The importance of walking the ground and seeing what another farmer did that worked — and that didn’t
This year will be the second year of the Zimmer Ag on-farm sharing, teaching and learning two-day event. Our farm is in hilly southwestern Wisconsin, the beautiful non-glaciated area of the state. Where we farm it’s not all flat, black, level fields, but we have beautiful views all around us.
If you come to our on-farm intensive, you will get to eat great food from local farmers, hear the latest about what we’re doing at Otter Creek Organic Farm and meet farmers and educators from all over with different experiences. You will hear presentations, see soils and fields, and be a part of discussions on many of today’s farming topics. Some of the subjects you’ll learn about include no-till, cover crops, soil health, nutrient-dense foods and feeds, designer compost, delivering minerals with carbon, regenerative ag, sequestering carbon, sap testing, growing rye and low-input farming.
Farming is changing rapidly right now, with every farmer facing new stresses from unpredictable weather. There’s a lot more discussion on soil health and sequestering carbon in soils. Every area and every farm is different, and every farmer has opinions as to what works — or what they believe works best. I believe consumers and food companies are going to demand cleaner foods and more carbon-smart production systems.
Figuring It Out
Regeneration is also talked about in many circles. Regenerate to what? On my farm, I don’t think we need regeneration. What needs to be regenerated if the system we have been following was working to begin with? If there is already healthy soil, cover crops, abundant soil life and healthy crops, why would I need to regenerate?
When it comes to farming, I say we do have it figured out. We know and understand the chemistry of plants and soils, and we know there is more to it than soluble NPK. We know what minerals it takes to grow a good crop, and we know what sources are better for the plants and the soils. We also know that biology is where we usually need regeneration. The soil life needs to be fed from a variety of food sources, have an ideal home with food and cover all year round, and abundant organic matter to feed on and live in.
We also understand tillage; we know that the best way to approach tillage is as thoughtful disturbance of the land. It’s not plow vs no-till — it’s a system of controlling the decay of residues, controlling air and water, and making sure the soil is loose and crumbly and provides an ideal home for soil life and plant roots. It’s tillage with a purpose, and that purpose is to build good soil structure. Many farms have not earned the right to no-till, and they also might not want to use all the herbicides and pesticides needed for no-till. No-till is often promoted as the answer to build soil health, but no-till by itself may not fix the farm. The focus should instead be healthy, mineralized, rich soils.
Farmers are good at doing what needs to be done to keep going and suppress problems, but we need long-term solutions. They are also proud and want to do the right things. At the event there will be discussions about what you can do to start — how to have a plan for where you want to go and understand what is achievable in your situation. You will also get to view Otter Creek Organic Farm’s system. Our rotation is one year rye with cover crops and one year corn.
Organic farms have two major problems: nitrogen and weeds. We know we can grow the nitrogen, and we do, and we also know that as the soils improve in activity and structure, we will have fewer weeds to deal with. To control weeds on an organic farm we need to stop the weeds that are there from going to seed, and our crop rotation does that.
At Otter Creek we still have some cattle, and we use their winter manure blended with poultry manure and minerals (our farm needs sulfur and boron) to make a designer compost that fits our farm and our soils. That’s it for fertilizer — we don’t use anything else. We don’t add plant-protective compounds, foliars or biologicals. We want the soils to do all the work. We know it’s our system and may not fit your farm, but hopefully by visiting our farm and seeing what works here you will get ideas about what can work on yours.
Rye Benefits
This year we’re farming 1,600 acres — 800 acres of rye and 800 of corn. That presents a problem for us — what to do with all that rye? Rye is the plant here in the upper Midwest that is our best option to sequester carbon, fix soils and help solve our climate problems. I’m part of a group called Rye Revival that seeks to educate farmers and consumers on all of rye’s benefits. When fed to livestock, rye has a positive effect on animal health. In Denmark they feed their hogs 15 percent of their diet from rye and it alleviates the need to use antibiotics. Rye offers many health benefits for people as well, and if 15 percent of all the bread we consumed was rye it would change agriculture and improve human health. Distilleries are starting to use more rye because it gives liquors a unique flavor, and different varieties of rye give different flavor.
