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The Rider Ranch— Growing More Grass in North Dakota

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Jed Rider, his wife, Melissa, and their three boys, Lane, Beau, and Garrett, operate a managed grazing operation near Alexander, in northwestern North Dakota. Most of their 6,000 acres of land is rented, but their ranch headquarters is on a section of land that was purchased by Melissa’s grandfather in the 1950s and Melissa grew up on that farm. While Jed didn’t come from a ranching background, as he grew up on a sugar beet farm and the family owned no livestock, he began working on a cattle ranch when he was in high school. From then on he wanted to be a cowboy. After college and a chance introduction to the work by HMI Certified Educator, Terry Gompert, Jed became obsessed with learning how to be a better grazier and develop a resilient landscape and sustainable business.

Obsession with Grazing

After college Jed went to work for a farmer/rancher for about a year and a half. “That farmer was renting my grandfather’s farm. I was trying to figure out how to run cattle on my grandfather’s sugar beet farm. Another beet farmer ran a few cows and asked if I’d ever thought about running cattle on irrigated pasture. I hadn’t, but this farmer had been reading about a guy in Nebraska—Terry Gompert—who was talking about this. We were having this conversation over a beer in a bar and I said I’d never heard of him.”

The farmer told Jed to get on the internet and check this guy out. “He told me that some of the things Terry talked about seemed pretty crazy but interesting. This was in 2001. I went home and started reading about Terry Gompert and Holistic Management and rotational grazing. I just couldn’t get enough of this kind of information. I’d stay up at night and make economic spreadsheets and irrigation pasture maps on the computer until 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning and it about drove my wife crazy. But I was obsessed with trying to learn more about it.

“I couldn’t figure out how to accomplish this financially at that time, however. I quit working for the beet farmer and a bit later I had the opportunity to take over my grandfather’s sugar beet farm. I grew sugar beets there, and then took on my father-in-law’s cow herd on shares. That’s how I started out on my own in agriculture.”

“I farmed sugar beets for seven years and never did get the irrigated pasture thing going. Melissa’s father wanted us to move up onto his ranch but he was only running 80 cows at the time. I said that if we were going to do that, we needed more grass and cows. At that time there was no more grass land available to rent, and he asked me what I would suggest. I told him I would like to start turning a lot of his crop land back to grass, and he let me start doing that. I started converting those cropland pastures into a grazing system after I seeded them back to grass, and it grew from there.”

Today Jed and his family move cattle through a planned grazing system consisting of tame and native pastures, upper river breaks rangeland, and some bale grazing in the winter. Their planned grazing revolves around rest and recovery. The cattle are moved as often as needed, depending on paddock size, and are utilized as a soil regeneration tool whether it’s July or January.

“It was 2008 when I started this program and I actually farmed sugar beets up until that year,” says Jed. “When I quit farming sugar beets I rented that farm out and concentrated on the grass and cattle. I changed the start of my calving season from April 1st to early June and also changed a lot of the management of my place.” The cattle are Angus, but he says they are nothing special—just whatever will have a calf and do well.

Most of Jed’s pasture is rented and now it is mostly grassland. “I have turned about 2,000 acres of cropland back to grass, and the people I rent from are okay with that,” says Jed. “It took some convincing for some of them, but I explained what was going on and why that strategy would be best. A lot of what we rent is from my wife’s parents and a couple of tracts that belong to another person. One tract that I was renting had both native pasture and cropland, and I still rent the native pasture from that guy. I tried for a while to convince him to let me convert the cropland but couldn’t get him to buy into that and he took it away from me—but it didn’t break my heart.”

Regenerate Resilience

Jed didn’t know much about Holistic Management until he learned about Terry Gompert and started learning from him. “I’d started helping a couple of local ranchers just because I enjoyed helping them. They had both taken Holistic Management courses. This was how I was first introduced to it,” says Jed.

Wayne Berry was one of Jed’s college instructors. “I’ve known Wayne for a long time, and I knew that he taught Holistic Management at the college, but I didn’t take his class—and at that time I didn’t really know what it was. Then later these two ranchers were introduced to Holistic Management by Wayne Berry. Thus the concept was actually demonstrated to me before it was taught to me. I understood some of the basics already, and I was open to it,” he says.

Then in 2011 he took his first formal course, from Josh Dukart. “I took the Holistic Management and Holistic Financial Planning classes and found these to be extremely useful. What I originally thought was ‘holistic’ after working with the two ranchers, wasn’t. I just thought that holistic meant low input, and that’s certainly a part of it, but holistic is a lot more than that,” Jed says.

“In 2008 when I pulled all the crutches out from under my cow herd and changed my calving date, we had a drought that same year, and it was a wreck. The only way I was able to get through that wreck was because I had lowered my input costs. Dropping the inputs helped, but at the same time the Holistic Management planning helped me get through it financially.” requires healthy soils. The present herd of 250 cow/calf pairs is used as a soil regeneration tool, while producing healthy, nutritious beef.

“I manage my land for the five soil health principles which are 1) Soil armor; 2) minimizing soil disturbance; 3) plant diversity; 4) continual live plants; and 5) livestock integration. These principles can maximize soil building and regenerate resilience. This is my goal.

Jed took the financial class, and then Melissa took the intro class with him later. “I actually did it backward taking the intro class second, but that’s how it worked out. I went to college with Josh Dukart so I already knew him. I actually liked the financial class better than the intro; I thought it was really good. They are both excellent, but the financial class really helped me a lot,” he says.

“What I thought I knew, I really didn’t, until I took that class. It was a game changer, and it still is, even more now than it was at first.” This class helped put it all together for him. The “WHOLE” goal for the Rider Ranch is health. To achieve healthy plants, animals, people and lifestyles first over here to help us on our ranch, and I can teach him. We can help other people understand what is actually going on with the land.

In 2008 Jed seeded cropland back to five native grasses. He wishes he had seeded to the diverse mix of 15 seeds or more including forbs and legumes at 60% of the mix like he now plants. This diversity helps to break through the tillage layers in the soil and is more productive than the grass mix alone.

“I think a lot of people drive by my place and don’t really know what’s going on until they actually come here and really take a look and understand these principles. We are trying to regenerate and improve resilience and health— for the whole complex from soil to plant to animal to human health. I think the goal is to regenerate resilience along that whole complex.”

To achieve the soil health principles he uses the four basic grazing concepts, which are rest, recovery, animal impact and stocking density. “In order to manage our grazing concepts and soil health principles, we use Holistic Management. This is the best way I can explain it,” he says.

Rehabilitating Cropland

Jed’s grazing management keeps improving the soil health and pasture production. “Our pastures are a diverse mix. We live on top of the Missouri River breaks so a lot of the native pastures include the bigger coulees that drop down toward the river. It is short grass native pasture, going down to the river. All the crop land sits on top. This is just the opposite of most farm country, which is generally in the valley bottoms with native grazing up on the mountainsides. All my cropland is on top, which is somewhat level ground, and then the terrain dives down into the coulees that lead down to the river.”

Jed’s first two seedings of cropland back to grass in 2008 included about 800 acres total, using five species of native grasses—three cool season grasses and two warm season grasses. “I realized over time that this was a poor mix, so for my next seeding I added some forbs into the