This episode of the On-Farm Trials podcast features an interview with farmer Douglas Poole in Mansfield, Washington as he describes how his trials are intended to work with the ecological systems on his farm. Douglas shares his experiences from collaring cows to harnessing soil microbes, planting alternative crops, hosting landlord parties to talk cover cropping and soil health, a decades-long legacy of biosolids, and creating/conserving sage grouse habitat on the farm.
Carol McFarland
Today, we’re here with Mr. Douglas Poole at Double P Ranch, north of Mansfield, Washington and we’re very excited to have you on the podcast here today.
Thank you for having me out.
Douglas Poole
Thank you for coming clear out in the middle of nowhere.
Carol McFarland
Oh, it was a beautiful drive today. There was a lot of big rocks along the way.
Douglas Poole
We’ve got a rock or two. You can take some home if you want to.
Carol McFarland
Oh, that sounds fun. I also drove past a couple of big piles in one of the fields out here. So I look forward to hearing more about those as we progress. In the meantime, though, would you tell me a little bit more about your farm, who you farm with and the area?
Douglas Poole
Yeah. So as we mentioned, we’re about 10 miles northwest of Mansfield, easier to consider it North Douglas County. I farm on the Big Bend, so the Columbia River actually is actually bordering three sides of the ranch. From there, we– I’m a third generation farmer. Farm with my wife and my son Lane. We farm wheat, canola, sunflowers, millet, sorghum. We’ll try some phacelia and some buckwheat this year. We usually have about a thousand to fifteen hundred acres of cover crops a year where we integrate cattle on that. And then we do have half the ranch is, is just native rangeland that we’ve trying to get the– or bring the cattle out of the rangeland and out onto the cropland in one of our attempts that it been successful with soil health and the soil health principles.
Carol McFarland
Oh, I’m excited to hear you expand on that a little bit more. Yeah, you you farm a lot of different things. I hear including some sage grouse along the way, too.
Douglas Poole
We do. Yes.trying to improve the ecosystem.
Carol McFarland
No that’s great. Do you want to talk just a little bit more about your precipitation, your climate otherwise and soil?
Douglas Poole
Most of our moisture comes during the winter months. We have about six to nine, six to ten inches of rain a year. Very, very, very dry. And so if we get an inch or two during the summer, that’s that’s a make or break or a million dollar rain for us.
Right now, I’m trying to break away from a fallow system. When I took over the farm it was all wheat fallow. And now obviously we’ve expanded into those other crops trying to break that fallow. And so one of my overall dreams before I ever leave here would be that there’ll be a year where everything’s green. There’s something growing on all acres. And so that’s again, as we go down the soil health principles in this journey that we’re on, just trying to get rid of fallow would be probably my next biggest thing.
As you probably saw, you mentioned the big rocks. For every one you see sticking up. There’s forty that we farm over the top of. I could take you out to a field and maybe get six inches with a soil probe and go over a foot and go down four feet. And so very rocky, very glacial. The story goes the Missoula flood broke loose, washed all– what it didn’t wash here, dumped everything here just fifteen miles to the south. You can actually see where the glacier stopped. And in the case here, I’ve been told that it blew– I’ve heard ten years it blew for a hundred years, but all the soil that is down around the Pullman area in the Palouse is actually mine. It was all up here after the glacial flood and blew down there. So every year I send my friends a bill down there. Would like my dirt back, but apparently I don’t see the trucks lining up. So kind of a, kind of a little bit of a trivia question.
Carol McFarland
Wind- deposited, loess does have to come from somewhere.
Douglas Poole
Yes. And it left here and went down there. So yeah. So that, you know, obviously the challenges that brings, I never thought of it growing up here. This was pointed out by another who I consider a very innovative farmer down in the Ritzville area. We were talking about his moisture and his moisture just goes away in August and September. And you know, it’s not until the changes, the temperature that it comes back. And I said, you know, I just don’t have that trouble. And he’s like, Poole, you farm in a bathtub. Where can it go? And he’s right. You know, the glacier, like I said, it might be at six inches or it could be at two or three feet, but our moisture can’t get away from us here, for the most part. And so when we went no tilland some of these other practices, it really converted quite well because what little bit of moisture we get, we are, we’re able to hold it.
Carol McFarland
When did you come back to the farm again?
Douglas Poole
I’m actually a three time loser. I’m on my third tour. And so I’ve been back, came back in the early nineties, early two thousands and then I came back for good in 2011. My dad was getting close to retiring. My uncles had retired or were moving towards that point. And so kind of the here on the main farm, everywhere north we’re kind of that last man standing as far as I have thirteen landlords. And that’s just no one else came to came back. I’m one of only one or two in the whole area that came back in my generation. And so there was, there’s a huge gap of people that chose to come back.
Carol McFarland
what do you attribute that to?
Douglas Poole
there were twenty-three– small, small school– there were 23 of us boys in high school. And there’s only two of us came back in my kind of that three or four year grade period. And they just guys went out and got degrees and got jobs and didn’t there wasn’t anything to come back to. So I guess I was crazy enough to come back. Like I said, been back three times trying to get back here. So it’s for me, it’s in my blood. I can’t seem to get away from it. I’m actually an accountant by trade, you know, interestingly enough.
Carol McFarland
It sounds like you have a fun career history as well and the way you bring that those skills transferably.
Douglas Poole
Maybe I just can’t keep a job. Maybe that’s what it is.
Carol McFarland
Obviously, you’re still here!
Douglas Poole
I was in public, public finance or governmental finance, and I actually missed that time. It was a different kind of challenge. I actually was allowed to kind of play and innovate at that point in time, too. So I think, interestingly enough, I was in public education finance and being around teachers and the administration in that– I had a superintendent who was an old farm boy and he just drilled into all of us continuous learning. Just learn every day and that, you know, they were, they were trying to move that into the classroom and everything else. Well, that, in my opinion, somewhat rubbed off. We usually have a podcast going, you know, during the day with my earbuds or whatever else. But there’s always something going on that we’re just want to listen. And that has made a big difference. I I attributed a lot of that back to him and how he drilled that into us.
Carol McFarland
Well, I know several years ago, you did suggest that the Farmers Network should start a podcast.So hopefully this this one’s on your list of ones you listen to.
Douglas Poole
Well little did I know you’d do it.
Carol McFarland
You know, actually, you do have a bit of a reputation around here for being quite the innovator in that inspiration and the learning that you bring into your farming. And, you know, it sounds like your coffee shop talk around here might be a little lean these days, but I’m sure they talk about you somewhere.
