Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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0:00:00 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 113.

0:00:04 - Steve
Whenever they're teaching you something, ask yourself one question what else does it do?

0:00:10 - Cal
You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, cal Hartage. You're growing more than grass, cal Hardidge. You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy toto-follow techniques to quickly assess your forage, production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at nobleorg slash grazing. It's nobleorg forward slash grazing. On today's episode, we have Steve Kenyon of Greener Pastures Ranching in Alberta, kansas.

Yeah no Canada. He shares about his journey, his transition to using other people's cows and other people's land. It's a great episode. And then for the over-greasing section, or aka severe grazing section, we discuss drone seeding. So yes, seeding using a drone. So interesting conversation For the bonus segment, that's over for Grazing Grass Insiders.

We discuss growing an inch of soil and actually how he far surpasses that. It's a wonderful episode. I think you'll really enjoy it. I know I say that every week, but I really enjoy these conversations and I appreciate you coming along to listen. 10 seconds about my farm. Lambing is slowing down. The plan right now is that the next sale is the first week in June, so any ewes not land by then will get a trip to the sale barn free of charge.

Grass is growing good here. We've got lots of rain, fescue is headed out. It always matures so rapidly. It's like one day I'm like I don't have enough grass and the next day I'm like, oh, it's all maturing too fast. I'm sure you experienced that as well. So it's got us thinking about haying season and how that's going to go. 10 seconds about the podcast is actually about the grazing grass community. It continues to grow at an astonishing rate to me. I appreciate everyone's involvement in keeping the conversation's civil discussions, productive. A little debate never hurts. If you're not a member there, I suggest you joining. That's on Facebook, grazing grass community. Enough of all that, let's talk to Steve. Steve, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.

0:03:52 - Steve
Thank, you very much. I'm excited too. I'm looking forward to it.

0:03:56 - Cal
Steve, to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation?

0:04:01 - Steve
Sure, my name is Steve Kenyon and we've got a company called Greener Pastures Ranching and we are near Busby, alberta in Canada, and we do custom grazing operation. So I actually don't own any cattle and the land that we graze on we don't own it, we lease it all. So it's a little bit of a different business structure. We are 45 minutes outside of the fifth largest city in Canada, so agriculture can't pay for the land values here, so we have to structure our business a little differently to make it profitable. So we've been leasing land for about 25 years here now.

0:04:36 - Cal
That is a different structure and plan to the way you do that. I know I had not ever been introduced to custom grazing under that pretense until I read what is it? No risk ranching from Greg Judy. It just wasn't something we had discussed here because my dad and grandparents had owned land and owned cattle and we always thought we went to we'd just go broke with the cattle that we owned.

0:05:01 - Steve
Yeah, it started years ago when I actually I owned my own herd of cattle, working off farm long hours, right Struggling to make ends meet. And I actually took the ranching for profit. Course, I decided to sell four cows just to be able to afford it, because we were broke, oh yeah.

I went to the ranching for profit course and one of the best moves I ever did. It was an eye opener when I started to understand the economics behind it. And I came home and I did my numbers because nobody had ever showed me how to do that before. And I had a few, a small herd of custom cattle because I didn't have enough animals for my land right At the time it was basically grazing for a friend.

I didn't call it custom grazing, oh yeah, but when I did the numbers my cows were losing money and I couldn't figure out why. It didn't make any sense. I had really good conception rates, great calving rates. Like we had 117% calving rate or something. That year. We had a whole bunch of twins. Oh, I was bale grazing for like under a dollar a day, like everything was just perfect, right. You couldn't get it any better. And when I did the numbers I was losing money and I'm like what. That makes no sense. And the reason I was losing money was because my grazing costs too much. It made no sense because it was my grazing, it was my grass, how is that.

But when you actually looked at the numbers, the opportunity cost because I could charge this much to my neighbor yes, that's what I had to charge my cows because that's the opportunity cost. If I got rid of my cows I could charge that much and bring in more animals. So it was my grazing that was actually making my cows lose money. Blew me away, switched to custom grazing, started making more money right, less risk, less no death loss risk, no market risk. My only risk is does my customer pay me? And in Canada we actually have something called the Animal Keepers Act that protects us. If a customer doesn't pay me, I can actually take the animals to auction and sell them to get my fees right.

I've never actually had to do it, but that way it's the best insurance you could ever have and I pay no premiums for it. It's a legislated act, so it's very low risk, right, just like Judy's book, right? Low risk ranching, and I've been making more profit than owning my own cows. So we've been doing that for since 2002, 2001, 2002.

0:07:24 - Cal
So when you went to that ranching for profit and you ran those numbers and you came home and looked at those numbers you go through those numbers so much and you were like we got to make this change, or did it take you a little while to really grasp that change before you jumped in and did it?

0:07:42 - Steve
No, it was pretty quick. It was an aha moment for me. Oh yeah, Like how come nobody's ever taught me this before?

right, it is so obvious the advantage of a gross margin analysis. Now, since then, I've learned it in other places as well. Right, there's other schools that teach a very similar thing, but that was the first one that I took was Rancho Caprova. I mean, what it does is allows you to make decisions easier, right? When the numbers are sitting right in front of you saying this is losing money and this is making money, it's like that's an easy decision. Whereas you look at your accountant's books, they come back, they're all blended together and you're like I don't know, right, let's do this Cause I like it Right.

We we're not making good decisions on the farm Until we break the profit centers apart and actually do the numbers then we can make decisions, and easy decisions.

0:08:39 - Cal
It takes that emotional side out of it. You're not making the decision while you're looking at your cows.

0:08:43 - Steve
Yeah, yeah, you can still keep Bessie if you want, but sell the rest.

0:08:47 - Cal
Let's just talk about. Actually, before we talk about that transition, let's go back a little bit further. Did you grow up raising cattle? Was it something you always knew you wanted to do?

0:08:58 - Steve
Yeah, my father was a mixed grain and cattle operation in Saskatchewan. Grain and cattle operation in Saskatchewan, smaller scale I mean. We had maybe a hundred cows tops and I don't know two, 2000 acres of grain land maybe. And my dad actually retired from farming when I was, I think, 13. So I was just part of it. My older brothers were helping on the farm and I wasn't doing much. Yet we retired and he moved to British Columbia and was no longer farming. So when I came out of high school I wanted to go back. Right, I wanted to farm, but I didn't have that much experience because I was pretty young when we left the farm. Oh yeah, so I went to college, bought some cows, started into it, right. And it wasn't until I went to the ranch for profit course that it really opened up and turned around for me, because owning those cows I was just struggling, right, my off farm job paycheck was going to feed them all the time, right, oh, yes, and.

