Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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0:00:00 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast episode 141.

0:00:04 - Blane
I don't know if you've ever seen a bunch of like-minded people geek out at looking at dung beetles in cow manure, but that's the kind of people we are.

0:00:12 - 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. 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 Regenitive Grazing course To teach ranchers like you easy-to-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 n-o-b-l-e dot org. Forward slash grazing.

On today's show we have Blaine Stacy from Northeast Oklahoma. He is a rangeland management specialist for the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. He also has a small farm not too far from me. On today's episode we talked about his journey to where he is now, as well as getting started on 80 acres and how he's managing his cows. It's a great conversation. I think you'll enjoy it.

10 seconds about the farm. We have rain in the forecast. Hopefully by the time you're listening to this we have some rain falling. Also, I've been under the weather for the last few days. I blame my dad, but it's possible I could have caught it somewhere else too. So I guess I shouldn't do that. I could have caught it somewhere else too. So I guess I shouldn't do that.

For 10 seconds about the podcast if you're not part of the grazing grass community on Facebook, I suggest you join it. We've had a couple posts in the last few days that really stirred a lot of conversation and that's the point of it talking to like-minded people and being able to bounce ideas off of them, get their viewpoints. You know it's so nice to have a discussion and understand that we all don't have the same viewpoints. So if you're not part of the grazing grass community, go to Facebook and do a search for grazing grass community and join Now. You have to answer a question or two or you won't get in. But those are easy. But I suggest you go over there and join. Enough of about my farm and about the podcast. Let's talk to Blayden. Blayden, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.

0:03:21 - Blane
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to discuss grass grass management, my little operation here in a beautiful corner of southeastern Nowata County, and hopefully give some tips, some tricks and some ideas for other people along the way.

0:03:40 - Cal
Sounds like a great plan To get started. Tell us just a little bit about yourself and your operation.

0:03:46 - Blane
That is a loaded question and I'll condense it to the best of my ability. Blaine Stacy from New Alley, oklahoma, I have kind of two different ways I'm going to approach this. Number one is I am a rangeland management specialist for the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. I work with farmers, ranchers, producers all across the state of Oklahoma. We do education, outreach and conservation technical assistance. What that basically means is I get a guy calling me and say, blaine, my grass ain't growing. Would you come and help me Up to massive scale regenerative grazing management operations, looking for ideas, tips, tricks, everything from livestock behavior, grass function, grass morphology, grass ecology. But I'm also a practitioner.

My little 80 acre grazing operation. We're about two miles due west of New Alloy, oklahoma. Most of the time it's a perfect little slice of heaven. It's a little bit dry today but we're. I think we've put together a pretty good program that I've got more grass than everybody around me. I'll say that, oh yeah, the ability to maintain the functionality of a grazing ecosystem through livestock management has been repeated over and over, and not just as an educator, but now as a practitioner. We've been here on this place just a little over two years. We purchased this in April of 2022, but I've been involved in grazing management pretty much my entire life. We could go all the way back to eighth grade FFA class. My father was an FFA instructor at Oklahoma Union High School and I joined the pasture and range judging team, so at a young age had an interest in grass grazing, land ecology, and what I loved about the FFA range judging contest was it didn't approach things simply from a pasture grazing only scenario. Oh, yeah.

In this contest you had to evaluate the existing plant community, compare it to what would be considered a historic plant community. So it taught you not only to use visual evaluation but compare that to what the grassland ecosystem would have been 200 years ago. Then we do an evaluation for livestock management how good of a spot is this for beef cattle? You look at forage production, forage availability, other factors like distribution factors, brush canopy cover, distance to water and invasive species pressure. And then, unfortunately, the contest. You do the same thing but evaluate for bobwhite quail habitat.

So through this contest grew up gaining an appreciation for natural rangeland ecosystems, was fortunate enough to be a state champion, went on to nationals and was a national champion as well. From there, I guess, I caught the eye of the state NRCS rangeland specialist at the time, mark Mosley. He was also one of the co-authors of the judging manual. He approached my father. He says Mr Stacy, I think I've got something your son would like. And they had a ecological academy is what they called it. Basically it was summer camp for grass and soil and range nerds which.

0:07:05 - Cal
I very much was.

0:07:07 - Blane
So in the summer of 2003, I believe, we went out to the Black Mesa Ecological Academy where the Natural Resource Conservation Service, fish and Wildlife Service, blm and Forestry all worked together to put on this camp. And I thought you guys get to do this every day. You get to evaluate grasslands, you get to go out and do field evaluations. So I was sold. I said sign me up. Oh yeah, so from there the career arc gets a little murky. Uh, there's probably not a job I haven't done at some point. I I've been everything from a uh, from a environmental technician for a federal recognized tribe, for the call tribe near ponca city.

I have been a nrcs usda employee. As an intern I've done everything in between, from day work cowboying to training horses, to working at steel pike and supply facilities, but always coming back to my love for rangeland, ecology and natural resources management, I landed with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. So that's-.

0:08:13 - Cal
Did you go to college at OSU?

0:08:15 - Blane
Yes, I did two-year stint in Wilberton at Eastern Oklahoma State. Oh, okay, On a livestock judging scholarship of all things. Oh yes, I showed livestock in high school and and was very enjoyable. We'll get into this a little bit later. But the idea of a perfect animal in a show ring scenario doesn't quite fit with what we're looking at as far as an efficient grazing animal in these high intensity grazing scenarios. If we get get off on that tangent, we'll get there. But from there I wanted to have a career in some kind of land resource management and I was lucky enough, and even with the Conservation Commission, my first two years was in water quality monitoring.

I didn't necessarily start with the soil health program which I currently work for, so two years of water quality monitoring. I gained an appreciation for the collection of data in that program because that was a direct gauge of the conservation programs that were being applied statewide either through NRCS Conservation Commission or our state and federal partners. So if we're having soil erosion we apply conservation practices. Within a watershed, we go collect the water quality data before and after. If we can show an improvement of that water quality, our conservation practices are working.

And grazing management was a huge push there in the mid-aughts until about 2010. Prescribed grazing was a was a conservation practice through nrcs and we were able to track that data. But in 2016 they said blaine, we love you and water quality, but we have an opportunity in soil and soil health program, would you like to do that? And I said, well, kind of explain what I'll be doing. So all of 2016, they had scheduled some plant identification workshops. So all my experience through FFA rings judging.

I forgot to mention that plant identification was also a part of that contest. Oh yes, you were supposed to identify 20 plants at any stage of growth. It could be we've had contests in the spring or fall, so you have to be able to identify big bluestem when it's that tall or when it's full, mature and seeded out. So that was right. In my wheelhouse I said sign me up, be glad to. And haven't looked back since, to be honest, didn't really have a good background in what we would call managed grazing regenerative grazing, in what we would call managed grazing regenerative grazing. Through university I loved my time at Oklahoma State, but it was a pretty conventional set of management rules continuous set stock grazing. We hammered to death how to set stocking rates, but we never approached the true grazing management systems that can be implemented that truly mimic what we would call the historic grazing pattern.

0:11:18 - Cal
Don't know how far we want to get off into that, but answer view and kind of the same thing, looking at inputs and outputs and and not really any grazing management there other than the conventional set stock we certainly know how to cash flow.

0:11:33 - Blane
But the yeah, a rangeland. I could remember a derogatory term that they usually call them native stomp lots. That's how they, that's how they viewed these, these nativeangeland ecosystems. It was just a space to get them a little grass in the summertime put a little hay out in the wintertime.