Douglas Poole
I tend to hang around people that, you know, kind of believe in the health of the soil, not that everybody doesn’t. I mean, I– we always talk about, you know, is there a bad farmer? I can’t picture one in my area anyway. And so it’s not that they or anybody farms wrong or anything else. It’s just in my own farm and in my own context. When I came back, there’s fields that we don’t farm anymore. They’ve been farmed down to bedrock. And that’s no indictment on my grandfather, my dad, anybody else. It’s just erosion took place. And in this particular part of the country, we’re at rock now. So it’s like being gone those, you know, those that having that gap of of eleven, twelve years twice. Those things that you kind of see like, whoa, we’ve got to change that or that, you know, we can’t keep cultivating that field or we can’t keep doing that. So those are again, continuous learning or observations. When I got back, I knew something had to change.
Carol McFarland
I think that’s some of that question about, what do you attribute the kind of fewer farmers in the area too is, you know, is that a social, environmental or economic kind of pillar that that’s…
Douglas Poole
All of, all of them. It really is. There’s a the generation below me. They’re all coming back.The school is vibrant again. The town is, you know, we’ve got our we’ve got a restaurant, you know, we’re able to support a store and a hardware in that. I would have told you 10 years ago, I’m not sure any of that was going to make it. And so it’s fun to watch these younger kids come back.
Carol McFarland
Well, it’s because every day is a good day in Mansfield.
Douglas Poole
You saw that? Yes. Yes. Neat community, obviously. I’m from here, so I’m a little biased, but that that group has really embraced Mansfield, and what we bring in and some of the innovation, it’s not just on our farm, but I would tell you, 80 percent of the farms in the Mansfield area are all no till now. And that happened all in a really a two or three year period. And so between the Conservation District and NRCS, all of a sudden there were no till drills being purchased all over the place. And so I I’m very proud to drive around here. You just don’t see things blow anymore. I grew up, you could blow, which was normally all the time, and not be able to see town
and not. But, you know, there’s areas from here from this viewpoint you just wouldn’t see. And that you just don’t have that anymore. And so it’s it’s cool how everybody stepped up and went that direction.
Carol McFarland
So now that Conservation District shout out, that was for the Foster Creek Conservation District.
Douglas Poole
Yes, we I was trying to remember, I think I got had the good fortune of getting on that board in 14 or so, 13 or 14. And we had one employee at that time. Now we have eight and they’re just you just got to get out of their way. They’re amazing what they’re doing and they’re embracing the whole soil health. In fact, we just got done with our strategic planning last week and it’s easy when you just put soil health as the circle. What are we all striving for? And so it makes that filter a lot easier for the organization to run stuff through.
Carol McFarland
It’s great that you have also been, you know, engaging in some of these various boards, but I know the Foster Creek board is a pretty fun one.
Douglas Poole
That one’s like I said, those kids are crazy on our employees. They’re just just give them a little to get out of the way, really. And what’s interesting about them is they literally will go out and knock on your door. You just pretty much just wear you out, you know, soil health.
So yeah, shout out to those. I’m very proud to to get to work alongside or really just get out of their way. That’s what we all need to do.
Carol McFarland
As we’ve been talking, have alluded to some of your overarching management goals that drive some of your innovative curiosity, kind of that why I’m hearing things like moisture retention in the soil, reducing erosion, especially wind erosion and following the soil health principles. Which soil health principles are you referring to?
Douglas Poole
They should be written on my whiteboard that you’re looking at.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, this is a good whiteboard.
Douglas Poole
Yeah. So obviously, limit disturbance, keep things covered, keep things growing root as long
as we can. Crop rotation or some sort of just diversity and then obviously cattle integration. And then the sixth one, there’s everybody keeps adding a new one, but context. And so what we do here in six to nine inches of rain is going to look a lot different than it does down in the Palouse or in Kansas. Or in Australia.
You know, we were, I try to go to two or three conferences each winter and we ended up in Colorado, Eastern Colorado. And I think I found something that’s about as close to our weather pattern. They’re a thousand feet higher, but they get winter moisture at six to eight, six to nine inches of rain. And we ran into a gentleman down there that he now grows 14 different crops all in a spring rotation and eliminated fallow. That’s the closest, you know, we, we followed a lot of New Zealand, a lot of Australia stuff in their dryer areas, but they don’t have a winter like we do.
And so it’s always been as much as I try not to be that well, it won’t work here because I’m different. It was comforting to finally find some guy that knew exactly what I was talking about. But we’ve never let our context stop us trying. You know, soil is soil in my opinion. All of those principles will all work here. They are, I mean, they’re being implemented here. And so just again, trying to figure out how cover crop and the cow works here, a little different than it would be in the Palouse.
Carol McFarland
So how are you translating that into your farm? Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the things you’re trying on your farm this year that you’re excited about? it seems like you’re always up to something, Doug.
Douglas Poole
Well, obviously the new rotations, millet and sorghum, the phacelia. We’re going to try phacelia this year, buckwheat in a monoculture. Wheat, chicory, and then sesame, interestingly enough, we’d like to try sesame. And I’m pretty proud that I leverage NRCS in those programs as well as we can. We’ve got a neay, you know, I shout out to the conservation district. We got one heck of an NRCS in this year too, in our county. And I attribute that NRCS to the fact that, you know, there’s 80% of the note, everybody’s no till now. They walked alongside.
But anyway, I try to leverage those programs we can to do some of this experimentation. It takes the risk out of it for not only myself, but the landlord.
I’m 90% leased. And so those, I mentioned those 13 landlords, I have to, in all of this, they are amazing in what they let us attempt. They see our vision.
Carol McFarland
It’s because you threw them a party, isn’t it?
Douglas Poole
Yeah, I did. We had a landlord day and they, all of them are really bought in. But at the same time, they have property taxes and they have all of that, you know, that they need to expect a living. And so those programs really come in handy to let us try that.
Cover crops are one or you kind of, you know, you do them once and then you don’t get paid
for it anymore. So a lot of that experimentation has been done on our own. And then I noticed one of your questions was, is the unintended consequences?
Carol McFarland
Oh, yeah.
Douglas Poole
And it wasn’t so much on my farm, but in the cover crop study that was done here in 17…17, 18 and 19.
Carol McFarland
That was Leslie.
Douglas Poole
Leslie. Yeah. Amazing work again.
Carol McFarland
That was out of the Okanagan Conservation District.
Douglas Poole
Yeah. She’s with the Department of Ag now. All of those, especially something like that, you know, there’s just if you go back in history and think about in my own journey, that was huge, a huge turning point. And it was an unintended consequence. The cows got out, somebody else that was in her study. You talk about somebody that she had at one time, 17 farmers spread over a four county area trying to basically herd cats.
