00:00 Hi, this is Kelly Garrett from Extreme Ag. We're out here today with TJ Curtis. I've often introduced him 00:04 as my cover crop consultant, seeding consultant. After you hear what he has to say today, we're gonna start calling him the cover crop guru. 00:12 It's been a complete lesson out here today. Uh, it's fascinating to learn and, uh, I really look forward to working 00:17 with TJ in the future because I, I think we can, we're making more cattle feed and, uh, we're using the acre more. 00:24 We're, we're gonna be able to increase the stocking rate. I can see that now, just standing here on 00:29 where we interceded this, uh, the sorghum, the kale, the buckwheat, uh, versus your standard Broome pasture. This is a fascinating research project that's, uh, uh, 00:39 really turning out well. So this is buckwheat coming here. And buckwheat is a phosphorus fixer 00:45 that will fix phos in the soil. Naturally. Cattle love it. Super high in protein, grows in a very arid climate. 00:51 So it takes a lot of compaction. It'll take moisture defecation, but it really grow well. So you can see in this area here 00:56 where we have really good growth of all the crops coming. This area here is very healthy. 01:00 Over here where we're a little bit weaker, maybe some, uh, plant food uptake not being happening. 01:05 We probably have some compaction layers, yet we're not moving the microbes as well as we should. We're here we are. So we got kale here, 01:12 which is a brass style, and we got the buck wheated. We got the sorghum sedan growing. So we got four different things happening here in this area 01:19 that's really great for multiple different roots and extra gates going in the soil. And that's what I really like to see. 01:25 So let's try to see if I can get one out without breaking it. This is a New Zealand based 01:29 forage is where it really comes from. And New Zealand has no moisture and no ground to work with. So everything they do, they gotta make sure they make 01:35 as much as they can per farm. So you can see how this root is going down, and this is why I like kale 01:41 so much better than like a typical radish. The tuber is going down, but all these laterals going off the side by fall, these will be as big as this 01:49 and this tuber will be this size. So that's all a vessel for nutrients up and down. This plant, this plant is high in copper, sulfur, 01:55 wor on manganese and zinc for the cattle to eat plus it dig greats back into the soil the same way. Is that an, is this an annual 02:01 or a perennial? Will this come Back? This? Nope. This is an annual, so this is not coming back. 02:05 But the benefits this year are huge. The other part is it's delicious to eat. I everything I grow. 02:13 So then the sorghum, the sorghum sedan we put out here, same thing. This is a high micro fungi hose. 02:19 So it's a cousin to corn, but it's not corn. Got a root structure similar to corn, but it gives off a slightly different eGate than corn does. 02:26 And you know, we, we look at this, we look at this paddock here, there's four paddocks here. We mowed two of them sprayed it with plant food to try 02:33 to hold the grass back a little bit. You know, the, the plant food won't kill the grass, but the nitrogen's gonna hold it back. 02:37 Then you can, this is paddock number three. You can clearly see paddock number four over there is just the Broome that we didn't mow. 02:43 Yep. And it's done. That's a, that's a very stark visual as to why we're trying to do what we do here. 02:49 Uh, I always wish there was more feed here, but if it, if at all local here, like where you say the soil's healthy. 02:53 Yep. We'd have a tremendous feed source. We just need to improve this land. But what we have done here, even in the weak areas, 02:59 is a lot better than the old bro pasture. 'cause look at that, you know? Right. That's done. This is still making feed 03:03 and putting carbon in the soil. Exactly. That's why it's worth the time and effort here. Yep. 03:07 So there's still money being made and it's still feeding the below ground livestock. Now we gotta figure out a way to get enough growth 03:13 to feed the above ground livestock. 'cause then there's eight crap out. They feed the below ground again. 03:17 So it's a whole cycle of life here where that is finished for the year. Carbon isn't either de created nor destroyed. 03:23 It's just transferred. Just transferred. We're still transferring more here than we are over There. And that's where this 03:27 root structure, see it's a different than that other one. But this is about all the structure it's gonna get where 03:32 that other one's gonna get the tuber with more laterals off the side. What happens, we'll see is as we come back 03:37 and we'll dig this again, this will be hooked into the, the tap root of Nebraska and it's all wet. Mm-Hmm. So Nebraska's down two, three feet. 03:46 This isn't, they're reading off each other and they're exchanging This is that synergy of the multi-species 03:50 that Gabe Brown talks about. Yep. And that's why they worked together because one went down two, three feet 03:55 and it's bringing that channel up and this guy says, Hey, do you mind if I just hook onto you for a little bit? 04:00 No, that's fine. I'm good with it. And it starts