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The Grazing Grass Podcast features insights and stories of regenerative farming, specifically emphasizing grass-based livestock management. Our mission is to foster a community where grass farmers can share knowledge and experiences with one another. We delve into their transition to these practices, explore the ins and outs of their operations, and then move into the "Over Grazing" segment, which addresses specific challenges and learning opportunities. The episode rounds off with the "Famous Four" questions, designed to extract valuable wisdom and advice. Join us to gain practical tips and inspiration from the pioneers of regenerative grass farming.
This is the podcast for you if you are trying to answer: What are regenerative farm practices? How to be grassfed? How do I graze other species of livestock? What's are ways to improve pasture and lower costs? What to sell direct to the consumer?
Welcome to the Grazing
Grass Podcast Episode 100.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
what's the most important skill
of being a good grazing manager.
I say to be a good observer
You're listening to the Grazing
Grass Podcast, helping grass
farmers learn from grass farmer.
And every episode features a grass farmer.
their operation.
and their regenerative practices.
I'm your host, Cal Hardage
Cal: You're growing more than grass.
You're growing a healthier
ecosystem to help your cattle
thrive in their environment.
You're growing your livelihood by
increasing your carrying capacity
and reducing your operating costs.
You're growing stronger communities
and a legacy to last generations.
The grazing management
decisions you make today.
impact everything from the soil beneath
your feet to the community all around you.
That's why the Noble Research
Institute created their Essentials
of Regenerative Grazing course to
teach ranchers like you easy to follow
techniques to quickly assess your forage
production and infrastructure capacity.
In order to begin
grazing more efficiently.
Together, they can help you grow
not only a healthier operation,
but a legacy that lasts.
Learn more on their website at noble.
org slash grazing.
It's n o b l e dot org
forward slash grazing.
On today's episode we have Jim Gerrish
you probably have heard of him from
a few of his books which include Kick
the Hay Habit and Management Intensive
Grazing as well as a couple others.
You may have heard him speak at a
conference or a school you went to.
We have him on for our 100th episode
to share about his journey and why
time is more important than space.
However, before we talk to Jim, 10
seconds about my farm and obviously
with this being the 100th episode
of the grazing grass podcast We're
talking about the podcast first off.
I want to say thank you.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for sharing Thank
you for leaving reviews.
Those things are the biggest factors to
the podcast success And I appreciate it.
I started this podcast for an opportunity
to talk to people who were doing what
I wanted to do, what I was trying to
do, what I was doing in some fashion.
And along the journey, I've shared
those episodes and I have learned tons.
So, thank you.
And again, share it.
If you haven't left a review,
please leave a review.
Those help when people go searching for
podcasts and they can read the reviews.
100 episodes.
Thank you.
With this being our 100th episode, we
are doing a little bit of a change.
Wednesdays will continue to be
our interview, our guests, grass
farmers, our grass farmers using
regenerative practices, coming on
and sharing about their journeys.
However, on Friday, we'll be
dropping a new type of episode.
So tune in this Friday for that episode
and I'll talk more about it then.
Enough of that, let's talk to Jim.
Track 1: Jim, we want to welcome
you to the Grazing Grass podcast.
We're excited you're here today.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Hey Cal, I'm looking forward to the
opportunity because the more we get the
good word out and the more audiences
we reach, the happier guy I am.
Track 1: Very good.
Hopefully we'll have a few listeners enjoy
this episode, which I'm sure they will.
To get started, can you just tell us
about yourself and your operation?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Myself, I've been in grazing in
the grass for, well over 40 years
now as a researcher, an educator,
a practitioner, a philosopher.
I spent 22 years, three months on
the University of Missouri faculty.
That was from 1981 to 2003.
So most of those years in Missouri, we had
our personal farm, in addition to working
at the research station, and we started
out on a small acreage just with sheep,
and the place we bought, of course, had no
fences, because it was a kind of farming
country, and so we learned to use electric
netting to move sheep, every few days
around, and then over about a five year
time period, we acquired the equipment.
More land, and I think four or
five different transactions.
We ended up with 260 acre
farm there in Missouri.
Most of it had been crop farmed
and was degraded quite badly.
So we started the process of returning
it to grass and healing it up.
We.
Added cattle about four years
into the process, the sheep
phased out after about nine years.
And so I worked for the university
doing research and I worked on
Maughan Farm doing research.
Most of the good stuff I learned
actually happened on my place and
then we did it at the research center.
Track 1: Oh, yes.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
And then When I was in my mid forties
and midlife crisis kicked in, I decided
I needed to do something else in life.
And so that's when I quit the
university and went into the
consulting and conference business.
And that's the time we moved to Idaho.
And on April 1st this year, we
will have been 20 years in Idaho.
And up until a year ago.
I
was managing one unit of a larger ranch
450 acres of center pivots that we
grazed, about 100 acres of flood ground,
several hundred acres of desert rangeland,
and so I didn't own a ranch out here.
I just had recreational ranching,
somebody else's dollars and I
just moved cattle around and
learned how to irrigate
and did stuff like that.
Now, we do have a small property
that we cut flood irrigated, pasture
that we custom grazed, replacement
heifers for one of the neighbors on.