They were continually overstocked to begin with, so it was just an input-output. They brought inputs in, they brought in the feed, they brought in the hay and they shipped the outputs to the feed yard. Essentially so, not not a what I would call an efficient or profitable system, but as long as the banker got his note paid and and you had a little bit left at the end of the year, not too many people were complaining yeah, the.

0:12:20 - Cal
The other thing is you're sharing your story there. That jumped out at me is this rangeland judging contest, or the full name, because when I went through FFA we had land judging. We got in there, we looked at soil, we looked at topsoil, subsoil, water capability of it, et cetera. But this rangeland sounds really interesting to me. I'm assuming it's more recent than when I went through school.

0:12:48 - Blane
Oh, I'm not sure when became an official contest. I remember being very small. My father was an ag teacher at Delaware High School early 90s. He had a range desert team then.

0:13:02 - Cal
Oh, so it may not be that my ag teacher was interested in that and I wasn't aware of it too.

0:13:09 - Blane
Could be, I mean God bless our teachers and educators.

0:13:12 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:13:13 - Blane
They can get spread pretty thin between livestock showing speeches, professional leadership and then the the, the students themselves and their supervised ag experiences. So I've seen that firsthand the ag teachers. They kind of have to pick and choose what they're good at or what they're comfortable presenting and coaching teams on. And, truth be told, there's a lot of land judges because it's a fairly simple contest.

0:13:39 - Cal
You don't get a lot of variability.

0:13:41 - Blane
The parameters are the same. You're evaluating soil texture, permeability, slope, elevation, and then really all the other intricacies of that contest are given to the students at the contest. You know all they have to do. It's more of a memorization thing. Oh yeah, they can get soil texture and they can get slope and they can get the the day that they're out there, the physical characteristics with some consistency. The rest of it's just memorization. Okay, well, if you, if you see this, this and this, you mark this.

The range judging was a little bit more, I wouldn't say complex, but you had to have a broader knowledge base. Number one you had to identify 130 plants before you could even complete the. There was 130 plants on that list. You may not see them all, but if you go evaluate a range site you have to know what big bluestem, switchgrass, indian grass, all these pretty common rangeland species look like at any stage of growth, whether they're three inches tall, fresh green regrowth after a prescribed burn or into a fall after that plant was already set seed and turned brown. So we've been trying to support our FFA and 4-H programs. We hosted a workshop in Stillwater earlier this summer and invited ag teachers to just come and experience what the contest is all about.

Oh yeah, we had probably a dozen ag teachers across the state that weren't already sending teams to the state contest. Just gave them an opportunity to say don't be intimidated by the breadth of knowledge, the breadth of knowledge.

If you can identify 20 or 25 plants and cover the main ones and know how to evaluate spatially grassland and mark some stuff on a card, you'll be fine. So we're trying to increase participation on that contest and I'm not going to let that contest die. But the simple fact is we had, I think, five teams at state FFA contests this year and of those five teams, three of those ag teachers are either retiring or have already retired and simply support this one theme, my father being one of them. He's been retired for five years from teaching ag but he still does one contest. He helps out with the rangeland judging contest through the FFA program.

0:16:10 - Cal
Oh yes, well, I will have to bring it up to the ag teachers, I know, I know. When I went back to education people asked they assumed I went back to be ag teacher. I'm like no, that's way too much work for me to do something outside of school hours. There is just so many activities so definitely, definitely it's.

0:16:31 - Blane
If we could get that comfort, comfortability with that contest and that's just getting those ag teachers exposed to it, I think we can bring that right up because on the other side, on the flip side of that, we're trying to find replacements for us.

Oh yes, we're looking for rangeland specialists, we're looking for uh, plant and soil scientists, those kids that are in sfa that are interested in these careers. Because, frankly, we can't find those kids, or we're not finding those type of kids, to fill our ranks for my professional career. And then, if we could get a few of them interested in regenerative grazing at the same time and become disciples of this as well, we can spread the idea of regenerative grazing further and further.

0:17:19 - Cal
Oh yes, and I think that's a really a natural evolution. As you gain knowledge about your range, land, ecology and and build that knowledge there, you, you come across regenerative grazing, regenerative ag practices and it really strikes your interest and you dive in deeper. Absolutely, that's it it was.

0:17:38 - Blane
Yeah, I tell people all the time if, if you're, if you read the bible, it was all on the way to Damascus. That was kind of a moment that I had with regenerative grazing, just truly a mind-altering moment of we're not trying to make these cows do anything they can't already do, right? Yeah, for one, we're mimicking the natural grazing pattern that shaped the Great Flames ecosystem. I think part of our discussion here, a little bit, is going to cover rangeland ecology, but that's what makes regenerative grazing so awesome. We're simply recreating the processes that shaped this central prairie ecosystem, albeit at a much smaller scale. And you're telling, when I first discovered regenerative grazing, my mindset was so, you're telling me, I can make the ecosystem better and graze more cows. That just was. Why aren't we all doing this?

0:18:42 - Cal
Oh, yeah, lower your input costs, maybe make more money yeah.

0:18:47 - Blane
Those are all music. We can shift gears a little bit and kind of jump into my operation. Let's do that.

0:18:53 - Cal
Let's talk about what you're doing, and just for our listeners, blaine is only about six miles away from me.

0:19:00 - Blane
We're tucked off here in what we call the Cherokee Prairies. We're tucked off here in what we call the Cherokee Prairies. So we're east of Bartlesville, west of the Ozark Plateau. There's a little kind of a wedge shape of native prairie. Unfortunately, a lot of it got coal mined back in the late 70s, early 80s.

The place I purchased here was coal mined back in the late 1970s. It was after the date where they were required to go back in and restore it. So they came in, they stripped mine, they moved all the rubble rock off, took the coal seams out, replaced the rubble rock and then put the topsoil back on Old historic soils. Maps tell me that this used to be an Afverserson silty clay loam with a little bit of Katusa soil. So we're talking silty clay type, pretty tight soils. For the most part that's what we, that's what we deal with. But I've got 80 acres of my own property. I've got a brother-in-law just to the east of me. He's a rope horse trainer. He's got a few old, retired rope horses so I do have an option to utilize some of his grass if I need to Some of his cows are running with mine.

He was gifted some cows as a wedding gift 10 years ago and when we finally moved back to the neighborhood he said Blaine, you're the grass guy, I'll turn my cows in with yours. If we need to turn them out on my side for a period of time, we can do that. So in total, I've probably got 120 grazeable acres that I can do lives.

So being a disciple or an educator of regenerative grazing, regenerative agriculture, through my career was was chomping at the bit. To get started on my own operation. We closed on this place in April of 22. And then I think when we came and toured the property, that was the last time that rained that particular year. Oh yeah, 2022, just a mile to the North where the edge of Oolagaw Lake comes in, that was flooded when we purchased the place, so we couldn't even go up to Road 27 because the road was flooded. And after May 15th, I don't think it rained a bit. The rest of 2022.

0:21:15 - Cal
We've had a few years with really nice spring rains that once it turns dry, it turns dry.

0:21:24 - Blane
And call that a double-edged sword. It benefited me greatly. Oh yeah, I'll tell you why. So I had a farm service agency cow loan burning a hole in my pocket. But from the time we closed in April till we moved up here in June, it was already starting to turn a little dry. So I simply said I'm just going to wait and see what happens. So two excellent things happened. Number one this grass got a rest and recovery period that I don't think it has ever had.

