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Branching Out with Agroforestry in Indiana
93 Plays1 month ago
Right tree, right place, right time. That’s one way to think about agroforestry, a farming methodology and movement that advocates for intentionally incorporating trees into farm operations as a way to support farm businesses and community health. Kate speaks with Kaitie Adams of the Savanna Institute and Liz and Nate Brownlee of Nightfall Farm about why trees are a critical part of the Midwest’s farming future.
The Taproot Podcast is an initiative of the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program, a project funded by the USDA National Organic Program to support transitioning and organic producers with mentorship and technical assistance and to grow the greater organic community. Learn more at organictransition.org.
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Guest Bios
Liz and Nate Brownlee are livestock farmers in southeast Indiana. Together, they run Nightfall Farm, on Liz's family's land. They've converted fifty acres of corn and soybean land to silvopasture, where they rotationally graze meat chickens, laying hens, turkeys, pigs, and sheep. Their grazing practices sequester carbon and raise animals with care – which turns into very tasty meat and eggs. Find Nightfall goods via their CSA, at local restaurants and independent groceries, and farmers markets. All of this work is motivated by a love for the natural world, a desire to fight climate change, and a belief that food can bring people together.
Kaitie Adams leads the Demonstration and On-Farm Education Team at the Savanna Institute. Based in flat lands of East-Central Illinois, her work focuses on creative ways to connect people, build abundance, and create new futures on landscapes and in communities through perennial cropping systems. Her background in anthropology (M.A., 2015, SIUC) helps illuminate the deep ecological and social connections created through agriculture and informs her work on the ground. Adams is drawn to agroforestry for its powerful reimagining of a future that is abundant, perennial, and beautiful. Adams also teaches community classes on seasonal cooking, fermentation, and canning when not rambling around with her veggie-farming husband and rambunctious daughter.
Helpful Links
- Savanna Institute
- Nightfall Farm
- Agroforestry Could Transform Farming in the Midwest
- In This World ~Wendell Berry
Credits
This work was funded and supported by the USDA National Organic Program, Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP)
Hosted and produced by Kate Cowie-Haskell
Podcast art by Geri Shonka
Music:
- Chiado by Jahzzar, Free Music Archive, CC BY-SA
- Poor Man’s Groove by Mr. Smith, Free Music Archive, CC0 1.0 Universal License
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Agroforestry
00:00:00
Speaker
And then when it comes to the people that are, you know, adopting agroforestry, think one of the things, a trend that I've noticed amongst those people is that they're intensely hopeful to begin with.
00:00:14
Speaker
Like the whole reason that they're planting trees is because it's a hopeful act. And it's also, you know, like this is something I can do that I know has some proven benefit that I'm really interested in pursuing and that it has long-term durability and it's like it's a legacy thing it's a hope thing and to like watch something grow that you don't have to till under or that it doesn't die i think is also one of those things that's like okay like we're gonna be here it's gonna be okay music music music
00:01:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Taproot Project.
Core Benefits of Agroforestry
00:01:05
Speaker
Today we are talking about trees. Specifically, trees in a place on purpose. That is one of the core tenets of agroforestry, a farming methodology and movement that says trees on farms can support climate resilience, financial resilience, and healthy communities.
00:01:24
Speaker
You just heard from Katie Adams, Demonstration Farms Director at the Savannah Institute. The Savannah Institute takes their name from the oak savannas native to the region they serve and, quote, conducts research, education, and outreach to support the growth of diverse perennial agroecosystems in the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi watersheds, end quote.
00:01:49
Speaker
Depending on where you're from, trees on farms may not seem like a novel concept, because it's not. Some of the oldest forms of agriculture were forest gardens of cultivated fruit and nut trees.
00:02:02
Speaker
And for farmers who are growing near forests or in hilly country, trees are a de facto part of the farming operation because they're already there. And farmers can see the benefit they provide through shade, reducing erosion, soil enrichment, etc.
00:02:20
Speaker
And in many parts of the Midwest, trees are few and far between, sometimes because the natural environment was grassland and sometimes because of systematic deforestation.
Historical Context and Integration
00:02:33
Speaker
I spoke with Katie about the benefits of agroforestry and the cultural barriers to incorporating trees on farms. Agroforestry is an integrated practice.
00:02:44
Speaker
It's not just like the trees are on the farm, but the trees are on the farm for a particular purpose, and they're doing particular work on the farm. So like a tree in a backyard isn't agroforestry, but a tree that was placed there for a cow to spend time in the shade under in ways that enhances the cow's life as well as the pasture's life is agroforestry.