And so for, 22 years, 3 months, I was in
academic research and education in the
field of grazing and then I've been 20
over 20 years now in the private business
side of it as working as a consultant
and I still do lots of conferences
and workshops and things of that
nature so that's the background on me.
Oh, I do want to
say, I did not grow up, I did not grow
up in the cattle business, and that's
why I tended to be more successful
in it than a lot of people have.
I grew up a crop and hog farmer
in South Central Illinois.
Getting into grazing was just a
Track 1: actually, that's where
my next question was going to go.
If you grew up that way,
what brought you to grazing?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
There's two or three different things.
We were, I said I grew up crops and hogs.
We also did custom haying.
And we sold a lot of
hay to beef producers.
We baled hay for a lot of beef producers.
And, I'd be driving along in a
nice hay field and, pretty good.
crop growing on and then I'd look across
the fence into their pasture and you know
it's depending on what time of the year.
It is.
It's either completely overgrown,
and you can't even see the cattle in
it, or it's grazed down to bare dirt.
And there didn't seem to be anything
in between, and I thought,
yeah, that's weird.
But not being a cattle guy, I didn't
know anything about, what they were
doing and what they were thinking.
And then in the summer of 1977
an Argentine rancher who was my
sister's brother in law came up.
And he spent a good part of that summer
out on the farm working with my dad and I.
And he was talking about
grass finished beef.
Because, of course, that's all
they did in Argentina at that
time was grass finished beef.
But he was talking about rotating
cattle every day, using no fertilizer,
grazing high legume content pastures,
letting the animals do the work,
letting nature work and all that.
And I said, boy, that doesn't sound like
anything I've ever seen around here.
And so that kind of opened my eyes to
something that was going on different
in somewhere else in the world.
And at this point I'll say my, even
though I grew up on a farm, I never
considered going to school in agriculture.
My first major was
anthropology then I was interested in
journalism, then I decided probably I
wanted to be a park ranger, so I went, set
out to get a degree in natural resource
management, didn't end up being there.
And part of the reason why
is I'm a very lazy person.
To get a degree in the liberal
arts school, I needed 16
hours of foreign language.
To get a degree in the College
of Agriculture, I had no
foreign language requirement.
That is the only
reason that I ended up going
into the College of Agriculture
rather than Liberal Arts.
And agronomy, I mean it's plants and
soils, that's, I was interested in that.
I met my future wife in introductory
soils at the University of Illinois.
And I was just intending to
go back to the family farm in
Illinois and, be a crop farmer.
I had a property a couple hundred
acres rented from my dad's cousin.
Of course, there was no contract
because everybody's back in those
days, every man's word was his bond.
And so
I was going to go, I had
that as a base of operations.
I was talking to some of the
older neighbors about maybe
taking over farming their place.
We were going to make the big move from
four row equipment to six row equipment.
And,
Track 1: oh, wow.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
And cousin, cousin George sold
the farm out from under me.
And so I
was six weeks away from graduating
from U of I with a BS in agronomy,
I was going to get married in seven
weeks and I didn't have that base work.
So what does a guy do?
You go to graduate school and I went
to grad school as a desperation measure
because I didn't know what else to do.
I actually got an
assistantship to go to the University
of Kentucky in plant breeding
with the red clover breeder, Dr.
Norman Taylor there.
I got down there, decided I had
no interest in plant breeding.
They had a new faculty member coming
Chuck Docherty from New Zealand
for the Pasture Ecology position.
I didn't even know what Pasture
Ecology meant, but I said,
yeah I'll be his grad student.
That'll be fine.
And so that's how I got hooked up with a
New Zealander who also had, the same crazy
ideas about grazing management that my
German brother in law from, or sister's
brother in law from Argentina had.
I said this is interesting.
Track 1: Oh,
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Two people from different sides
of the world, and they're talking
about this approach to grazing.
And I had the good fortune to
pull off the bookshelf at the
University of Kentucky Library a
book called Grass Productivity.
By Andre Voisin, a Frenchman who
worked from the about 1930 to
1961 until his death in grazing
management, and he's really first
wrote out the actual, plans and
description of time controlled grazing.
And that's why we have this topic of
why is time more important than space.
Because almost all grazing
management in the U.
S.
Is spatially based.
What you, what we got taught, in
college is just, it's stocking rate
is the only thing that matters.
You got this piece of land, you
put this many animals out there,
and you leave them out there.
Now, supposedly, you leave them
out there until it is grazed in an
appropriate residual and you're.
move them somewhere else.
Almost everybody forgot that part
of it and it became just you leave
them out there till it's gone.
And that's how we
got our grazing lands into
the poor state that they were.
So those are the three things that got
me into time based grazing management.
An Argentine rancher who was already doing
it back in the 1970s, a major professor
in graduate school from New Zealand, and
then reading Andre Voisin's book in 1978.
As they say, the rest is history.
Track 1: It's always amazing how
these little coincidences happen
and they guide you on a path that
really made all the difference.
Without those, would you have been there?
Just the fact of going to
grad school and all that.
It's always very interesting to me.
. squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
If I had gone back to the family farm
in 1978 and become a crop farmer,
buying more equipment and acquiring
some land, 1984, I would have been just
one more victim of the farm crisis.