I remember okay, I've got a little story for you here. How about this? First, I remember back then struggling to keep these cows going and I was working 17 to 18 hours a day in the oil patch right, driving a truck and still coming home, trying to manage this farm. So I remember I leased a section of land from my family and right in the middle of the section was a pasture, probably about 50 acres right. So I brought these cows home and I put them out there in the 50 acres and then I spent all spring I went out and worked all the land around there and I seeded, seeded down some crops, I seeded down some hay, I seeded down some green feed and then it was growing.

I'm still working six days a week, 17 hours a day, type of thing. Then I crop grew, we sprayed some of it, then we hayed some of it, we hauled those bales, then we took the green feed off, hauled those bales in and then put the cows into the corrals. Then all winter long I would feed them in the morning, go out, feed them and of course you need grain for the bulls right. So you got to be out there twice a day feeding grain. That's what I was taught and I realized one morning, as I was feeding the bulls the grain, that I had just fed them four hours ago Cause I had no sleep.

Right, I'm working 17, 18 hour days and you're feeding twice a day. I'm like I just fed these guys four hours ago. Why am I here feeding them again? And it made no sense. Okay, keep doing it the next spring. Turn the cows back out on the pasture, start it all over again. Right here I'm going out there working my tail off for these cows and I remember that spring we had to haul the manure out. Okay, time to haul manure. Oh yeah, broke young guy just barely getting going.

I borrowed a a small dump truck. It was like a one ton dump truck, two wheel drive, from my brothers and their bobcat Trying to get the manure hauled out. And this is early July, getting out there trying to dig up the manure with the bucket. And of course there's still ice underneath some of this manure, right, because it hasn't. It's still slippery and but there's mud everywhere and we're I'm trying to load this truck and it's hot out. It was 30, 35 degrees Celsius. It was pretty hot and I tried to dump this truck and of course then the pickup truck stuck. Okay, so now I'm over there chaining up to my oh, by the way, my girlfriend's driving the truck for me, because I can't afford help. Girlfriend's driving the truck and she has no air conditioning, so she's not happy. But then the truck stuck and then of course I'm my human resources was not good that, very good that back then, and now I get the bobcat in there to get it unstuck. And now the and I've only got this one day to do this Everything's stuck.

0:12:28 - Cal
And I can't.

0:12:29 - Steve
I'm standing on top of this manure pile having a temper tantrum as my girlfriend is walking to the house, right.

She's done, I'm done. Like I lost my cool and I don't think I was yelling at her, but I was just. I was mad. I'm standing on that manure pile and I turned around and I looked over at the fence. Every single one of those cows was watching me and I realized at that moment that all summer long, all winter long, they've been watching me work Right. I seeded for them, I paid for them, I cut for them, I hauled bales, I fed them and now I'm hauling manure for them. And I made a pact, right then and there, that I am no longer working for my cows, they have to work for me.

0:13:17 - Cal
This is just not working.

0:13:19 - Steve
Ever since then, I've made them work for me. They go out and swath, graze, they dig for food. They go out and forage on their own. They get their water right. I let them lick snow, they get their own stuff.

0:13:37 - Cal
Ever since that day was the last time I've ever hauled manure and that was in 1998. Very good, yeah, let them do the work. Yes, my story brings up a story that my grandparents tell all the time. 1950s, they were milking cows, milking them by hand, and the electric went out. I forget why. I assume a storm came through I'm in Oklahoma, severe weather happens and so they were without power. They started hand milking. Partway through milking, grandma got kicked and she went to the house. Now grandpa continued, he says, and when he finished it was time to start again. He went to town and bought a generator. But that story, my grandma going back to the house, she's like I'm done, not helping anymore. Yeah, yeah, I'm done, I don't blame her Right.

I don't blame her, right, I don't blame her, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we. You made this big change from your cattle to someone else's cattle, someone else's land. Talk about just that process of getting started there. Did you for one? Was it something you were knowledgeable about before you started it, or were you like this should work?

0:14:50 - Steve
let's go try it, I'm going to say it was a relatively fast compared to most people. Not overnight fast, but it was a relatively fast mindset change there was too many things that didn't make sense in agriculture For me.

Like I'm trying to figure this out, okay, I'm a, I'm a cowman, right, I'm a cattleman, I own cows. And then I realized that you know what, if I can take care of the grass, then that takes care of the cattle. And then I started reading the grass, like I probably got that when I started reading the Stockman Grass Farmer magazine and I'm like, okay, I'm a grass farmer. Now I don't necessarily, you know, it's not the cows, they're a tool that I can use to manage the grass, right, a tool. And then I even took it another step further. Now I got to manage the soil. If I can manage the soil, then that takes care of the grass, and then the grass take care of the cattle and the cattle take care of the people, right. So it's this evolution that I went through really quickly.

I remember being in that ranching for profit school years ago. I was the youngest guy there, basically, yeah, 2001, I took that, so I don't know how old that would make me quite a while ago. And multiple people came up to me at the end by the end of that because I was fairly passionate about what I was doing back then, and some of the elderly people there, that they would come up to me and they would say you know what?

I just wish I would have taken this school when I was your age, right you? Have such a good start ahead of you. And they were right. They were right, I was. I remember being in tears there because I couldn't feed my family, I couldn't make ends meet, and it just turned around for me, right yeah, turned around for me, right yeah. The fact that I got that kickstart early. I had some really good mentors that got me going. Yeah, I was very fortunate to have the guidance.

0:16:34 - Cal
Maybe it was to go in this direction and I'm very fortunate for that when you had your own cows, were you doing more adaptive grazing or rotational grazing? After you decide, your cows are going to work for you.

0:16:47 - Steve
Yes, definitely From the time when I was in the story where I was hauling, or that was in Saskatchewan and then I moved up into Alberta here in 1999. From there I started doing a rotational grazing Pretty intense I think my first grazing cell, which would be a quarter, within a year, maybe two years, I had it into 21 paddocks. So even like my first year up there, I was pretty intense, not necessarily knowing what I was doing a hundred percent, but doing what my mentors told me to do.

So, yeah, I started really early and fairly intensive 21 paddocks grazing around on a quarter section. Now that quarter, I still have that quarter today and it's in four paddocks because I have other land with it. So I was quite aggressive to begin with and I've taken fences out actually since then. But now we have, I think, about 35 paddocks on the whole cell. So it's still good, but obviously a bigger herd.