drawing off. It Molly's over there. I think she 04:04 likes the kale too. Just like you tj. Yeah, it's delicious. She, she knows good food. I can see that right away. Very intelligent dog. 04:10 So you're happy with what's going on here and like over here where the, in the weaker areas, it isn't that the plants aren't doing their thing, it's just 04:17 that the soil needs repaired. Yep. It needs, so you know, we got a slope here we're working on. 04:21 You can see where the lows are. We know that we have had a lot of movement over the time of nutrients and soil. 04:26 So we've degraded some of this and now, you know, we've been in the till for a long time, but we still had stuff moved down the hill. 04:31 Well this has been in grass my whole life, right? As long as I can remember. But it still moves down the hill. So the other thing we've seen, 04:37 which is really interesting, we just took over a farm like this in Minnesota three years ago as a gravel pit. 04:41 And then they filled it in and they didn't mine it for 20 years. It's just grass. We did a Haney test on it. 04:45 The soil life biology was zero after three years of this we're in the normal zone. They're like, how did you do it? 04:51 I said, multi-species, we just keep long carbon, remove a forage and then let it sit. The other part is when you have grass like that, 04:58 it gets very compacted and the microbes go, I can go this far. And that's it. All the microbes, as we start doing this, 05:05 like in this area, they're flowing this whole length, which is great. 'cause now they went to this plant and this plant 05:11 and this plant and this plant and said, I'll exchange with you, I'll exchange with you, I'll exchange with you. And they're working together over there. 05:16 They're like, well as far as I can get us to this plant and I can't get you farther. We wanted to walk to Dennis 05:21 and we could probably do it today. I wouldn't want to, but we could. But I'm not walking home. All I know that I'm not going that far over. 05:27 And that's the microbes they can go so far. And they're like, well I'm done. You're on the right path here because just a stagnant grass is a stagnant grass 05:34 and you can only feed so long and then you're dumping feet out here. Let's keep making feet. 05:38 So we were at the other pasture first where we interceded into some of that rotational grazing paddock. 05:43 Now we're back over here at the farm that we call Grandma Donna's. This is the ground that was intended to go to soybeans. 05:48 But instead TJ came up with a mix for us. We put it out here and we're trying to very intensively manage 05:54 and rotational graze the cows on crop ground to see if we can make it more profitable than soybeans. He's got more interesting stuff, uh, to say. 06:02 So here comes the guru Once again pulling up. The first thing I noticed was it's a lot greener and lusher out here than at the old. 06:09 The other pasture was just strictly pasture for many, many, many years. Where the soil was tighter, 06:14 there was less nutrients available. The plants are struggling, the root masses are smaller. Here where there's been more intensive, no tilling 06:21 and management of nutrients. There's loose nutrients out here and we're scavenging up making cow feed out of 'em. 06:26 So we have a better root structure. We're shooting multiple lays off the sorghum sedan or over there with just one single plant. 06:31 So this is a multi, so it's like on a corn plant, this is like multiple ear corn plants. So there's great things happening here. 06:37 We got a better, better structure of this. You can see where this is clinging to the root system. That's a glucosamine trying to make more soil, 06:44 more aggregates for your farm. The other part is we have a better stand of kale. We're seeing more species out here, seeing a few more peas. 06:51 We're seeing some more buck weed. We're seeing a healthier looking forage. Because what had happened here prior for several years 06:57 where it was more of a no-till row crop type situation where there was nutrients being applied, where the pasture was pasture. 07:04 It was, it was taken care of. Well there's nutrients put out there, but just grasses, just grass. 07:09 And this has had multi-species on it over the years. It's had corn, it's had soybeans, it's maybe had some small grains. 07:14 So it had rotation. Now we're putting a big rotation of a lot of different mixes. But this is a way healthier cover 07:19 crop than where we came from. The most interesting thing I hear from you now is that you're saying the crop ground is 07:25 healthier than the native grass. Yep. You know, and I, that, that blows me away because I assumed that the soil health was better than, than 07:34 where we've been monocropping and things like that. Now of course that pasture is, is Broome. So it's basically a monocrop as well. 07:40 But it's been allowed to function as it wants to. This has been in more of a controlled environment, you say. And I I am really blown away that you're saying 07:48 that this is a healthier soil than, than that grass. I, I don't think that most environmentalist or um, people in our society now in this, 07:57 in this carbon sustainable movement would think that and that that's something I really want to get across here in this video. 