And, probably have nothing,
Track 1: Oh,
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
never had, gone to work in a
factory in town or something.
I don't know what I
would have done, but the
fact that George sold that farm, and I
had immediately switched directions, I
ended up having a completely different
life, and it's been a pretty good one.
Track 1: Yeah, very interesting with that.
And you finished grad school, you were
going to grad school in Kentucky, and then
you got a job at University of Missouri?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Yeah, yes, I did.
I'm one of those few people around
and say I only ever had one job
interview I applied for one job.
I had one job interview and I
was in that position for 22 years
three months So I'm not very
good at doing job interviews
Track 1: Yes do not come to you
for advice for job interviews.
On the other hand, your success rate at
job interviews is just at the ceiling.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Yeah, I could be a consultant
on how to nail a job,
Track 1: there you go.
You just have to frame it
in the right framework.
You get the job in Missouri
and you move to Missouri.
Did you immediately think you're
going to start grazing animals?
Or were you more focused on
your university job at the time?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Oh, the position I was hired for
was at the University of Missouri's
Forage Systems Research Center,
which is an outlying research
station up in north central Missouri.
And basically,
my job assignment was to make beef
cattle competitive with soybeans
on marginal, highly erodible land.
That's what my assignment was.
When I went there, no, I did not have
the expectation that I was going to
buy a farm there and become a grazer.
cattle producer up there.
At the moment I took the job in
the Missouri, that would have been
absolutely the last thing on my mind.
When we went there, we lived in a little
town of Linnaeus, I think 325 people.
I had never lived in town before,
other than two years as a undergraduate
at University of Illinois.
But I'd never lived in town before,
and the urban pressure in Linnaeus was
just too much for me, and, we had to
get out of town, otherwise I was gonna,
kill a bunch of people or something.
And so Don found this small property
out in the country, where we went to,
13 acres, and that's way too much lawn
to mow, so that's why we got the sheep.
And then it grew from
Track 1: I was wondering why you
went to sheep first, but it sounds
like sheep fit your property there
because working with small acreage.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Exactly, and we learned that early on,
and people over the years who've, come
to me for advice on small properties.
The smaller the property, the
smaller the animal better be.
All the way down to if you
only got a half acre lot, you
better be rabbits and chickens.
Because you're not going to grow a
beef on that.
Also we had small children.
And
it's a whole lot easier to get them.
Incorporated in doing the farm chores and
working with animals if it's sheep, and
we did have chickens also, if it's sheep
and chickens, rather than, big old cattle.
Track 1: And I hear that from
a lot of sheep producers.
One reason they go sheep, their kids
are small and their kids are able to
be out there and help them with them.
Now, I know the hair sheep I have.
They can be a little crazy.
They can also mob you too.
It's just crazy their Way they
act, but I'm assuming you did
not go with hair sheep back then.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
No we definitely had wool
sheep, and, hair sheep was not
a thing in, really in the 1980s.
There were a few around, but it wasn't
the big enterprises that it is now.
My wife,
She did hand spinning and
weaving, and so it's really
hard to do that with hair sheep.
And so we we had what we
called the commercial flock.
Which was white sheep, Fendorce
at Rambouillet Cross, basically.
And then we had the spinning flock,
which was Border Leicester, Cotswolds
we had some Lincoln Coopworth
Cross, but they were colored sheep
and they were, long.
Long wool breeds.
Because
She had a business of selling fleeces
and spun fibers back in those days.
Track 1: oh Interesting, yeah Very
good, but When you brought those
sheep onto your farm and you started
with them, did you just kick them
out there like you had seen everyone
else do, or had your experiences from
University of Kentucky you brought them
in and immediately did what with them?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
the 13 acres we bought was the house
and yard and then an open field.
No It had a crop of wheat on it when
we moved in, and so there was no fences
around it there's no grass there, and
as I said, we started with electric
netting because that's what made sense
is, if you have ten sheep and you have
two pieces of electric netting, you can
start grazing management, you can start
doing something, we of course had to seed
the pasture down after the wheat crop.
Track 1: Oh, yeah,
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
And so it was, I don't know,
six or nine months before, from
the time we moved on until we
actually had animals on the place.
And then the, after the original
13 acres A couple of years later we
were able to buy an adjacent 40 acres
that was in pasture and that's when
we were able to, expand into getting
cattle is after we got that 40 acres
and then we bought 180 and then 20.
So yeah, it was four transactions
in which we built the farm from
the original just house in the
country to the 260 acre grass farm.
200 acres of it was either being farmed
or had been abandoned from farm because
it was so badly eroded and grown up
with blackberries and stuff like that.
So we had about 200 acres of it that we
had to bring back into productive pasture.
Track 1: Oh, yes.
As you expanded the farm, you
went from sheep or you added
cattle into the sheep operation.
Did you manage them separately?
Did you manage them similarly?
Did you manage them together?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Good question.
Most of the time we ran them separately.
And some we did leader follower grazing
and people always ask me do you put the
cattle out first, the sheep out first?
And the answer is it depends.
It depends on what is the pasture
condition and what are the needs of
the, the different classes of animals.
So sometimes cattle
grazed ahead of the sheep.
