Livestock
Heirloom Apples & Craft Cider
Mehgan Blair (Lake Superior Chapter) and Nate Watters (Cannon River Chapter) are two orchardists and hyper-local craft cidermakers in different Minnesota landscapes. Blair and her family steward a historic dairy farm with an heirloom orchard in Duluth: Canosia Grove. Icelandic sheep are their “land managers,” grazing and conditioning the soil to expand their orchard. Watters…
Read MoreConventional to Kernza®: A Soil Health Journey
Kaleb Anderson is the third generation of his family farm in Goodhue, Minnesota, and grew up with a conventional ag background. Living in the Driftless region, soil degradation and erosion were always a big concern. Since moving back onto the farm in 2006, Anderson has adjusted practices and diversified the business. He would say that…
Read MorePayments for Hauling Water and Feed to Pasture
Attention to livestock producers with pasture: as a result of the drought we had this summer, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) has edited the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish program (ELAP) and it will now give producers payments for hauling water and feed to livestock on pasture. The payments are easy to…
Read MoreLuhman: What do you want to know about livestock?
Agriculture is so incredibly broad and diverse! Within crop farming there are so many crops and grains that a farmer can produce. As a livestock farmer you can produce a handful of species options, either grazed, or in more conventional feedlot methods. You can market directly to consumers, or on a commodity market, or in…
Read MoreDirt Rich: (Pastured) Turkey Talk
This week on Dirt Rich, we’re revisiting our episode on the bird of the hour: turkeys! Kathy Zeman pasture-raises a veritable menagerie: goats, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys, broilers, hens, meat rabbits, and honeybees graze her twenty acres at Simple Harvest Farm Organics. The array of animals she raises now ensures she never has to…
Read MoreBuild farm resilience when you Give to the Max
My name is Jared Luhman, Soil Health Lead for the Sustainable Farming Association, SFA member, and grazier in southeast Minnesota. 2021 was a challenging year for farmers across the state. With Covid increasing the demand for local meat along with shortages of processing and possibly the worst drought in decades, we were challenged. The thing…
Read MoreDirt Rich: Field Notes
We’re shaking things up! My cohost and colleague Jared Luhman and I are playing the roles of both guests and hosts (ghosts?) in today’s episode. Join us for some “field notes” as we reflect on the past year: drought challenges and lessons, in-field experiences across the state, hopeful moments, and observations from different spaces in…
Read MoreLuhman: Lightening the Load
So often people fear that in order to improve their soil health and regenerate their soil it will come at the expense of their profitability and the success of their farming business. And while it is true that adopting regenerative farming practices can be a learning experience, and sometimes that comes with yield hits or…
Read More“Virtual Roundtables” are a Great Place to Learn
Did you know that if you are a Mentor or Apprentice in the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship program that you have access to our monthly webinars called Virtual Roundtables? The webinars are on the first Monday of each month at 11:30 and last for one hour. Each month has a new topic to learn about. The…
Read MoreDirt Rich: Getting Water Quality Certified
“It’s hard to find a Minnesotan that’s not proud of the fact that we’ve got so many wonderful lakes in our region and we’re the source for the Mississippi River…We have a lot of pride for our natural resources in this state and we have a lot of pride for our operations.” –Jennifer Wagner-Lahr The…
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