Close to the Ground Keeping You Up-to-Date on the Art and Science of On-Farm Monitoring Fall 1999/Winter 2000 • Vol.1, No.3

Welcome

Here we are again, bundled up a little more than last time…that is, if you are in or near Minnesota. Regardless of where ‘home’ is, some things have changed over time. See how we monitor our own lives—it is such a normal, natural process.

This issue will help you think through a few monitoring conundrums, or perhaps create a couple more. One article presents the questions of farm economics as a function not just of cash flow but of ecological worth as well. The continued debate on over-wintering cattle is furthered in our cover story with special attention paid to pasture regrowth. And we offer a love story, bluebird style!

Three final tidbits: the muskmelons mentioned in the last issue materialized soon after and were scrumptious! You will notice that this publication is meant to be hole-punched and included in your Tool Box. And some of you returned a survey on your impressions of the Monitoring Tool Box. We’ll report the results when they’re available.

LSP and collaborators in Minn. and Wisc. have begun a project focused on monitoring and riparian grazing, subjects that need optimum discussion. Publications, presentations and grazing schools will get the word out. If you or someone you know is interested in sharing your experiences and/or farm, please contact LSP.

Please do send us your words and pictures about how you’re being intentional in your land use. You’ll help someone else along the way with an idea, a bit of inspiration.

Cover Story

Cows on Snow…Really!
by Ralph Lentz

Grass farmer Ralph Lentz conducted a two-year study in 1994-96 as part of the Energy and Sustainable Agriculture Program (ESAP) of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. His goal was to investigate several winter-related, low-input pasture management practices and their affect on herd health, pasture ecosystems, and his daily life. Lentz’s research and personal observations began several years prior to the ESAP study and continue to this day. Below is an abbreviated report of his findings for 1994-96 and an update from this fall.

Ralph Lentz farms in the Mississippi River bluffs region of southeast Minnesota. His farm is a mixture of hills and relatively flat areas, 17 different soil types, and the influences of 1600 adjacent acres that drain through his place. Some of the poorer soils include clay-loam gumbo types, which make for poor drainage and difficult tillage. Consequently, Lentz feels his farm is best suited for grazing livestock, at a rate of about 40 beef cows year-round. His buildings and equipment are minimal: a barn to wean calves and house winter replacements, a 90 horsepower diesel tractor, and hay-making implements.

The research project addressed three different but related aspects of grass-fed beef cow production:

1. the use of animal impact and over-wintering to establish and maintain pastures;
2. the establishment of warm season native prairie grasses using cattle as the planting mechanism;
3. the environmental impact of feeding cattle on frozen ground.

To explore the first aspect, Lentz utilized three 4-acre paddocks that had last been cropped in oats in 1992, with no subsequent fertilizers, herbicides or tillage. In one paddock, quack grass and other species returned to allow 18 days of grazing.

Another paddock was winter-seeded on top of snow in early January, then stocked with hay-fed cattle to work the seed into the soil. By spring the herd had left sizable hoof depressions and little residue, but there was little manure runoff or soil erosion. The paddock was rested until mid-June and then successfully grazed for 10 days. Over-wintered sites continue to produce about twice as many grazing days as non-wintered areas.

The second part was motivated by Lentz’s understanding of warm season grasses as a source of abundant forage when common pastures go dormant. Lentz plowed an old alfalfa field in the fall and planted it to rye, hoping that rye’s allelopathetic qualities would clear the field of common weeds. This worked, but within a week of cutting in June (at flower stage for bedding) quack grass filled the field.

So Lentz sprayed Roundup and in early July hired a custom operator to plant a mixture of barley, bluestem, switch grass, and Indian grass. Grazing the following June controlled all weeds, allowing the prairie species to become established and eventually to go to seed. Lentz rested the five acres until November, when 44 cows and 33 calves grazed it and trampled in the seed.

Overwintering cattle on pasture appears to have a positive impact on biomass production, soil erosion, and manure runoff, in spite of the surface appearance in spring. Lentz observed that:

1. A low input system helped him weather depressed feeder cattle prices;
2. The added manure helped increase biomass production and added heat for cattle warmth and earlier snow melt than in other paddocks;
3. Energy savings from not distributing 10-15 tons of manure per cow per year were considerable;
4. Field song bird populations increased with the establishment of paddocks;
5. Animal impact in spring or fall was beneficial if the duration is short and the rest period is long.

In November of this year, Lentz noted:

1. Beef cow economics will not pay for silos, concrete feeding systems, and shelters. The low-input economics of over-wintering make sense.
2. I haven’t had a vet bill for two years. I had a mild outbreak of winter dysentery in 1997, but the animals survived it without medicines, special care, or confinement.
3. Shelter is a necessity in Minnesota winters. This valley farm is ideal, with steep hills and terraces or timber for shelter during severe storms.
4. Early June grazing is important to control cool season grasses and dandelions before the warm season grasses really start growing. The prairie area was grazed three times this year. I am beginning to think that the most sustainable grass-based systems would have warm and cool season grasses.