And that would be if we were in a little
bit of a weedy situation and we wanted
the sheep to focus on weeds, so we'd let
the cattle go through, take the good grass
out, and then mostly have the sheep eat
the remaining weeds that were out there.
And then situations where we might have
the sheep going in ahead of the cattle
because we bred the cows in mid summer,
and we bred the sheep in the fall, and
we wanted to have better nutrition.
In the sheep than the cows
that we had weaned calves off.
And so the sheep could go through
first and, it's basically the same
effect as flushing them with grain
to increase the breeding percentage.
Depended and there were rare
occasions when we actually just
put them out there together.
But when it comes to daily rotation
and grazing management, I actually
did that first with the sheep.
We've, we started out in a twice a week.
rotation.
So every three or four
days we'd been moving them.
We had a bad drought in 1988
and that's when I started moving
the sheep on a daily basis.
Now by that time we had built some
permanent electrified high tensile
fence for structure and then I did,
still did, controlled grazing with
the electric netting within that
framework of high tensile fence.
But we started moving
sheep on a daily basis.
Because mostly we were having
them eat weeds because that was
the only thing that was out there
in that drought and it worked
so well, I just kept doing that and then
the cattle that winter on, with stockpiled
pasture rather than, giving them three
or four days worth at a time, I stripped
grazed them every day to ration out that
feed to stretch it out further and we
got so many more grazing days per acre.
All.
By doing that, that's when it
just opened my eyes that in my
view, for me, it was silly to do
anything less than daily rotation.
So you just become habituated to, what
you do for chores on a daily basis.
And I look at neighbors in the winter,
going out and feeding hay every day.
Shoot, I'll just go out and move
an electric fence every day.
And after we moved out west, and
where the herds are bigger here, on
the unit we managed, we usually had
300 to 500 pairs here, or dry cows,
and then, neighbors around have
convinced, have similar herd size.
And I always told them they
thought I was crazy going out in
the cold moving electric fence.
And I told them, I can feed 400
cows in the time it takes you
to get your tractor started.
And that's simply, the way it is.
Track 1: I know that going to daily moves
just considering my situation here my
dad has a farm, which I help him with,
and I have my own operation, dad, for
years, dad, and he'll probably, he's
apt to still tell me this but in his
mind, Daily moves are too much work.
I'm like, it doesn't take me that long.
It takes me so long because I
have different herds to move.
If we had them all together, it
wouldn't take me hardly any time.
And I know that's a big thing
a lot of people get hung up on.
They're like, it's just
going to take so much time.
What would you tell someone if
they're saying it's just too much?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
I might start by saying, what else are
you going to be doing with your time?
Oh, farming, bailing expensive hay,
working on equipment that's broke down.
Yeah, there's things you
can do with your time.
If you design the grazing cell
appropriately, so if your permanent
fence and stock water infrastructure
is set up appropriately, and all you're
doing is running fairly short stretches
temporary fence, in the case of cattle,
it's a single poly wire the sheep, I
did the electric netting to the end,
with hair sheep, I know plenty of
people who, use one and sometimes two
wires to manage their hair sheep wool
sheep, they were a little more difficult
to contain, so we used the netting,
but if you design it
Grazing cell appropriately.
You're right.
It doesn't take much time.
I mean I had a 8 to 5 job, 5
days a week with the university.
And so that's what a lot of
people in, out on the farms have.
They've got a town job 8 to 5, which
of course actually means about 7.
By the time you drive to work or whatever.
And so I did all
of those moves.
around having that job.
And of course, as the kids got older,
I could have them do some of it.
And usually I would have at least three
herds to move when we had sheep, there
were the sheep, and then we'd have a
cow herd and a yearling herd.
And sometimes I would have replacement
heifers separate from either one of those.
We did custom grazing.
Also, and when we were custom grazing
pears for someone else, I did not
co-mingle our herd with the outside herd.
That was two
herds to move.
So most of the time I was moving
three or four herds every day.
And probably an hour and a half is what
my chore time was on a daily basis.
And one of the cool things about
grazing is 50 cows or 500 cows.
It takes the same amount of time.
And so the labor, once you understand
how to set the grazing cell up,
what are the best tools to use for
making your moves and get a technique
down to where you do it smoothly?
It doesn't take much time at all.
Track 1: And that's been my
experience for the most part.
I do use electric netting with some
goats I have, and I have some thorn trees
that make electric netting just awful.
Haven't figured out how
I'm going to do that.
I'm thinking I'm going to try and get
those goats to respect the polybreed,
but we'll see how that goes this year.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
There is that and then virtual
fencing is going to get affordable
one of these days and Goats and
brush management is one of the great
opportunities for virtual fencing.
Track 1: I have looked
at virtual fencing some.
It's just a little bit.
More than I want to spend, but it
seems to be coming down quickly.
I find it very fascinating and
I'm a technology person, so I'm
like, Oh, I really want to do that.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
It's it's you.
Yeah, you're exactly right that today a
lot of these systems are more cost than
you can afford to pay It, particularly
if you're just selling commodity
livestock and if it's a pretty small
scale operation but the higher the value
of the product that you're selling,
like if you are in, direct market, grass
fed, go to grass fed lamb and you're
getting a premium price for it you can
afford to, use some technologies that
you can't in the commodity business.