0:17:41 - Cal
When you started or made that transition at custom grazing, did you go out and find new land or were you able to use some land that was already owned by family or something?

0:17:54 - Steve
No, it was all new land. My family's land was actually back in Saskatchewan.

0:17:58 - Cal
That's what I thought, but I wasn't completely sure there.

0:18:01 - Steve
Yeah, I moved away. My dad and I didn't necessarily get along right. I started farming with him and we had totally different views on what what's going on and the best thing that I ever did was I left the farm. Oh yeah, because my dad and my relationship got way better right now we look forward to seeing each other.

Right, we only see each other a few times a year, but when we do, it's good. It was not pretty back then, right, it just wasn't working out. I'm grateful that he's there. He's been there to help me out if I've ever needed it, but the best thing I ever did was left the farm. Oh yeah, and that's not for everybody, obviously, but we I started up here One of the, so one of the blessings I had in in my career was actually the, the drought of 202. Because I learned so much during that, it was a very educational time for me. And then the BSE hit in 2003. What that did was a whole bunch of farmers quit. Right, it didn't really hurt me because I'd already sold my cows, but farmers quit all over the place and land became available.

So all of a sudden, I'm looking at okay, can I rent this one, can I rent this land? And I gained quite a bit of land between 2003 and 2007. I went from having two quarters of land up to probably 14 or 15. And the custom grazing was paying and there was a demand for it in Alberta which I didn't realize there was before. Yeah, it grew pretty good until 2007. 2007, there was a big change, though. Before, yeah, it grew pretty good until 207. 207,. There was a big change though. The US opened up the ethanol market, which all of a sudden you take 40% of the US corn out of the market. That raises the prices, and then the prices of wheat and barley and everything go up as well. After 2007, it started getting harder to find land because the grain guys were really competitive.

0:19:46 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:19:47 - Steve
But yeah, that 203 to 207, I expanded pretty quickly.

0:19:53 - Cal
And you'd mentioned there. You touched on just a little bit. You found there was cattle for custom grazing available. You found a need there.

0:20:04 - Steve
Yeah, I didn't realize that before, but as soon as I started putting the word out, people are like, yeah, we need pasture. Now the service that I created is how do I say this? The medium-sized farmer. So the little farmers were quitting, right, they were quitting, getting out. The medium-sized farmer was getting bigger and what he needed was more help. He needed help, so I could.

I would find little pieces of land and put them together and make a bigger pasture when they don't know the area.

They couldn't find that. I managed to negotiate and get land together, and then what I could do is I offered to these medium-sized farmers that are getting bigger is I can take 500 head for the summer, worry-free, you're done with them, you don't have to touch them. It's like having another employee, but for them, their other option would be to find a little piece of land over here and a little piece of land over there and a little piece of land over there, and then send 50 cows there and 40 cows there and 60 cows there and not be able to graze them efficiently right, not in a regenerative manner and then hire someone to drive around all summer to basically take care of these cows right, there's no efficiency there, whereas I can say I'll take 500 head and see you in the fall, we'll send them back, oh yeah, and they're like yes, here you go, wonderful. So that's. The service I'm providing is getting that land and managing it in a much more efficient manner.

0:21:22 - Cal
Oh yes, and when do you typically take or when do those animals usually arrive, and when do you ship them back?

0:21:31 - Steve
Yeah, so we'll start grazing usually around May 15th in our environment we're at seven and a half hours north of the US border, so we're a fair ways up here and May 15th we start grazing and we'll usually graze yearlings till end of September, early October and we can take bread, heifers or cow-calf pairs, depending on the customer. Some years we take them into November, december, sometimes even January, depending what we can find for swath grazing or something like that.

0:21:59 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah.

0:22:01 - Steve
Yeah, this year actually we've got a year round herd and we finished our swath grazing on March 2nd.

0:22:08 - Cal
So we brought the cows home for March and April. So swath grazing, tell me a little bit more about that.

0:22:15 - Steve
Okay, Swath grazing by definition would be. You would plant a cereal crop so normally oats or barley or some combination and then grow it. Let it get to the I prefer, like the milky stage and then you swath it.

0:22:29 - Cal
Yeah, then you swath it, and then Then you swath it.

0:22:31 - Steve
And then you leave it in windrows until winter. It's just stockpiled out in the field and then you can start strip grazing through it during the winter and let the cows do the work. They do all the harvesting for you. You just left it in a nice windrow. The reason for the windrow? Instead of leaving it standing, cereal crops can get nitrate poisoning when the killing frost hits it. So if you cut it before that frost hits it, then you don't have any chance of nitrate poisoning. It also stockpiles it better for the deep snow. You bring all that crop together and put it in a nice windrow, then the cows can find it in the snow and then, once they find it, then they just keep digging along that swath. Oh yeah, and we've gone through two feet of snow and they can still find that swath.

0:23:11 - Cal
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, how long. So you said you're cutting it before frost and so you're cutting it in October and you grazed it through May, I'm sorry, march, yeah, so this year's a little bit different.

0:23:24 - Steve
Okay, the crop that we got this year was actually a garbage crop. Called it his ugly mess. So I work. I don't seed those crops down right. That's typically how you would do it, but normally what I do is I salvage crops, right, if a?

grain farmer has a wreck crop that didn't work right. I've been around long enough now that some of them know that hey got a wreck crop. Let's call Steve. We can still get something out of this. So I'll put a fence around it. Normally they don't have fences, so I'll slap up a fence in the fall and then plan out a strip grazing or something.

But this year's it was actually. They seeded it down to alfalfa in the spring and we had a really dry spring and it didn't germinate. And then we got a whole bunch of rain in June and then everything came up right. Every volunteer, every weed he could imagine came up and he didn't want to spray it because he didn't want to kill his alfalfa. So it turned into an ugly mess. So he wanted me to bring cows over there. I'm like in August. I'm like, even if I bring them over there, it's going to take me two months to get through it. It's not as if I'm going to be able to level it and make this ugly mess go away, because it was right by the highway right A hundred thousand vehicles around the pack back and forth, right, he wanted it gone.

So he said, okay, fine, I'll swath it. So he did. He swathed it and we went out there and we thought we'd get a month and a half, maybe two months, out of it. We actually got three months out of it this winter.

0:24:37 - Cal
Oh yeah, that's a pleasant.