Ralph Lentz can be reached at 651-345-2557. For a complete report on his 1994-96 project, consult the Greenbook ‘97 Tools for Success compiled in July 1997 by the ESAP staff (651-296-7673.)

Tips

The Soil Health Card—Gauging quality with just a hand or an eye
by Ann Lewandowski

Do you have healthy soil? How do you know?

Maybe you make formal measurements and send them to a lab, or conduct an in-field respiration test, or take an infiltration measurement. There are several tests in the Monitoring Tool Box that require rudimentary or home-made equipment.

But you may depend even more on informal observations such as how well a field drains after a heavy rain, the health of your crops and weeds, and ease of tillage. A soil health card is a simple rating system created by farmers that takes advantage of these visual observations.

Farmers can use a soil health card to quickly evaluate soil quality and to compare the effects of management practices on soil quality over time.

Because the card relies on qualitative observations, you can’t easily compare your ratings with those made by your neighbor. But there are some unique advantages of a soil health card:

1. It is written in farmers’ terms.
2. It is adapted to local conditions and needs. Cards developed in different regions across the country may use similar indicators, but they differ in important ways because crops, soils, and cultures vary. For example, Maryland farmers include pH and erosion on their indicator table but North Dakota farmers decided not to. Both groups included soil tilth as an indicator, but poor tilth in Maryland was defined as "looks dead, like brick or concrete," and in North Dakota as "hard or very firm soil." There could be differences within a state, too.

Farmers in about 10 states have developed cards by using the Soil Quality Card Design Guide. The guide describes a step-by-step process for leading farmers through the process of identifying soil quality indicators and developing a Soil Health Card. The endproduct is a region-specific, user- friendly, do-it-yourself tool to assess soil quality.

By participating in such a gathering, farmers will have generated valuable discussion about soil quality. Typically, the meetings are facilitated by Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) or Extension employees with technical soils training. This is an opportunity for these technical specialists and farmers to learn how the other understands soil.

The Design Guide and samples of soil health cards from around the country are available on the NRCS Soil Quality Institute web site (http://www.statlab.iastate.edu/survey/SQI/sqihome.shtml). For more information or to order a Design Guide, contact Ann Lewandowski by telephone at 612-624-6765, or by email at alewand@soils.umn.edu

Ann Lewandowski is a geographer for the NRCS Soil Quality Institute. She writes and edits soil quality information for distribution to NRCS personnel and land managers around the country. Her office is at the University of Minnesota.

Research

Monitoring the Economics of Sustainable Farm Management
by Gigi DiGiacomo

Rapidly changing commodity prices, farm input costs, and government policies can easily lead to short-sighted farm management decisions that are based on immediate market and policy conditions at the expense of long-term goals. While management adjustments are often necessary during a given production year, it is also essential to step back and take a look at how the farm business performs over time. With this insight, development of a long-range plan can help a family move toward its personal as well as farm business goals.

A handful of farmers participating in the Sustainable Farming Systems (SFS) Project are doing just that. They hope that by monitoring at the whole farm level, they can learn whether it is possible to manage for ecological enhancement while maintaining or improving farm income. These families recognize the need for multi-year economic monitoring in order to build a sustainable farm business. The six families from the Sand Creek (south central Minn.) and Chippewa River (western Minn.) watersheds currently operate diversified crop and livestock farms and are engaged in alternative farm management practices such as rotational grazing, minimum tillage, and/or organic crop production.

Economic monitoring includes goal setting, record keeping, and analysis that can be used in whole farm planning.

As a group, their management philosophy is based on diversification, environmental stewardship, and personal family goals. Even so, profitability is important to them, too. The families share several economic and whole farm goals including risk management, debt reduction, increased use of family labor, and the desire to build a beautiful and healthy farm landscape.

Based on their goals, team members are exploring how production and marketing diversification reduce price and income-related risks from year to year. At the same time, they are taking a hard look at economic performance within individual enterprises: the difference, for example, between the viability of laying hens versus turkeys. In the words of a farm team member, "enterprise monitoring becomes especially important when the operation is diversified. You need to be able to track which enterprises are profitable."

During the SFS Project’s first year of monitoring, participants measured enterprise operating expenses and productivity, returns to capital and labor investments, and whole farm profitability. These analyses were conducted in cooperation with the Minnesota Farm Business Management Assoc. using FINPACK™ software. At the same time, team members began measuring their family’s progress toward farm, community, and environmental goals with help from a worksheet from the Monitoring Tool Box developed by University of Minnesota economist Dick Levins.

One year is not enough to understand how the variables work out over time, so we intend to conduct this research for two more years. Building a sustainable farm business doesn’t happen overnight!