But anyway, one of those cover crop studies, the cows got out and it just we all turned around like, wow, that’s what we’ve been missing. We’ve been trying to implement these cover crops and didn’t have the cattle integration part even in our mind. And so, I mean, we all those of us that could and those of us that had the opportunity and infrastructure started reintroducing cattle to the cropland. Which if you think about that, all of a sudden, my pastures get to rest because, you know, the cows are up on the cropland. So that was an unintended consequence that we all look back as a huge, huge turning point in our journey.
Carol McFarland
So how have you been using the cows? It sounds like on your cropland, Are you putting the cool radio collar callers on them radio?
Douglas Poole
part of the journey, we started with putting them out in just in our fallow. And so that eliminated one, if not two sprays. So again, in this journey of soil health, trying to eliminate those chemical disturbances. And so that was a big deal.
And then when we started growing cover crops and then, of course, the unintended consequence, we thought, well, let’s grow cover crops and put the cows out there.
And the one thing that we’re doing just a little different here and a couple of the other neighbors is we just take something out of rotation for a year. And so I have to go to the landlord and say, hey, we’re investing in the soil, trying to keep a living root as long as we can, And we’re going to do it with cover crops. We’re going to bear that expense. We’re going to bear the expense of management of the cows. But what should come out of that is better soil. And so anytime that I can get a program and help with the landlord. But everybody has really been amazing in understanding that I’m pulling something out of production for a year because I I paint it in the idea that they’ve, you know, if I have a barn on something I’m leasing, they would expect me to keep it painted or, you know, keep the lights up or whatever else. But have I ever had a landlord say, hey, I want you to invest in my soil, keep the soil, whatever, whatever that is. And so one of the ways we believe is the cover crops and the cattle integration, which really is going to move that forward is the virtual fence product called Vence.
And so everything on those cattle are controlled by a radio collar. The signal gets sent to the collar and the cow knows where they’re supposed to go and where they’re not supposed to. But what’s fascinating by that product and I don’t even think they’ve tipped the surface of what they can provide for us is the data, the grazing data, because you’re able to tell where every cow has been and where the herd concentrates .And so I have a have a spot up here in one of my own pastures that I would tell you that draw looks looks normal to me. They grazed one half of it and left the other alone. So what is it in that draw that- is it an East West thing, North South thing? But the intensity that they put through that draw was almost to a line. And so I being the old accountant that I am, the data that’s going to come out of that’s just going to be crazy.
Carol McFarland
I hear it can also help select which cows maybe should be..
Douglas Poole
Yes.
Douglas Poole
We know the lazy ones. And there’s a gentleman up north. He doesn’t mess around. He if he can see they’re hanging around the water and that’s it. They’re gone. He culls them right away. And, you know, does that throughout the year. And so as he’s built up his herd, just in I think he’ll be on his third year, he, you know, obviously probably anecdotally can see his herd improving because he’s got workers as opposed to lazy, lazy cows.
Carol McFarland
The ones that always go wandering off or get stuck in something or all the things.
Douglas Poole
Or always testing the fence. That’s a big one. But just it was more so he now knows which ones will climb the hill and don’t mind being the worker bee that they should be. So it’s just it’s kind of like anything else. We’ve, we’ve bred our cattle to be lazy. We’ve bred our crops to be lazy. in my case, my seed is grown under irrigation in a high, high nitrogen input system. And then I bring it up here to the desert and expect it to perform. And so it’s no different with our cattle either. You know, we’ve kind of bred them to be big bodied and then expect them to go to the top of the hill. It’s probably not one of our smarter things.
Carol McFarland
I think in some circles, there’s a renewed interest in some of the heirloom varieties
and trying to maintain some of the genetics of those traits, all those like hearty Scottish fuzzy cows.
Douglas Poole
We are, in our cropping system to getting back to some of those heirlooms that land races that, of course, they were bred away because we started inputting nitrogen. And so those old those old varieties, of course, in the case of wheat, you know, went down. They just tipped over because they weren’t used to that. And so in our system, we’re trying to eliminate a lot of those inputs. Can we bring those land races back? We actually ran into again, one of our conference tours, we ran into a couple from the Dakotas and they pretty much went cold turkey. Just eliminated all inputs, fertilizer inputs, in a grant, in a grant fertilizers and have really gone to some Korean natural farming, which, you know, to the audience might or may or may not sound like some tin hat stuff. But they were they went back to land races and are growing back, they’re growing everything above the county average. Don’t take crop insurance anymore. And so we were all we, you know, we all question them. Well, where does that that product go? And they said, we just take it to the regular elevator for now. We have no inputs from, you know, we’re getting the money from the expense side. Right now, we don’t need to market it as a land race. We were fine where it goes. And so I’d give anything to get to that point where I can say I don’t care where my land race goes because we’ve eliminated the expense side of it, or at least pared that down.
Carol McFarland
Is that that’s something you’ve been working toward for a few years, though?
Douglas Poole
We have. We’ve we’ve incrementally– we always focus on nitrogen, obviously. But we’ve over the last six years, we’ve just we would do a soil test. You know, the old version of the soil test, which I now call I didn’t I don’t I didn’t make this up. I’m a plagiarist.
Carol McFarland
Careful, Douglas.
Douglas Poole
I know, is a sales brochure, really. And so we take this soil test and, you know, gosh, shows you got to have 50 pounds of nitrogen and my agronomist would make a recommendation and we just cut it by 10 or 20 percent. And I have to get a shout out to him, too. He was supposed to be here today; Mike Nestor with Sterling Valley Agronomy. And a huge part. I could do a whole nother podcast on my relationship with him and, you know, he’s been on that journey. And so that was first thing we did was, you know, if you listen– you can see on my whiteboard, I have Christine Jones. She just hammers away at getting the inorganic nitrogen out of the soil at that, especially at that seed zone. And she said, if you got to sleep at night, then just cut it by 20 percent every year. What we were doing was making that cut. But then we were replacing it with a chicken litter byproduct that had fish hydrolyzate, volcanic ash and some microbes that whether the listeners know about Tanio products or whatever else had a little bit of those in there. And I didn’t I never saw a drop off in any of my yields. In fact, there are places where I can where we had a little unintended consequence with the drill where the fertility wasn’t going down the chicken byproduct. And you could see to the line. I mean, dark, light green and dark green. And so the chicken stuff was working.Imagine the smell, though, that it became very onerous to deal with that product.
Carol McFarland
Oh, I’ve smelled it.
Douglas Poole
Yes. And chicken beaks and a couple of the other things. And so in our delivery system where we were trying to run it through a drill, it became very onerous to try to get that in. I could see in a broadcast situation, it probably works great.
