Tangletown Highlands

TANGLETOWN HIGHLANDS

by Tim McCray Tim@ABPmag.com

As we were laying out plans for American Beef Producer’s relaunch last summer, we were throwing around ideas and of course one of the items was business cards. The usual: name, title, logo, yadda, yadda, yadda. But rather than sticking with the usual boring titles such as publisher, sales person, I wanted to have some fun with it. How about a play on words? Derek Sample – Hereford, cuz it’s not a chevy. He does indeed, drive a Ford. So we laughed about that for a bit and it obviously stuck. Mine became Highlands – the best part of Scotland. Because, well it is. The Highlands is where my ancestry comes from. So…I now brake for Highlands.

During the time between our Midwest trip in June (as seen in our August issue) and the California/Oregon trip (in this issue, page xx), I had run across a small herd of Scottish Highlands. I walked up to the farmhouse, introduced myself, and began asking some questions about their cattle and perhaps feature some Highlands in an upcoming issue. Linda explained to me they weren’t really her cows, they belonged to her brother Scott and his partner Dean. Scott & Dean also run a restaurant in South Minneapolis called Wise Acre Eatery as well as a nursery right across the street called Tangletown Gardens. Then there’s the farm in Plato, MN that supplies not only the beef and vegetables that support the restaurant, but also the plants that support the nursery. They also wield both businesses to teach the locals about where the food comes from, how to grow it better, the benefits of sustainable agriculture and how to support your local producer.

Scott Endres met Dean Engelmann at the University of Minnesota in their horticulture class. It was there they decided they wanted to work together. Dean and his family reside in Plato, MN and take care of growing and supplying the restaurant, the garden center and of course the Highlands. Scott lives in Minneapolis and manages the day-to-day operations of the garden center & restaurant. That, of course, is the condensed version.

I was looking forward to visiting Plato, to hear about some Scottish Highlands and learn how this system worked for them. Scott explained to me early on that they do things differently. As I pulled up to Dean’s farm house, I noticed the trees and shrubs that were in their nursery, as well as their landscape (the largest part of their business together.) I actually found myself paused for a minute to

take it all in before getting

out of my car. Dean came out t

o greet me and I told him that I will probably have a lot more questions than I had anticipated. “Of course” he replied and added that he would probably have more answers than I was looking for. We then spent the next hour and a half in his driveway where he educated me about dirt, microbes, soil health and grass. Dean & Scott both spend quite a bit of time educating their customers on the benefits of soil health, which produces healthier vegetables and healthier grass which feeds the cows. Dean had mentioned to me that he gives some talks entitled “You are what you eat eats.” With that said, I was really glad that I had convinced my wife Raven to accompany me on this trip since she suffers from some digestive issues where she has to be concerned with not only what she’s eating, but also whatever that animal has eaten as well. At the beginning, they wanted to mix biological farming and regenerative agriculture into their business model where everything they do supports everything else. Using the beehive method of farming as well as being employers, nothing is solitary as it all benefits the hive. So as Scott & Dean were laying out their plans for the restaurant, they had 2 things in mind. Whatever they put on a plate, it had to come from the farm. They also wanted the best, healthiest options available to them. The plains of the Midwest contain some of the best soil in the world, created by the bison that ate some grass, trampled more and moved on. Minnesota is blessed with an abundance of water already, but rest assured, we’re in a drought too, just not as bad as some other parts of the US this year. When Dean started farming his ground, he had his soil tested and found his organic matter to be around 3.5% - 4% in some areas. His professor had stated that at best, you might be able to change it .25% in a century’s time. Thankfully he found that to not be the case at all. In fact, he gets his soil tested every year and after about 12 years he’s found the soil conditions have improved to 6.5 & 7% since implementing his high stock density rotational grazing. “We can fix our soil much quicker than what we had previously thought,” Dean said. He has about 20 acres of pasture to utilize. Normally, without the rotation, he said he could handle about 20 pairs. He has double that and sections off about a quarter to half an acre for the cattle to be on

that spot for 1 day, and then they rotate. Thus recreating the successful model of eat some, trample more and move on to the next section. Last year they didn’t even get through 2 rotations and the cows couldn’t eat it all.

Rather than harming those microbes in traditional farming methods – everything they do now helps them. He’s never tilled more than 2 or 3 inches deep, and has a hay field on its 7th year, that continues to go up in tonnage every year. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the higher our tractors get, and the deeper we try to plow our soil, the less we understand about the ground we use,” Dean said. He will ask his neighboring farmers, “When was the last time you went out to your field and dug a hole to look at the dirt? Probably never.” He pays a lot of attention to his soil make up and recently tested his compaction – “at 13 inches down we were at 70psi” in the hayfield. He tested a neighbor’s field on traditional methods and found 210 psi at only 7 inches down.

As Dean was researching some different breeds, he decided on Highlands as they had everything he was looking for and more: leanness,

genetic quality on grass based system and especially the Omega 6 to 3 ratio. Scottish Highlands can have a 4 or 5 to 1 score when they’re raised on really good pasture. Starting with 4 to keep the grass down at his gravel pit, those 4 have ballooned to around 120 since the beginning. They’ve also recently started experimenting with belted Galloways and Herefords to try and cut down that finishing time. Dean also exclaimed that “the carcass quality they’re seeing on those crosses are unreal – unbelievable!”

They also started a CSA and in it’s first year they had 331 members which is quite large for just starting out. Today that CSA has 950 members that receive portions of the 18,000 pounds of produce that leaves the farm each week. Having that CSA in place really helped them make a transition during 2020. They didn’t have to change a lot; they just changed the way they marketed their produce. They took out some tables in the restaurant and expanded into a fresh market. With the other events that unfolded last summer in Minneapolis they certainly felt the tension in the air. But surprisingly the garden center was busier than ever. It seemed like people in the area really embraced

getting back to their gardens or starting some long-awaited landscaping projects to help relieve some of that stress from last year.

Beef seems like it’s been on the proverbial chopping block for some time. But “beef isn’t the problem, its how we raise them that’s the problem,” Dean said. He added, “If you took all the beef cattle in this country and put them into a high stock density rotational system, you could sequester all of the carbon released by man since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 10 years.” So in fact, beef isn’t the problem, but it can offer a solution in the way it’s raised.

We finished up with Dean a full 2 ½ hours later. Just enough time to get some lunch at Wise Acre and visit the garden center and introduce myself to Scott. Many customers at both locations, some eating, some shopping at the fresh market, some enjoying a relaxing drink on a hot summer day. Tangletown had an abundance of plants and items and even though its kind of off season for gardening, it was quite busy, a well spent afternoon and I think we both learned much more than we had anticipated. He did warn me…