Gigi DiGiacomo is available for more discussion about economic monitoring at 612-545-8634 or digia002@tc.umn.edu

Field Notes

Monitoring Bluebirds for a Love Song
by Jodi Dansingburg

"The eastern bluebird’s love song is why it is referred to as the bluebird of happiness. If you have not heard their song on a cool spring morning, you have not yet lived! It is as if he has ripped a rainbow from the sky, sprinkled it with stardust, converted it to music, and poured it from his heart. Ahhh, this is the sound of our bluebirds, this is the sound of spring."
- Texas Bluebirder Keith Kridle

Last April I got wind that the annual meeting of the Bluebird Recovery Program was being held in Winona, Minn., just up the road from our farm. It seemed like the ideal opportunity to learn more about this attractive species, which has declined in numbers since the beginning of the century due to loss of habitat and the introduction of two bird species from Europe - the house sparrow in 1850 and the starling in 1890.

Speakers shared information on everything from placing and managing bluebird boxes to advantages and disadvantages of various designs of bluebird houses. We even learned how to photograph bluebirds from the well-known Minnesota Department of Natural Resources author Carroll Henderson, author of Landscaping for Wildlife and Wild About Birds.

I left the conference all excited and ready to move those bluebird houses out of our shed and wait for the "little blues" to move in and set up housekeeping. We were lucky enough to have a pair of bluebirds settle into one of the four houses set up on the farm!

There are several things that stick with me from the conference and my subsequent monitoring experiences which may be of interest to others.

1. Bluebirds are not scared off by people and benefit from the watchful eyes of human admirers. Here’s why. Bluebird houses are used by a variety of other bird species. House sparrows and wrens are the least desirable users of bluebird houses and wrens are the most destructive. They destroy the nests of their competitors (ie. bluebirds), by poking holes in eggs, pulling nests apart, and removing eggs from the nests.

Chickadees and swallows make use of bluebird houses without harming bluebird nests. Placing houses within 15 feet of each other allows one for a bluebird pair and one for another species. This keeps swallows from taking both boxes and may reduce wren predation.

The key to producing successful bluebird fledglings is weekly monitoring of the birdhouses. A good bluebird house can be opened without disturbing the nest to see what’s in it (bluebird eggs are blue!). You won’t scare off the bluebirds by doing this. If you discover a nest full of feathers or speckled eggs, or observe a wren or sparrow nesting in the box, you may want to remove the nest.

2. If you really want to attract bluebirds to your site you can feed them. I tried this with a few containers of meal worms which I was able to keep in their container in the fridge until I was ready to use them. To the thrill of our family and our neighbors, a couple of bluebirds used a house and feeder we set up on the edge of a sheep pasture. Our monitoring was nearly daily as the kids and I kept a close watch on the eggs and then the babies as they hatched, grew and flew.

3. Some bluebird houses are more effective than others. Two types generally produce good results. The first is the Peterson box with its angled front door and the second is a PVC plastic design with a wooden removable roof. The more square boxes seemed more likely to suffer from dampness and insect infestations.

4. There is a well-organized and extensive network of bluebird watchers. Minnesota’s Bluebird Recovery Program of the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis (P.O. Box 3801, Mpls, MN 55403) coordinates bluebird monitoring and reporting efforts. They have an easy-to-use form to keep track of changes in the populations and methods of encouraging nests and successful fledglings. Members also do educational presentations to inspire would-be "bluebirders." An $8 membership fee entitles you to the organization’s newsletter and resource catalog. Consider attending next year’s annual conference at the University of Minnesota’s Arboretum in Chaska on April 15, 2000.

The network of bluebird enthusiasts extends beyond Minnesota. If you have access to the web, you can subscribe to BLUEBIRD-L@cornell.edu which offers an exchange of ideas and bluebird news from all over the country. The national North American Bluebird Society’s next annual meeting will be near Galena, Illinois from June 22-25, 2000 (call 815-845-2390 or go on-line at www.nabluebirdsociety.org for more info.) Here’s another site: www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/1999/bluebird/bluebird.htm You can also check with your local Audubon chapter or state natural resource management department to find groups in your state.

Jodi Dansingburg and her family raise goats and watch bluebirds on Dancing Meadow Farm in southeast Minnesota. She worked for LSP with the original Biological, Social, and Financial Monitoring Project, the forerunner to the Monitoring Tool Box. She can be reached at 507-454-4024 or jodid@landstewardshipproject.org

Resources/Tools

Minnesota Weather Guide, The Environmental Calendar 2000 (Fresh Water Society) includes a monthly page with sun, moon, precipitation, and average high and low temps plus additional pages on monthly meteorology, phenology, and astronomy information. Wall or book size. Available in local grocery stores, bookstores or by calling toll free 888-471-9773. $13.95 plus $2 shipping.

A Wildlife Manager’s Field Guide to the Farm Bill (Wildlife Management Institute). A 44-page booklet that reviews agricultural conservation programs that affect wildlife and the USDA agencies that administer them. Targeted at wildlife managers, but lots of useful information for farmers and landowners. Available through the Institute, 1101 14th St. NW., Suite 801, Wash., D.C. 20005 or by telephone, 202-371-1808. $4 postpaid.


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