0:24:39 - Steve
Yeah, it was better than I thought it was going to, though I don't mind those Grain farmers don't like polycultures, but I sure do.

0:24:50 - Cal
So you did swath grazing till early March, and then you brought the animals to bale grazing.

0:25:01 - Steve
Yes, you bet we had a bale grazing set up and actually because of that we have way too much bale grazing set up. We've got an extra whole field that we're not going to use this winter now. We'll save it till next winter. Bale grazing we basically set out a whole bunch of bales out over a paddock Usually one of the paddocks that are lagging behind, maybe not producing as much. And what I'm trying to do is the number one reason why I bale graze is to lower my labor and equipment cost. You do all that work in the fall. You can get it done a lot quicker with a lot less headaches. You're not dealing with cold frozen twine or anything like that. You can get it set up pretty efficiently in the fall and then all winter, when it's cold, either you're opening gates or you're just moving a fence and you can save an awful lot on labor and equipment costs that way. The bonus I get out of that is the water holding capacity in the pastures. Later A lot of people think that it's the fertility you get from bale grazing, and I thought that for years too.

I'm thinking all that manure and all that hay breaking down yes, that's part of it, but the big bonus to bale grazing is the water holding capacity. I've done it a few times and the drought of 2021 really it just shone through. I started bale grazing across a paddock the year before and then, when we started to calve because I don't like bale grazing during calving because there's a chance that cows can cast, they'll lay on a mound of hay in the wrong way and can't get up, so I stopped and started unrolling bales then.

But I went, was working my way across this paddock and bale grazing and then when we switched to unrolling, so basically we got half a paddock that was bale grazed, half of a paddock that we unrolled bales on.

Now we unrolled on it until it was filthy right, you didn't want to unroll another bale there because there was so much manure and urine and then we moved on. They both came out pretty good in the spring. They looked good, but then when we ran out of water, the second grazing on that drought of 2021, which was a severe drought for us the bale grazing was still bright green in September, two feet tall, and right beside it where we unrolled bales, where we only added fertility, basically was brown and gone. There was nothing left. So the water holding capacity created builds a system where the microbiology right, if you can hold water, you hold microbiology and then they get this perpetual fertility for you, right? Because if you add fertility, it gets used up and you have to keep adding fertility, whereas if we build a system and that's what the bale grazing does of water holding capacity, we get this ongoing fertility. So, yeah, it's an amazing transformation to the land.

0:27:32 - Cal
Is that happening because you're leaving more litter with the bale grazing?

0:27:38 - Steve
Most people like to call it waste but compared to unrolling what I see, when I see some waste in the bale, grazing is usually stems right.

The stems of the lower quality of the plant ends up being left because they dug through that bale and got all the leaves, all the high quality stuff, so they got all that good stuff, whereas if I'm unrolling a bale, lots of times it doesn't unroll right. Maybe you picked it up backwards or with a little bit stuck together and so you unroll a little bit faster to get it to go. Guess where all the fine leaves are. They're flying off in the air or they're falling down into the soil like below the grass, and then the cows can't get it. So, in my opinion, when I'm bale grazing, the cows get to eat most of the good stuff, whereas if I'm unrolling, or especially if you're using a bale buster, a lot of the good stuff they don't get because it's blowing off in the wind and falling down into the grasses. Bale grazing, it's usually the stems or the less palatable stuff that gets left behind, which is great. That's water holding capacity for me.

0:28:38 - Cal
Oh yeah, yeah, you, you mentioned or you didn't mention this. I saw this in a video. You set your bales on their side.

0:28:48 - Steve
Yes, the reason I set the bales on their side. It depends when. Usually I set them on their side because they shed rain better in the fall. If I've got twine, you can easily pull the twine out from underneath that bale in the fall if nothing's frozen down, so you can cut them, pull the twine off quite easily. If I'm doing a different style of bale grazing, where I'm bringing the bales in the wintertime, now the twines might be frozen.

I put them on their end because it's a lot easier to pull that twine off walking around the outside to get it off, bang on the ice or whatever you need to do Not preferred, but if I have to, then I'll do that. My risk then is, if I put out too many and the springtime comes, if I've still got bales out, the snow that accumulates on top of them, if it warms up and melts, then all that snow melt goes right down into the bale and I've had moldy bales in the spring, so you've got to be careful. If you put them on their side, then it sheds the moisture a lot better.

0:29:42 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah. And you mentioned twine. Are you seeing a lot of netting twine? How's the hay wrapped up north?

0:29:50 - Steve
Yeah, I really dislike the netting. There is so much garbage left over. I know all the hay guys love it. It's quicker. It sheds rain better. It looks pretty because they color them green, so the bales look greener. But, man, there is a lot of garbage when you're left over right. I just want to go back to sisal twine, or I heard somebody coming up with a edible net wrapping or something I'm like great Something.

Why are we using so much plastic? I we were out there pulling net wrapping off. We had 101 bales, I think, in this paddock, pulled all the net wrapping off and we ended up filling a whole tote bag with garbage out of that I'm like why do we need this much garbage for this?

We should have something better by now. I know it's dollars and cents and they can make it cheaper and it's faster. But yeah, just all the garbage. I just shake my head is why we're going this way. But yeah, just all the garbage.

0:30:42 - Cal
I just shake my head is why we're going this way.

0:30:43 - Steve
I'd love to go back to size of twine, but when you buy the hay, none of the hay guys want to use it, because it was slow and it's more costly, and they got to jump out of the tractor more often to change the ball of twine. And there's just so many excuses why not to use it. So it's a losing battle, I tell you.

0:31:00 - Cal
Yeah, everything's net wrapped here and yeah, it's awful. I was driving home from town earlier, flatbed pickup there with just a huge stack of that net wrap balls there and I'm just like, how's that even staying on there? More microplastics into our environment.

0:31:20 - Steve
Yeah, yeah, we got to get something that's biodegradable or edible with minerals in it. How about there's a good one? Yeah, we should invent that, you and me, we're going to patent that.

0:31:31 - Cal
There we go, yes, yeah, with your bale grazing. You set it out there. Are you doing daily moves with that and allotting them just a certain amount, or are you doing longer periods of time?

0:31:44 - Steve
So with bale grazing you can't do daily moves because there's not enough bunk space. The idea behind it is to get enough space so that everybody has bunk space. Three days is about a minimum for me. I like five if we're moving across and it depends on how my labor situation is. If I've got plenty of time or I've got someone hired that's there to do it, great. I like 5D moves. But depending on the feed and depending on the situation, I have gone all the way up till to about 30 day moves. We'll turn them into 30 days worth of feed and then they go through it. They pick out all the good bales first they get down to cleaning up. The risk is when the bales are down to that cleaning up point. If you get a big snowstorm, then you get some waste.