00:03:10
Speaker
And so it's ways that and humans are interacting with trees for food production.
USDA-Recognized Practices
00:03:15
Speaker
It's ways that livestock are interacting with trees and the ways that we're utilizing these trees for the benefit of the ecosystem, the farm business, um the other sort of animals above ground and below ground.
00:03:29
Speaker
There are five USDA-recognized agroforestry practices, and they can be divided into edge-of-field or infield practices. The first two are windbreaks and riparian buffers.
00:03:44
Speaker
These are both edge-of-field practices because the trees are alongside the production field rather than in it. A windbreak is a row of trees adjacent to cropland that, like it says in the name, can protect those crops from wind.
00:03:59
Speaker
But windbreaks can also protect crops from chemical drift, from pesticides being sprayed on neighboring farms, or even offer an odor block for properties adjacent to hog sheds or confined feeding operations.
00:04:11
Speaker
The second edge of field practice is riparian buffer. This is a stretch of trees along a waterway planted to protect that waterway from the cropland. Trees can filter out fertilizer runoff that would otherwise end up in the water.
00:04:27
Speaker
Two infield practices of agroforestry are silvopasture and alley cropping. In silvopasture, trees are planted directly into pastures in ways that benefit the trees, the pasture, and the livestock.
00:04:42
Speaker
Silvopasture can also be done by carefully adding livestock to a wooded area.
00:04:49
Speaker
Alley cropping is adding rows of trees into production fields so that you're, one, benefiting the production that's already happening in the field, but then also producing a crop in the canopy or the overstory.
00:05:02
Speaker
you're laying two different production systems together that and balancing the production of both of those. So that can be, so like I mentioned, I didn't know what agroforestry was before I started working at I was doing alley cropping in my former career as a vegetable producer, but I had no idea it was called alley cropping.
00:05:21
Speaker
ah We were just planting vegetables in between rows of fruit trees because we needed the fruit and the vegetable production and saw the benefit of adding those things together. um But it can be done cut flowers, vegetables, corn and soybean production, small grains, hay, all things that can be integrated and with trees.
00:05:40
Speaker
And finally, the fifth agroforestry practice is forest farming, where you're using the understory of a forest to produce a crop like mushrooms or medicinal plants. And you say you said in the area that you're in it's harder to convince people to come around to farming with trees.
00:05:58
Speaker
Why do you think that is? I
Barriers to Adoption
00:06:01
Speaker
think it's really, it's a complicated thing with a very long history. But there's very, i am based in east Central Illinois, which is prime kind of corn and soybean country.
00:06:17
Speaker
So the largest, or the county that produces the most corn in the world is next door to the county that I live in. This is like flat black earth that was not created, you know, that wouldn't just like come that way.
00:06:36
Speaker
It's been a managed landscape for a really long time. i'm But it is like, it has been increasingly i'm consolidated.
00:06:47
Speaker
both in terms of who owns the land, who operates the land, what crops are growing on this land, who lives where on this land, what infrastructure is on this land.
00:06:58
Speaker
and it's basically been set up to really just support corn and soybean production. And so when we ask folks to do something differently or think about something, their land or the way that they produce in a different way, that's really challenging because there's been kind of generations of work that have been leading up to the situation we're in now.
00:07:21
Speaker
And it's supported by state and federal policy. It's supported by, you know, lots of different industrial actors in terms of corporations that are supplying seed and spray and um services to folks that are doing this particular type of farming. And so we're not just asking folks to add trees into the production or add different practices or really asking them to like,
00:07:45
Speaker
shift the way that they think about what the farm does, who does it and why which is a complicated thing. And it's almost different than asking someone to do cover crops or talking through a reason why someone might be interested in transitioning to organic because it's basically a tweak in the system.
00:08:02
Speaker
where you're basically taking that same system and then optimizing it for a different set of goals or um to produce something a little bit differently. but And it's all part of an annual cycle, but trees are perennial.
00:08:18
Speaker
They will outlive people. they, you know, get passed down to
The Browleys' Agroforestry Journey
00:08:23
Speaker
generations. Like if someone plants a tree, like you're basically like, well, now someone else has to deal with this tree and the next generation. and that can be challenging for folks in many ways, especially now when farmers are operating on such tight margins.
00:08:40
Speaker
Like the medium income of a farmer in Illinois is zero dollars. Oh my God. Which is Yeah. Oh my God. It's wild.