This was a lease pasture before this, and when we toured the place it was pretty obvious that their idea was we're going to take every blade of grass out here yes leave nothing but the bark on the trees, and we even ended up finding a dead cow from from the, from the landless sea. Oh yeah, so from april till essentially october, during the growing season, this got arrested. It probably never had.

And then about the time people were looking to start to disperse some, some livestock. I had a friend of mine that lives just up the road named Jeff O'Connor who had some cattle that had some Pharaoh cattle company genetics. He was also a regenerative grazing practitioner doing daily moves, high intensity grazing type stuff, and he was trying to get rid of some older cows and I was really interested in the genetics and the cows that were already broke to a system so I purchased 10 head from him in October and I purchased some from my father to kind of put together a little mix match herd and I jumped in head first October. I think it was well if today's the 17th it was. It had to have been October 15th of 22. We had hot wire rolled out ready to go, oh yeah.

0:23:14 - Cal
So let's, let's jump to that time Getting your place ready for cattle. You bought this place. What did you do to get it ready for those cows coming in? Okay, five, six.

0:23:25 - Blane
One. I was very fortunate. I have a spring fed pond and I have good six strand perimeter barbed wire fencing, oh so nice, you had a good working perimeter already.

Yes, I didn't have to worry anything about that. My biggest concerns were how to implement some kind of grazing paddock and allow livestock to come back to water, and adding infrastructure electric fencing to the perimeter fencing. So first off, I literally went to orslans down the road here in nowata and bought the biggest solar charger that they had, which I found out later was not near near enough to do what I needed to do with running multiple wires. You know the ignorance of being a new disciple, I guess. So the cows that were already broke that I purchased from Jeff O'Connor they were a godsend because they helped train my other cows.

0:24:22 - Cal
Oh yeah, they knew what was going on.

0:24:23 - Blane
They knew what a hot wire was. They were just fine being in smaller spaced areas. So part of my career mindset is I'm trying to utilize this as a demonstration farm, not just my own operation.

0:24:36 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:24:37 - Blane
I like to tell people I am as scientifically unscientific as possible. I am trying to implement methods that other people would. Let me rephrase that it's I'm trying not to be too excessive that people don't want to try it Right. Every practice I implement I run through my mind. It's usually is this something my dad can do? Is this something a general 65-year-old farmer retiree? You know my father. He drives a school bus for the school still, so he's got all farmer's responsibility. But are the things that I'm implementing on my operation something that can be mimicked by anybody else in agriculture production? Oh yeah, but I am meticulous in my data collection, photos, maintaining records and and and having tried to have some sort of scientific explanation for anything I've tried to do, if that makes sense.

0:25:38 - Cal
Yeah, I think that's great and, I'll be honest, that's the part I don't do a good job on. We collect a fair amount of data for our cattle, but actually for the land, I don't do a good enough job doing that. I've started keeping more records of it the last few years, but that's an area. And one thing you mentioned there was photos. Photos are really nice because you can see progression that you've forgotten. So you can go back and you can be like, yeah, we made improvement here. But you pull up a photo You're like, oh, wow, I forgot we were there. Are you doing anything to to make sure your photograph photographing, taking pictures of the same area, or are you just doing it as you're out there each day? How are you managing that?

0:26:26 - Blane
D. All of the above I try to recreate set point photos. Thankfully, I've got some pretty obvious landmarks on my place. I've got a water tower. In one corner over here I've got a tree line, a very obvious tree line that is repeatable in several photos. And try to use those as my points of reference.

0:26:47 - Cal
Which is a great way to do that Find something that's not changing or that's notable enough, a landmark there that you can put in your photos and you know where you're looking each time.

0:26:59 - Blane
So just kind of just any general day, if I'm rolling out a new stretch of hot wire to build a new paddock again super unscientifically scientific I will hang a wire. I will count down two fence posts and hang a wire and go. My pasture is a quarter mile across by half a mile long, where I do the bulk of my intensely managed grazing.

0:27:24 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:27:25 - Blane
I don't have quite the infrastructure I need on my brother-in-law's place, so we might give them bigger paddock size, but I usually utilize him for winter grazing anyway. Oh yeah, uh, so active growing season. I just step off two fence posts and hang a hot wire and go across the pasture. Now I've done the exact calculation. It comes out to like 0.885 acres, so 24 head of adult cows any given stage of gestation. Um, if they've got calves on them, if they don't, so I know exactly how many livestock I've got. I don't know exactly the amount of square footage doing daily moves. However, just like anybody else, I get home late. I'm working my career outside of the farm, where I get home at 9 pm.

I might unintentionally, intentionally say I'm gonna leave those cows in there an extra day. Is it gonna hurt anything? Yeah, but I'm gonna take pictures of it. I'm gonna note it in my records. You could you could bring up the aerial photography from my ranch that's been updated on google recently and actually see the grazing strips across my property that I can point to exactly where I did that double grazing event.

Just based on just based off the change in in in the color of the grass, and I've got follow-ups of that where you can't tell there was any difference. Even though it was essentially a double grazing event pretty excessive, I took it down probably more than I should have, but, learning from some other guys who utilize ultra high density grazing, they might say well, yeah, you had a little bit excessive utilization, but that's going to have a myriad of other positive benefits.

If you look at the flush of root exudates that come after a grazing event, that feed the microbiology, that allow for a more rapid recovery of that plant community. So that, all being said, I'm doing daily moves 24 head of cows up on about an acre a move there's. There's some spots in the property. As I graze closer to my house I've got to do a little bit of a shift and shake it around some wooded areas. What I've done with my watering point is I've got one pond in the corner but before you get there, blaine, I do want to go there.

0:29:48 - Cal
I just want a little clarification on your daily moves. Are you running? Are they in a, not a half miles? Are they in a quarter mile long strip? Yes, I thought that's what you were saying. I just want to make sure. Yeah, it's a.

0:30:00 - Blane
It's a it's a quarter mile wide. I don't know if we'll be able to see this on on the camera, but here's a map I have of my property. I'll try to get without a glare you can see on this side. This is area that I had not grazed. Yeah, yeah, and you can see the strips as we come across. That double grazing event was back about right there you can see a little bit of a difference in color variation. Oh, yes, yes, we're getting a little bit of glare on that.

Yeah, and having this area of photography is invaluable.

0:30:35 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:30:35 - Blane
Not just from a planning standpoint, but you can kind of track change over time. Oh you, can Just through when Google updates your area of photography?

0:30:43 - Cal
Yeah, and one thing on that that's really minor. Your lines are pretty straight. I, I've got an 80, I've got least and I've got a high tensile running down the middle of it. So I'm only going eighth of a mile on any of my strips. And some days I get out there and I'm thinking was I drinking before I made that strip? Because this one, I don't know, that was me latched here. Oh yeah, uh. So so how are you doing it? So your lines are so good I've got a little honda rancher foiler.

0:31:16 - Blane
I got a set of binoculars hanging on the handlebars and I'm thankful I've got just enough of a gentle slope for the majority of the property. I can see to the other side. So the way I utilize my paddock setup is so there'll be a lane that the cows are already in and I will have the next two grazing paddocks already set up. Oh, okay, so I go out there 5 o'clock in the evening, get off work, come in.