But what I normally do is, as we're getting down on the longer graze periods, let's say we're going to do the 30 day one. When we get down to like day 20 or day 25, maybe I'll go out. So now we're we're down to the low quality stuff. They've gone through most of the bales there but there's low quality out there. I'll go out with a high quality bale, an alfalfa bale or something, and unroll it to give them that high nutrition. But I'll unroll it so everybody has bunk space, and then make them go clean up again the paddock that we just finished. What we were doing at the end we were unrolling two alfalfa bales and making them go back and clean up, whereas a day's ration for them would have been five bales.

Oh, yeah, so they get two really high quality ones every day, and then we'd force them to go back and clean up. Yeah, they cleaned up pretty good. Depends on the quality of the hay that was in the bale grazing itself I mean my what I'm rolling out is always good quality stuff I want. That's the supplement to supplement.

Oh yeah, but yeah, depending on the quality of the hay and the palatability is really how well they clean up. When I'm doing three to five day rations, then I can make them clean up pretty good Right.

0:33:37 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:33:38 - Steve
They clean up pretty good on that time period. So depending if the labor is worth it for you or not, because the you know movement going to feed cows once a month is pretty low labor- oh, yeah, yeah, dealing with hay with five day moves, not too bad either, yeah.

Um, the I said that the number one reason why I bail graze is for to lower my labor and equipment costs. So just to give you an idea of how much that lowers it uh, the more animals, of course that divides out better your labor and equipment. But the over the years I've looked at the government stats on yardage and equipment costs and things like that, and the one for yardage that they've had for years is the act of feeding, so your tractor and your labor, fuel and depreciation, all those things going into it. The average Alberta yardage cost over the last 10 years is anywhere between 70 cents per head per day and about a dollar per head per day. Okay, so that's not feed, no feed included, that's just the act of feeding is anywhere between 70 and a dollar, okay. So when I'm bale grazing, when I crunch my rough numbers, I'm usually under 10 cents per head per day. Sometimes I've been under 5 cents. So if I'm, let's say, it's 70 cents and I'm down to 10 cents, that's 60 cents difference.

So I could waste 59 cents worth of feed and I'd still be farther ahead compared to because that labor and equipment cost gets so much better. Are there ahead compared to because that labor and equipment cost gets so much better? And then the bonus is all the water holding capacity and all the fertility I get and that's 10, 15 years worth of improved pastures out of it. It's just an absolute no brainer.

0:35:11 - Cal
Once you've actually seen it and done it and it's just wow, that's amazing, oh yeah, and I love the something you mentioned there when I asked how often you were moving them. You brought up enough bunk space and I really hadn't thought about it from that aspect. But we do a very loose bale grazing. I guess it would fit the definition we put a set of. We will go out and we'll feed a whole bunch of hay in all of our different paddocks. We'll go out and we'll feed a whole bunch of hay in all of our different paddocks and we'll put five or six bales in a pasture and that'll feed our cows three to five days. So that's what we're going out and doing that, and then we can just open gates the rest of the days, which makes it super nice. But I really hadn't thought about it. If you're not feeding multiple days there, you don't have enough bunk space and I hadn't really considered it as bunk space but you don't have enough bunk space for them all to eat their fill.

0:36:10 - Steve
Yeah, if I was to go out and feed daily, you would either use a bale buster or a unroll your bale so that you'd lay it out in a long line so that everybody has bunk space. If you were to try bale grazing like that, you could only get 25 cows. I've got a drone now so I actually counted. Oh, yes, you can get 25 cows around a bale, but if you don't, if you're only feeding a day's worth of ration, there's a bunch of cows, those poor doers that are not not at that bale and they will end up getting skinny. So when you're bale grazing, at least three days gives you that. First two days, everybody's got bunk space, everybody's eating. Well. The last day, everybody's cleaning up. Right, the boss cows don't get too much and the poor doers get not enough. So yeah, bunk space is important when bale grazing.

0:36:57 - Cal
I'm a little surprised that number is as high um number of cows per bale.

0:37:04 - Steve
Yeah, I did too, but when I took a drone shot here just last winter I got the picture and I counted 25 heads of that bale. No bale feeder though the bale feeder only has what? 12, maybe 16 openings, I don't know. Yeah, maybe, yeah, but yeah, with no bale bale feeder, I counted 25. It was pretty tight, it was pretty snug.

0:37:24 - Cal
Oh, I imagine so, but it's working for him. Now you mentioned there you have some year round animals that you're also you'll be calving, so you are doing some custom calving too.

0:37:35 - Steve
Yes, it depends, don't have that every year.

0:37:37 - Cal
We had this customer come in.

0:37:38 - Steve
A few years ago I needed some extra work for an employee that wanted to stick around for the winter, so we brought this herd in and it's 150 cows. It's nice, because then I get to do the bale grazing. Oh yeah, it's extra work, it's extra time, but I've got a guy hired to calve them out and he's he wants the work right, he's pretty content to do that and yeah, then I get all the water holding capacity built up on my land. Being able to do this, yeah, I enjoy that.

0:38:06 - Cal
When are?

0:38:08 - Steve
you calving in Alberta. In Alberta we like to calve end of April, early May.

So just as the grass is turning green, we start calving. I kind of time it with my grazing. May 15th the grass is not very tall, but I want to start grazing, so I'd like to have about half my herd calved out by May 15th. That way you can pull out those pairs that are all good and get them moving. But it's not the full herd yet, so grass is short. We got paddocks that are this big, but we only have half the herd in there, so they can stay there for two or three days, because there's not very much. If I had the whole herd in there, they'd be out in a day. So then we can just keep moving in the rotation, nice and slow, those little calves. We don't have to go super fast. And then as we calve more, we add more pairs to it.

So right, I'll haul another 10 over there and put them in there or run them down the alleyway or whatever depends how way they are. And then we'll just keep adding to it. So as the grass gets taller, in each additional paddock we're adding more cattle to it to graze it down. So it's a nice even graze on that first rotation because we keep increasing the number of animals on there, so it matches your carrying capacity and everything right so yeah. I match it with my grazing so it makes it a little simpler.

0:39:19 - Cal
Are you calving those out on pasture or?

0:39:19 - Steve
in a barn. It's a little simpler.