00:08:52
Speaker
I thought it was going to be low, but I wasn't thinking it would be that low. And like, that's not average. Like but that's the median, right? Like kind of right in the middle. im But like the margins are tight, tight, tight. They're getting tighter.
00:09:06
Speaker
um And, you know, there's less people farming the land. There's less people living on the land and it's just a, it's a tall, it's a tall order.
00:09:18
Speaker
And there's this, there's this um i don't I guess you would call it like a viewpoint or understanding that I often hear among, especially corn and soybean farming communities and landholders is um the framing of highest and best use, that this land's highest and best use is for agriculture.
00:09:41
Speaker
And so this comes up often in conversations around the use of wind turbines, solar solar farms, things like that, that why would you pull prime agricultural land out of production? Like this is this land's highest and best use.
00:09:58
Speaker
Like if anyone should be growing corn and soybeans, it should be here. in Illinois where we have the, we this is the place. It's almost like a and I wouldn't say this to these farmers, but it almost has like a like a manifest destiny kind of feeling to it of like this land was made for this.
00:10:20
Speaker
And this is my role within that is to steward this land to its highest and best use. which is corn and soybeans. And there's often, that's also often tied with the analogous that corn is a grass.
00:10:35
Speaker
This was grassland and grass prairie. So therefore, if it's not going to be prairie, it needs to be corn because it's designed designed for corn, for grass.
00:10:51
Speaker
ah I'm an anthropologist by trade and I know that you are too. So like I spent a lot of time thinking through like you know, so the mythology or the mythologizing of the land and like this, these ideas of what the natural world should do and what the cultivated world should do.
00:11:15
Speaker
The Savannah Institute supports agroforestry adoption across the Midwest by providing technical assistance, on-farm agroforestry training, tree planting services, and maintaining demonstration farms where people can see agroforestry in practice.
00:11:31
Speaker
They also support farmers who want to incorporate trees into their farm. Two farmers in Katie's network are Liz and Nate Browley of Nightfall Farm. Liz and Nate learned
Rotational Grazing and Biodiversity
00:11:43
Speaker
about all aspects of farming while on the East Coast, but returned to southern Indiana a decade ago to become livestock farmers on the land Liz had grown up on.
00:11:53
Speaker
I spoke with them about their farming journey and why trees are now an essential part of their operation.
00:12:01
Speaker
I would love if we just started by setting the scene and if you could tell me, what's happening in the rhythm of your lives right now and on the farm. um Where are you at in your season? What's going on?
00:12:14
Speaker
ah You have found us in the tired part of the season. Yeah. We are a pasture-based livestock farm and we gear everything towards the growth of grass. And so that is winding down, which means it's really heavily our harvest season. So we raise meat chickens, egg layers.
00:12:34
Speaker
We raise Thanksgiving turkeys. We've got pigs and we've got sheep. And ah right now it's almost full census, full population here on the farm, which means morning chores most legitimately take all morning.
00:12:48
Speaker
Can you say more, either of you, about um what you said, Nate, about being focused on the growth of grass? and That was just sort of a surprising you know sentence to hear. Sure, yeah. So for for us, it's really both, but we can't have...
00:13:04
Speaker
uh, the growth of the meat without the growth of the grass. So that's kind of like our, uh, foundation. Um, so we rotationally graze or forage all of our animals. So we once had a state inspector come out to the farm and asked where the barn was. And we said, well, the pigs are in the field, actually. You you won't find them in a barn. Um,
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, I would add that um there are a lot of other folks who graze livestock who talk about being grass farmers as much as anything. You know, that that we are out here trying to grow the best solar panels we can, right, in the grass that we can graze so that we can raise our animals and then we can move them along and have those forages grow back just as quickly as possible because they're hardy, healthy plants.
00:13:50
Speaker
um so that we can graze them again. um And that's and part of what excites ah me anyway about rotational grazing is that you know all the numbers show you can raise at least a third more animals on the same amount of land.
00:14:04
Speaker
um And in terms of this question of how are we gonna feed the world, um That's one solution, rotational grazing is one solution. um But it takes really paying attention to the the natural cycles to do that. So we have 50 acres of pasture um here on my family's land.
00:14:21
Speaker
um We converted it from corn and soybeans into pasture, some of it 12 years ago, some of it about eight years ago now. And um on all of that land, we have planted trees um mostly as a source of shade.
00:14:33
Speaker
and That's our biggest motivating factor um because it is hot and only getting hotter. And um our animals, we struggle with um the animals being able to keep themselves cool enough.