It's time to move the cows to the next paddock. I'll prop a hot wire up with a piece of pvc pipe. When they see me come on the full, they know it's time to roll to the next paddock. So they'll go into the next paddock. I'll lower that wire and then I'll immediately roll up the back wire that was behind the paddock that they were just right that they just left. And then I'll go hop out another two, two grazing paddocks ahead or so and put that wire out. So I just get my benactors out, look across that field and say, okay, there's, there's the reel hanging on the fence from the last wire, it's gonna be close, and just kind of eyeball it and let her rip Away. We go.

0:32:30 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:32:30 - Blane
If we got a little bend or a little bit of little curve or angle in, it doesn't hurt my feelings any.

But I just know, as long as I stepped off those two fence post length that's about 30 feet wide for my fence post spacing and take her across and I've got the paddock set up for the next two days. And the reason I keep a couple of paddocks set up out in front is, you know, I get tied up, have a late evening or I've got a couple of days where I'm out of town. I'm trying to set this up where my loving wife, she can run out there on that four-wheeler. Prop a hot wire up and move the cows, oh yeah, prop a hot wire up and move the cows, oh yeah, that's another aspect of regenerative or managed grazing is it's got to be wife-friendly and my wife she's very interested in the goings-on, she loves working with the cows, she loves being out there outside doing anything to help. So having it set up to where she can manage it on her own without a lot of assistance or input when I'm not there.

it is invaluable that we can continue the operation with with with minimal interruption. Now it depends on she's a school teacher, so she gets home she, if she's just beat after a long day at school, she can just go prop the wire up, move them and not worry about anything else. And then I can come back the next day and they still have another paddock set up that they can move into.

0:33:54 - Cal
I just have to go move two wires instead of one oh it takes me 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes now did you say on your lanes that you're giving them on your paddocks?

0:34:03 - Blane
you've got a lane set up back to water yes, so I'll get my picture back out if we can keep from getting too much glare on it. So I have a pond here on the southwest corner, so I have a water lane set up along the perimeter fence on the south side of my property. Oh yeah, every one of these grazing strips will come down here and I have a piece of PVC pipe that props up the water alley. Essentially it's my water gate, so they'll graze down the strip, come back here and I've got a water point with a tank at the overflow of my pond and I can come back, graze, go to water. I usually start by grazing on the east side, so that allows my water alley to recover as well as my grazing strips.

Oh, yeah, it is a sacrifice area and I utilize it as such, but it's about 20 feet wide water alley that those cattle can come down the grazing strips, go to water and come back. But that's had some unseen benefits as well. It's an excellent fire break. Oh, yeah, it would be. We're one of the last properties before you get down to Oolagaw Lake. There's a lot of public hunting area and not to talk bad about anybody, but we get some derelicts and degenerates that either throwing cigarettes out the window or lighting fires on purpose or lighting fires on purpose. I sleep at night knowing that if I got a south wind and somebody throws a cigarette out the window, it's going to burn up to that water alley and go out because those livestock have trampled that down.

Most of the time it's pretty bare soil. Closer to the pond the plant community that's further away from the pond it can recover just as well as the grazing strips. And I've actually had the ability to utilize that as a little bit of an extra or a little bit of a grazing patch.

0:35:56 - Cal
Yeah, yeah, that works really good for you to utilize it. Have that lane going to the pond Now, did I understand correctly, you're running your polywire from fence to fence and you're using a PVC pipe to prop it up so that they can get in that alley to go?

0:36:12 - Blane
Yes. So back to the issue of having enough power I utilized. I started with a solar PowerMac charger. It was one of those. It's like two and a half joules of stored energy. And I think if I only had cows that were already previously hot wire broke, I think it would have been okay uh oh yeah invariably, you always have a couple gals in the bunch that they're just not team players.

They're gonna they're gonna exploit the loopholes. They're gonna find the low spots. They're gonna they're gonna figure out that I can get underneath that wire and it only hurts for that much.

0:36:48 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:36:49 - Blane
So, but once one of them starts figuring out, they start teaching those bad habits to the rest of them. So I fought that for pretty much all of 20, the fall and into the winter of 2022. So, combined with we didn't. We weren't getting good electric current through grounding because the soils were so dry. I ended up having to run a double wire every time I moved and because of that, I essentially only had two paddocks set up at a time.

So, sometimes, if I couldn't get to them or had to, couldn't set up an additional paddock. I was utilizing it a little bit heavier than I wanted to, but it was still during the winter, going into the spring, oh yeah, so in summer of 2023, we were blessed with average moisture, depending on it when we got it, and I went ahead and splurged for a.

0:37:44 - Cal
Speedrite 6000i charger. Oh yeah, with the remote and that's got the remote.

0:37:47 - Blane
Always buy the remote. That thing is the best thing since sliced bread.

0:37:51 - Cal
I'll tell everybody who will listen.

0:37:53 - Blane
A side note, though my charger just quit working about three days ago. Not sure what happened. I ran some tests. It did some blinking light things, and I'm going to probably end up having to send it back to Datmars to have it either repaired or replaced. It's still under warranty. I don't know what happened there, but up until then it was working wonderfully.

0:38:14 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:38:14 - Blane
And then what I did was I did an offset high tensile wire along my perimeter.

I did that for two reasons.

I could have ran one right across the center of the property lawways and could have done grazing off one side off the other side and made it work.

But the the width, the quarter mile width of the property, I still think I'm getting fair to decent utilization without having to deal with another permanent wire that if I don't like it I gotta spend a lot of time taking it back down. So the the high tensile along the perimeter is essentially just an anchor point that I can go anywhere I need to and not have to worry about moving a solar charger closer or farther away or worry about regrounding it. I've got six of those six foot ground rods in the ground at the house hooked up to the high tensile wire. I've got six jewels of pop everywhere I need it and and that's been that's been the the best investment I've made so far oh yeah, well, a good energizer will change your opinion of rotational grazing absolutely a poor one will cause you to give it up faster than you thought you would, and a good one will make you continue longer than you thought you might.

Through conversations with other producers either, producers that have been doing it for quite a while the opportunity to go to a lot of these grazing management conferences through my career, not only to help facilitate me as an educator but to take stuff home from my own operation. You know to hear the gurus like Jim Garish and Greg Judy, who have forgot probably more than I've learned. But having Jim Garish speaking at an event up in Kansas two years ago and he wrote the blueprint on here's what I do, here's what you probably need to do, everything from fencing design, anchors, high tensile to the energizers you need, so having the ability to listen to him flipped the switch and said I was under gun, I didn't have enough electric power going to deter these livestock, kind of a little bit to deter these livestock, kind of a little bit of a side benefit.

It keeps the whitetail deer from testing it as much. Once they figure out they run through it one time and it lights them up. They don't just flint across my pasture anymore. They kind of you know they'll take their sweet time trotting across there and I hope they still do that here in november when gun season rolls around. Oh yeah, so ulterior motives and extra benefits, I guess yeah, yeah, slow them down.

0:40:57 - Cal
I I know when this lease property, when I first put up my wire yeah, I had some deer issues, but now I don't have any but and I put it down the center, but doing it again, I think I'd do a perimeter with longer runs I was thinking, well, that's less walking, except now my wire's not quite where I want it and I'm thinking about splite or cutting it right in the middle so I can have some different lanes going. So, yeah, keeping that area open so you can make adjustments as you need to in the future works really good you know, don't, don't, don't build yourself into a box that you can't get out of.

0:41:35 - Blane
I guess would be a good way to put that. Yeah, so that it's, and I'm not. I'm not running any particular brand or kind. I'm a I'm a mixed match kind of guy. I I utilize several different brands of post. I've got o'briens on my what I call my semi-permanent line, so, oh yeah, my water lane and I've got a couple wires that I leave just for, okay if I need to hem them up in the corner to get them to the lot. Leaving that one wire in one particular place is easier to catch them on a, you know, on a terrain feature where the where they already like to go back to shade, I leave one wire up, just to kind of.

