Proactive Soil Workshop

I have a standing agreement with my farmer neighbors to graze their crop aftermath.

Each fall, I string electric fence around one of their fields and let my sheep and cattle graze a bit of kochia and regrowth.

Usually, it takes a couple of sunny days to pound the posts, unroll the wire and enjoy the fall light glowing across the harvested crops.

Sometimes, my brother helps me and we catch up on family news.

Sometimes, I get to think about things as I set up the temporary fence.

This year, I thought about how the dry heat created crunchy appetizers for grasshoppers before the cows could get to it. The grass looked good in May, before June broiled it to a crisp, like a steak I left sizzling while I answered the phone.

The neighbors’ crop aftermath would buy a lot of grazing time.

Then they pulled up and offered more land to graze -- if I would install a gate across an access road.

Yes, I will.

Their neighborly offer enhanced my reactive plan to this drought.

I have a long-term, proactive drought mitigation plan, too.

It’s a simple strategy: Grow more grass.

Grass is simple to grow. It needs sunlight, food and water.

My ranch sits just east of the Rocky Mountains so sunlight is plentiful.

So the question becomes how to feed and water the grass.

It turns out that dung beetles dig freeways from the surface downward. Then microbes use those freeways to trade food with plant roots.

So all I need to do is encourage microbes to hang out at the ranch and then I can go watch soap operas with my box of bon-bons.

I know almost as much about how to entice microbes as I know about celebrity gossip -- neither

Britney Spears nor bacteria are within my area of expertise.

So I called internationally-renowned Nicole Masters to get some advice on how to use cattle and sheep to grow more grass.

I want more dung beetles to build more tunnels so more fungi can bring more nutrients to more plants to feed more cattle and sheep.  

Nicole has been offering advice in New Zealand and Australia for many years. Lately, she has been traveling across Montana to show ranchers how to feed microbes, develop a proactive plan and -- best of all -- spend less money.

Her biggest payoff is helping ranchers change their attitude from depressing drought reactions to positive, proactive management.

Typically, her plan might take five to seven years to improve the grass.

In five years, we will have another drought so I might as well get started now.

Information is power so I invited her to explain her thoughts to everyone at a workshop here at the ranch.

She will tell all of us how to evaluate what is working and what can be better on September 26 and 27.

We all will step down four feet into a trench to look at what is happening underground.

My job is to dig the trench.

Nicole said to be sure the trench is wide enough so it won’t collapse and smother someone.

I can do that.

Pondera County Extension and the Pondera County Conservation District will do the rest.

Dr. Dick Kinyon will feed all of us so nobody has to suffer through my forgotten steaks.

I don’t want to constantly monitor microbes by digging trenches across my ranch so Nicole will share how we can look at plants on the surface to confirm what is happening below-ground.

Nicole offers one difference between reactive and proactive management.

To join us, register by calling 406-271-4054.