00:14:45
Speaker
um The beautiful part about silvopasture is that it still lets us do all the things the pasture would normally, but we get that added benefit of shade and depending on what we plant, at fruit and nut production on top of it.
00:14:58
Speaker
Our ground was really poor. So when we when we moved home, um you know this had been in corn and soybeans since the early 80s. um And um we you know our organic matter level was about 1.6%, which is um pretty pretty low. um But I'm really delighted to say that after eight years of rotational grazing on some of it and 12 on the other, um we just tested the summer and we're at 3.2%.
00:15:27
Speaker
Wow. Congrats. It feels
Sustainable Practices at Nightfall Farm
00:15:30
Speaker
really good. Thank you. And it's not just the organic matter that's up, you know, so many more, so much more life in the soil around us, you know, snakes and frogs and turtles and bugs of every shape and size and dragonflies and spiders and um herons flying overhead. And mean, the the differences are real based on how we're grazing. Mm hmm.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah. So you grew up on this land. so right Is that right? Yeah. And came back to it after you decided that you wanted to farm. What can you say more about um what happened in that in that gap that led you back home and made you want to change the land that had been in corn and soybean?
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. um So my parents bought this place in 71 and they did the pretty traditional farming thing around here at the time. um So they did some corn and some beans, some wheat, some hay and some pasture. And they had about, you know, 20 head of cattle and just a typical small farm.
00:16:34
Speaker
um And then um when the farm crisis hit and the USDA policy was get big or get out, um they just couldn't make it pay. And so they got out.
00:16:45
Speaker
um And they started renting to neighbors who chose to get big, um folks that we're still friends with and and neighbors with. um And, you know, those guys are farming thousands of acres of corn and soybeans now.
00:16:56
Speaker
And they were they were farming our ground as well. um in kind of the standard way around here. um And so when I left for college, I had no desire to be a farmer. I wanted to leave. I was told very clearly to get an education, you know, and get off the farm, even though I'd been in 4-H and FFA all growing up. um It wasn't about developing my skills as a farmer, a future farmer. It was about and public speaking and leadership and um community development, things like that.
00:17:26
Speaker
um But um and college, my my thought was to be an environmental a reporter or ah something in conservation. right And I started to realize through my coursework that the way we treat the land is determined in part by what we eat.
00:17:44
Speaker
um And so, or guess the other way to say it would be the the way we eat impacts our natural, our natural landscape so, so much. And um so started paying attention to food and farming.
00:17:56
Speaker
um And I met this guy, Nate, ah who is on his own path. Nate's waving. Falling in love with farming. um And so we, um right after we got married, we worked on farms, other people's farms for about five years, um Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont, New York, and um just saw beautiful, thriving local food systems where people were doing something a little different um than what we'd been around all growing up.
00:18:26
Speaker
And we said, you know, if we if we stayed in Vermont, we would have been a dime a dozen. There's so many good farms there. um But if we come home, um to Indiana, maybe we could try to be of more use um and have a bit bit but larger of an impact um to show a different path and and have um a different type of food for our customers than they could get at the grocery store.
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah.
Importance of Trees for Livestock
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um How does organic fit into your practices right now? We get the question a lot at at the farmer's market ah or when we're building a relationship with a new chef or or small grocery, you know, are you certified organic?
00:19:05
Speaker
And we say we're not certified, but we follow a lot of organic practices. And and then we use that as a way to talk with customers about Okay, we use non-GMO feed, which is as close to organic as um the market can bear where we are here in rural Southeast Indiana.
00:19:21
Speaker
um And we talk about- In terms of keeping your product prices low. without Yeah. So so um here's how I explain it. um And these prices might be a little out of date by now. But so we feed a lot of grain feed feed.
00:19:36
Speaker
to our animals. Our lambs are a hundred percent grass fed, but everybody else is getting a grain feed. You know, they're all omnivores other than the lambs. And, um, so that bag of feed, if it was a 50 pound bag of conventional feed might be less than $10.
00:19:51
Speaker
Um, if it was organic feed, it might be $26 or more. Non-GMO is about 17. Um, non gmo is about seventeen kind of right in between. So it is a higher quality product using more organic practices than conventional.
00:20:06
Speaker
um It is not as good as organic feed would be, but I don't think our customers could handle the price point we'd have to charge if we went with certified organic feed. Yeah.
00:20:17
Speaker
Other than the feed itself, we're following a lot of organic practices in terms of you know um animal welfare, in terms of access to pasture, um and amount of roost space, you know all those sorts of things.