But, what we've seen you and me through
our lifetime everything computerized,
everything that's high tech starts
out expensive and then it comes down.
And VirtualFence is in the
process of doing that right now.
Track 1: Oh, yes.
Just a rabbit trail.
But, technology the things we can do
now with technology just over my life.
And if I consider my dad's
life, it's even more amazing.
I don't even know where technology
is going to be in 20, 40 more years.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Yeah, it's one of the reasons that I'm
glad I'm the age I am and I'm going to be
dead before, the humanity actually gets
destroyed by technology, but I have to
Track 1: Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I've worked in education
for a number of years.
In fact, when I went to the
Essentials of Regenerative Grazing
in Miami, I was still working.
In education, but since then, I have
resigned from education to focus on
the farm and I did do that with some
apprehension because I still have bills
to pay, but I'm pretty excited about
that opportunity, but in education, we
can see the see the negative effects of
technology amplified on some behaviors
and stuff in education, which is,
which, like you said, how's it in?
I'm not sure.
Not sure.
I want to know.
With,
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
we don't need to go down
that path any further.
Track 1: right, yeah, we'll stop there.
Now you had the sheep, you brought
on cattle, and at a certain
point you got out of the sheep.
Did you get out of the sheep just to
focus on cattle, or was there another
reason to make that transition?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Okay.
We all have our reasons
that things happen.
Our fourth kid arrived.
My wife had started an electric fence
business, Greenhills Grazing Systems.
It was growing leaps and bounds.
I was beginning to travel more and more.
Speaking at field days,
workshops, stuff like that.
So I wasn't, around that much,
the kids were coming to an age
where they were getting involved
with things at school, activities,
and something had to give, and,
I, it was 1993 1993 was when we
liquidated the sheep operation, and
I would have to look back to see,
maybe we were in a market depression
at that time or something, but yeah.
Yeah.
It was all those different
Track 1: but not enough hours in the day.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Not enough hours in the day.
I still, every time I do a financial
analysis looking at sheep versus
cattle, especially on smaller
farms, for profitability sheep are
hands down a much better choice.
Track 1: We started hair sheep
in 2015 and we have just been
expanding the hair sheep and we've
actually decreased the cow herd just
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652: Huh.
Track 1: financials on the two species.
Now right now cattle is really
good, but this market, I don't
know how long that lasts.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Two to three more years.
Almost any idiot should be able to
make a profit in the cattle business
over the next two or three years.
And then it's going to
get challenging again.
Very challenging.
Track 1: And that's my fear these
people who own land that live in towns
going to see there's money available.
And those properties are not
going to be available for lease
anymore because they've decided
they can make money in cattle now.
Potentially.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Yeah that is definitely true.
And I want to just pursue
that line a little bit.
So besides me doing the
educational stuff, we have a family
business, American Grazing Land
Services, and my wife and son run that.
We sell electric fencing, stock
water supplies, forage, seed,
livestock, weighing equipment.
And when COVID rolled around, and People
saw empty shelves in the store and started
thinking about their own food security.
The jump in business and retail sales
that we had, particularly on electric
fencing, but also in the stock order
supplies, from little homesteader outfits.
urban refugees, people going out and
buying 20 acres so that they
could produce their own food.
They need to defense those
places, get water, seed them down.
And that, that pace of fleeing the
cities and getting a place in the
country, I think it's slowed down.
Just a little bit.
And part of the reason is because
the price of land has, in response
to, that demand has gone up and
some people who thought they could
afford it have decided
they couldn't afford it.
But things that happen in our broader
society and broader community are
becoming more and more impactful.
on the way we need to look at our day
to day farming and ranching operations
because the market and the community
that we're interact living in and
interacting with it is not the same
market and community that it was.
Even 20 years ago and certainly
not what it was 40, 50 years ago.
And so we cannot
continue to operate in business models
that basically expired 40 years ago.
But because of the average age of the
American farmer and rancher, that's
exactly where most of them are.
Economically, they're operating
40 years out of sync
with the current economy.
Track 1: very true.
I see it happening all over here.
Pickle my there's a, I
won't say who they are.
I know there's a farm up the road from
me and it's been managed the same way
forever and a son is taking it over and
they've gone from they were having a
calving season, but That's too much work.
So they're just putting the bulls out
there and they'll just wean whenever they
get whenever the calf gets big enough
just that thought just that step backwards
now I that there's lots of management
stuff they could do and I've had
discussions and they tell me cattle rotate
They're grazing enough by themselves.
It's not a problem.
I disagree but Just that step back
there from the calving season.
I'm like why they didn't
ask me for my opinion
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Yeah, year round calving.
For some people it's good for cash
flow, but it's terrible for the
bottom line at the end.
It's terrible for the bottom line
at the end of the year, though.
Track 1: Yeah and I think they're
coming from it that, oh, this gives
them cash flow whenever they need
to need cash, they can go pull some
calves to wean and take them to market.
I know when we went to calving seasons,
just the better management we got from
calving seasons was well worth it.
We could do a better job.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652: I
would definitely agree with you on that.
Track 1: So you're in Missouri,
you've gotten, you're running
cattle, and then you decide to
go across the country to Idaho.
Why Idaho?
Why then?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Okay.
See, I gotta go back
to my childhood again.
