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November 1, 2024 - It is that time of year again! In a few short days, Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA) will be hosting their annual Regen Ag Conference. This year’s keynote speaker’s list is once again well worth the registration fee and your time to attend. Check out more information on mfga.net.
This will be the MFGA’s seventh annual conference, and this will mark the first year that I am a participant and not immersed as part of the organizing committee. You can tell when a project continues to improve quality and motivate acceptance in the community as the directors change step down and new ones step up. It is with a profound sense of pride that I watch MFGA, and the Regen Ag Conference continue to grow and meet the needs of the producers and network they work hard to represent.
We all will agree that we attend conferences for the speakers and networking, Though, while true, this is not the only reason. In the smaller groups, often in quiet corners after salutations, great news and updates are exchanged, producers ask each other the real burning question, “what have you done that failed in 2024?”.
It is always right then and there that I know the MFGA conference and others of the same ilk are where I belong. No other group of ag producers are so willing to list and discuss this question so openly. Many other events seem focused and willing to talk about what worked and how it makes them successful. Fair enough in my books, as many of you know, I believe to each is their own.
Only at a regen ag conference do we talk about what has failed or openly talk about considering something that has non-traditional, even off the wall thinking. Gabe Brown has said “that I expect to fail at least one thing each year or I am not pushing the envelope enough to get better.” There are soil health principles we all try to follow to some degree in regen ag and the only way we can learn and expand our horizons is to experiment and share our experiences with other producers.
I cannot tell you how many times I have been in these discussions sipping a cold barley pop with a group of like-minded producers as one producer describes their failed project only to have the other producers say “wow what if you tried doing it again …. but do this different.” No one is there to criticize, only to offer words of encouragement and their thoughts of adjusting the concept based on their own experience.
I have been in on the early concept of intercropping grazing corn and different plants to provide a more balanced diet for the herd. About 10 years ago my oldest son Max was with me listening to the conversation on corn grazing. On the way home Max said he wanted to try grazing corn on his dry sows (4 head) and the boar. The next spring his project started in the pen; he wintered his dry stock (about ½ acre pen). Max then took the harrows we use on the driveway and the quad and leveled the pen and used the bale spear on the tractor by backing up and dragging the spear on the ground, he made rows. The rows were not straight and a little wider than normal, but it worked. Max hand-planted the corn in the rows and cross harrowed the small pen. When the healthy weed crop came up, he used the quad and the neighbors’ sprayer to apply roundup. When the weeds started to dry up, he hand tossed oats into the stand to compete with the weeds. When fall rolled around, Max put in his breeding herd of swine and watched as they ate all the oats up after 14 days and the oats and green weeds were cleaned up. The swine soon found that there was another crop above them, and they lived on corn cobs and stocks for the next three weeks.
I will share with you a few of the projects we have tried on our family farm near Virden and how they have since turned out. I have always been curious about honeybees and the bee colony. About 10 years ago I saw a go-fund me page for a new hive design out of Australia that made honey collection simple and easy on the hive and the keeper. Last winter I found a producer in Saskatchewan who was selling out a complete unit. A nuc (starter beehive) two nest suppers and an easy flow hive supper. Max and I took a road trip out to pick up the new enterprise and to my happy surprise, Max told me he wanted to work with me on the project. Just as the bees were expanding the hive and were starting to use the flow hive, the colony swarmed (split into two colonies with one going off to start a new hive). The remaining colony never had enough feed sources to expand back into the flow hive. We stole two frames of honey from the two-supper nest hive just so we got some honey for our own use. This became the most expensive honey I have eaten. Maybe Max and I will have better luck next year.
This spring, Max and my other son Herb rented a quarter of sandy land to produce cattle feed on, about a mile from home. With the wet spring they had to wait to get a custom operator to seed the field and planted a bit later than they originally planned. They planted a cool season cover crop that they designed on their own research. No problem, as they were after green feed. It was workable. Seeded late in June, the crop popped up and was doing well, just like they planned.
Things went a bit off course after the producer across the fence cut and baled his hay stand on July long weekend. A few weeks later we noticed that only the peas were standing, and the cereals plants were gone. We were haying at the time, and it was not until the end of the second week in July that I toured the field to find the grasshoppers had consumed half the field crop. The hoppers consumed all the cereals on the part of the field that had not recovered from significant wind erosion from the eighties and their damage stopped where the wind erosion had not been so bad. After seeding, the rain never came back. It was great for haying not so good on light soil in the field. We fenced the field for late season grazing, hoping to improve soil health by having the cattle out on the land. We will know more next year.
Herbert talked last winter about something we could do together. After much discussion we thought we should stock the new dugout we had installed five years ago with rainbow trout. It was the perfect business combo: Herb likes to fish, and I like to eat them. In early spring, I spent hours each day for several weeks trying to find a source of rainbow Trout to stock our dugout. We could not find a supplier in Manitoba. If you have a supplier in Saskatchewan or Manitoba of fish stock, please let me know. We hope to start this project next year.
Max is starting to think about long-term management. One of the projects he wants to do is increase the water holding ability of our property. He has approached the local watershed district to install a series of small dams, each around 1-2-meter-high, in the seasonal creeks we have on the property. The goal is to keep the water on the property longer for the forage and stock on the farm. He came up with the idea after looking at an abandon Bever dam that held water for a few months or so after spring run off or a heavy rain event. He is hoping to have them put in this fall.
Last summer Max bought a Jersey heifer for his own milk consumption. This big brown eye beast is a farmyard pet as she selectively grazes where she wants in the home quarter. The goal was to do milking once a day and let her calf have the rest of her production. Since she calved in late May we have not bought milk or butter. But it sure seems to be that my job - as it was when I was seven years old - is to go to find the milk cow and put her in for milking. We separate her from her calf for about 10 hours (mid-morning till evening) to have enough milk for the house. Max has learned that different feed sources can and do change the production and taste of the milk. Some things just must be experienced.
I am looking forward to a big crowd at the MFGA conference where we can talk about what worked and what did not work on our operations.
Till then have a great fall.
Larry Wegner
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