00:20:31
Speaker
um And then also in terms of you know are we using antibiotics and and things to promote growth? Definitely no using them if animals are sick, of course. um But um having that kind of conversation goes a long way with customers. They start to understand some of the nuance um because I think everybody ah who asks, they've heard like, oh, organic food is better for you.
00:20:54
Speaker
And I agree. Organic food is great. um And when I can't just give them an easy yes, I have to draw them into conversation to help them see why we're not not certified here yet.
00:21:06
Speaker
A lot of our, ah lot of our customers in this area are still less, less ah temporally removed from farming in their their family history than we find in um bigger, ah more populated areas. So a lot of customers still remember going to grandma's to help can green beans or you know remember what it's like to work in the garden. And so one conversation that we had a lot with Liz's dad when we first moved back was, well, I don't understand why you wanna buy organic milk. When I was growing up, we never bought organic milk. It it you know it just seems like a waste of money.
00:21:42
Speaker
And we had to sit down and say, well, actually, you know, the reason you didn't buy organic milk when you were growing up was because you had a cow and you were taking care of it and you knew what was going into what you were drinking. And ah the difference in practice between having a family milk cow or having a dairy nearby compared to going to the grocery store and buying from a much bigger dairy or ah an aggregated milk producer means that you just know a lot more of what's going into it. And so ah explaining some of the differences between the way you might remember it from growing up to the way it could be today when you're in the the aisles of the grocery store. Okay, so let's let's talk about trees. um Liz, you had mentioned that you brought them in mostly as shade.
00:22:31
Speaker
um how How and when was agroforestry introduced to you to as a concept and and when did you think you might try to start planting? there's no There's no genesis that we can point to, I don't think. I think it just kind of simmered ah because it made sense. And then somebody put a name to it, which was helpful. But ah in terms of our introduction to agroforestry practices on the farm, my off-farm job when we started the farm was working with a consulting forester and we would do tree plantings for landowners.
00:23:07
Speaker
ah that were um following a plan written by a district forester. And inevitably, we couldn't fit as many trees onto the property as the forester had written the plan to include. And so that means we would have a couple hundred trees sometimes left over or, you know, enough trees that made sense not to just toss them into the woods. And I could bring them home and we could toss them in the ground. And that was That was driven by that that desire for shade and thinking forward to, okay, if if a pasture is our office, how do we want our office conditions to be in the middle of summer? Or what's um what benefit would we get from adding and incorporating these trees into our pasture? And i think we started doing that before we really connected the dots to agroforestry the practices that the USDA recognizes as such. We did get an EQIP grant to ah do a silvopasture practice in our two newer pastures that we have taken over most recently.
00:24:07
Speaker
And we planted those in rows such that um we can also consider alley cropping as one of the practices that we do do because we'll run the the meat chickens through there. And they ah have trees now on either side of them. They're big enough that this fall for the first time we heard chicken feet crunching on dry leaves that has blown down and That really feels like we're getting towards seeing some, not maturation, but fruits of the the the tree planting.
00:24:36
Speaker
Well, and I think part of the genesis could be like, okay, so we started planting some trees because we were able to get trees for basically free. Right. And we knew we wanted, we were both nature lovers. like We knew we wanted trees around us.
00:24:51
Speaker
Um, but, um, one, one piece of the puzzle or one thing that maybe accelerated it is, um, There's some persimmon trees here near the house and garden that my brother had planted back in 2000.
00:25:05
Speaker
And when we moved home, um you know, we'd go out and collect the persimmons in the fall and make persimmon pudding and that sort of thing. And my mom had just, um you know, grinded some pulp and the seeds were left over. And she said, would the pigs want these?
00:25:21
Speaker
Because we're always taking various scraps out to the chickens or the pigs. And I said, well, I don't know, but let's try. And um they sucked those seeds clean. they would They would take, you know, that leftover pulp. They would chew, chew, chew, enjoy, enjoy and spit out a clean seed.
00:25:37
Speaker
Wow. Wow. Oh, see processors yeah and so we said, okay, the pigs like persimmons. And it makes sense. They're sugar balls. You know, who wouldn't like that? um And so that made us start to think about, well, what can we plant that might be future food for our animals?
00:25:53
Speaker
And so we planted a lot of persimmons. and We've planted a lot of um ah types of oaks that give smallish nuts that our animals could eat. um and and And then I think the other thing on the pig front is, um so pigs are really big, powerful animals.
00:26:13
Speaker
And so the shelters that you make for them have to be really big and beefy. But if you're rotating pigs, that means you have to pick up those shelters very frequently and move them to the next paddock.