Carol McFarland
So how does your drill handle chicken beaks?
Douglas Poole
You plug them up and you get to get out and clean them. Yeah, and then and then the smell my wife would make me– I had to undress outside. And most of the time, my clothes had to be washed that night.
Carol McFarland
It’s good you live in the country.
Douglas Poole
She’s yeah, in the country and she’s a patient woman.
Carol McFarland
Well, she’d have to be, Douglas.
Douglas Poole
Everybody that knows my wife knows.
Carol McFarland
You’re talking about trying these different things and not just what you’re trying, but how are you trying them? Are you an all in on everything? Put it out where every neighbor you have can see. Or how is it that, you know, if something’s working or not and if you’re going to try it again?
Douglas Poole
I’m an all in. I don’t have that many years left. I’m not going to be here until I’m 90. And so I want I want this to be functioning. So when my son takes it over, he doesn’t doesn’t have to worry about this transition. We’re in a huge transition. You have to remember that, you know, there’s been 80 years of tillage here, probably 40, 50, 60 years of anhydrous ammonia, no crop rotations, some of that. And so you just can’t undo that overnight and then add the complexity of the context. The lack of moisture or the, you know, the timing of the moistures and stuff like that.
I’m not a hundred acre kind of guy. It’s just that rotation is going to have that procedure implemented. They were hauling chicken manure in here as fast as I could have them truck it in. And, you know, we had a lot of nights. I sat out there and it got the beaks. You know, I would screen all of the fertility. And in the case of the canola, we were putting 100 pounds an acre of that product. And then for the wheat, 50 pounds. And so all of that ran across a three by three screen that I had a broom. And I got the beaks and the feathers out the best I could.
Carol McFarland
It sounds like a lot of undressing before you went into the house.
Douglas Poole
I did. I did. It’s frustrating because it was such a great product. I could see where we had those things where the drill messed up or whatever else you could see how well it was doing.
Carol McFarland
And you said you talked about the color, when you talk about, like, see how well it’s doing. I’m interested in what that means to you as a producer.
Douglas Poole
Well, the color, obviously, when we get back to all of these things that are important– photosynthesis with if I’m light green, am I photosynthesizing as well as something that’s got a higher pigment of chlorophyll? You know, just purely a healthier plant is going to photosynthesize and in exchange nutrients in the soil much better than something that’s a little weaker. Obviously, our mindset is as well. Anhydrous UAN32 used to provide that. You know, my my studies and stuff and my travels now show that that was kind of a false color, so to speak. And so now that I’ve used these other products– and we’ve moved to a worm casting now, just purely out of the fact that the chicken litter was becoming too too difficult to deal with.
Carol McFarland
Are you putting that through your drill?
Douglas Poole
I do. We do two things with the worm castings. There’s liquid. And so we do an extract. We have an extractor again, back to Mike, is my agronomist. We now refer to him as my soil health therapist. He brings two of those extractors out. He travels from here. I’m as far north as he goes. And then he’s clear down into southern Idaho with those machines. But we do a liquid and then we also mix in a dry with our seed and put that in. And all of that’s in for.
Carol McFarland
So is this a really good time maybe to also, since we’re kind of talking about different sources of fertility? I mentioned that I saw some large dark brown piles on a field as I was driving up here to your place. Are those yours and what are they? And is there a history there?
Douglas Poole
Yeah, so those are biosolid piles. I suspect– the company that is in the area that brings the biosolids here and then applies it, I think has thirty two, thirty five generators– municipalities that come to our area. That program has been in place since 1991. I mentioned one of my first tours, I actually came back and ran that company, the application company. When that was when that came in the early 90s, they had a company out of Oregon. They didn’t really understand the farming practices side of the application. And so my dad and two of his close friends formed a company to apply it more in tune with how they farmed. And so I came back, ran that for a couple of years. But biosolids are an amazing tool. Best example, I had to go back and refigure on my dad’s ranch, had to refigure some yields for a program. And in the case from 1985 to when I was redoing those just a few years ago, his yields had gone up 13 bushel over the farm. amazing farmer. He had changed the way he tilled. He he was making other changes, but biosolids played a big role in those increased yields in those base, base yields for the farm. And so we use biosolids as another tool, kind of another arrow in the quiver, so to speak. They– what I found is, is a lot of my soil health principles, as I make the conversion to some of these work really well if it’s followed by biosolids. And that’s you know, those are just anecdotal observations that we make, it’s a valuable product to bring.
Carol McFarland
You think that’s just like a bulk carbon or do you think it’s something else?
Douglas Poole
you’d have to obviously talk to the people that can spout this out way better than I can. I think you’ve worked with some of them, too, right?
Douglas Poole
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
You’ve got a long history of collaborating with a lot of university folks.
Douglas Poole
Yeah, of course. Obviously I love WSU.
Carol McFarland
Go Cougs.
Douglas Poole
So, you know, they– it’s all of the above carbon, obviously the nutrient load that it brings. And I’ve always thought that the simplest thing in it rattles around with my brain this way. There’s not an excess of zinc and a deficiency in molybdenum or whatever that is. For the most part, the product comes fairly balanced. And, you know, they do the testing and they know what we’re getting. So everything has to be applied at an agronomic rate.
But that I just think some of what we’re seeing or a lot of it is just the fact that it’s a balanced product. Back in the 90s, when we when we first first were doing an analysis and comparing to commercial, we did it did a financial analysis. And if you were to try to put everything you got in biosolids on commercially, it was it would have been a thousand dollars an acre to try to get everything that you get in biosolids.that was actually that analysis that made me think, Okay, it comes comes with everything. And a lot of those I’d never be able to put on myself.
Carol McFarland
Well, it really sounds like you’re a numbers guy as well, you know, in the lifelong learning and the innovating and your soil health goals, I imagine that coming back and making sure the numbers work are really core to your operation, you know, without actually asking you about details of your numbers, because,that’s not what we’re doing here. But just how do you frame that? I mean, is it yield numbers that you’re looking like? What is return on investment look like on your farm when you’re trying these new practices?
Douglas Poole
Well, I look at it in a long term. I mean, there’s obviously the did I did I make another year? Can I get another operating loan? There’s there’s all of those numbers. But as we implement these things and I’ll use sunflowers, sunflowers as an example. We’re supposedly deficient in calcium in our soils, but yet when I grew sunflowers, all of a sudden, the plant itself in a tissue test has calcium all over the sunflower. And then the wheat crop following is now in adequate ranges for calcium. Where did that come from? I didn’t put it in.
Carol McFarland
Sunflowers are they root pretty deep.
