The Unconventional Father and Son
When the neighbors look at you funny, you’re probably doing something right. Barry Little and his son Eli operate the Blue River Ranch in Hamlin County, South Dakota. They focus on soil, cover crops, grasslands, and livestock. Their ways might be unconventional, but they’re saving money and reaping the benefits of healthy land.
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Following is a transcript of this episode of the Successful Farming podcast.
Eli:
I'm Eli Little and we are at the Blue River Ranch headquarters, Barry Little is here. My dad and I have been farming together basically, since I got out of college and that was in 2013. We do corn, beans, wheat, cover crops, and we have cattle and sheep, hogs, chickens, and we try to integrate everything that we do, getting cattle out on cover crops and getting them out on all of our fields and trying to improve our soil health is our number one priority out here, the healthy soil that makes the healthy animals and healthy food.
Mitch:
I think one of the key things that we want to talk about is the grasslands that you do have here. And the fact that one, that was ground that was tilled at one point, and then it went to CRP and now you're working it back into grassland. So talk a little bit about that transition and really the reasoning behind that as well.
Eli:
Okay. So we have about 400 acres of grassland that we have as pasture now, most of that used to be tilled land and it wasn't productive, it's a lot of low river bottom ground, and it was put into CRP. And then from there, we put it into pasture and we've been rotationally grazing it year after year more intensively getting into a routine every year. And we've really seen the soil improve and seen a lot more diversity in the plants that weren't even planted there. Cattle and resting paddocks has really helped improve everything out there.
Mitch:
What role do cover crops play in the grasslands? And we talked about the fact that you're able to rest it and rotate.
Eli:
We got into cover crops here about really about five years ago, and it's really allowed us more options for grazing, late summer and into the fall where we can get the cattle off of the pasture land earlier and that'll allow it to grow better in the spring. And we can also have a lot more available if we want to do some stockpiled grazing in the winter, it really allows us to build up those pastures and to utilize that cover crop.
Mitch:
We talked about not only plant diversity here, but wildlife, the thing that you guys are doing, I'm sure you've seen an increase in wildlife as a result. So just talk a little bit about the wildlife that you guys see out here and why you think they're here, not only wildlife, but pollinators?
Eli:
So a lot of the cover crop fields have a lot of blooming plants. A lot of it stays green through, I've seen green plants underneath until late into December, and that's allowed a lot of wildlife habitat. And in years where they say that, oh, we have a low pheasant population, or we're not seeing a lot of deer, we don't really understand what people are getting at there because we go out into these cover crop fields, into these different grassland areas and we see so many pheasant broods and scare up a deer here and there. And I think our management practices has allowed wildlife to really improve on our land.
Mitch:
So has the health of the grasslands improved? And we touched on this, but do grazing cover crops on the crop land, so just speaking of the rest I suppose, have you seen a change in the grassland out there because of the cover crops?
Eli:
So by being able to plant these cover crops on fields, we were able to take the cattle off of the pastures and rest them for as long as they need to, or as long as we want to, instead of getting 30 days rest on a paddock, we can get to 45 days or 60 days. And that really helps allow the grasses to grow fully and improve the health of that soil and the health of the plant. And because you don't want to come in with the cattle too early and suddenly you stunt the growth of a plant, that needs a little more time to get going. So that has really helped the plants on our pasture.
Mitch:
How often are you rotating?
Eli:
When we first started with rotational grazing, we rotated cattle every five days in 45 acres. And now we are down to six or seven acres sometimes and moving on once a day. And as we go on and as we get more practice, we would like to go to two times a day, moving maybe a couple acres, if the forage is there and do a lot more intensive grazing that way. And you'll really see a lot of improvement, if you're able to manage that way.
Mitch:
So how long have you been doing this? This is a twofold question. How long have you been doing the rotational grazing and working on the grassland and the cover crops and what got you started on this?
Eli:
So we first got started on the rotational grazing about 10 years ago. It was just mostly inspiration, we started attending seminars on the success of people who were doing these rotational grazing and cover crops and all those things. And the more of those that we went to, the more that we realized we were doing wrong. And we might think that we've got it all figured out and then we go to another seminar and suddenly, oh, we have something else that we can improve upon. And that's where we're at now is trying to do our own thing, but also trying to use our influences to better our practices.
Mitch:
What are some of the big resources that you have? I imagine you work with the Grassland Coalition, NRCS.
Eli:
We work with NRCS for many of our programs that we are involved in. They help us out tremendously. And we also work with Game, Fish, and Parks, and I know that the local elevator, Colton Farmers Elevator has helped us out with cover crops, their Mustang seed, and they've been a great help. We couldn't do this without the help of all these resources, including the Grassland Coalition as well.