If I need to catch them and spill them in that alley, I, I, I utilize that. But I've got, I've got Gallagher reels, terragate reels, o'brien post, gallagher post um. Speed right Charger. It's all it's just. I've put together kind of a blend of what works for me.

0:42:33 - Cal
Oh yeah, I got two questions on that. First one's a real simple numbers question about how many reels are you using each day or not using each day? But you're needed out there for your cattle setup.

0:42:46 - Blane
Since I'm a pretty small operation, I have six reels total. Oh yeah, I try to have four of those out in my grazing pattern every day. So four reels means I've got three lanes set up the lane they're in, the lane they'll go into tomorrow and then, if I don't have time to go set it up, they'll have a reel to go into the the third day and then I usually keep one hanging.

I've got a little mini reel hanging on the four-wheeler. If I just need to, if I just need to make a spin out and get around the cow that's gotten out. You want to talk friends benefits. You know, if you leave some thatch out there in your grassland and that hot wire is laying about 12 inches off the ground and that cow that knows what it is, even though it's not up there at that 36 inch height where she normally sees it, if I just jump on that full weight or make a big circle around her and just hold on to it and that wire kind of wants to swing in around her, she'll tell him to go back where she needs to go.

0:43:51 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:43:52 - Blane
So utilizing that South cow psychology, and then I just got one real hanging up the house as a spare. If I need to, I need to go do something swirly different cross fence something, or really.

what I use it for most often is if my neighbor's cows get on to me, I can oh, yeah, I can just do kind of a quick alleyway to one of the either gates on either end that that I joined myself and my neighbor and get his cows back where they need to go. Oh yeah, another negative of managed grazing is when you've got grass and your neighbor does it, your fences all start to lean or start leaning in.

Yeah, they start getting that little bit of an angle on it. I've got a neighbor. He's a great guy but he's kind of one of those. If there's a blade of grass out there left at the end of the growing season, that's something he's wasted. He's got the prettiest patch of broom weed in the county.

0:44:55 - Cal
Oh yeah, well, at least your fences aren't leaning out. We have a couple fences along the road leaning out and it drives my dad crazy because they're leaning out. But it wasn't the goats, it wasn't the sheep, it wasn't the cattle that did that. I had a few llamas, and the llamas will stick their head through that fence and push on it and it's goat wire, so they will stick their head through it and graze. I'm down to one llama now and I don't think she'll get replaced. She'll finish out her time here. But those are the animals that pushed our fence, leaned it over some, and dad cannot stand those fences leaning. Well, I don't want to see any leaning fences either, but it drives him crazy. And that llama will reach out there and you can see how far she can reach on the bar ditch. And why is she doing that? It beats me Because she can, because she can, yeah, because you know it's about like a horse reaching out there. She's got quite the reach on it, yeah.

The other thing about your lanes before we move on to our overgrazing section shade. Do you have enough trees out there? Do your cows? Is shade a factor for you?

0:46:04 - Blane
Yes, I've got shade. So my 80-acre block, I've got shade on one end and I've got shade on the other end. I've got nothing in the middle.

So, as such, I try to utilize those unshaded areas during spring fall time, where where thermal impact's not going to be as big of an issue I mean I'm not going to say you're not not gonna catch a 95 plus degree day in may where, as soon as they get done grazing in the morning, they're all gonna wad up in the water alley. You know, I've got some hackberry stuff growing in the fence row just along the perimeter that, depending on the time of year, will catch a little bit of a southern lean and provide some shade. Uh, again, it doesn't really bother me if they're hanging out in that water alley because it's it's a fire break and it's it's it's already established sacrificed area anyway. So I I try to. I try to plan my grazing.

If I'm, if I'm, making a move through the property, they're grazing the open areas that have limited shade during the non-impactful days spring and fall, when oh yeah, it's, it's 105 and hot. I got them on either end of the pasture. It kind of depends on where we started. I may be making a nice pattern across there and if it turns 105 and it's hot, it's muddy, I may skip 20 days worth of grazing strip and get them into shade and utilize that yeah and then kind of start over at square one where they have shade on the other end of the property yes, so always a factor.

I just just kind of got to play that with the weather. The the good lord deals you a good hand or a bad hand. You just kind of got to make lemonade out of lemons.

0:47:51 - Cal
Right and have the flexibility to do that is Blaine. It's time we transition to our overgrazing section, sponsored by Redmond. At Redmond, we know that you thrive when your animals do. That's why it's essential to fill the gaps in your herd's nutrition with the minerals that they need. Made by nature, our ancient mineral, salt and conditioner clay, are the catalyst in optimizing the nutrients your animals get from their forage. Unaltered and unrefined, our minerals have the natural balance and proportion that your animals prefer. Have the natural balance and proportion that your animals prefer. This gives your herd the ability to naturally regulate their mineral consumption as they graze. Our minerals won't just help you improve the health of your animals, but will also help you naturally build soil fertility so you can grow more nutrient-dense pasture year after year. Nourish your animals, your soil and your life with Redmond. Learn more at redmondagriculturecom.

And we're going to take a deeper dive into something about your operation or you. And today we're going to talk about rangeland equality I almost said equality, but maybe that's the wrong word Rangeland, ecology and restoring ecology. Ecological Boy, you know, once you get past one or two syllables I have trouble. So we're going to talk about rangeland ecology.

0:49:28 - Blane
Yes, yes. So, like we said in the beginning, I wouldn't be where I'm at today without my love for the rangeland ecosystem. I don't know what it sets it apart from other grazing scenarios. Grazing systems Go to other parts of the world.

There's just nothing's really cool about Bermuda grass and fescue. Those are the two major grass bases that we have here in Northeast Oklahoma, and nothing against those species. They make great forage for livestock. You know fescue's got its issues you got to deal with. Bermuda grass has some issues as well. You know Bermuda grass behaves as well as you take care of it. It's kind of like I joke with my producers. It's kind of like my ex-girlfriend you kept spending money on her, she kept looking really good. Spending money on her, she kept looking really good. So with native rangeland, it's what shaped this ecosystem for eons or two major impacts fire and grazing. So we've worked with partners through my professional career but they had a. You know their conservation mindset was one of exclusion. We're going to remove all impacts and there's no better way to screw up an ecosystem If you remove all the impacts that shaped it.

So we've got some nature conservancy partners that have some property in South central Oklahoma that when they were donated the property, there was the stipulation of well, we want to set this aside, so we don't want to have any cows out here, we want to just have wildlife. And the ecosystem is. It's essentially in suspended animation. It's not functioning correctly because they've removed that grazing impact.

0:51:21 - Cal
So yeah, it wasn't created without that grazing impact.

0:51:24 - Blane
Yes, impact. So yeah, it wasn't created without that grazing impact, yes. So marrying of two worlds, or at least in my world, of of grazing systems, management and rangeland ecology you can't have one without the other. So most of the listeners have probably heard this in some form or fashion that the Great Flames were shaped by bison, massive migratory herds of bison. There were historic accounts of the great southern buffalo herd, six to seven million animals estimated, and they would move as a mob. They would move across this ecosystem, creating a tremendous impact 90 to 100% of forage utilization.