0:39:20 - Cal
Are you kevving those out on pasture or in a barn?

0:39:23 - Steve
On a pasture, but we're feeding them to begin with oh yeah, the ones before May 15th. We're rotationally abusing some pastures. We're on one and it's trying to grow, but we're also feeding on it like crazy unrolling bales. So the manure and the urine and the litter that stays there really does it a benefit. Oh yeah, Even though we're technically they're overgrazing all those little green grasses coming up, oh, and then, as soon as it starts looking dirty, we move to another one, and then we move to another one.

0:39:49 - Cal
Oh yeah, you'd move before yeah.

0:39:51 - Steve
Yeah, as soon as it's dirty, we get those calves moving along. And then, once grazing starts, we get into end of May. We're almost done calving. Maybe there's a few stragglers, and by then I'm like just kick them all out.

Oh yeah, yeah, if she's this late, she's got to calve on her own. Yeah, and we don't do a lot with calving. Usually it depends on what the customer wants, but I would rather do as little as possible. We drive through them and basically ear tag and put castration rings on them. Oh yeah, that's about it, just so that we can keep track of who's who. If you catch them before they're 12 hours old, they're easy to catch After that. Yeah, it's pretty tough. They're fast.

0:40:30 - Cal
We have hair sheep in addition to our cattle, and that's my dilemma with hair sheep I don't want to catch them in those first 12 hours because bonding is so important to them. Catch them in those first 12 hours because bonding is so important to them, but if I wait past 12 hours I can't catch them, so that's a dilemma I have with the sheep, but that's yeah, it depends on the customer, though, right, because I do have a customer.

0:40:54 - Steve
They're his animals, what?

0:40:54 - Cal
does he want so?

0:40:55 - Steve
then we try and work it out. I had a customer a few years ago. He said, no, don't calve them, don't do anything. Just let them just let it happen. If there's a problem, deal with it, but we'll tag later.

0:41:05 - Cal
So it just depends on the customer.

0:41:07 - Steve
Yeah.

0:41:09 - Cal
Do you see anything changing on the horizon for you, or do you have a pretty well set pattern that you like the way it's going?

0:41:17 - Steve
It's getting tougher and tougher to hold on and keep land. Oh yeah, the grain industry is very well supported, we'll say it that way and they are aggressive on land. The price of canola for the last couple of years has gone through the roof and now a lot of hay fields and a lot of pastures have been worked up if they could be. So there's a huge demand for pasture right now, but there's also a huge demand for land. I got landowners raising rent. I've lost some land because somebody else offered way more. So that's the. I don't know if I'm going to get pushed out entirely, but yeah, I've shrunk a lot in the last couple of years. The demand of grain, yeah.

0:41:54 - Cal
And it's coming just from the grain. Farmers demand Pretty much yeah.

0:41:59 - Steve
The trickle effect right, when all the hay land, or a whole bunch of the hay land, gets ripped up and put into canola. And pastures are getting ripped up, then there's less hay right and there's less pasture available. So all of a sudden, the great, the cattle guys, are bidding more for pasture because they there's very little of it around. So it's a not necessarily the grain guys that are taking the land, but it's's a trickle effect from the price of canola yeah.

Okay, yeah, and now the price of canola has actually gone down. Oh yeah, but we still don't have the pasture and the haylands because it's all been ripped up. I don't know if it's going to correct itself over the next couple of years, but this year there's a huge demand and there's some guys throwing some awful lot of money around at some of this land.

0:42:41 - Cal
Oh yes, I know that the people really in farm country. When they talk about land rent prices, it just baffles me, it floors me. I'm in an area we don't have too much farming going on.

0:42:54 - Steve
Yeah, yeah, and I'm not going to try and out outbid them because if, honestly, we've had, I don't know how the grain guys are surviving. Actually, I do know how they are, but we've had four years in a row where the grain guys have had terrible crops.

0:43:09 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:43:09 - Steve
We had 2019 and 2020 were super wet. Guys were out there pulling combines with four wheel drive tractors just to try and get through the mud to get their crops off. I remember it was so wet the peas didn't even germinate, they just rotted in the ground. It was so wet. Oh yes, for one of my neighbors. And then we had 2021, 2022. That were drought years. Severe drought, terrible crops, terrible. But all these grain farmers are still gung-ho and going because everything's crop insurance covered everything. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's. I couldn't have four years in a row of bad crops and probably survive because I don't have that coverage. So we have a lower risk system where I don't. I don't have bad crops. Rarely do I have bad crops.

0:43:49 - Cal
Very good, steve. Steve, it's time we transition to our overgrazing section, where we take a deeper dive into something you're doing on your operation to find out more and we were discussing this earlier. Jim Garish was on the podcast a few weeks ago and he's. I don't like the name of this section. You actually suggested we should call it severe grazing, because we're spending more time there, we're going deeper, but we're not staying too long there.

0:44:19 - Steve
Exactly, yeah, the big definition difference between overgrazing is when the root systems of the plants getting hurt. Severe grazing you get on and off quick, you take it down heavy but you haven't hurt the root system. So there's a trick for you to get that. Tell Jim you solved it, there we go.

0:44:35 - Cal
Yes, our topic for today is drone seeding.

0:44:39 - Steve
Yes day is drone seeding. Yes, it's. I bought a new toy. Actually, last two years ago I bought a small drone just to get the hang of it for video work.

Right, there's so much social media now and it's really handy to get some great videos of the herds and the grazing and stuff. And then last year this opportunity came up. I went to a session and they had a guy doing a demo on this drone seeding and I'm like, well, that's interesting. Every five to seven to 10 years, I don't know it's always a little bit different. I need to reseed some land.

What I've found in my environment. Clovers do really well when it's wet. Right, we have a wet year and I'll have clovers take off and I got these great pastures. It looks like I'm a genius grazer. And then all of a sudden we'll get a severe drought and my clovers just die. They're gone. Oh yeah, they need wet feet. And all of a sudden now I got no legumes left in my pastures and now I look like a terrible grazer. So over the years I've had agrologists out to try and figure out what's wrong with the soil and back and forth. No, it was dry. The clovers need wet feet. That was it Right. After a big drought, now I just go out and seed some more legumes to just to kick it back into gear quickly.

But I've always done it with ground equipment and I'm pretty cheap. I don't even own a tractor, so it'd be a quad mounted spreader. I have hired or rented a Valmar in the past. I've mounted a spreader on the back of my pickup and gone out and spread it right. So none of None of it's very accurate, very hard on equipment because I have some very rough land.