08:03 This was a cornfield last year, been cropped my whole life. And you are saying the soil's 08:07 healthier than here than in the grassland. Yep. So part of it is, Kelly, over the course of your lifetime of doing this, you'd went to a no-till system. 08:13 You were not tilling this, you were not destroying the structure. You were letting mother nature have her structure. 08:17 You were putting a crop in it, you're adding fertility to it. You were trying to maintain it the best 08:21 of your ability without flipping it over, flipping it over, ripping it up, destroying the structure. 08:25 Then we added more things to it to build the structure even more. But it's finding all the nutrients that were there 08:30 that were not quite used by your previous crops. But this is way healthier because it means it was here. It wasn't down the creek somewhere. 08:37 That pasture we came from over the course of time, if you put fertility out there, if it wasn't used, it washed away and went somewhere else you didn't want it. 08:43 And as that pasture shred all the time, every year it would die off and that nitrate would flow to the river 08:49 because it's in an phosphate and otho nitrate form. This is being held. So this is actually really better 'cause the way you farmed it over the years, 08:57 'cause you didn't just keep plowing, you said, well we gotta get away from that. We're not, that's not good for us. 09:01 So you started doing this and this is to me a healthier soil. So I know environmental people don't like when I say this, 09:06 I really don't like when I talk like this. But managed crop ground is really great 'cause we're constantly stimulating growth on it. 09:11 Where a pasture or a woods is just a monocultural system that's not really being stimulated to do more. 09:17 We're stimulating this to do more. I'm not in the greatest shape 'cause I'm not as stimulated as I used to be. 09:22 You're in great shape 'cause you're stimulating, you move around more. But we're both healthy. We 09:25 just are different levels of health. That farm we came from has a level of health but not as great as what this level of health is. 09:31 So when you watch cattle grades, it's really interesting because they know what they want to eat. 09:35 So when they come into a situation, if they're short of protein, they'll devour all the grasses like the sorghum sedans. 09:40 They'll eat that down. They won't touch much of the brass or legumes. They'll nibble at 'em, but not a lot. 09:45 They'll go to the next pasture. Once they balance themselves, then delete all the brass and legumes. 09:50 Why brass and legumes are higher in copper, sulfur, boron, manganese, zinc. All the micronutrients get to the third paddock. 09:56 They'll lead everything. But when they first start, if they're short of protein, they'll devour all the grasses. That's the first thing they'll go 10:01 to is they'll hit every ounce of this grass. Is it good? Yeah. 'cause it'll stimulate the grasses to grow again. 10:06 They'll let this get a little bit bigger and then the next time they come in they'll devour all this. When they eat it, they'll eat just mainly the leaves off. 10:13 'cause that's where all the protein's at. You watch 'em graze and you'll know exactly what they were short. 10:16 Even though you try to feed 'em the best of ability and take care of the best ability. When they come out here, they're like, this is what we eat. 10:22 You know, it's, it's like me, I could eat steak for probably seven, eight years and not complain, but it should probably have some fish 10:27 or something else in the diet occasionally. And my wife makes me do that. But you watch cattle grs, 10:31 it's really interesting to watch meat, all this. But when they get to this, that's when they're doing all their micronutrients balancing. 10:36 That's where these, these legumes come in and Nebraska's come in. You know, I uh, you know, it's really important to me 10:42 to be involved in the sustainable space in American agriculture. One of the reasons is obviously the sustainable revenue 10:48 dollars, the carbon credit type dollars that are available to farmers. I wanna be an advocate for that. 10:53 But I also wanna be an advocate for American agriculture and show the public and, and, 10:58 and show our society that that farming is good for nature. And I didn't know that TJ was gonna say these things today. 11:05 Uh, I'm bursting with pride right now. And you know, like when we go to temple's area and things like that in the Del Marva, 11:11 then many regulations thrust upon them to make them farm a certain way. And some of the ways I'm farming now is very much in 11:17 line with the way temple farms. So I'm not saying all regulations are bad, but I'm also saying that the way we're farming here in 11:23 Iowa isn't necessarily bad. And you heard it from TJ himself, my row crop acres, at least right here, the soil health is better than 11:30 what's been in natural grass. And I don't think anybody would've guessed that. I would've never guessed that he was gonna say that. 11:35 And, and so this is a very important thing for me. This is why I am involved in the sustainable space. And TJ hit the nail on the head 11:42 and I didn't know he was gonna say it. I got lucky again.