Douglas Poole
They do. And so the soil test, of course, showed I was deficient at one foot or two or however far I got. Well, the sunflower went and got it somewhere. In fact, we were just going over soil tests this morning. Everywhere we’ve had sunflowers, I’m I’m now in the optimum for calcium and a list of other things. And I didn’t have to spend a dollar for for any of that.
And so as I look in the five and ten year, all of a sudden now those fields have calcium, which we know is one of the huge drivers of the truck in the whole idea of soil health and in how a plant cycles nutrients and interacts with the biology of the soil. So that that’s exciting. And so economically, I don’t make a whole lot of money on sunflowers, but it pays for the next five years or ten. We don’t know. We’ve only been growing them since 2015. And so there’s a case where the more rotations we add, the better my biology gets. And in fact, the one of the things we’re taking is a carbon to nitrogen ratio and determining what that that looks like. And those fields where I’ve had sunflowers, that ratio is getting closer to an optimum where we start out well and not have to have any influence.
Carol McFarland
So this is, you know, this is the point in the interview where I ask, what are you seeding all of these different crops that you’re trying, including your sunflower, but also you mentioned millet and sorghum. What are you using to put those in the ground?
Douglas Poole
Well, we drug home on planter.
Carol McFarland
Ah, when did you do that?
Douglas Poole
Just here a month ago. And I’ve been kind of looking just specifically for the sunflower. But then we got excited about the millet and the sorghum. And and so I had a hoe drill in my transition from conventional farming to no tail. We had a John Deere, which was a hoe drill. And then just in the last couple of years, we added a disk drill. So trying to get away from even more disturbance.
And then as I looked at it, we we just– were a little off on our yields on the sunflowers. And it obviously has to do with the fact that the hoe drill or even the disk drill in those air carts put five seeds within two inches of each other. And then I have a space for 10, 10 feet long. And you can tell. And then, you know, those clumped up sunflower seeds are all the heads about the size of my fist. And then you’ll have one that’s properly spaced and it looks like a basketball. And so that we drug the planter home to to see if we couldn’t address that. But that’s you don’t I’ve never seen a planter up here that that could be interesting to see what how that goes.
But I think it’s the next progression. Everything’s a progression. And I’m seeing a lot of guys that that talked about no till not working on their farms now are talking to disk drill or are talking some of these other crops. And it just this journey that we’re all on. It’s fascinating. The scotomas that are being broken, people’s minds around it won’t work here. Now, all of a sudden, not only will it won’t work, I can probably do something better. And it’s as fun as we all watching everybody else’s journey.
Carol McFarland
Or listening.
Douglas Poole
Yeah. Yeah, so…
Carol McFarland
Actually, we had Dusty Walsh was one of our first interviewees on the podcast here.
And he talked about his work seeding sunflowers with a planter that he brought over from the Midwest. So it sounds like there’s a few questions that come along with those. is that something you’re most excited for? What’s the most exciting thing?
Douglas Poole
I was most excited for the year to have year number two with events with the virtual fence. This would be our third year in Millett. I think we’ve got some tweaks to do there, being more purposeful where the cover crops go and how they tie into the natural range land and then how we can maximize the virtual fence with that. One of the things we’ve been doing experimentally I would just call it incorrectly as we overgraze the cover crop. And so we don’t– we bring the cows in and we basically take the cover crop to the ground. And so you’ve lost, in my opinion, lose all of that nutrient cycling, all of that photosynthesis, all of that interaction with the biology. And so this year we’re going to try to bring cows in, graze thirty percent of it and get them back out and then see how many times we can keep coming back and keeping that plant from going reproductive and just continually. You know, that whole liquid carbon pathway and photosynthesis and everything else that. Mother Nature, God, whoever you believe in, Allah, you know, that was that provided us with that just getting out of the way and letting the system work like it can.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, that was actually one of my follow up questions, if you’re using some of the mob grazing strategies or, you know, what your kind of grazing approach is.
Douglas Poole
You know we have that we’re not there yet. You know, those are one of the things we need to get better at is the mob grazing. And so this year for me, if I can just get them in and get them back out with, you know, as close to intent– you know, a mob system as we can. But it more for me this year is just timing. And then if we can get to that system where they’re tight, we keep them tight and move them that way. That’ll be the ultimate. You know, I where I see the cows fitting it– back to numbers were the numbers don’t jive for me anymore. This is the combine that I want. If I was to to book one out or spec one out would be over a million dollars. You know, John Deere just came with another tractor, a million dollars. But yet I’m still growing the same wheat . we’re in a decline with our prices right, and so I’m struggling to understand where that isn’t. That number doesn’t pay anymore. It doesn’t doesn’t balance. And so I see the cows as a way of packing just pounds off as opposed to bushels. But it’s following those cows. Then if we can follow or or grow some of these other crops, sorghum, you know, where it got out that we were growing sorghum. Next thing you know, you’ve got a food company that’s saying, hey, we need sorghum grown up here.
Carol McFarland
And millet I think.
Douglas Poole
And millet. We need those grown up here because they’re sourcing them out of Nebraska. And so it’s a win-win for everybody. That all came with it got out that we’re growing sorghum and millet. And it’s fascinating how those markets all of a sudden come. But those things are going to be successful because we’re going to be following a cover crop. We’re not going to be following a fallow or just a, you know, an old generic wheat crop. That diversity, I think. And so I liken it to a hamster wheel. If we’re just getting on the positive hamster wheel, you know, everything will kind of take care of itself. And so trying to break that fallow system, that’s a huge thing for me.
Carol McFarland
I think those are all kind of principles of agroecology, too, just that, you know, working with the system and trying to really leverage the ecosystem in favor of the production
You mentioned your work with millet. Did that start as a WSU collaboration?
Douglas Poole
Yeah, yeah, they had a booth at something I went to and nobody had signed up. No, what the heck?
Carol McFarland
You are a glutton for punishment.
Douglas Poole
Yeah, they don’t put a sign up sheet out in front of me. And so there were three or four of us that signed on. And I, of course, was the furthest one north. You know, that’s kind of the one downside to WSU having all my soil is as they decided to put the land grant university down there, things were a little more productive down there. But it’s fascinating how, you know, here you are drove all the way to Mansfield today.You know, the stuff that we do and are willing to do, people are willing to then come and help. And that hats off to WSU, really. You know, we kidded about Abby Wick over it. And in the Dakotas, you guys have really are, in my opinion, blowing by what they’re doing from an academia, from a from a land grant institution standpoint in that you’re wanting to come out and walk alongside of us, provide the instruction and the information we need in real time, handle some of these these trials so they get done right. That’s kind of a novel concept, because we’ll forget where we put the tire or the bucket or the flag or the fence post. And, you know, one of those usually goes through a combine because we forgot where they were.