I grew up a
flatland crop farmer in Illinois, right?
When I was 15, two of my older
brothers and I went to Colorado
and camped in the Rocky Mountains.
And from that day on, I wanted
to live in the mountains.
And what I wanted to do in the
mountains actually was besides
hiking around and hunting and
living there, was write stories.
Before I ever became a grazing authority
and, wrote books on management intensive
grazing, kicked the hay habit for
quality pasture, before I wrote any
of that stuff I was a fiction writer,
and so I wanted to live in the Rocky
Mountains and write stories, and I said
midlife crisis is what we, made me move
is when I was about 44, 45, I realized
that what I really wanted to do in the
world was live in the Rocky Mountains
and write stories, and so we made the
decision that, we set a date that is
whether I had anything else to do or not.
That's the day I quit at the university.
We would sell our farm in
Missouri, and we would move west.
Why it ended up being in Idaho in 1997, I
started coming to Idaho on a regular basis
to help University of Idaho Extension
teach their Lost Rivers Grazing Academy.
And so we were coming to Idaho a couple
times a year to do those programs
and about 2002 we just decided,
we ought to just move out here.
And so that's what started the process of
actually leaving the university, selling
our Missouri property and coming out here.
Track 1: Very interesting.
I know for me when I was, I
want to say 16, we took a trip
to Colorado, to the mountains.
For me, the mountains were nice.
I enjoyed visiting them, but.
My brother and sister they just love them.
Now, they were younger they still
live close to me, but they go
out there more often than I do,
and my brother loves the ocean.
He goes to the ocean all the time.
The ocean doesn't fascinate me either,
because I can't graze livestock,
I got a real quick story.
So first time I went to
Hawaii, my wife is from Hawaii.
So she went over ahead of me and
she was over there about a week.
And I'm like, send me some pictures.
I just want to, I want to
see, I've never been there.
And she's we haven't gone anywhere.
I'll take some pictures.
Tomorrow we're going to go
to the mall or something.
I'll take pictures.
Be like, okay, did you go?
She said we just ran to the mall.
There was nothing to see.
I didn't take any pictures.
This goes on for a week, and I fly over
there, and her dad picks me up at the
airport, and we go to her parents house.
parents house is about, I don't
know, 20 minutes from the airport,
so not too far, so we had to drive
by the ocean, then up a hill into a
residential area and find their house.
But on the driveway of her
parents house, if you look to
the east, you saw the ocean.
If you look to the west, there
was a mountain behind her house.
And if you looked across the
driveway, there was a palm
tree in her neighbor's yard.
I'm like, all of this would have
been great for a picture for me.
I would have enjoyed a picture she's
didn't even think about any of that.
So you get out to Idaho.
One thing you all have is
the American grazing land.
Did you all start that about
the time you went out to Idaho
or was that a later addition?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
It was, oh, four or five months
after we moved here, decided
we really needed to get back into the
fence business because they're just,
at the local farm store level, there's
just so little choice and most of it's
not very good stuff, unless they're
selling, Gallagher or Stafix or something.
If it's the really cheap farm at home
stuff, it's not quality material.
And largely got into the business just
to service my consulting clientele.
And then, word of mouth advertising
from them expanded the business.
In 2014, when our son joined the
business, he's the one who set up our
online store and everything that a
modern supply business needs to be doing.
Track 1: Oh,
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
In the first 10 years that we had
the business, it grew probably from
100, 000 annual sales to 400, 000.
And then in the 10 years he's
been in the business, we've
gone from 400, 000 to about 2.
6 million sales a year.
Track 1: Oh,
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
And so that's really been the power
of having online availability.
And again, in the
COVID years, if you didn't
have that online availability,
you went out of business.
And so we were well set for.
When COVID hit and that boom from, all
those homesteaders needing to fence
and take care of their new properties.
And then also as another thing that's
really helped business is the no
till farmers, the regenerative no
till farmers who have all realized
that they have to have livestock
incorporated back into their cropping.
businesses to really
bring soil health back.
Portable fence on farmland
is a huge market for us.
Track 1: Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I wouldn't take that tangent just
to ask a little bit about it.
I know I've ordered a few times
from there, and it's always
worked out really good for me.
I haven't got any special discounts,
but otherwise it's worked out well.
It is time for us to transition
to our overgrazing section.
And we mentioned it earlier,
but let's go a little bit deeper
into that why time matters.
More than space.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Okay as we've talked about a little bit
earlier, some people say, oh, moving
them every day, that's way too much
work, and you should just turn them out.
And so the best explanation, the easiest
thing that I can come up with to explain
why it's important to make grazing
periods shorter, and extend recovery
periods, is if we think about the.
interaction of the animals with plants and
soils during the actual grazing period.
So we have this pasture here.
The livestock are in it here right now.
Mostly negative things are happening
to the plants and the soil.
The tastiest part of the
plant, the most nutritious part
of the plant is the leaves.
Leaves are where photosynthesis takes off.
So animals preferentially
are grazing leaves.
As they remove leaves,
photosynthesis is going down.
As the amount of energy being harvested
by the plant is reduced, energy flow
to the root system has to be reduced,
which causes the root system to contract.
Now, in the long term, there's a
positive aspect to that, but in the
short term, it's a negative to the plant.