00:26:25
Speaker
And that gets tiring very quickly. ah Moving it through the you know a muddy, mucky mess after a rainstorm gets tiring very quickly. um And so planting trees has actually meant that we only have to have those shelters nowadays. Like our trees are large enough that we only need those shelters for the first couple weeks when the pigs are out on pasture.
00:26:46
Speaker
Maybe a better way to explain that would be, um so we buy in feeder pigs. So they're, you know, eight to 12 weeks old when we get them. um we We do have them in the barn for like a week so they can, you know, we can get to know them. They can get to know us. We train them to the electric fence, um make sure everybody's good, you know, kind of standard quarantine practices.
00:27:05
Speaker
And then we move them out to pasture. And so it's still springtime. It can be, you know, wet and rainy. So those first couple of weeks, we have the shelters in place and we move them from one paddock to the next. But um once the pigs are just a smidge bigger, um we switch to just the trees as their shelter now because we have 20 foot tall trees. We have these copass um copses of trees that we've planted and that we've let grow um specifically for shelter for the pigs. And so it actually saves us a ton of labor because we don't have to move those heavy shelters anymore.
00:27:39
Speaker
um And so we're already seeing the benefits um in terms of our bodies and in terms of the health of the animals, um, because they, they hang out in that shade any day. It's more than 65, you know, they're picking the shade.
00:27:54
Speaker
Um, and so it's really feeling, i don't know, it's feeling good that we can actually get some benefits already from solo pasture plantings.
Practical Benefits of Willow Plantings
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. And I was reading about your, um, um planting willow or you plant you've planted willow as mean, it's a fast growing tree and shade, but also great forage for, I think it was your sheep, right?
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that actually grazing not straight from the ground is better for their their health as well. So that's just ah like a hole ah whole new layer to to think about. Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'll tell you the willow is a really kind of a fun piece. um Nate, what if I kick off the story and then you take over and talk about how we actually use the willow with the animals? Sure, sure. I'll just, I'll say that. um So Nate um wanted to go to a training that the Span Institute was having, um but it was a couple states away. So we asked if there were any folks coming from our neck of the woods that he carpool with. And they said, yeah, we know this guy's going from Kentucky. Maybe you guys could carpool.
00:28:59
Speaker
Um, and the guy named his name's Matt Wilson. He said, yeah, for sure. But I'm doing a work trade with somebody on an agroforestry planting in Illinois on the way. Do you want to do that with me? And Nate said, yeah, for sure. So let's do it. What could I get as the work trade? And he said, oh, a bunch of elderberry cuttings.
00:29:17
Speaker
And I was pumped about that. I've always wanted to have a lot of elderberry. We have really poor ground. Elderberry is supposed to do great on poor ground. Perfect. So Nate and Matt get home and Nate says, don't be mad. But I mostly brought willow. Oh.
00:29:32
Speaker
We had some elderberry cuttings, but 33 different varieties of willow, shrub willow specifically. um And so we just took that and ran with it. And we planted 1700 feet of willow plantings all around our pastures because we had seen farmers in Vermont who were using, you know, grazing willow with their sheep.
00:29:51
Speaker
um And it yeah, it keeps their heads up off the ground, which means less parasite pressure. It's a different type of forage. um And so we really were excited about that, but we've actually seen even additional benefits.
00:30:03
Speaker
um And maybe Nate, you can explain. Well, i guess I'm not a hundred percent sure which other additional benefits, uh, cause those are such good ones, but we have, um, created the best shade on the farm through the willow plantings.
00:30:18
Speaker
Uh, the sheep love to bed at the base of the willows, uh, because it's, uh, they graze as high as they can. And we've seen some of them stand on the back of another sheep so that they can get a little bit higher into the willow. my God.
00:30:32
Speaker
We're kind of on a three to five year rotation of coppicing the willows. So with with shrub willows, you can cut them down to the ground and essentially maintain adolescence for the plant and they grow back incredibly quickly. They grow back a little straighter and thinner. So they have happened to be a a weaving variety. They can make really good whips for weaving baskets.
00:30:54
Speaker
um They also are their own planting material, so we're propagating the original 1700 feet. I'm sure we've doubled that by now. um And the turkeys also will bed down at the base of the the willows. it's It's really nice that there's such a dense shade. We're starting to get um basically bare soil at the base of a lot of the the willow rows, which ah you might think is not necessarily the the best benefit. But actually, soil contact is a great source of a cooling property for the animals.
