From the Pastures: Kicking up the dust

Ground moisture update: My neighbor half a mile south of my farm dug 8 feet into the ground to fix an 18-inch concrete tile. He said he never hit any moisture digging down to the tile and there was “no moisture” inside the tile. There has been a lot of tiling done around me this winter and I’ve never seen the dirt covering the tile lines be so dry and crumbly. The dirt that is mounded up over the tile lines seems to settle down quickly and several fields have those tile lines worked down smooth with the rest of the field.

Where I can find bare dirt on my farm I can usually “kick up some dust.” This is the middle of February and it’s not supposed to be this dry. I walked my fields on Feb. 16 and I have moisture under the old hay left behind from grazing the unrolled hay bales.

The cover crop field, that has knee-high pearl millet and other grasses, has a good ground cover and moisture in that soil. The soybean fields that I no-tilled wheat or cereal rye into are the driest. The permanent pastures that I’m rotating my sheep through and unrolling hay over the grazed-down grass also has moisture, but only under where I have a “hay cover.” It’s like putting mulch over a new grass seeding to conserve the moisture from the wind and the sun.

Upcoming meetings: Feb. 20-21 is Southern Iowa Grazing Conference with Allen Williams and Dave Meidl, both excellent speakers. Next on March 2-3 is the Bud Williams Marketing and/or Stockmanship school in Bolivar, Missouri. You can take one or both.

Two days later is the Bud Summit where people who actually use the marketing and stockmanship to further their livestock enterprises gather. The format is loose and will include discussion by the attendees, questions and answers, video narrated by Bud Williams and networking with producers from around the continent. For info, call Tina at 417-777-1609 or tina@stockmanship.com. This can be expensive, but it’s very good and worth the money.

Back in Illinois on March 4 is the Midwest Covers and Grains Conference in Washington, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Website is practicalfarmers.org/midwest-covers-and-grains-conference. Also in Illinois on March 6-7 at the Elizabeth Community Building in Elizabeth will be the Profitable Pastures Grazing School with Steve Kenyon. Steve grazes thousands of cows over 3,000 acres of managed ground in Alberta, Canada. I’ve listened to Steve before and he is down to earth and very informative. For more info contact, call Nathan Koester at 815-291-3858.

The Illinois Lamb and Wool Producers annual meeting is March 14 at the Animal Science Lab at the University of Illinois in Urbana.

For the last one we go to Indiana for the Southern Indiana Grazing Conference in the Eastern time zone. This is always a good one also. It’s in the Amish community of Odon, so they have good food and good conversations. There are four great speakers, and for more info call 812-254-4780, ext. 3.

Oh, I forgot, it’s March 13, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST. Peter Byck, podcaster of “Roots So Deep,” is the first speaker, followed by Greg Halich on “Bale Grazing Done Right.” Peter Ballerstedt will speak before and after lunch, and Barry Fisher will wrap it up with “Grazing with the Soil in Mind: From Pastures to Cover Crops.” I’ll be there, so I hope I see you.