The crop continued to look good and improve, and we decided to foliar apply two gallons of slow-release nitrogen (XRN) to the crop and hoped that we would get a good rain before the end of the month. On August 26th we received 0.6” for a total of 3.2” rainfall from the time the crop was planted until a killing frost.

Then Something Happened

At the beginning of August, the crop looked especially good in the terraces where all of the water was standing in early July. The crop outside of the terraces where we kept our residue in place seemed to be lagging, which is part of the reason that we decided to foliar apply the fertilizer to the crop. Over the course of the month, the crop in the wheat residue continued to improve, but the crop seeded in the terrace bottoms began to wither. By the end of August, the appearance of the crop in the terrace and the appearance of the crop outside of the terraces completely reversed

of the field was very sandy with soil organic matter between 0.5–0.7%. The farm also had a fair amount of noxious weeds, and prior to 2019 we had never been able to graze the acres due to a lack of water and related infrastructure.

The Opportunity

In 2018 we late-seeded the farm to rye in an effort to improve cover and infiltration and to address some of our weed control issues that persisted since the beginning. In late December we received some snow and the crop was finally able to begin germination. By April that crop began to grow; however, we noticed some weed issues on the portion of the field where we had observed a yield drag. As a potential remedy, I spoke with a neighbor about bringing in a load of light cattle and parking them on approximately 80 acres for about 30 days to see if we could use

Take Home Messages

Clearly, what we did on these acres may not have looked too flashy from the road. In fact, my neighbor asked me in early August if I had planted headless milo. But here’s what our neighbors couldn’t see: We were able to: 1) keep a living root in the soil within 30 days of planting a cash crop; 2) grow a good crop with very little added fertilizer; and 3) grow a cash crop without any additional weed control.

Conventional wisdom would all say “That can’t be done here.” But it was. In fact, this may be the best grain sorghum crop that I have ever grown and, ironically, it was grown on half of the moisture as my previous best.

Managing Weeds Naturally

We took over a leased farm in 2009 that had a long history of tillage as well as significant soil losses by both wind and water. A portion of the field consistently lagged behind the remainder of the field in yield and most

The Execution of the Plan

The cattle did well, and we continued to monitor our progress on the weed issues through the latter part of May. In early June it began to rain on these acres. By mid-June the cattle had cleaned up most of the weeds; however, they had also eaten most of the rye cover. I didn’t like the lack of cover so I went into my barn and noticed some old millet seed and some alfalfa seed and I decided to plant those acres with the leftover seed from a few years back. When I began to seed the crop, the cattle were still grazing the rye and the weeds. The night that I finished planting the mix, we received 1.25 inches of precipitation and things were looking up for this project. Prior to germination, we sprayed out the remaining living cover including the weeds and the rye. We seeded 13 pounds of millet along with two pounds of alfalfa and one pound of sugar.

Unfortunately, the weather pattern changed overnight and the remainder of July was hot and dry with no further rain. August is normally reliable for rainfall however it started off hot and the rains stayed away. The crop continued to look good and improve, and we decided to foliar apply two gallons of XRN to the crop and hoped that we would get a good rain before the end of the month. On August 18th, we received .85 inches or a total of 2.05 inches of rainfall from the time the crop was planted until a killing frost.

Then Something Happened

At the beginning of August, the millet and the alfalfa were really struggling due in part to the lack of moisture and the lack of soil function noted earlier. After we foliar-applied the fertilizers I went on vacation.

Grain sorghum growing between the terraces in excellent wheat stubble cover in early September.

Planting into green rye following severe grazing event for weed control in June

To my surprise, when I returned from my vacation, it was much like a suitcase farmer from the days of old returning at the end of the growing season to find a crop that actually appeared to be thriving under conditions where most crops would have withered and died. As I walked the field, I was surprised to not only find the millet making seed, but I also found alfalfa growing as well.

The Take Home Messages

What was behind this pleasant surprise? On these acres we are able to: 1) integrate livestock for weed control and improved natural fertility; 2) plant into green growing rye that was being grazed; 3) increase residue while keeping a living root throughout the year; and 4) harvest a millet crop to cover our expenses.

Integrating Livestock for a Soil Reboot

In 2009, we took over a farm that had been enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for 20 years with the idea of putting it back into crop production. The soils were fairly good, however they were not fully functioning in spite of having a permanent perennial

these acres. We seeded rye and then we grazed out part of the acres in 2015 and hayed another portion. The hay crop was the best that we had ever fed and the heifers did well on the acres that were grazed out.