Last spring I took a Valmar out. I rented a Valmar and took it out and did a bunch of seeding and I broke both arms off of it in the week, right Like I had to take it to the welding shop. Can you weld these arms back on? I just picture how rough my land is. Right, usually there's an axle or something broken in the on the vehicle too, and I'm not even going to talk about how sore my back is. Oh yeah, imagine I'm 51. Now I don't bounce around in those trucks very easy anymore. So this drone came out. I'm like that looks pretty interesting. I bet there's a lot of people that would want to use. Get some use out of that. So if I buy one, now is the time it's a brand new thing and offer custom seeding as well. Maybe this is a because I'm losing some land. I just told you I'm losing some land I need to offset that income.

So what could I do as another profit center? So jumped on board the drone I bought. Everything together was about 30 grand, right, so it's not less than a tractor and a broad or a spreader or a seeder, but still a fair chunk of change. And I got to seed all my land and now I'm seeding for other people too, and there's a yeah, it's a fair bit of demand for it as well. So pretty handy tool. My back is so thankful.

0:47:10 - Cal
Oh yeah, I imagine. So.

0:47:12 - Steve
Yeah, it pretty well, does all the work for me. And on the rough land it just moves up and down with the contours, Doesn't slow down for the bumps. I tell you it's pretty slick.

0:47:21 - Cal
Oh yeah, now how much seed can a drone carry?

0:47:25 - Steve
Mine is actually the smallest one that they make for seeding with a drone, so it's the starter one. I guess you could say it is.

I can carry six kilograms of, so about 14 pounds of seed. So not that much Good for legumes, because legumes are heavy. As soon as you get some grass seed in there and it gets fluffy, then you can't seed very much. The volume is an issue, but just top dressing is great. It works really good for top dressing with legumes. The battery is an issue too, though I basically have to land it every eight minutes.

0:47:56 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:47:57 - Steve
Yeah, so it's pretty quick. So every eight minutes. I'm you ever seen NASCAR when they do it?

0:48:02 - Cal
Yeah.

0:48:07 - Steve
Like when I jump out there you can hear the air impact going and the tires changing and it's pull out the battery, put in a battery and fill the seed tank and then go get her back out there. But it's pretty efficient. It's the smallest one, like I said, and I'm still seeding between 12 and 15 acres an hour, so in a day, a good day, I can get a quarter section seeded with that Are you?

0:48:29 - Cal
is it pretty programmed on, you set an area and it can go across it, or are you having to make sure you've got the right coverage on it?

0:48:39 - Steve
Yeah, no, it pretty well does all the work, so I will go to a field and basically draw out the perimeter on the screen. I mean, you've got to understand technology and I'm not the greatest with technology so I'm pretty slow getting the hang of it, but I'm getting there. You basically draw the perimeter, it designs a flight path for you and then you can adjust it right.

If you want to go east and west and no, I want to go north and south instead, or at a diagonal, or whatever is more efficient, right, I can trim it up a little bit, make it a little bit more efficient, and then I hit go and he has it programmed, it's memorized. When he runs out of seed, he'll tell me and he'll just come home.

And then I fill it up, send them back out. He remembers where he stopped and he goes right back to the same spot and he just keeps going and, yeah, he drives the perfect path every time aiming for the dark fence post on the end, that, or the tree with the kink in it, that, oh, there's two trees with a kink in it.

0:49:34 - Cal
Which one was it? Yeah, exactly yeah.

0:49:39 - Steve
I've got aerial photos where you can see where I was looking at the wrong tree still like six years later. Because you can see the paths where we seeded and where we missed, so not anymore, the drone's pretty precise and it's got radar.

It's anti or what do they call it? Avoidance collision safety mechanism or whatever they call it. So it flies by GPS and radar. So I can fly at night. It's actually pretty cool If I get it programmed right, if I can go and see the field in the daylight, draw out the perimeter so I can see what's going on and then hit go. I can see well into the past dark. It's actually easier to see the drone because he's got bright red and green flashing lights.

And he can be across the other side of the corridor and you can see him easy. He's lit up pretty good. In the daytime you struggle to find out where he is because he blends right in. But yeah, seating at night is great because if it's all gps and there's an obstacle there, he'll see it and just stop because of the radar.

0:50:34 - Cal
Yeah, pretty slick that's really interesting to me. I love drones. I've got one here I play with too often. Obviously I'm into technology. I know we have a local guy that does spraying from his airplane, but he is getting into drone spraying and I hadn't heard of drone seeding, so I find that very fascinating.

0:50:58 - Steve
Yeah, I think I'm one of the first ones in Alberta anyway, and maybe close in Canada, because the guy I bought it from didn't even really know how to set up the spreader system. Right. They're doing lots of spraying. They're selling spraying drones, even though technically it's illegal in Canada to spray chemicals out of a drone. Oh yes, because it hasn't been proven safe yet. Right, compared to an airplane. You know that whirlwind behind an airplane, that chemical is going everywhere.

The drone is that pressure is pushing straight down Right when you see it, it's you know. Yeah, it's a lot better than the airplane, but as an operator I don't want to be there because where?

0:51:39 - Cal
are you when you're?

0:51:40 - Steve
spraying with a drone. You're standing underneath it half the time. I got to be close to it to be efficient and, yeah, I've got no desire to spray Maybe biologicals or organic, some teas or something someday, if somebody really bribes me. But I haven't even put the sprayer tank in my drone. Right, it's sitting in the corner of the shed.

I've got two spreader tanks now because I bought an extra one just in case something goes wrong. But yeah, I have no desire to spray and, by the way, it's illegal. So it's funny, at the school they'll teach you they say just so you guys know it is illegal in Canada to spray chemicals out of a drone, but this is how you do it. So, obviously people are doing it because they're selling a lot of drones, but yeah, it's, it's behind the off, away from the highway. They're doing it probably.

0:52:23 - Cal
Yeah, that's interesting and I'm interested to see how it all goes down here, because my neighbors are crazy about spraying every year from airplanes. It's yeah, I've got honeybees and I don't spray and I'm like stay away from my fences, and yeah, yeah.

0:52:40 - Steve
We've got to get away from that. We've got too much. There's tools in our toolbox and I'm not saying we eliminate spraying, but we got it, but we're doing way too much. We've got to figure out better ways to do this.