Carol McFarland
Oh, yeah, you did just do that.
Douglas Poole
Yeah, we had a little boo boo. But it’s it’s an honor and touching that WSU would come, you know, come clear up here, U of I, Oregon State. The three of them really are, you know, they’re not standing around looking at this whole soil health thing and thinking, oh, geez, that doesn’t apply. It’s like they’re looking at it going, where do we insert ourselves to be sure we’re out ahead of it? And that I don’t in all the travels that we do, whether it’s down to Kansas for those conferences or Colorado and stuff, those WSU needs to really walk away and know that from an academia standpoint, they’re– you are leading, really a leading force.
Carol McFarland
Well, that’s a really meaningful shout out. Thank you. I know some of my colleagues. I mean, including at the USDA, ARS are based in Pullman.
Douglas Poole
Yes, I forget about them.
Carol McFarland
Including the Cook Farm and all the work done there, too. You know, really? Yeah, this is it’s a neat area. It’s really a privilege. Actually, I think most of the researchers you talk to will say that the privilege really is getting to work with our region’s awesome farmers and I know that myself.
Douglas Poole
Well, the recognition of that. You know, I mentioned ARS and Dave Huggins will get, you know, Dave’s been on the Direct Seed probably way longer than I have on the Direct Seed Association board. He doesn’t need to be there. And what made him or what made them think that that was a good idea? He sits and he listens and he contributes. And it just, you know, we have that whole arm that.
You know, if I wanted to get down on a rabbit hole, you know, the USDA and crop insurance is almost kind of works against us because everything’s a yield. We’ve got to have the yields as high as we can so we can get our crop insurance. And so, of course, those high yields demand a high input. And I’ve never watched anybody that sits at those tables from a research standpoint, come in there and go, hey, we’re slamming more down your throat. If there’s some innovation or guys trying different things, they want to know. And I think we can both agree that Dave’s, Dave puts his grant money where his mouth is and where his thoughts are. We have Garrett now doing some of the research. So the whole sorghum thing is all led by WSU.
And you know, you talk about I think that’s the coolest thing that’s going on with that weed resistance. Somewhere along the line, Ian Burke and Nick Bergman and those associates came up here, I think came here and what is it that we could do to get ourselves out ahead of this whole our Russian thistle becoming, you know, resistant to round up. And with their leadership, we came up with crop rotation. And so now there’s seven farmers here trying sorghum because we think that’s a way out. And I just rode those fields the other day. I really have no weed pressures in those fields where I had millet and sorghum and somewhat sunflowers also. And so there’s a different soil signature or whatever it is well over my my pay grade to explain it. The soil seems to be a lot happier, so weed doesn’t need to come.
But back to my point, you know, instead of coming up here and doing roundup trials, they came up and actually changed a farming practice that’s going to be lifelong.
No-till on the plains is a huge, huge conference. There’s no academia at that table. I just was down at the High Plains, no-till conference. Academia doesn’t have a seat at the table. And here we have leaders. So we’re lucky. This whole journey, it’s just not one thing. It’s all of these different influences.
Carol McFarland
It’s a system.
Douglas Poole
It is. I like to tell the story. What really took off in 2015 was it was International Year of the Soil.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, it was.
Douglas Poole
And you know, the NRCS was out promoting that. Well, that was the same time we were all out buying drills and moving that forward. That was a big deal. You know, at the time, you know, we got some cute magnets and, you know, but the NRCS people were out beating down our door going, hey, look, at that time, they had us all ranked. We didn’t even know it. They had 20 of us ranked in as soon as that button was hit. We were all in. They had done that without us really even coming in and doing an application. And so they yeah, I mean, it funny story to this. That whole thing.
There was another round of applications and they we got out that North Douglas County wasn’t going to to qualify. We were all like, well, geez, we, you know, another five guys lined up ready to to convert. And what they had done or they attempted to do was say that you had to have an air quality board in your county to apply. Well, Douglas County doesn’t have an air quality board because west of us is forest and river. Well, our dirt, Lincoln County, Grant County, Adams County– they all have air quality boards because it was our dirt blown over there. And so, yeah, they were going to take us out. And somebody threw a fit, called, We all got in, you know, who the guys that were that next next level in trying to to convert and get access to those monies. It made a huge difference in this area.
Carol McFarland
It’s important to know when to make the noise for the leverage points.
Douglas Poole
It was just funny. It’s like, well, why wouldn’t we qualify? We’re the ones blowing all our dirt over there.
Carol McFarland
You know, I wanted to go back to the millet. I know you said that that started as a WSU collaboration as well. What is your experience been growing millet? If you tried different varieties, how’s seeding it been? How’s it going?
Douglas Poole
Yeah, we’ve done the there was four or five different varieties. We’ve kind of settled on one. Now, I think our tweak is is seeding rates, seeding timing, whether we use the planter or the disk drill. again, the two officers, huge observations I’ve made is is my I can show you to the line where my wheat– so we seeded wheat following. I had a twenty acre, twenty acre millet pack. And I can see I can see the line. And so, again, the millet brought a different soil signature that the wheat loves, whether maybe it’s just quite simply rotation.
The second observation I’ve made is it’s an interesting residue. I’ve got amazing ground cover with what probably isn’t the highest yielding millet crop that one could ever have. But I just it has a beautiful– when that combine gets done with it, the ground is covered. And so back to your soil health principles, I’ve got covered now, you know, from heat and some of those other external influences.
And thirdly, you know, we talk about that North Douglas County is kind of ground zero for sage grouse and sharp tail grouse. And two years ago, when I first had my millet, I found twenty in the millet all hunkered down, you know, and it’s kind of one of those things like, oh, my gosh, good thing they went ahead and moved because I was putting some biological and extract of some sort over the top. And next thing I know, here’s twenty going right by the sprayer. And so they obviously they love our crop rotations.
Carol McFarland
Well, you’re growing bird food, Douglas.
Douglas Poole
You know, and the kicker of that is, is we have that market. It can go into bird food. But now, all of a sudden, when it gets out that we were part of that WSU trial, now, all of a sudden, the food grade millet market has come calling. And so that that’s been huge. You know, I shout out to Joni there at Snacktivist. She just she is– I think we talk about some of us that will try just about anything– She’s us on steroids. And, you know, and that again, I love the her– the name of her company because she is actually being an activist with regard to soil health and how that translates into human health.