Mitch:
You talk about the seeds when you're done running CRP in the area that is now your grasslands, do you put out mix it grassland or grasses?
Eli:
So right when the CRP was taken out 10 years ago, we didn't put anything in the pastures at that time, but now we got some influence that we should be incorporating seed into that. And we did a little bit this year, tried to help some troubled area that's an irrigated pasture. And we found that we got a lot more forage out of it by adding some clovers and some oats just right into the soil there. And we're going to do a lot more of that as years go on, especially with the irrigated pasture, we have a lot more potential there.
Mitch:
So irrigated pasture, what do you do for water up there as far as for the cattle, doing the rotation graze, how do you get the water out to them?
Eli:
By taking our CRP and putting it directly into pasture we were qualified for some programs through NRCS and Game, Fish, and Parks, and they cost shared putting in water lines and we have this one-inch plastic pipe going, running to all the paddocks. And we've made it so we don't have to have a pipe running here, there we've run them along the fence line between two areas so we can utilize that one water line better, and we can use it on both sides of the fence. And we don't have to have as many lines that way, but there's this one centralized well that supplies all of our paddocks. So our cattle are drinking out of potable water tanks that are on wheels and they just have a float and we have quick couplers. And so they're drinking the cleanest water that they can drink.
Mitch:
Obviously, you have to make money, but you guys seem to be doing things that are not only helping the bottom line, but they're also helping the land, helping the soil. You've got the Big Sioux here that runs, and so the water's cleaner. Just talk about what the practices are doing beyond just making money. What are they doing for the land and how does it feel to be doing something that's taking care of nature and mother earth?
Eli:
Yes. So when we get into what we're doing, we don't just look at the cattle we have out on pasture, we don't just look at the crops in the field, we go so far beyond that, looking into the ground and into the soil and the plants, and they need to work first to get everything else to work. And it needs to be not only sustainable, but also regenerative because the more that we put into our soil, the more care we take of our soil, the more benefits we're going to get from that soil. And that's really what we're focused on. And it's helping us with our bottom line, helping us cut a lot of costs that are unnecessary, such as fertilizer and spraying and we keep cows out on the soil along into the winter, with cover crops and full season grazing. And we don't have to bring them in to the feedlots and we don't have to feed them and we just, we cut a lot of costs, but we're also, we're making money that we can't see right now, but we'll see it in the future.
Mitch:
When I'm talking about soil, I'm talking about soil in the crops, in the cover crops, in the grasslands. To me, sustainability definitely didn't work in the area that you guys have grassland, because that was stuff that was tilled over and used up really. So you had a regenerative for sure, because you had to bring those soils back.
Eli:
All soils that we're dealing with, whether it be crop land or grassland, we're concerned about all the soil. We want to improve on all of our soil and with our practices we can do that. And really one of the main key soil health things that we like to use is integrating livestock on all ends. We really believe that that is the number one way to improve our soil health. Every year, we try to incorporate cattle on as much land as we can.
Barry:
One of the questions you asked Eli was about what got you started in using cover crops and I wanted to address that. The first year, the idea that cover crops was, that we were going to get a little bit of grazing out of a wheat stubble field before corn stocks were available. And so the first year it worked wonderfully because the cover crop grew up darn near waist high. And we put the cattle out there and they got a lot of feed value out of it. And then for about three years in a row, it was dry after wheat harvest and we couldn't get a cover crop established, and we couldn't get anything growing, but we kept trying it. And our goal is to extend our grazing season so that we don't have to feed any stored forages. And last year we got to, I believe we've had to feed for 45 days. We couldn't get anything out of the fields for the cattle to graze at that point.
Barry:
But this year we've got six different things going on for the cover crops that we planted. We had some oats that we had this year and after harvest, we planted that to a full season cover crop, but at the same time that we planted the oats, we put in four varieties of Clover, which got established, so by the time the oats was harvested, that was already growing. And so that's going to be our first forage to graze this fall. And then after weed harvest, we plant turnips and radishes and allow the volunteer wheat to come up. And that isn't growing very well, we had a cool September and October and didn't get a lot of growth out of that. We also had about a hundred acres of crop ground that was too wet to plant the corn. So about the 4th of July, we got into that and seeded it all into a cocktail of cover crops.
Barry:
And one of the new things we're excited about for the future is going into standing corn when it's less than knee-high and seeding some cover crop into that, that'll go dormant over the summer, but as soon as the corn starts to dry out in the fall, it starts to grow again. We're hoping that that that'll give us a little protein boost in our corn stocks so that we can graze longer in corn stocks, every winter. And the last thing I want to talk about is the pheasants forever, South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks collaboration called brood mix. And it's something that they developed for landowners to plant, to help with getting more chicks to survive every spring, to make it into the summer and fall for a hunting season. And it involves about 15 different plants that you plant in the spring and they all come up together and different ones bloom all summer long, so that there are bugs attracted to it that the chicks can eat while they're growing up. And it also is a great place for pollinators. So we have a lot of bees that show up in those fields.