Unfortunately, most of the rye used in this country today is imported; we’re working to change that. The issue right now is that most of the rye grown in the Midwest is poorer in quality than imported rye. We can change this. There are better varieties for the Midwest, and we need to promote them and plant them on more acres.
The last, but very important, use of rye is for cover crop seed. Rye is unique as a cover crop — what other seed can you put either in the ground or on top in the late fall and by spring you have a healthy cover crop?
More research is needed on the management of rye, the best varieties to grow for different purposes, and demonstrations of how to take advantage of needing fewer inputs when farming rye. We didn’t make a profit from the rye crop on our farm last year, but the profitability of the whole farm has changed for the better since we switched to the rye/corn rotation, and I’ll share those economics at the on-farm intensive in August. I’m doing a year-long documentation of our farming system this year, with pictures and videos of the how, what, when and where of our farming system. I’ll have some of the initial information to share, and the full story will be available this coming winter.
Testing
Besides covering all the basics, our focus at the on-farm intensive will be on testing. In my experience, if you do a lot of testing and use different labs and different methods, you just end up confused. Testing should be about helping you make decisions on your farm. I certainly know and understand the basic soil mineral test and wouldn’t start farming new land without that test. Soil testing is the first step; then there’s feed tests, tissue tests and sap tests to get a picture of the plant’s mineral uptake. There are also soil health tests and soil biology tests. Once you decide what type of test you want to take, you need to choose which lab to use. There are many different labs out there and a lot of different testing methods, which adds to the confusion.
Last winter I was at a conference in Idaho and met David Knaus. David owns a lab in Oregon called Apical, and he does sap testing using his own unique testing methodology. I learned a lot from him, and I will use his tests on our farm this year and share the results at the event. David will also be a guest presenter and will share his expertise on sap testing. Testing should be about making decisions to improve the soils and crops and to reduce limiting factors. You won’t be disappointed with David’s talk — he’s very skilled and knowledgeable.
On-Farm Intensive Topics
We took on another 100 acres this year of irrigated, light soils. As soon as we knew we would be farming that land this year, we pulled soil tests so we would know what needed to be fixed and what didn’t. The soil test showed that soil pH was between 4.4 and 5.7, so we knew we needed to start with lime. I’ll talk more about what else we’re doing on this new field at the event.
There will be stations set up on the farm at the intensive where we’ll discuss specific topics, including fertilizers and compost, cover crops and soil health, perennial crops and agroforestry (staff from the Savanna Institute will be there to present), testing results from our farm, the Otter Creek rye/corn rotation, and the Otter Creek farming system with the economics and practices we use.
Following our two-day intensive we are hosting an organic training event on Wednesday the 24th of August. That will be a strictly organic-centric event that will cover the organic practices we’re using on the farm this year. We invite you to attend that day as well if you’re an organic farmer or are interested in learning more about organics.
It’s been a long, cold spring and we’re not sure what the summer season will bring to our farm this year. The spring cover crops are up but are behind where they usually are this time of the year. In just the last two days the weather has gotten unseasonably hot, but we’re still short on rain, so that will limit growth. With the weather being less predictable each year, we just never know what to expect. But we have done a lot of work to build resiliency into our farming system, so no matter what the weather throws at us, we maintain our soil health and get a good crop.
I hope to see you on the farm this August.
Gary Zimmer is the co-owner of Otter Creek Organic Farm in southcentral Wisconsin and the founder of Midwestern BioAg. He is the author, with his daughter, Leilani, of The Biological Farmer and Advancing Biological Farming. He has attended every Acres U.S.A. conference for the past 40 years and has been a presenter for the past 30.