After the acres were grazed, the natural diversity really began to express itself and the grass stand continued to thrive.

The Execution of the Plan

In 2018 we again seeded rye into the perennial stand of warm season grass with the idea to graze it out again in the spring. The spring of 2019 started out dry, but by late May the rains began to fall and the rye began to grow. We turned in some open heifers that we had purchased along with a nice bull and began our grazing plan with the idea that we might do a switch back or two and then move back to the ranch. While it was raining, the rye, clover, and warm season grasses were thriving and the cattle were in good flesh.

Unfortunately, when it stopped raining in late June, we ended up going through the rest of the growing season on approximately 2.25 inches of moisture; however, both the cattle and the grass appeared to be doing better than the cattle grazing on native grass.

Then Something Happened

When it began to dry up, I watched the cattle and they seemed to stay in good condition and the warm season grass stayed green after the rye had matured. In comparison, I looked at another field where we had been doing a similar rotation in the past, but it had not been planted to rye in 2018 nor had it been grazed through the first week of September

The Opportunity

In the early going we had seen some presentations that suggested we might need to till these lands just to smooth them up. In spite of out attempts to suppress or remove the native grass it just kept coming back in both drought and in the good years. In 2014 we gave up on trying to get rid of the grass, and we began to experiment with pasture cropping on

Take Home Messages

By implementing these regenerative agricultural principles, we were able to: 1) seed a cool season annual in a warm season perennial grass dominated stand that was grazed out; 2) capture a decent return on these cropland acres without using traditional farm inputs; 3) achieve a 100 percent breed-up with our heifers with 90 percent of them breeding in the first cycle, which is the best that we have ever done with our bred heifers; and 4) realize an increased value in the heifers, which amounted to a value of $100 per acre for the season.

Storm Casper is a retired NRCS Soil Conservation Technician and works as a field consultant for Understanding Ag LLC. He can be reached at: cattle123@live.com.

Behold the millet crop growing in very dry growing conditions in early September.

Pasture cropped rye crop following first graze event in May.

Three crops in one, as the clover begins to emerge in the warm-season perennial grass stand as the rye is finishing up in June.

Reader’s Forum

Acknowledging Emotion as the Way Forward

BY BLUESETTE CAMPBELL

There’s no need to describe that the times we are currently living in have transformed the definition of ‘normal’ for every one of us. For months we have been taking every day, one day at a time. Some have been affected more directly than others, but we have all been affected in some way. These changes manifest themselves in many different ways and often come out in the form of emotion, sometimes without us even realizing that’s what is happening.

I think it is really important to make this distinction now because so many of us want to discount emotion or deny that we even have any. Showing emotion has somehow, over time, been perceived as a shortcoming or a sign of weakness. I beg to differ. Actually, I would like to suggest, in my own experience, acknowledging emotions can bring me closer to a solution or resolution of a challenge much faster than if I attempt to sweep it under the rug or pretend I don’t have any. Once I accept the emotion for what it is, the road to ‘letting go’ and ‘moving on’ is more smoothly paved and easier going.

Throughout my day, I have been making a conscious decision to check in with my own experiences. What I have discovered is everything is requiring a little more energy, thought, and time. Just a trip to the grocery store, with all the added precautions, can be very time-consuming. Making plans for our upcoming brandings, with all the unknowns about large gatherings, requires more thought, conversation, and consensus-building at our management meetings. This can get cumbersome and frustrating. Upon reflection, this frustration is heightened due to indirect changes in our world. My personal struggles are tied to the greater whole and I am experiencing

As a Rancher, I Feed People

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

I’ll leave off not with my own answers or wisdom to offer, but hopefully some good questions that may start us down the path. How do we function and thrive now, despite the tension between economy and ecology? This tension seems so at odds with the kind of ecological restoration work our species will require in order to continue to exist on this

emotion because of it. This realization has allowed me call it for what it is, attach the emotion, and carry on.

To keep things simple, let’s take a look at four key emotions: Anger, Sadness, Happiness, and Fear. Because it rolls off the tongue nicely, we will call them: Mad, Sad, Glad, and Afraid. (Indulge me for a few moments and agree that any other words of emotion that you can name would, in one way or another, fall into one of these four categories.)

