Grazing
Dirt Rich: A Chat with Gabe Brown
On the latest episode of Dirt Rich, Gabe Brown shares his ranch story and his 25+ years of learning about regenerative agriculture practices with host Jared Luhman. Before “soil health” concepts entered the mainstream, a few hail storms in the ‘90s, financial challenges, connections made with soil experts, and some serendipity prodded Gabe to try…
Read MoreSpring Grazing Management on ‘Dirt Rich’
When is the best time to turn the cows out? On Episode 31 of Dirt Rich, Kent Solberg and Jared Luhman dig into this decision that sets you up for the rest of the grazing season. It can be awful tempting to get started as soon as we see green, but Kent illustrates how letting…
Read MoreLuhman: Importance of Recording Observations
In adaptive grazing management, we are constantly adjusting and “adapting” our management to a variety of factors from weather, to the specific paddock we’re in, to the time of year it is as well as adapting to past management decisions. The challenge with adapting is that it is so easy to forget past observations or…
Read MoreSolberg on Soil: Wide-Row Corn for More Income, Soil Health?
Some recent thoughts on wide-row corn were recently discussed in Successful Farming Magazine. For producers with beef cattle, sheep or dairy replacement heifers, wide-row corn may be a more profitable way to use corn acres. Wide-row corn could be a means of developing 2-3 income streams from what was single-income acreage while increasing plant diversity, integrating livestock and…
Read MorePodcast: “Home on the Tree-Range”
In the newest episode of SFA’s ‘Dirt Rich’ podcast, we chat with Tony Wells of Regeneration Farms. Tony and a few partners are years into developing a regenerative and resilient poultry production system that provides opportunities for small farm profitability, which they’ve implemented on a 40-acre farm. The model attempts to replicate a forest habitat for poultry,…
Read MorePodcast: AMPed for Grazing!
Over the years of establishing and fine-tuning their management systems, grazing has become absolutely key in both Jared Luhman’s and Doug Voss’ cattle and dairy operations. Beyond rotational grazing, Adaptive Multi-Paddock grazing (or AMP) has improved the ecology of their farms–not to mention saved the time, energy, and expense of hauling around feed and other…
Read MoreDGA Update: Thousands in apprentice stipends available
I want to let you know about some programs that DGA has to offer for their Master Graziers and apprentice candidates. Did you know that if you are an Organic Valley farmer, you can qualify for a stipend to get an apprentice on your dairy farm? Organic Valley has partnered with DGA to offer their…
Read MoreLuhman: Summit brings national attendance
Last week was our 8th annual Midwest Soil Health Summit and we didn’t let Covid stop us from providing some great educational content to our attendees! We obviously prefer to hold an in-person conference, and are planning to go in-person again in 2022. However, by offering a virtual summit we had 12 attendees from outside…
Read MorePodcast: “It’s like Tinder for cows.”
“I think the future of farming looks more collaborative. It looks like working together, and it’s about stacking enterprises.” Meghan Filbert of Practical Farmers of Iowa (and a beginning farmer to boot) joins Dirt Rich to talk about an online tool facilitating just that. Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) is a nonprofit in Ames, Iowa…
Read MoreLuhman: Time to reflect and plan
For many farmers, winter is a time when we are able to slow down. Here at Dry Creek Farms harvest is over, and we are still several months from planting. Last year’s calves are weaned, many are gone, and calving is months away. It’s really just been a great time for me to reflect on…
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