0:52:51 - Cal
Steve, it is time for us to transition to our famous four questions. Sponsored by Ken Cove Farm Fence Supplies. Ken Cove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass Podcast and grazers everywhere At Ken Cove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass Podcast and grazers everywhere At Ken Cove Farm Fence. They believe there's true value within the community of grazers and land stewards. The results that follow, proper management and monitoring, can change the very world around us. That's why Ken Cove is dedicated to providing an ever-expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant.

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0:54:17 - Steve
Favorite book or resource. I'm going to go back to the very first one that got me going, that's the holistic management book.

0:54:24 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:54:25 - Steve
The first thing that ever triggered me into this, down this route, this road, was I got to hear Alan Savory speak at a conference in Lloydminster, saskatchewan.

Oh yes, and I just got out of college, right, young guy out of college, I knew everything about the water cycle and seeding and fertilizer and everything they taught me.

And then Alan Savory stood up there on the stage and said the water cycle is broken, we've broken it, it's devastating our ecosystems. And I'm like how come, in all the years of college I took, nobody ever told me the water system was broken, right, and it is. It's devastating, like I just it blew me away. So of course, I bought his book right then and there and read it a couple of times and basically trained myself in holistic management this was back in 97, 98 maybe and just jumped in with both feet because it made so much sense compared to where I just came out of college, where it didn't make sense, like there was so many things that they didn't have answers for me, like I was the annoying student that always asked the hard question Um and yeah, it just blew me away that the stark difference between the education I could get from places like holistic management or ranching for profit or things like that, compared to what I got in college and I was disappointed, yeah, yeah.

0:55:44 - Cal
Yeah, because just think how far ahead we were would be if, if kids were getting that kind of training in college, ready to go back to the farm or start their own.

0:55:55 - Steve
That being said, we are getting some of it now. I'm actually really excited. There's some really good educators and some good researchers out there that are jumping on board with this right, and five years ago, 10 years ago you wouldn't have that, but we are now. We had a researcher he's an instructor at the university, local university here and he came out to our pasture rock. I had him as our special guest and he was a soil scientist by trade, but on forestry soils it brought him out. Long story short, brought him out, threw him in one of our soil pits and he knew what he was coming into. He had every land map that's been created over the last hundred years about this piece of land.

0:56:35 - Cal
It's gray wooded soil.

0:56:36 - Steve
It's this, it's, it should have this underneath it. And when I threw him into one of our soil pits he was stumped. He said there's something wrong here. There is no way we are supposed to have 10 inches of black topsoil in a gray wooded soil zone. Something's wrong here, or maybe something's really right. So that was really cool to have him. He had an aha moment that we could do this. We have him on video saying something about there's something about this regenerative grazing that has some really amazing carbon sequestration potential. And he told me and it's not necessarily because of my pasture rock, but he told me after that he said every student that goes through his first year soils classes, which every student at the university has to go through it, every student has to watch Kiss the Ground. Oh, yes, the documentary right.

0:57:27 - Cal
So that's a huge thing that at least every student gets to watch that.

0:57:31 - Steve
So yeah, we're making huge progress in the last 10 years.

0:57:35 - Cal
Yeah.

0:57:36 - Steve
Yeah, sorry, I went too long on that one probably.

0:57:39 - Cal
Oh no, it's great. Our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm?

0:57:45 - Steve
My favorite tool for the farm Right now it's my drone, but that's just because it's fun. Favorite tool for the drone. I have so many tools because I have cattle that help me manage the grass there. There's a lot of tools there. I have so many insects. I have so many critters that I think of as tools or as employees. Right, they work for me. Cows work for me. I don't have much for tools Like I don't even own a tractor. I've been have much for tools Like I don't even own a tractor. I've been ranching for 25 years and never owned a tractor. So, yeah, my joke would be it would be all the animals and organisms, micro-asia, fungi. But my sidekick is probably the most handy tool that I have. Sidekick, or a geo geo tracker. It's a little Jeep looking thing. Oh yeah, I went away from using quads or side-by-sides because they're so expensive to repair.

These little sidekicks were built by Suzuki in the late eighties and early nineties and I pick them up and, man, they're cheap to repair, they're cheap to run, they're really handy. They got a heater and a windshield and a radio compared to a quad. Oh yeah yeah, it's pretty handy little unit. They're getting harder and harder to get fine now, but that's probably my handiest tool that I have Very good.

0:58:56 - Cal
Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started?

0:59:02 - Steve
Oh, just getting started ask questions. I actually did this. My daughter went to college a couple of years ago and I was trying to get her to not to go but, everybody else is pushing her to go. I said I will pay for some private courses ranching for profit. Holistic management right.

I'd rather you go to those If you're going to go into agriculture. Those are better bang for your buck. But anyway, she still had to go. So I told her whatever you do when you go there, whenever they're teaching you something, ask yourself one question what else does it do? What else does it do? What else does it do? So here's this product that we're going to use. Like the agriculture has been teaching what to use and how to use it, right, that's probably going to come up in a box, a bag or a bottle and they're going to teach you how to use it. My question is ask them what else does it do? Okay, if it's going to kill this critter or this plant or this, whatever, what else is it doing? Is it going to? How is it taking care of my fungus in my soil and my bacteria in my soil, and what does it do to my dragonflies and how does it? Is it going to run off into my water systems? And I posed her that and I didn't.

I didn't hear much back from her. She went through her two years and she went into dairy. A couple of years later I ran into the Dean of Agriculture from that college. I knew her from years ago and ran into her and talking back and forth and I said so, did you ever meet my daughter when she was in college? That was your daughter. Oh my gosh. Yes. I said well, how'd she do? What do you? What'd you think of her? She goes. She asked a lot of really tough.

1:00:27 - Cal
Oh, yes, so I'm like yeah, right on Good.

1:00:31 - Steve
Yeah, so ask questions, right. Don't just trust what you're being told you should do. Ask why you're doing it in the first place, right, and what else does it do?

1:00:42 - Cal
Excellent advice there. Lastly, where can others find out more about you?

1:00:48 - Steve
Where we have a fairly active Facebook page on Greener Passions Ranching. We're trying to do a few other social medias, but I'm not, I can only focus on so much. So we're doing. Facebook is pretty good. We got 20,000 followers or something. Youtube we're trying to grow it right, so we're starting to put out more videos. So YouTube and Facebook, I would say, are the main ones. You can find us on Instagram and I think there's a Twitter page, but we don't we're not near as active on those. But yeah, facebook is my main one.

Very good, steve, we appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today, betcha Thanks for having me.

1:01:21 - Cal
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