Carol McFarland
Well, again, it’s a system and that every piece is important. And a lot of things that come up on this podcast is you know, as we try different things beyond what the commodity, the conventional commodity market compensates for, how does that translate into economics to keep farms more sustainable economically? And there’s a huge role in a whole chain. It goes so far beyond agronomy.
Douglas Poole
It does. If you are an Alan Savory, you know, if you’ve ever read his book, which is that was just about– Alan’s well above my pay grade as far as what his message was, but I plotted through it and it really is. It’s I use the example: If the school isn’t functioning correctly, is my farm going to function correctly in that if there isn’t anybody to work from the, you know, the kids that are going to school then I’m behind out here. And how does that affect the Lions Club, who then raises money for the kids that have the opportunity to stay here because they can raise a goat and a pig and a sheep? And those things that have nothing to do with agronomy, nothing to do with equipment, nothing to do with the crop really do bleed into what’s going on on our farm.
The grouse, you know, to me, the grouse are going to be an indication that I’ve got some soil health going because that tells me that I haven’t killed the insects and everybody that the grouse would like to eat. You know, my native ranges and my cover crops are now cycling properly. And so that’s just going to stimulate more of the beneficial insects into the area. More beneficial is the less I have to spray. I mean, all of these play in, but it’s there’s just not one thing that you can leave out. They all somehow apply. Just trying to figure out how they all apply. A lot of times it just falls in our lap, to be honest. I mean, I’d like to tell you that I’m Alan Savory and I can draw it all out in a big map, but that’s not going to happen.
Carol McFarland
Well, I did see you on YouTube. So I’ve seen some pretty thoughtful and cool stuff. So maybe maybe you’re next on the speaker circuit.
Douglas Poole
Yeah, no, no. I like to be home.
Carol McFarland
I know it’s gorgeous out here, so I don’t blame you. So when do you start planning your trials?
Douglas Poole
We’re probably a couple of weeks away from having the sorghum trial. Really, it’s not– I don’t even consider them a trial anymore. The sorghum and the millet are going to be a crop. And whether we are able to get them into the food, food grade or not, we’ll have that ability to be ready. And so I always have the bird seed market.
We actually laughed about we ought to just be growing our own bird seed here. And that whole idea of trucking it clear to Spokane. What is it that we again, back to that community? Why couldn’t we have our own bird seed market here, which would provide jobs and which would be an improvement to the Lions Club and the school and the churches and everything else? So that’s not out of the question yet. There’s enough of us wanting to grow these different crops.
Carol McFarland
Well, there’s some infrastructure pieces to a more regional market as well. I mean, even your ability to grow bird seed for a Spokane market up here.
Douglas Poole
Yeah. And I think some of that back to your build it and they’ll come. You know, we’ve had people say, you know, the processing part of that, the equipment’s not that not that big a deal, not that expensive. And so as a community, why couldn’t we come together and create an investment pool or, you know, a structure where we build our own here? And it’s the community gets to benefit from that.
Carol McFarland
Something that I’ve expressed before, you know, hosting this podcast is, there’s a lot of these great ways that people are implementing soil health principles in other parts of the world. But even in our part of the world is unique. And each farm in this part of the world is very unique. You talk about how different Pullman is from up here. And why am I up here today? It’s because everybody’s translating these different because what matters is there’s a lot of great ideas out there. How does it work on your farm? How are you trying it? How are you translating it in the face of changing environmental, economic and social conditions?
Douglas Poole
And I think that drives me a lot. I mean, it’s always in the back of my mind. I don’t understand how I’ll ever be able to afford a million dollar combine. I feel like I’m there today and it’s so funny. We were cleaning something in the basement in our house, found an article of my dad was interviewed in 1993 and he was…kind of funny, he was saying the same thing in 1993. I think he had just bought a combine for seventy thousand dollars. And his whole point was, is I my son would love to come back, but I don’t think I should let him because I don’t see where this is sustainable.
I think what kept us going for the next two or three decades was the fact that we didn’t make these innovative changes. With the case of my dad’s farm was biosolid, and his change in some of his tillage practices and stuff. He you know, he obviously was got another ten or fifteen bushel an acre that made it so he could keep going.
Carol McFarland
In the long term too. It sounds like I mean, you’re still reaping the benefits of that investment.
Douglas Poole
And those changes. And so those are things that, you know, and I think the changes we’re making with regard to no till and lessening the passes that we make with that equipment, the chemicals and the fertilizers that we’re able to reallocate those funds or just cut them all. And so I I worry about the million dollar combine. Obviously, we’re addressing it, my generation and in the community and those that are on the soil health journey are trying to address it, much like my dad did back in 1993. The million dollar combine just doesn’t make sense. I foresee my son still running 20 year old combines in that I don’t know where that’s going to be sustainable. So…anyway, it’s a driving force and in knowing I’ve got to change because that just that that equipment thing is not sustainable anymore.
Carol McFarland
Retaining the value of the capital investments, the relationships with your landlords in the community and diversification and exploring lateral options in the market, not necessarily
to completely escape the commodity market, I had one of my previous podcast guests referred to it as kind of a mutual fund. The diversification.
Douglas Poole
You know, this is actually an aha that I came up with. And again, with Mike, it’s my soil health therapist. We we spend a lot of time sitting around going, what if what would it look like? If I didn’t have wheat anymore? What what chains would be broken if I got away from wheat? Maybe I don’t need a combine anymore. Maybe that that that looks a complete different in my need for equipment and chemicals and fertilizers. If I didn’t have wheat, all of the things I have to do to maintain this crop that, in my opinion, has been bred, you know, it’s had all the goody bred out of it and is on life support. And so I have to give it life support measures every year. What does that look like out here? Maybe it’s sunflower, millet and sorghum and cover crops and cattle and everything else. And so it changes. It just, you know, it’ll end up on a whiteboard here before too long once I get the office set back up.
But as you look around, you can see the one I kind of forget is, you know, managed to improve and regenerate the soil herd. We have to think about the soil as a herd of living organisms.
And if we take care of them, it’ll take care of the economics.
Again, this journey. One of the things that really clicked with me one time was is every time I drive my four wheeler out, if there’s that much life in that teaspoon of soil, I’m killing some of that biology every time I drive out here. And so I need to minimize my trips, whether that’s with my four wheeler or my sprayer or my combine.
Carol McFarland
I’m going to give you a pass on that one a little bit, because I think that is part of the carbon cycling process.
Douglas Poole
Yeah, that disturbance. Yes.
Carol McFarland
The cycling of the microbes.