Mitch:
Talk a little bit about the grasses that you have out there now, you're bringing back some grassland and how that's doing and how your rotation grazing and your cover crop is helping that land.
Barry:
The land we're talking about here is the farm that I grew up on. My dad bought the farm in the late 50s, and it was all crop ground. And he struggled for 20 years to farm it. And I tried to farm it for a few years, and then he and I put most of it into CRP and it ended up staying in CRP for 20 years and we planted maybe four or five species and most of it is for the CRP program. But since then, and it's been, I believe this is the 10th year that it's been out of CRP. And since then, every year we see a little better diversity in the plants that are in the pastures, and we get a little more forage out of it every year. And we attribute that to the rotational grazing we're doing where we try not to have the cattle on a given paddock for more than at most 48 hours. And then they're moved and that paddock gets to rest for at least 30 days and we prefer 45 days.
Barry:
And the fact that you're allowing every species to come back every time you graze, it means that the cattle can't take out their favorite grasses and leave the weeds. So the soil over the last thousand years has got a really heavy load of hard seed that's been there for a millennia and those seeds are being allowed to germinate now and come up. And we're seeing a lot of native warm season grasses show up in pastures that have never been seeded to it. And when I was a child, those species weren't out there, it's kind of exciting.
Mitch:
The life underneath what we're seeing, what do you think is happening under there because of what you're doing, the systems that are going in there, all the different diversity?
Barry:
So regenerative agriculture is the new buzz word that we're trying to get involved in. And it's all about the microbes that live in the soil, and you got to do what you can to feed the microbes because when they're growing and living and reproducing, they benefit the soil and they benefit the livestock that graze on it. The neat thing for me, I have a degree in microbiology from a hundred years ago at SDSU. And in my time, there was maybe 10,000 species of microbes that they could culture and grow. And after I got out of college, they realized that there were a lot of microbes that they didn't know about it because they couldn't reproduce them. And those are the ones that are in the soil and they're in them on a ruminant gut and they do amazing things. One of them is they can take inaccessible fertilizer out of the soil and they can convert it to a form that's usable by the plants.
Barry:
So if you're doing a good job of regenerative agriculture, eventually you should be able to stop putting any fertilizer on those fields when you grow a crop on them, which would be a tremendous savings every year for growing corn or soybeans or wheat.
Mitch:
Talk about the infiltration testing. I know you're doing it in the crop land and have you been doing it out in the pastures in the grasslands as well.
Barry:
Okay. So in 2016 NRCS had a grazing tour on our land. And one of the fellows that came was from North Dakota, and I can't remember his name, but he set up the soil infiltration tests. And at that time he said that we could take up to six inches of rain in an hour, and it would all soak in. And that was in some land that had been crap just two years previous to that. And we had seeded it down to grass. So it was in the infancy of being a grassland. We did that in a few other sites, and we're at the point where we could take a torrential rainfall and it would all soak in instead of running off.
Mitch:
And you get the Big Sioux here, which is flowing down to the cities. And what does this mean for people that are in the cities that infiltration is obviously helping out water supply? So talk about that a little bit.
Barry:
Okay. So the land we're dealing with here is in the Big Sioux River watershed about, well, I think it's been 12 years ago, we put all of the land on the banks of the B Sioux into a Big Sioux River easement. So we can't graze there, we can't do anything with it. And we had to move our fences back 180 feet on each side. So we don't have any runoff going into the river and we don't have any livestock going into the river. And the fact that all the rainfall that happens, goes into the soil instead of running off, it means that the water going down the Big Sioux River is clean coming through our land. And the more farmers and ranchers that change to the sort of thing we're doing, the cleaner the water is going to be and the better it's going to be for those folks down the stream that have to get their drinking water out of there.
Mitch:
Did you do anything to build the riparian areas back up, because when you're farming and grazing to the edge of it, it's broken down. So just talk about the riparian areas along Big Sioux.
Barry:
So we used to farm within maybe, I don't know what 20 feet of the banks of the Big Sioux River, and if there was a flood that would erode really quickly back to our field, and then we'd have to move back farther. But since we've taken the Big Sioux out of our pastures, it's healed itself, we didn't have to do anything to the edges. And now that we're 180 feet back on both sides, we got a real nice thick stand and grass on each side. And there's a lot of animals live in the river that you can't see because of the cover on each side. And it's all healed up and the banks are so steep that you can't jump in and out of the river. Used to be with the cows grazing in the river or along the river, they make paths down there and there was a gentle slope on each side. And in the winter time that helps the animals that live on the river like the Muskrat's because right next to the river bank, the water stays open all winter instead of freezing over because I guess it stays warmer.