During the last three months with all the disruptions to our normal routines, there have been quite a few changes, perhaps some disappointments, and maybe some joys. To help you reflect, I’ll list a few that may trigger your thoughts. Ask yourselves if you have been acknowledging them in your day-to-day lives or if you have been ignoring them. I am not suggesting that you have to do anything about it. Some people function very well with struggle and prefer to keep it that way. If you are not one of those people and want to move past your current struggles, maybe by identifying some of what you are experiencing and attaching it to an

Emotion

Mad

emotion, you can move on. Take a look at a few of these examples, try them on for size, change the wording, or brainstorm a whole new list of possible experiences that fit better with you and your circumstances. The idea is that if you can identify with these experiences and attach them to an emotion, you will be well on your way to letting go of what is holding you back.

Take a glance at the table and see if anything resonates with you. If you catch yourself silently nodding or shaking your head, saying, “Hmm..” inquisitively, or find your eyebrows in an elevated position, something is definitely speaking to you.

Take a moment. Think about the emotion that is attached to your experience and then decide if you want to do anything about it. It is entirely up to you. Keep in mind, however, that acknowledging your emotions could be the way forward. Might I suggest that if you are struggling at all, in any way, even if it doesn’t seem to be related, it just might be connected to a much larger whole without you even realizing it? It might just be your emotions knocking at your door, ready to help you to the paved road of Easier Going!

Experience

• Why can’t things just get back to normal?

• People aren’t taking Covid regulations seriously/are taking Covid regulations too seriously!

• Boxed beef prices are so high and producer prices are so low!

• The Gov’t made me miss my Grandpa’s funeral!

• I can’t visit my sick parent.

• People are hurting, going broke, dying or are less fortunate than I am.

Sad

• I wish things could just go back to normal.

• We decided not to bring the vet out for the cow/dog/sheep.

• I am so fortunate to live where I live, do what I do, or have what I have.

• My family is healthy.

Glad

• The snow finally melted.

• Calves are dropping on green grass.

• What will the re-opening of society look like?

• I might get sick/get someone sick.

Afraid

• We might not make it financially.

• What if I’m breaking the regulations unknowingly?

• Why are family members fighting all the time and what does it mean?

planet. How do we meet our basic needs as individuals? This isn’t simple, especially when we know we contain and depend on multitudes, down to the billions of microbes in our own guts that mediate our health and personality.

How do we feed ourselves in the world we have now? How do we sustain ourselves, when the human body’s needs can hamstring the broader earth-body on which we depend? And how might we nurture that necessary future

world where our appetites are no longer at odds with our continued existence? I don’t know, and writing this is simply my best attempt at sidling up to the question.

This article was first published in The Counter, a nonprofit, independent, nonpartisan newsroom investigating the forces shaping how and what America eats. Read more at thecounter.org

PROGRAM ROUNDUP

Online Financial Planning Course

HMI’s Online Learning Series Getting Started Holistic Management® Financial Planning course this spring had 28 participants from Germany, Denmark, Guatemala, Senegal, and the United States. This course focused on key financial principles that helped participants learn how to work on their business, not just in their business. The participants were very excited to learn the key economic analysis tools for improved financial decisions for both annual budgets and for long-term investment.

Featured Participant: Elicia Chaverest

“The HMI Financial Program has really made me take a closer look at my personal finances, particularly my net worth. Through this program, I have a clear understanding of the financial terms used and how these terms actually affect my finances including how to develop a holistic plan. By understanding my personal finance, I have been able to take a holistic approach to making changes to improve my consultant business, minimize my expenses, and plan for my future/ retirement through the lens of a holistic plan.”

HMI Free Webinars

To support the HMI network during the challenging spring months of 2020 that brought COVID-19 and economic turmoil, HMI provided

GRAPEVINE

New HMI Director of Strategic Initiatives

HMI is excited to announce our new Director of Strategic Initiatives, Wayne Knight. Wayne is an internationally-recognized rancher from South Africa as well as a Holistic Management Certified Educator and consultant since 2006. He also served on HMI’s Board of Directors from 2013–2019.

In 2013 Wayne was a runner up for the Peter Edwards Award (Grassland Farmer of the Year) presented by the Grassland Society of Southern Africa (GSSA) to the best conservation farmer/land user in recognition of the sound application and practice of the principles of range

a series of free webinars to help people who were having to make decisions during these difficult times.

Effective Decision Making for Challenging Times Webinar

On April 8th 73 people from around the world participated in this webinar to learn about Holistic Decision Making. Certified Educator Peggy Sechrist led the group through the seven tests used in the Holistic Management® Framework and provided examples of how the decision-making process improves individual and group decisionmaking. Folks left with the opportunity to apply to work with a Certified Educator mentor to go over a decision they have been struggling with.