And then, the soil science of the last
15 to 20 years has really developed
into the relationship between living
plants and living organisms and
all of those different symbiotic
relationships that are taking place.
The current science says that 30 to
60 percent of the energy from today's
photosynthesis will move through the plant
and be fed to microbes within 48 hours.
And so if we diminish photosynthesis,
reduce energy flow to the roots,
that also reduces or stops the
energy flow to the microorganisms.
And then all those beneficial acts
that the microorganisms are performing
of mineral transfer into the plant,
protection from soil bacteria,
fungi, insect pathogens, that
defense system starts breaking down.
And if soil compaction is going to
occur in a pasture, the physical
force causing the compaction is
animal hooves hitting the ground.
And that only happens
during the grazing period.
So we have four negative things
happening during the grazing period.
Reduction of photosynthesis, Restriction
of nutrition to the roots, reduction or
ending of direct carbohydrate flow to the
soil microorganisms, and soil compaction.
Positive thing that happens during
the grazing period is dung and urine.
That is our fertilization
program, and that does happen
during the grazing period.
Alright, so if we think about the
recovery period, mostly positive things
are happening for the plants and soil.
Leaves are growing again, so we have
photosynthesis kicking in again.
That's more energy to the root, so
the root system can expand, and also
the root system can feed the microbes.
The growth of the root system, the feeding
of the microbes, and accelerating those
activities breaks up the compaction that
may have occurred during the grazing
period, and then also the decomposition of
the done to release minerals or transfer,
transfer minerals to the plant or release
them into the soil is taking place.
So it just makes sense that the
fewer days of the active growing
season that the animals are actually
negatively impacting the plants.
That's important, and every time, as we
make grazing periods shorter, for that
little increment of land, the potential
recovery period becomes greater.
So we reduce the number of days
that negative things are happening,
and increase the number of days
that positive things are happening.
The traditional Spatial,
stocking rate based management.
Every day we have the negativity of the
animal impact taking place and the absence
of recovery limits the positive outcomes.
And that is why understanding that
you need to manage time more than just
space is the key piece of making grazing
successful and ranching profitable.
Track 1: As you minimize that time
and you do faster rotations, is there
a range we should be looking at?
How short and how long should that range
be for the optimal or best management?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Okay, in a productive environment, so
a high natural rainfall environment
or irrigation, three days is about the
maximum I want to be on one pasture,
because if you've got moisture and the
temperature's right, within three or
four days, that's trying to regrow.
And the animals, because they're
programmed to look for the best bite
of feed possible, if there's new,
higher quality growth coming, then,
older, more mature stuff out there,
they're going to start grazing that.
So in that productive, fast growth
environment, three days is about
the maximum that we want it to be.
Now, semi arid rangeland.
When I moved west, where we live
in Idaho, our natural rainfall
is between 7 and 8 inches a year.
And in that semi arid environment I used
to think a month is fine to be on that
pasture because things grow so slowly.
And I thought that mostly
because that's what all the
conventional range scientists said.
And then after being out here, I
said, man, that's too long.
And we better cut that down to
two weeks and then to 10 days.
And so where I am now is seven to 10 days.
It's the maximum that I want to be.
On a particular unit of rangeland.
I'd rather it be 3 to 5 days, but
we can live with 7, 7 to 10.
So that's the ranges in grazing
periods that we look at.
And then the recovery period,
most people want me to tell
them, it's some number of days.
It isn't some number of days.
Recovery of a plant isn't
based on calendar days past.
It's based on how many new leaves.
it has been able to grow.
And to avoid overgrazing, and I'm a
little hesitant with you using that
term, Cal, for your kind of wrap up.
Let's talk about anything in grazing,
because over, because overgrazing is
a very specific happening in grazing
management, and overgrazing is a function
of failure to effectively manage So on
most cool season grasses, we need at least
three new leaves per tiller for that plant
to be in a positive carbohydrate state.
After a grazing event,
we need to grow back
three new leaves.
On most of our native warm
seasons that numbers four or five.
And cool season grasses, I prefer
to graze at four to five leaf stage.
Big blue stem Indian grass
side oats, things like that.
I like grazing them at
six to eight leaf stage.
And if you do that, you're
going to have very healthy root systems
and very strong and vigorous plants.
Now, overgrazing is, happens two ways.
Either you stay on that pasture
too long and the animals are
grazing off the new regrowth before
the plant is fully recovered.
very much.
Or, we took the animals off of
this pasture, we've allowed it
to recover some, but not enough.
And we come back and graze it again before
it's in a car positive carbohydrate state.
Overgrazing is a function of
failure to effectively manage time.
And once again, that's why
time matters more than space.
Track 1: Wonderful
information right there.
Just you could just take notes
on everything you said there.
Excellent.
Not that you need me to say that.
I realize
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Thank you.
Thank you.
Track 1: Our last section,
we'll go ahead and transition
to our famous four questions.
Same four questions we
asked of all of our guests.
The very first question, what
is your favorite grazing grass
related book or resource?
Very
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
I would of course have to say, Jim
Gersh's books, Management Intensive
Grazing, Kick the Hay Habit,
Quality Pasture.
But, what I consider the most important
book on grazing management written
in the last, hundred plus years.
