Our Practices

With the first principle of regenerative farming being “limit soil disturbance,” many regenerative farms are strict no-till farmers. No-till farming has many beneficial effects on soil health. The one downside is that in most cases, no-till requires at least some use of herbicides for weed control. Some exceptional farmers have controlled their weeds through their regenerative practices to a point where they might need to spray only once in 3-5 years, but those examples are few and far between.

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We started out on the no-till side, partly because of my experience working on other no-till farms, and partly because I have technical respect for its benefits. When I worked on other no-till farms, I ran the spray rig a lot, and I hated it. One reason, I was always concerned about my own safety while handling the chemicals. When we started our own farm, I outsourced the spraying. But then, one day, I became morally conflicted – how can I ask someone else to do something I didn’t want to do for health reasons. Since then, we began to farm organically, and now I daily ponder which of the two evils is worse, a little tillage, or a little herbicide; mechanical disturbance, or chemical disturbance. That’s a topic worth a lot of discussion and debate. With that in mind, we are trying to figure out what the least amount of tillage is that we get away with. Needless to say, we grow a lot of weeds with our crops.

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To help keep the soil covered, our first choice for tillage is a sweep plow. This implement consists of large sweeps (chevron-shaped blades), that run a few inches below the ground surface. They cut tap roots, and heave the soil, dislodging young plant roots, but do not invert the soil, except where the shanks intersect the soil surface, so the residue mostly stays on the surface, and much of the soil structure is left in tact. Sweep plows have their limits in application however, so other tillage tools are also occasionally needed.

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In an effort to not till, we mow weeds when practical. A good time to mow weeds is when they are mature and just beginning to produce a seedhead, but before the seed is viable. At this point the plant has put a lot of its energy into developing seeds and regrowth after mowing will be limited. Timing is critical. This is only a post-harvest option. Along those lines, we also use our sheep and cattle heavily for weed control. Our primary weeds are kochia and Russian thistle, which when young, make great forage. We also graze our cover crops. Putting livestock on our cropland helps to fertilize and inoculate the soil.

For biodiversity, and to maintain living plants in the soil, we plant cover crop mixes. Additionally, our cash crops are generally planted with companion crops (e.g. oats with spring peas or lentils, and flax), so they are not monocultures. Between the cover crops and cash crops, there is almost always seed in the ground ready to grow. Each time a field is tilled, immediately after the tillage pass, seed is sown, so freshly tilled ground is exposed as little as possible. Because we are in a moisture-limited environment, whether or not that seed grows is another question. But, consider Ecclesiastes 11:4, “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap,” which is saying, do not wait for the perfect weather to sow seed because a seed not sown will not grow.

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Although that advice may seem reckless to some, we consider our climatological context when using cover crops to improve their success. In the semi-arid high plains, practices like planting green and relay cropping are not typically a good idea. Planting cover crops in the late summer or early fall that will winter-kill, followed by spring cool-season cash crops early the next spring is usually a good strategy. We also consider which species to use and focus on low water-use plants.

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While grazing our native pastures, we practice various levels of planned grazing. Our farm, as most in the area are, was fenced for cattle. We started with just one small pasture, making it into something that can contain sheep. Every year we have more “sheep-proof” permanent fencing that allows us to rotate through more of our acres. We basically have a never-ending amount of fence to rebuild as sheep-proof fence.

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In the interim, we have used a lot of temporary-type, poly-wire fence in semi-permanent applications. It is getting easier every year as we slowly chip away at fencing projects. Ironically, as most of the writing above is centered on cropping practices, most of our time and effort in reality is centered on fence-building, water development, and other aspects of our livestock production.