Mitch:
Five principles of soil health. How do these apply and differ between how you manage your landscape?
Barry:
I think it was three or four years ago, the Grassland Coalition put on a seminar in Watertown and a fellow named Jim Garish came and he spoke for a morning about grazing management. And one of the things he made the group of us repeat over and over is I will not be afraid to waste grass. And that is the toughest thing to overcome when you start doing intensive grazing, which is what we do now. If you go out in a pasture that's an over knee high, so you got a lot of growth there and you put 300 cattle out in a eight acre paddock for a day, within about two hours if you come back and look at it, you'll go, wow, there's a lot of waste of grass out here, because they're just trampling in the ground. But that is exactly what the landscape needs.
Barry:
It needs the grazing animal to eat half and pack the other half back in the ground to cover it up, to be converted into organic matter so that the soil will not dry out because the top is covered with soil armor and it allows the plants to regrow quicker. And it's good for the landscape, but it's really tough on the rancher.
Mitch:
So what role are the cattle playing in that? Obviously they're trampling it down, they're eating it, there's manure out there. Talk a little bit about how the cattle worked out then.
Barry:
Okay. So when you turn a group of cows in a paddock and they start grazing and they start trampling and they're moving around the whole time, they're out there, they're picking and choosing the best grass that's growing, so that's good for their health and then they're trampling everything down. So if there's weeds coming out there, they do a pretty good job of knocking them down so that they don't become a problem. And the fact that they're traveling all over as they're grazing, they spread their manure and urine all over the paddock, which is a natural fertilization. We haven't fertilized a pasture in about 10 years and we have way more growth than our neighbors have. And we attribute that to the nitrogen in the urine that get spread all over as they're grazing,
Mitch:
What are your neighbors saying about what you're doing? I mean, you guys are doing some different stuff. So do people ask questions?
Barry:
A lot of our neighbors like to argue with us about what we're doing and why it's not very bright. It's definitely not the way everyone else is doing things. We don't use creek feeders because we believe that a calf should start to eat grass as soon as its rumen is able to digest it, we wean lighter calves than some other folks do, but we haven't spent a dime on feeding them at that point either. We'd like to leave our cows with their mothers for eight to nine months, which is really unconventional. A lot of folks say, you got to pull that calf off so the cow can get her health back before the winter sets in. But the way our cows eat, they actually can gain weight right up until that very cold weather hits in January. So it's fun. Eli and I enjoy the banter with the folks that think we're wrong.
Mitch:
What would you say to somebody once they're stuck with the banter and actually are interested in doing this, what would you say about the process? Because there's some work upfront to change this stuff over and you're not seeing results right away.
Barry:
It takes a commitment, you can't just say, well, I'm going to try this for a year or two, and then I'll prove that it didn't work because you do need to set up those fence lines so that you can easily make paddocks and you do need to have a water system that works. Otherwise, they're going to have to trail back across what you already grazed to get to a water. What I like to try to say to people that want to argue with me is, well, let's sit down with a pencil and paper and let's talk about your costs compared to my costs and go through the whole thing, including costs of things like hauling the manure back out of your barnyard, those extra costs you probably don't usually think about. We're pretty certain that our cost per day is lower than anyone else's.
Mitch:
Do you still enjoy what you do? I heard an interesting thing yesterday, we were out with Jodie Brown in Faith, South Dakota. And his wife said that since he's changed over to rotation grazing, he's excited again, it takes some creativity to do what you're doing. Do you enjoy that? Do you enjoy what you do?
Barry:
Every year we're finding new things and that's exciting. Somebody has come up with an innovation we didn't hear about before and it's like, how can we use that on our farm? And it keeps us going. I just turned 60 and a lot of people that had turned 60 had been doing the same thing for the last 20 years and they're happy with it and they're going to do it until retirement, but I don't want to be doing the same thing we're doing now, when I turn 65, I want to move ahead a long ways.
Mitch:
Talk about your grandkids. Does that change the way you look at what you're doing and what you're doing for the land?
Barry:
So I've got two wonderful granddaughters and the oldest one gets off the bus here every day after school and spends a little time with her grandmother. And so I get to see her almost every day. And I used to have a work, work, work perspective, and now spending some time with the family is a lot more important than it used to be. And we're getting to do it and it's wonderful.
Mitch:
So do you think about that when you do what you're doing for the land? Does that play into it a little bit, the family and the future of the land that we're on here?
Barry:
Oh, absolutely. The idea that when I'm gone, there might be a legacy here and it might go on for a few more generations, so that's in the back of my mind.