There was, if you've seen the movie Dances with Wolves, where this buffalo herd stampede. If they didn't eat it, they certainly trampled on it, oh yeah, and urinated and manured on it and manured on it. So it was just a tremendous impact. But then that long rest and recovery period that these grazing lands essentially evolved with, allowing that plant community to recover. But they all didn't recover with the same species. That's what we call ecological succession. So after a major disturbance, you would have the early successional species. We usually call them weeds.

So, if we took a tillage scenario so a farmer's out there plowing the ground or he plows up sod, use the pioneers, for example that first succession of plants that tried to come back and repopulate were weeds. They were tall, rank, nasty stuff that probably tasted bad to livestock, probably had stickers, pokers and thorns on it, but that plant was bioengineered to resist crazy impact to allow recovery. For the next succession, the mid-successional species, we start to look at species like side oats, grama, several other different grass, forb and legume species that their job was to fill in the gap after the weeds had done their job. And then the tertiary or the secondary succession of the mature blue stems switchgrass, indiang, indian grass or, at least for a tall grass, prairie scenario, where where I'm at northeast oklahoma was historically tall grass prairie.

so, utilizing the the methods of high intensity regenerative grazing, of whatever term you choose to utilize adaptive multi-paddock grazing if you want to, to use total grazing high density, we're shooting for the same target. But truly, the recreation of this method of grazing restores the function of that ecosystem, everything from the growth and regrowth of these grasses, who are ecologically evolved to tolerate a fair amount of grazing, as long as they get an appropriate rest and recovery period.

I recently had the opportunity to go through and vet the Noble Research Institute's Essentials of Grazing course, and they do a wonderful job of reinforcing the idea of there's no way you can harm a grass base in a single grazing event. You can. You can turn a million pounds of livestock onto an acre and let them I don't want to say demolish it, but but excessive utilization. But as long as you get those cows off of that impact and allow appropriate rest and recovery grass, water, sun, everything relative give it 60 to 90 days. I tell my producers don't mow your yard for 90 days. What happens then? They say, oh, my grass is thick and rank. Well, that's what your pasture could look like too.

Utilizing the same methods. What do we do when we mow our yards? We have a tremendous impact and a long rest and recovery period. Now we're just trading a cow for a lawnmower, but the impact is similar, oh yeah.

It's the same thing. Yeah, we're recycling those nutrients when we see, in a lot of our set stock, continuous grazing scenarios. A lot of the highly palatable species get grazed down, the unpalatable species increase and overtake. We're talking species like broom sedge, bluestem perennial and annual threon, long spike tridents. Here in Northeast Oklahoma If you're in some wetter areas it might be prairie cordgrass, but there's a whole suite of species that they belong in the ecosystem. They're native species but as you continually selectively remove their competition that being the high quality, high palatability species that's when they start increasing overtaking and when it gets to be, such a problem.

We hear farmers say well, how do I kill it? I said, and essentially it. How do I kill it? I said, and essentially it's not how to kill it, it's what management scenario have we been in for 20 plus years that caused this to be such a problem? So for a lot of years, or at least in my collegiate professional development, you know it was. It was we were addressing symptoms. We weren't looking at the causes of these problems. So the more I studied and the more I learned about regenerative grazing as an ecosystem function, not just a grazing management plan for the sake of pure profitability or management or reduction of input costs. Whichever avenue you want to approach that from, or reduction of input costs, whichever avenue you want to approach that from, it's truly the restoration of that ecosystem function that allows those native grasses to one, provide a forage base.

Two, do their ecosystem function below ground, with the soil we talk a lot about soil health. It's the impact of grazing. Removing the tops of those plants triggers a flush of root exudates below the soil. So those roots are leaking out sugary liquids to attract microbes. Those microbes break down, process, cycle and recycle nutrients. And as long as there is an appropriate rest and recovery period where the plants can then grow, put out solar panels, then put carbon back down into their roots. We could talk about how the carbon cycle is affected.

We could talk about how the water cycle is affected If we have the ebb and flow of the root reduction after a grazing event and then the root regrowth after that rest of recovery period. You know we're talking about fracturing soil profiles open to where they can hold more moisture. We're in a D3 drought right now. We mentioned earlier that you know where your few blades of green grass are in your pasture. Well, I know exactly where my green grasses are in my pasture and, excluding the low lying areas, that gets a little bit of sub irrigation from the pond. I could tell you exactly the grazing event that occurred in certain areas and how it relates to the greenness, because I've got a few strips where, just on, accidentally, on purpose, I double grazed a water alley just to see what would happen.

So I got home late one night and I said I'm just going to leave those cows in that strip an extra day and they'll either hurt it or they won't. And I've got a nice visual strip of it's not much of a difference. But that grass is just a tiniest shade of green, greener than the strip before it or the strip after it. So seeing a little bit of a tangible benefit from that just kind of reinforces the fact that you can't hurt these grassland species in a single grazing event. They can handle it, they can take a liquid and keep on ticking, but you got to give them that rest and recovery.

And then for the rangeland ecology purpose we talk about intrinsic benefits wildlife, earthworms, the biology that comes in, and we still don't have a good grip on the total soil biome as far as the ecological functions of different microorganisms, bacteria, fungus, protozoa. We just know that if we do the grazing, the correct management in a correct fashion, we get the benefits from it, Even if we don't know how it works. I tell people I drive my truck every day. I don't know how to work on the engine, but I trust it to work as long as I do the maintenance and take care of it. I change the oil, tune her up every couple of years, make sure all the fluids are topped off. But I trust that system to work as long as I do the maintenance.

And that's grazing management and rangeland ecology in a nutshell. If we do the management and the maintenance, it'll continue to work for you in a pretty efficient I don't want to say low input, but reduced input manner that ultimately we can either run more cows on smaller acreages and put more money in our pockets.

1:00:41 - Cal
Yeah, which you know. We have these noble goals and everything, but at the end of the day, if you're not getting more money in your pocket, you're not going to be around to do it.

1:00:51 - Blane
That was what I fought with when I first entered my career in conservation, because we were so exclusionary. It was almost like you could get government conservation assistance to do nice things at the expense of your operation. Yeah we'll go plant you some range plants, but then you have to exclude grazing as part of your conservation plan.

1:01:16 - Cal
Oh yeah.

1:01:17 - Blane
I know it was to establish those species you don't want to over. You don't want to raise those species before they're ready, of course Right. Species you don't want over, you don't want to raise those species before they're they're ready, of course right. But again, those exclusionary practices just never did sit well with me when, as a as a producer, you know, I was always of the mentality of if we're having to exclude anything, is it?

is it doing any good, whether it's excluding the grazing or exclusion of species that should be in the ecosystem, that we've removed through essentially poor grazing practices.

1:01:50 - Cal
Right. Yeah, well, blaine, it's time for us to transition to our famous four questions, sponsored by Kencove Farm Fence. Kencove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass podcast and grazers everywhere. Farmfence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass Podcast and grazers everywhere. At Ken Cove FarmFence, they believe there is 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. Whether you're growing your own food on the homestead or grazing on thousands of acres.

Expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant. Whether you're growing your own food on the homestead or grazing on thousands of acres, ken Cove has everything you need to do it well. From reels to tumbleweels, polytwine to electric nets, water valves to water troughs, you'll find what you're looking for at Ken Cove. They carry brands like Speedrite, o'briens, kiwi Tech, strainrite, jobe and more. Ken Cove is proud to be part of your regenerative journey. Call them today or visit KenCovecom, and be sure to follow them on social media and subscribe to the Ken Cove YouTube channel at Ken Cove Farm Fence for helpful how-to videos and new product releases. They're the same four questions we ask of all of our guests and Blaine to get started. What's your favorite grazing grass-related book or resource?