Andre Zen's grass productivity.
'cause that's the foundation.
A Alan Savory and holistic plant grazing
and, all of his thoughts on time-based
management really go back to Andre Vean,
myself, any almost every other grazing
guru that I've met from any other country.
That has been the seminal
book, in their philosophy.
Track 1: I'm embarrassed to say I
have the book, but I haven't read
it yet, so I need to remedy that.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Yes, you should.
Track 1: Our second question, what
is your favorite tool for the farm?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
My favorite tool for the farm.
My eyes and my brain.
Still the best computer that I can
run for farm management software.
Track 1: Is there anything you've done to
make your eyes and brain more effective?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Being a good observer.
All right.
When people ask me what's
the most important skill of
being a good grazing manager.
I say to be a good observer.
Now, I used to keep almost,
from our personal farm in
Missouri, almost everything
I kept in my head.
That does not work anymore.
And I've got to write and record things.
I am known as being an Excel geek.
I have Excel files for almost every
question that comes up and situations.
And so just keeping my mind sharp
by continuing to develop those kinds
of analytical and planning tools.
But be an observer,
keep your eyes and mind open
all the time and record what
and that can be a photograph.
It can be an audio recording.
It can be, the written word,
but record it some way.
Don't count on your brain to
keep all of that stuff safely
stored for all of your days.
Track 1: Very good.
And that's the part I have
to work on is recording it.
I love these new smartphones in
that I can take pictures and then
I can go back and see when I took
the picture and it's really nice.
Dad and I was talking about some lambs
we had sold and I went to my phone and
said it happened this date because here's
the pictures from all that activity.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
And something else,
and
not all phones and camera functions
will do this, but if you have the
setting on yours where you can also
tag the GPS coordinates of every
picture you take, that's pretty
Track 1: Oh, yes.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Because
Track 1: yes, that would be,
especially if you're looking over time.
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
yeah, because sometimes you
think you saw something over.
I know it was here.
I saw this plant here.
I saw this hole in the soil
here, but you can't find it.
If you've got a GPS function for
your camera, you will find that spot.
Track 1: Oh, yes.
Yeah.
That's excellent advice there.
Yeah.
Our third question.
What would you tell someone
just getting started?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Don't believe half of what they told you.
Track 1: Can you expand
upon that a little bit?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
I spent a lot of years unlearning
many things that I learned in school.
That In the real world, it sure doesn't
seem to be true and accurate information.
It really comes back to what I
already said about be a good observer.
Analytical thinking.
I love playing mind games where
you gotta figure something out.
Figure out what is this person
trying to convince me to do
or convince me not to do?
Why are they telling me this?
I used to, grew up in
conventional agriculture, went
through the land grant system.
I believed everything
that I was told, was true.
And I have found that it is not, if
you look at the world around you and
in the light of your own experiences,
if something that someone is telling
you just doesn't make sense, think
long and hard about what's their
motivation for telling you this.
And in, in the
case of ag, in the case of, in the case
of agriculture, a whole lot of it is.
They want to sell you something
and you got to figure out
whether you should buy it or not.
Does it make sense?
What they are saying that this
product will do this and it will
return you this many dollars.
It's in the cow calf business all the
different inputs, injections, things
you can do to You know that cow calf
pair if they all gave us the percent
performance boost You know that's claimed
and you're doing all those things.
Everybody ought to be weaning
eight and nine hundred pound
calves and we don't do it.
Track 1: yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Excellent advice.
And lastly, Jim, where can
others find out more about you?
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
Best place to go is our website,
which is americangrazinglands.
com.
You can just search Jim Garris
grazing and it'll take you there.
We have a lot of
information available there.
And now that I know you, Cal
under grazing media resources.
We have podcasts from our friends,
and so we'll put a link to grazing
grass podcasts there so that people
can, find all the other episodes
that you've done and the other people
that you've talked with.
Because I've never gotten around
to it, we don't actually produce
our own YouTube videos on different
things, but there's 40 to 50 YouTube
videos from various conferences.
interviews and stuff up
there.
So you can get a lot of the presentations
that I do at conferences and workshops.
Again, it's under that
grazing media resources tab.
And then there's, all of our
product sales, our store,
our online store is up there.
Uh, so that's where you can
find, and you can buy books.
We've I've written four
books and they're available.
from our website, but there's
other people, that I respect and
trust what they're doing that
we sell some other people's.
Books as well.
Track 1: Oh, yes, and we'll put
a link in our show notes as well.
So
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
I appreciate that.
Track 1: Jim.
I really appreciate you coming on
This is our hundredth episode Which is
just crazy that we've made a hundred
episodes that even people care to
listen because it's been downloaded more
Than what my mom has time to download.
So
It's really been impressive and I Really
appreciate you coming on and sharing
squadcaster-iai6_1_03-06-2024_162652:
You're more than welcome, and
as I said at the start, I just
appreciate the opportunity to
get the word out that there's a
better way of farming and ranching.
One of our slogans on our website on my
business card too, is making the world
a better place one pasture at a time.
Track 1: and that's a great philosophy
there I tell people a lot of times with
the grazing grass We just want people to
take that next step whatever that next
step may be for them Yeah, and thank you.
I appreciate Jim