Creating Your Holistic Goal Webinar

On April 15th 25 participants engaged in a Holistic Goal webinar taught by Certified Educator Angela Boudro who presented a practical approach to determining key desired outcomes for your farm or ranch. She went over the steps to creating a holistic goal to assist participants in their decision-making and in identifying key production and systems needed to have in place to survive and thrive in these challenging times.

Weathering the Change & Climate Smart Farming

On May 26th 78 participants joined Holistic Management Certified Educator Elizabeth Marks who is the USDA Northeast Climate Hub liaison to NRCS to learn about Climate Smart Farming. Elizabeth summarized the changes in weather that have happened over the last 130 years in the United States as it affects farmers and ranchers. She then discussed climate smart farming and ranching practices that improve ecosystem processes that farmers/ranchers can implement to be resilient to those changes. She presented for an hour and then hosted a Q&A session which was highly interactive. Per multiple requests she has decided to host another Climate Smart Farming/ Ranching webinar with other Certified Educators presenting on their different regions.

and forage science and conservation. His management practices from 1997 resulted in a 300% increase in carrying capacity during his 23-year tenure as the land manager on the 9,600-acre Knight Ranch.

Wayne will be headquartered near the Dixon Water Foundation Ranch in Decatur, Texas and will be adding capacity to HMI’s staff with his expertise and hands-on experience with ranching as well as his international experience in training and consulting. Wayne will be focused on expanding HMI’s key strategic initiatives and developing new projects. Welcome, Wayne!

CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

h h

The NEWS FROM HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL

people programs projects

Elicia Chaverest

Wayne Knight

Certified Educators

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.

UNITED STATES

Kirk Gadzia

Bernalillo

505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com

Jeff Goebel Belen

541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com

* Katherine Napper-Ottmers

Las Vegas 505/225-6481 • katherineottmers@icloud.com NEW YORK

* Erica Frenay

Brooktondale 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com

Guy Glosson Snyder 806/237-2554

glosson@caprock-spur.com

Kathy Harris

Holistic Management International Dallas/Fort Worth 214/417-6583

kathyh@holisticmanagement.org

Tracy Litle Orange Grove 361/537-3417 (c) tjlitle@hotmail.com

Peggy Maddox

CALIFORNIA

* Lee Altier College of Agriculture, CSU Chico 530/636-2525 • laltier@csuchico.edu

Owen Hablutzel Los Angeles 310/567-6862 go2owen@gmail.com

Richard King Petaluma 707/217-2308 (c) rking1675@gmail.com

Doniga Markegard

Half Moon Bay 650/670-7984 Doniga@markegardfamily.com

* Kelly Mulville Paicines 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com

Don Nelson Red Bluff 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com

Rob Rutherford San Luis Obispo 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com

COLORADO

* Joel Benson Buena Vista 719/221-1547 joel@paratuinstitute.com

Cindy Dvergsten

Dolores 970/882-4222 • wnc@gobrainstorm.net

Tim McGaffic Dolores 808/936-5749 • tim@timmcgaffic.com

* Katie Belle Miller Calhan 970/310-0852 heritagebellefarms@gmail.com

KANSAS

William Casey

Erie 620/ 423-2842 bill.caseyag@gmail.com

MICHIGAN

Larry Dyer Petoskey 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com

MISSISSIPPI

* Preston Sullivan Meadville 601/384-5310 (h) 601/835-6124 (c) prestons@telepak.net

MONTANA

Roland Kroos Bozeman 406/581-3038 (c) • kroosing@msn.com

* Cliff Montagne Montana State University Bozeman 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu

NEBRASKA

* Paul Swanson Hastings 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) pswanson3@unl.edu

Ralph Tate Papillion 402/250-8981 (c) • tater2d2@cox.net

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Seth Wilner Newport 603/863-9200 (w) seth.wilner@unh.edu

NEW MEXICO

Ann Adams Holistic Management International Albuquerque 505/842-5252 ext 5 anna@holisticmanagement.org

Christina Allday-Bondy

Edgewood 512/658-2051 christina.alldaybondy@gmail.com

AUSTRALIA

Judi Earl Coolatai, NSW 61-409-151-969 judi_earl@bigpond.com

Graeme Hand Franklin, Tasmania 61-4-1853-2130 • graemehand9@gmail.com

Dick Richardson Balhannah, SA 61-4-2906-9001 dick@dickrichardson.com.au

* Jason Virtue Cooran QLD 61-4-27 199 766 Jason@landlifeeducation.com.au

Brian Wehlburg

Kindee NSW 61-0408-704-431 brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