00:31:31
Speaker
The soil is going to be cooler on a hot day for them to lay against than a tuft of grass. And so that is just just like a, you know, 100 foot long cooling bed for all of the animals when it it it gets really hot out there. And so we just can't ah sing the song of praise of willows loudly enough.
00:31:51
Speaker
Nate, is it OK if I share the turkey story? Sure. Yeah, yeah. OK, so the The only way we get to have turkey or whatever, you know, meat or eggs that the customers are so excited about is that our pastures are becoming healthier for animals. And part of that is shade.
00:32:09
Speaker
So several years ago, um we had a summer where we had a ton of the heat index days. Humidity was through the roof and, you know, the heat index was way over 100. um And we actually had a specific day where we lost 18 of 51 turkeys that were headed to the butcher.
00:32:29
Speaker
And we lost 30 chickens that were headed to the butcher. They were all within a week to a day. Let's see, how do we say Chickens were going to the butcher the next day and we lost 30. out of the 300, that spring batch of turkeys was headed to the butcher the next week and we lost 18 out of the 51.
00:32:47
Speaker
And they were in man-made shade shelters beside water and they were just too hot. They just could not cool down. um And that was very sobering. It was so sad on so many levels, right? Just like emotionally and personally.
00:33:03
Speaker
was really hard on our pocketbook. um it was It was bad in all the ways. It was bad for our meat inventory and supply for customers. um Bad for our hearts. Yeah. And so we um we started asking really tough questions about, you know, can can we raise animals in this heat? What does this look like?
00:33:24
Speaker
um And so one of the things that we've done is planted willows um for plants. shade and we've really leaned on them. So um we had a couple summers with no ah none of those heat index days. That's awesome.
00:33:37
Speaker
and We did build some different types of shade shelters that are taller um and have better ventilation. So it creates ah deeper shade down at the animals level. um But the biggest difference is the willows that are now 10, 12, 15 feet tall along running. So they run north south. So they create this great shade morning and evening.
00:33:58
Speaker
um And so this summer, when we had spring turkeys and we had meat chickens on pasture and we had heat index days, we didn't lose anybody. um and that's a testament to being able to have shade in our pastures.
00:34:11
Speaker
And so do our customers know about that? No, not necessarily. i mean, ah that's that's not what they're noticing. They're noticing how delicious the turkey is. um But we only have that turkey to sell to them because the turkeys have shade.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah. That's great. That's a great story. Yeah. um Just helps me understand, too, how much of a necessity this is really, yeah, like... I don't know, shade is something that can just sound nice, but if this is really a matter of survival for um your animals and your business.
00:34:42
Speaker
so It really is. um We've learned a lot more about heat index since that that particular event. And oftentimes the the heat index forecast is measured for shade.
00:34:53
Speaker
And so that that astronomically high number that you're worried about is when you're not in direct sunlight. And so knowing that our animals are able to take advantage of that lower astronomical number, uh, is one of the ways that we can get through a day without just stress overload. um we still try to mitigate those days as much as we can with more, um ground pans of water that they can step through and cool down their bodies. We, we actually bought a solar powered ceiling fan to put out in one of their, um, shelters just to kind of move some air. And, uh, those are beneficial, but it is really just cutting that sun and, um,
00:35:35
Speaker
I'd like Liz mentioned, we had great shade shelters. Uh, we're much happier with our current and improved shade shelters and there was just nothing we could do. We had, um, some neighboring farms to lost cows on that same day. And, you know, it's, it's just, it's, it's not.
00:35:52
Speaker
It's not something you lead with at the farmer's market because people have such a ah romantic idea of farming and they want it to go well. They want to, they want to think that you're happy on the farm and and living ah an idyllic life.
00:36:03
Speaker
And so we, I think generally as farmers the paint pretty pictures and it's nothing that we hide. We'll talk to anybody about it, but that's not what we lead with. And the,
00:36:19
Speaker
the benefits of being able to just have fewer of those stories as the the years march on because we're we're at a ah more established point in our farm. um It's something I think we take for granted. I don't think we, I don't think we, you know how like when when you get hurt, you don't really remember the pain from the last time you got hurt. I think that story of losing so many birds in one event is a story now. And we don't feel that same wounds because we've been able to patch it with a a willow salve.
00:36:54
Speaker
yes Yeah. Yeah. Well, the last thing I'll add on that is, um, this summer, um, During that that heat wave, actually, our vet came out for just the annual inspection that vets have to do nowadays, right? They they do a touch base, they walk around the farm with us.