1:03:15 - Blane
My favorite would probably have to be my first one, a recommendation from a friend. I had not quite fully shifted into a regenerative mindset. I was on board with the idea of soil health as it related to crop lands, cover cropping as part of my career, but I wasn't a farmer so I wasn't getting a lot of crossover. So I had a friend of mine. He was utilizing cover crops as a grazing resource and I've actually got the book sitting right here just because of it. How to Not Go Broke Ranching by Walt Davis.

1:03:51 - Cal
Oh yes.

1:03:52 - Blane
I had an excellent opportunity to get to listen to him speak at an event in Ada, oklahoma, and it was right before he had passed away. So to have the opportunity to listen to him, to gain that knowledge and to have this resource that, oh yeah well, does an excellent job of breaking down basically everything we've discussed so far.

But in a in a set of terms that anybody can can understand and utilize. Um, where we get a little disconnect excuse me, me some disconnect from, let's say, our research partners with our universities and the ranchers out there putting it into practice, verbiage and terminologies and the way research papers are written. Walt breaks down those barriers, puts it in a set of words that anybody can understand and anybody can utilize and take forward.

1:04:47 - Cal
Yeah, Excellent resource there. Our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm?

1:04:55 - Blane
My favorite tool. Well, outside of the basics you know, the utilization of ATV or the poly reels or the souped up charge I think everybody needs to invest in a set of shears and a gram scale to do grass clippings. Because, oh yeah, how do we know how many cattle we can run or how do we know how long we can leave livestock in a paddock if we can't do forage evaluations? Long we can leave livestock in a paddock if we can't do forage evaluations. So there are several resources like the, the nrcs web soil survey, if you utilized a pasture stick to do forage estimation and evaluation. Those are all great methods. But I think everybody needs once a year to go out and do an actual hoop grass clipping because that gives you as accurate of a measurement of infield forage at that time, that snapshot in time as you can get. So I've got what essentially equals out to a tenth of a meter hoop and just a scale, and I'll put a little little. I usually use a soil sample bag and I'll cut all the grass in that hoop, stuff it in or stuff it in that bag. I'll weigh that bag beforehand and then my little grand scale, weigh it and then extrapolate that into pounds of forage per acre. Now I know how much grass I have per acre. Then it's just a math problem of how to set up my paddocks or figure out the length of time I need to run livestock in a particular area. So, for instance, I've gone out. If you utilize the web soil survey, it says my ground makes about 3,800 pounds of grass per acre on an average year.

Well, I haven't had an average year since I've been here. It's they've been right. There was dang dry. There was dry in the early part of the year, then wet in the second part of the summer and I had a really good weed flush but not so much grass grow. And then this year I had a excellent early spring and early summer and then it turned off dry and had to rain since fourth of july. But having having the ability to go out and get those snapshots of your forage availability in any type of growing season, I'm probably overstocked as we sit today, because I didn't get the regrowth I expected after my first grazing event Having the ability to import a little hay.

I've got a brother-in-law right next door. He's got a 20 some odd acre hay meadow. He keeps some hay for his horses but since his cows are running on, his cows are running with mine, it's just kind of a combined operation I I. The only hay cost I have is I got to fill up the diesel tank for dad when he comes and cuts the hay he's got some hay meadows near us.

As soon as he finishes up with some custom work, he comes and bails our 20, some acres, and you know, it's just dad doing us a favor. But having having the ability to measure forage is essential. So, outside of all our other tools that we have available, get you a scale clip and a hoop to do grass clippings.

1:08:05 - Cal
And I'll be honest, I've never done that, but I think I ought to try it and see what it tells me.

1:08:12 - Blane
And another benefit from that is, once you start doing enough of those grass clippings, you can start calibrating your eye. Oh yeah, okay, if I visually see about 12 inches of's, say, mixed burbuda grass, fescue and you know that about 12 inches. Every time I've trimmed it or or harvested it in my hoop and say, well, it's coming out to about 4,500 pounds, and you go out there and do a cut and you're either way high or way low. You say, okay, did I do something incorrect? Am I truly that low? Do I need to repeat that? So it just helps calibrate or tune your optical illusionist, your eyes out there, to make sure you're still seeing and getting pretty close to where you need to be. Oh yeah.

1:09:03 - Cal
Yeah, yeah, excellent. Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started? Find your people.

1:09:14 - Blane
I could not be in this operation or be excited about this type of regenerative grazing if I didn't have a group of people just like me that are so excited to talk about soil improvement, to talk about rangeland or grassland function, the intangibles outside of ag production. Don't get me wrong. We wouldn't do this if we didn't love it, the cows, the operation, just being in agriculture providing that service to the world. But I don't know if you've ever seen a bunch of like-minded people geek out at looking at dung beetles in cow manure. But that's the kind of people we are.

Oh yeah, there are resources available at our conservation offices. There's people that are willing to help. There's people that are willing to help. But the social media age, the one good benefit, if it really has any, is we've been able to find those communities that we wouldn't have found otherwise. Similar to the Grazing Grass podcast group.

We've got listeners coming in from all different parts of the world chiming in, talking about what works for them, what doesn't work for them, finding people in your areas. We had a podcast listener, I think about a year ago now, that listened to my counterpart, meg Dreske, when she came on the podcast. And this producer reaches out to Meg and says I'm interested in some conservation assistance, really interested in the things that she had spoke about. And, meg, she's our counterpart in Western Oklahoma. So she says I'll get you in contact with Blaine. He's our Eastern Oklahoma grazing land specialist. You want to know something crazy? Quint Dawson lives three quarters of a mile down the road from me.

So this producer through the podcast found somebody and he's right down the road from me. So this producer, through the podcast, found somebody and he's right down the road. He's my neighbor when we purchased our current properties. We purchased them from the same guy it was all part of just a dispersal sale.

So, finding those people in your community that we would never have found any other way without connecting through social media, through podcasting, finding those people Once you got your community around you, they're going to be your biggest cheerleaders, they're going to be your biggest shoulders to cry on, they're going to be your support system. So find your people and everything else will fall into place. They'll give you advice, They'll give you suggestions. The works.

1:11:43 - Cal
Oh yeah, and what's that saying? You're the average of your five closest friends, the people you hang out with, and so often those are people we work with. But just think about the people you hang out with and what they are doing. Is that where you want to be? That's right In in anything. So, yeah, that's the reason I think my wife doesn't want to hang out with me as much. So I'm working on that.

1:12:07 - Blane
but uh, my wife is extremely interested in it, but but there there is a limit. We I was sitting on the couch on my phone and I have an app on my phone called the soil web app and you can, you can look at soils descriptions. Anyway, I'm scrolling through my phone and she says what you reading. I said soils description. She went you so well, there's a limit. But you know, take that with a grain of salt, I guess yeah well, I invited my wife out to lunch tomorrow.

1:12:38 - Cal
I said why don't we just go out eat lunch somewhere tomorrow and instead of saying hey, that's a great idea, or I'd love to? She's like what farm are we going to or what livestock are you looking at? Ulterior motives.

1:12:52 - Blane
I got you Well, since you brought it up.

1:12:56 - Cal
there are some livestock involved, but you know, it's just a minor portion, that's it.