CANADA

Don Campbell Meadow Lake, SK 306-236-6088 doncampbell@sasktel.net

* Craig Leggett Chestertown 518/491-1979 • craigrleggett@gmail.com

Elizabeth Marks Chatham 518/567-9476 (c) elizabeth_marks@hotmail.com

Phillip Metzger Norwich 607/316-4182 • pmetzger17@gmail.com

NORTH DAKOTA

* Joshua Dukart

Hazen 701/870-1184 • joshua_dukart@yahoo.com

OREGON

Angela Boudro

Central Point 541/ 890-4014 • angelaboudro@gmail.com

SOUTH DAKOTA

* Randal Holmquist

Mitchell 605/730-0550 • randy@heartlandtanks.com

TEXAS

* Lisa Bellows

North Central Texas College

Gainesville 940/736-3996 (c) • lbellows@nctc.edu

Deborah Clark

Henrietta 940/328-5542 deborah@birdwellandclarkranch.com

Blain Hjertaas Redvers, SK 306/452-7723 • bhjer@sasktel.net

Brian Luce Ponoka, AB 403/783-6518 lucends@cciwireless.ca

Tony McQuail Lucknow, ON 519/528-2493 tonymcquail@gmail.com

Kelly Sidoryk Blackroot, AB 780/872-2585 (c) kelly.sidoryk@gmail.com

FINLAND

Tuomas Mattila Pusula 358-407432412 tuomas.j.mattila@gmail.com

NAMIBIA

Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii

Windhoek 264-812840426 kandjiiu@gmail.com

Hermleigh 325/226-3042 (c) westgift@hughes.net

* CD Pounds Fruitvale 214/568-3377 • cdpounds@live.com

Peggy Sechrist Fredericksburg 830/456-5587 (c) peggysechrist@gmail.com

WASHINGTON DC Christine C. Jost Washington DC 773/706-2705 • christinejost42@gmail.com

WISCONSIN

* Larry Johnson Madison 608/665-3835 • larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com

* Laura Paine Columbus 608/338-9039 (c) • lkpaine@gmail.com

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.

* Colin Nott

Windhoek

264-81-2418778 (c) canott@iafrica.com.na

Wiebke Volkmann

Windhoek 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na

NEW ZEALAND

* John King

Christchurch 64-276-737-885 john@succession.co.nz

SOUTH AFRICA

Wayne Knight

Mokopane +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net

Jozua Lambrechts

Somerset West, Western Cape +27-83-310-1940 • jozua@websurf.co.za

* Ian Mitchell-Innes

Ladysmith, Kwa-Zulu Natal +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za

These associate educators provide educational services to their communities and peer groups.

In Memoriam

Kay James

It is with great sadness that HMI learned of the passing of Kay James of the James Ranch near Durango, Colorado. Kay and her husband, Dave, have been long time Holistic Management practitioners along with their adult children who all help run the James Ranch. Kay and Dave came to Durango in the early ‘60s and over the years they developed the ranch to include multiple income streams including a grass-based dairy, whey-fed pork, and a landscaping business that worked on roadside reclamation projects and construction sites.

Kay James

Kay was very involved in the Durango community and held leadership roles for the La Plata County 4-H Youth Development and the Durango School District 9-R Board of Education. She also helped found the Durango Education Foundation and Leadership La Plata.

Kay is survived by her husband, Dave, and her children: Jennifer Wheeling, Julie Ott, Cynthia Stewart, Dan James and Justin James; and 10 grandchildren. Our condolences to the James family for their loss.

HMI was also saddened to hear of the passing of Stan Parsons on July 15th in Natal, South Africa. Stan and Allan Savory worked together in the 1970s when Stan was assigned to a research project to test the economic and biological validity of the “Savory Grazing System.” They worked with clients all over the world as they worked to develop a ‘holistic’ approach to ranch management, combining grazing management and animal husbandry with business management. In 1983, Stan established Ranch Management Consultants and began teaching Ranching for Profit Schools while Allan went on to found the Center for Holistic Resource Management

As Wayne Knight, HMI’s Director of Strategic Initiatives noted: “In my opinion, Stan played a huge part in the development and evolution of Holistic Management. Having worked for him for a brief period, and spent time in his home & office, I appreciate what his contribution has been. Many of the teaching and financial planning components of what we teach and use at HMI can be attributed to him.” For more information about Stan’s passing go to:

https://www.rcsaustralia.com.au/vale-dr-stan-parsons/

THE MARKETPLACE

Graeme Hand Certified Educator

• We make sure you can adopt Holistic Management by focusing on your barriers to adoption