00:37:16
Speaker
um And they wanted to know all about our willows and our solar powered ceiling fan, etc. Because they were getting tons of calls from other farmers about animals dying or stressed out animals from the heat. And um they, you know, they need solutions to be able to offer their clients and, and they were so impressed that we hadn't lost any animals, um, which made us feel good. It felt like,
Philosophical Reflections on Farming
00:37:38
Speaker
okay, we have some outside validation, you know, this is working.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah. Wow.
00:37:45
Speaker
Um, I think that's all my tree questions. Great. But I kind of want to wrap up on a, um, yeah artistic note and take a look at that poem you sent me.
00:37:57
Speaker
um And this, this poem is called In This World by Wendell Berry. um I'll read it and then I'd just like to hear what you um what you both find in in this poem and how it relates to your lives now.
00:38:15
Speaker
The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill, dark floodwater moves down the river.
00:38:30
Speaker
The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall, the birds sing. I have climbed up to water the horses and now sit and rest high on the hillside, letting the day gather and pass.
00:38:43
Speaker
Below me, cattle graze out across the wide field of the bottomlands, slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world, men are making plans, wearing themselves out, spending their lives in order to kill each other.
00:39:03
Speaker
So like we told you, was a very dark turn at the end. Yeah, I know. And I decided to keep it in because I'm like, Wendell definitely saw the connection between the two sides of that picture. That's right.
00:39:18
Speaker
so but And we actually, I mentioned earlier that we had a a workday with some of the other Savannah Institute farms here in Southern Indiana.
00:39:29
Speaker
yesterday and so our blessing for the meal was reading that poem because that's the origin story of the name of the farm so that line ahead of nightfall the birds sing is where the name of this farm came from and so that's why we selected that to send your way but um we We talked for a good amount of time about the the last two lines and specifically the last couple of words of that poem last night and how true it seems to ring. And so, yeah, I think it's absolutely appropriate to include. But when we talk about it as the name of the farm's ah origin, we generally focus mostly on the the kind of feeling of
00:40:14
Speaker
looking at your work at the end of the day. we We love the time of day that is nightfall because it's beautiful. Oftentimes you are getting a pretty clear external cue that it's about time to stop working.
00:40:31
Speaker
um and you're able to sit back and look at some of the things that you've accomplished and and see the, the good you've done for others. Uh, so in that poem's case, you know, the cows that they're out there grazing or the hills that are horses that they're being watered.
00:40:45
Speaker
And, um, we really feel that, uh,
00:40:51
Speaker
that that sense of satisfaction at the end of a day of a good farm day. And so that really resonated with us. And so we were pointed not to that poem in particular, but in the direction of ah using Wendell's assistance to name the farm from one of Liz's friends, is if you want to tell that story, Liz.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we had, so we we knew we were coming home to farm, and um we were trying to figure out what to name the farm. And we'd come up with a couple of options. um One was Home Again Farm, for instance, right? We were moving back to the Midwest. um And I put it up on my Facebook, because at that time, that was the only social media, right? And had my friends vote, which which farm name do you like? There were three options.
00:41:33
Speaker
And the vote was split. A third, a third, a third. So to us, that said, like, there's no clear winner, right? Yeah. And a librarian friend of ours said, you just need to sit down with a good book of Wendell Berry poetry and a good bourbon, and the name is gonna come to you.
00:41:48
Speaker
wow And so that's exactly what we did. ah and and we found this poem that just epitomized, and is that a word, epitomized? Yep. Yeah. Okay. We found this poem that just epi epitomized what we were trying to create, and reality where we could see that we'd done something useful during the day the course of the day, that we were taking good care of the land and our animals, that we were part of something um creative and joyful, not something destructive.
00:42:16
Speaker
and um And we try to, even amidst the the busy days, we try to remember that. We try to pause um and reflect on what we're doing. um We don't always manage it it. Sometimes we're just tied up in the the work.
00:42:30
Speaker
um But it's easier to pause and enjoy the farm when there's shade to stand in. I'll tell you that.
Conclusion and Credits
00:42:48
Speaker
Thank you to Liz, Nate, and Katie for their time. This episode was produced by me, Kate Cowie Haskell. The music you heard was Chiado by Jazar and Poor Man's Groove by Mr. Smith from the Free Music Archive.
00:43:03
Speaker
The Taproot Project is an initiative of the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program. a project funded by the USDA National Organic Program to support transitioning in organic producers with mentorship and technical assistance and to grow the greater organic community.
00:43:19
Speaker
You can learn more at organictransition.org.