1:13:01 - Blane
That's it, it's we, you know, it's funny you say that oh, greg judy, jim garris, those guys, you know, they. They say they're grass farmers. Uh, we're the. The livestock are the tool that we utilize to create the grass that we want, not vice versa. So oh, yeah that's always. That's always that that was that I had. Another turning point of my mindset is we don't grow the grass to feed the cow, we feed the cow to grow the grass.

1:13:32 - Cal
Yes, yeah, the cattle are the tools you're using, or whatever livestock you're choosing to go with. Yeah, and lastly, blaine, where can others find out more about you?

1:13:42 - Blane
As far as social media, I've I media. I've got one social profile on Facebook For my professional career, the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. You can reach us for outreach, education or assistance through the Oklahoma Conservation Commission website. If you want to email info at conservationokgov for general information. Or you can reach me my email is blainestacey at conservationokgov.

Like I said earlier, I'm kind of the de facto eastern Oklahoma grazing lands guy for our program. I'm not limited by that. I've got producers I still continue to work with scattered out throughout Oklahoma. But our program the Oklahoma Conservation Commission Soil Health Program we've got five soil health specialists scattered throughout the state. Meg Gretzky is in Cheyenne, oklahoma. So way out west We've got an urban soil health specialist in Oklahoma city and Tulsa. We've got a soil health specialist Josh Anderson and Ardmore. So we're scattered out throughout the state to provide assistance to producers.

Also your local conservation district If you're in Oklahoma. Other States have different conservation programs but the root of our services start at your local conservation office in Oklahoma. If soil health is something you're interested in managed grazing, that's always what I recommend as your first stop shop, because if they don't have what you need they're going to call me anyway. But it's a good opportunity to get involved with the local conservation district, get signed up for programs. I always tell people if you want to win the lottery, you got to buy a ticket. If you want to be eligible for financial assistance, you got to go in there and sign up. Oh yeah, the nature of conservation assistance is we don't have enough money to help everybody, so you got to get your name on the hat for that, as everything else.

The only other place you could probably find me is in the standings of the saddle bronc riding for the cowboys rodeo association. I do, oh yeah, I do moonlight as a. I tell people I am a amateur grazing artist and a semi-professional saddle bronc rider and the only reason I bring rodeo up is because I have met so many regenerative-minded grazing people through the sport of rodeo and most of them have been right. Here in Northeast Oklahoma there's been a couple of young men that I didn't really know them that well, but we were all. We rodeoed and was on the way to rodeo in Arkansas and he asked me. She said, blaine, what do you do for a living? And I kind of hemmed and hawed. I said, well, I do some grazing consultations and I work for the conservation commission and we do grazing, management, planning, and he goes. So have you ever heard of Greg Judy? And just immediate sparks, sparks go to flying. We didn't talk about rodeo. The rest of the trip we were oh yeah we were grass nerds there and back.

And, and this, this guy, he's. He's building me a greg judy style bail unroller. Uh, his name, oh yeah, his name's zane bowman. He's building me a bail unroller that I can utilize this year. So, oh, very good, I've made several contacts just through the sport of rodeo. Uh, the, the guy that pointed out the the how to not go broke ranching, he's a pickup man, a man for a rodeo company up in missouri, but he just recently moved out to okima.

1:17:16 - Cal
So he was the one that that that told me.

1:17:18 - Blane
He said have you read this book?

1:17:19 - Cal
and I said no yeah, and I can picture that blaine getting bucked off. He's coming to get you off that horse and you have that conversation as he takes you over to the side.

1:17:30 - Blane
Yeah, how's your grass at your house? I said as good as it gets at your house. Yeah, it's good. That's usually about all the time we've got. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk later. Yeah, it's the before and after. Talks at rodeos that he's working at and that I'm competing ultimately end up talking about grass and grazing because it's such a core part of our personalities. It's almost like the rodeo portion is just a sidebar. I utilize the rodeo as a little bit of an extra income. Some people go golfing on the weekends, some people go to the casino casino. I've been fortunate enough that I don't know if you can see I've got I've got about four of those championship saddles.

1:18:11 - Cal
So oh yeah, that's very good.

1:18:13 - Blane
They've blessed me the last several years and I've been able to utilize that rodeo money to put it back in my operation. So I I bought a new four-wheeler last year with rodeo money. I paid for my infrastructure, infrastructure, my high-tensile and my spin charger and all the accessories that go with it. Last year Paid for it by riding bucking horses. Now I am 36 years old and I'm the oldest guy back there, so that is coming to an end fairly quickly.

1:18:43 - Cal
But the only thing I'm going to.

1:18:45 - Blane
I'm going to shift into more of a administrative role. I'd like to become a rodeo judge and still be involved with it, but a lot less wear and tear on the body.

1:18:56 - Cal
Yeah, that that would probably be a little easier on you on your body and recovery the next day. Yeah, and I'll try to end with this story.

1:19:04 - Blane
So, okay, I left the rodeo part of it till the very end, but I truly cannot tell my story of of where I am at in my professional career without rodeo. Because in 2007, I took an internship with the NRCS in Pawnee, oklahoma, and there was a rangeland specialist that worked in the office. His name was Joe Villalba and he was a cowboy. We were both interested in the Western lifestyle rodeoing. The only rodeoing I had done previous to this was I tried to be a bull rider. I was way too tall, wasn't any good at it. I'd go enter a few bull ridings, get bucked off, and that was. That was the end of the year. So one day in a conversation just he just mentioned, you know, you, you ever try riding saddle broncs because, number one, there's just not that many saddle bronc riders anymore. I don't know if it's just the cost of equipment to get started oh yeah it's a pretty steep learning curve.

It took me five years before I could even really stay on a horse that was bucking and go through all the motions and make a successful ride, oh yeah. But at that time he put that bug in my ear. For some reason it stayed there. End of the summer, I had some money saved up from my internship, so I bought a bronc riding saddle and started entering rodeos.

So, fast forward to February of 2014, I broke my shoulder in Jackson, mississippi, at the big pro rodeo there, and at the time I was working at a pipe yard. So I couldn't work. I couldn't ride a horse, I couldn't work, I couldn't ride a horse, I couldn't ride rocks, couldn't do anything. So I just so happened to be sitting at the table looking at job listings and I found the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. So if I hadn't broke that shoulder, I'd still probably be working at that pipe yard today. So I would not have a rodeo career without conservation and I would not have a conservation career without rodeo. So those two those two parts of me are are inseparable in any case. So you don't like talking about grass, we can talk about rodeo. If you don't like talking about rodeo, we'll talk about grass, but either one will never run out of stuff to talk about.

1:21:22 - Cal
Oh, yeah, it's interesting how things work out in life. Blaine, I'm really glad we got you on here. You know I mentioned to you in the email I've been planning to get you on here for a long time but I tried to monitor how many Okies I have on here so that we don't have so it's not too Oklahoma-centric. Try to space them out. But really enjoyed the conversation today and appreciate you coming on and sharing Absolutely.

1:21:50 - Blane
Again, if you're interested in any kind of conservation, technical assistance, outreach or education our soil health program at the Oklahoma Conservation Commission or if you just want to talk, grass and grazing, I'm an open book. Grass and grazing, I'm an open book. I'm actually hoping to shape and maintain my operation as a demonstration farm to utilize for folks to come in and view.

1:22:12 - Cal
Very good, very good. Well, thank you, blaine. I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I know I did. Thank you for listening and if you found something useful, please share it. Share it on your social media. Tell your friends, get the word out about the podcast. Helps us grow.

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Transcribed by https://podium.page