• Enterprise re-design to lower risks and expenses while reducing your workload

• Systematic process to determine recovery and animal impact on your land

• Clear, unambiguous, proven definition of perennial grass recovery that increases ecosystem function

• Early warning indicators of animal & land performance

• Including Multi Species/ Cocktail Cover Cropping in your grazing plan

• Our training uses the latest research on reducing barriers to adoption (www.CBSM.com) to increase your success

Mobile: +61418532130

Email: graemehand9@gmail.com www.handfortheland.com

Twin Mountain Fence Solar Energizer (S300)

The

Introducing our most powerful, compact solar energizer, the S300. The S300 is a 30-mile, 3 joule, solar energizer. Ideal for most livestock. AC adapter is included for easy battery recharging. Built-in lightning protection and “Power on Demand.”

Featuring the Twin Mountain Fence 3-year guarantee, including lightning.

Order online and receive a FREE

5VM fence tester! ($28.50 value)

Use Code HM20 at checkout!

Resource Management Services, LLC

Kirk L. Gadzia,

PO Box 1100

Certified Educator

Bernalillo, NM 87004

505-263-8677

kirk@rmsgadzia.com

www.rmsgadzia.com

Pasture Scene Investigation

How can RMS, LLC help you?

On-Site Consulting: All aspects of holistic management, including financial, ecological and human resources.

Training Events: Regularly scheduled and customized training sessions provided in a variety of locations.

Ongoing Support: Follow-up training sessions and access to continued learning opportunities and developments.

Land Health Monitoring: Biological monitoring of rangeland and riparian ecosystem health.

Property Assessment: Land health and productivity assessment with recommended solutions.

CORRAL DESIGNS

CORRAL DESIGNS

“Bud Williams”

Cindy Dvergsten

By World Famous Dr. Grandin

Originator of Curved

By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator of Curved Ranch Corrals

Ranch Corrals

The wide curved Lane makes lling the crowding tub easy

Includes detailed drawings for loading ramp, V chute, round crowd pen, dip vat, gates and hinges. Plus cell center layouts and layouts compatible with electronic sorting systems. Articles on cattle behavior. 27 corral layouts. $55.

The wide curved Lane makes filling the crowding tub easy. Includes detailed drawings for loading ramp, V chute, round crowd pen, dip vat, gates and hinges. Plus cell center layouts and layouts compatible with electronic sorting systems. Articles on cattle behavior. 27 corral layouts. $55. Low Stress Cattle Handling Video $59. Send checks/money order to:

Low Stress Cattle Handling Video $59. Send checks/money order to:

GRANDIN LIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

GRANDIN LIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3 Fort Collins, CO 80526 970/229-0703

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3 Fort Collins, CO 80526 970/229-0703 • www.grandin.com

www.grandin.com

HMI Certified Educator

Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

Customized training in all aspects of Holistic Management

 Farm & Ranch Management

 Holistic Financial Planning

 Soil Health / Biological Monitoring

 Business Planning and Marketing

 Holistic Grazing Planning & Mgt.

Learn how good stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize

I work over the phone & internet as well as in person. My clients include family farms & ranches, small businesses, non-profits and government agencies. Contact me to discover how you may benefit from my life-long farming experiences, 25 years as a Holistic Management Educator and professional work in natural resources & small business.

May 25-26 — 2 Day Stockmanship only, Dickinson, ND

May 30-June 1 — 3 Day Marketing/ Stockmanship, Wawota, SK

Coming also to Alberta, Wyoming, and Iowa!

Whole New Concepts llc Training & Development for Todays World 970-739-2445

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com 417-327-6500

wholenewconcepts.com

“Bud Williams”

Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

Learn how good stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences enjoyable, easier, and more profitable and how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize your profit goals.

Springfield, MO — February 10-12

Bluffton, GA — March ????

Middlebury VT — August 20-23

"My son and I sorted, loaded and delivered 33 feeder calves Saturday. Brian said we should send you guys a Thank You Note each time we handle cattle. This was the smoothest and easiest it’s ever gone. Price was good too. The only people who don’t like this method are the folks who have never taken the time to learn and try." — Ben

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com

info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com

417-327-6500

How many animals truly receive feed that has been grown with correct nutrients added to the soil? 95+% of all pasture and hay soils we test do not have the fertility required to provide the animals that eat it with even close to good nutrition. What about yours?

You can only manage what you correctly measure. Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.

Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.