Douglas Poole
We just had our first meeting– but with US Fish and Wildlife, the Fish and Wildlife of Washington State, NRCS, the Conservation District. I have this map of my farm and it happens to be all contiguous. And so I– this all started with trying to get some NRCS money for something. And there’s some decent rangeland management money. And so I thought, well, this one, I’ll get them. Here’s my ranch. It happens to be grazing land that I just some of it I happen to farm. But think of it all as rangeland. What would that do? What could I apply for if it was all rangeland?
Carol McFarland
How much do you like to haul water, Douglas?
Douglas Poole
Well, we’ve hauled water, we’re trying to expand the watering stuff. And there were money– there were monies for that for infrastructure. If it was rangeland. In a quarter in 160 acres, I’ve usually got twenty or thirty acres. That’s native range, you know, because it was a rock pile or a big this or whatever else in that. And so this whole thing started with that. Oh, it morphed into if we treated this all as an ecosystem and I’m wanting pollinator strips and tree lined creek beds and all of these things that whether they were here or not, I want them now to– because all of that benefits our farming operation. I don’t have spray anymore. There’s all these things that can be eliminated if Mother Nature just was operating right.
So anyway, in this meeting, there’s some CRP up here. Interestingly enough, it was CRP that had just happened to have biosolids ahead of it. And there’s there’s two observations that can be made there.
Our soil can support seven or eight feet tall grass. I’ve seen it. What we’re not allowed to do is then to disturb that. We’re missing the animal impact in that ecosystem. And so after 10 years, that’s really become a really become a kind of a dormant ecosystem because all of that heavy grass now is just sitting on the ground and nothing is able to to cycle the carbon. And so it when we were all talking about it, it made my point for me. Gosh, just let me graze it for just even a couple of weeks. Let that hoof action and that just stimulated just a little bit.
Carol McFarland
Give it like a little massage.
Douglas Poole
And it really was their observation. Oh, my God. Look how that’s too thick for the wildlife. you don’t see deer in there anymore. We would if we could have any sort of animal impact to that. And so it it brought a whole nother conversation.
Well, they what they’ve always asked us to do mid contract on some of these CRP and sage grouse grasslands is go out there with a mower or a harrow. And it’s like, oh, my good golly that we got to get out of this iron is the answer to everything that hoof action really would. You know, we know that would would stimulate that so much better.
There’s that ecosystem, And I wouldn’t have caught on to this ten years ago. I told this group, I’m like ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been here. I want to farm every acre I can get my hands on. And now we’re we’ve put just in this last year, we put almost 800 acres of grassed areas that just probably shouldn’t have been farming anyway, but they make corridors. Now we’re able to tie areas for them, for the for the birds and insects, whoever to move out through our fields And so we’ve become more efficient because we’re not farming those rock piles anymore. And, you know, I hope to stimulate an ecosystem that then pays back, whether it’s beneficial bugs or or whatever.
Carol McFarland
Do you see more critters? You talked about the grouse.
Douglas Poole
I do. I think we do. And that again, we’ve had a fish and wildlife– the kind of the area guy stop and go, man, he’s I love coming up to Dyer Hill because he said, I know I’m going to see something that I don’t get to see anywhere else. And that was a couple of years ago when all we had was cover crops and sunflowers. Well, now the sorghum and the millet and some of these other things are going to be– we we see it here. I don’t know if it’s my age or what, but I’m kind of becoming a bird guy.
Carol McFarland
For the listening audience, not getting to appreciate the big smile on your face and kind of the gleam in your eyes, you’re talking about these animals kind of being- becoming more part of the landscape. It’s inspiring.
Douglas Poole
And they’re vital. They’re vital to the whole thing. And that again, I’ve come to that conclusion or it’s been an evolution to to get to that observation. I need them more than they need me, you know, and so that if I’m going to continue to farm here and ranch here and my son is like, I need more help from them. And I haven’t done a good job of making an environment for them.
Carol McFarland
We talked a little bit about your landlords and the, you know, your paradigm around stewardship with your landlords and how that’s, you know, kind of special or different. Acknowledging that everybody is on a different journey at this point. But how do your landlords respond to wildlife corridors and pollinator strips?
Douglas Poole
It’s new language every time. Yeah, I have to feel for them every once in a while, because every
there’s something, especially after winter meetings, there’s something new I drag home every year.
But it when we had our landlord meeting, it was fun. I tell everybody, it was a double edged sword, because all of a sudden I had some soil health experts because they have time and it’s of interest to them because it’s their land. And so it’s been cool. I love getting an article from a landlord said, hey, have you thought of this? Probably not. You know, they. So now all of a sudden you have all of these different people doing research on your behalf because it benefits their land, too.
You know, we mentioned everybody else’s journey being different. It’s fun to watch the area,
just stuff that gets talked about in different circles, whether it’s the kid group or the parents, it’s a t-ball. All of this stuff is there’s just a whole different positive dynamic being discussed. And it really all started with a little bit of no till. I just- I love reflecting on that and going, man, we bought a no till drill. We fixed everything. And we don’t even talk about the drill anymore. We brought home a planter, so maybe we do talk about it. But, you know, there’s there’s just it’s just so far past. What point are we using or what? You know, how many pounds does my tractor weigh? Fields don’t blow anymore? What is it that we can do differently with those?
Carol McFarland
How are we working with the ecosystem to achieve our production goals? That’s a lot of what I’m hearing from you today.
Douglas Poole
You articulated it way better than I did.
Carol McFarland
I think we’re probably on the homestretch here, but I’d really love to hear what’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned from a past trial. You’ve had a very long history of trying some cool stuff.
Douglas Poole
That’s a long list. I think of all of them and there’s tests now, I don’t know. I’ll go back to the the the total digestion test that’s out there. Total nutrient digestion that has the total inventory of everything that’s in my soil. And again, we always focus in on nitrogen. In that test, I have data now I’ve got for the most part, I usually have fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred pounds of nitrogen in my soil. Now, is it available? No. The biology isn’t isn’t cycling it right yet, because I haven’t– you know, I haven’t put the environment in place. But that test, when I saw that and again, we were somewhere that said, take this test. We ran those tests. We adjusted our fertility to course eliminate anything in furrow anymore other than the worm castings in some some rock phosphate. If all of those nutrients are there and I’ve always been told, I’ve heard it anywhere from there’s a hundred years of nutrients in your soil to endless. Never have to worry about it if your soil biology is working correctly. And so that test validated that idea. Our cropping system and our testing this last fall validated it. And so I have two tests that I’ll reference– or two fields.
One was a biosolids. Field if you were just to take the normal soil test showed that I was optimal in nitrogen. Biosolids brings nitrogen. The plant actually the wheat plant actually showed that it was deficient nitrogen. But yet it showed all of these other nutrients were in the optimum. Probably the best standing wheat I’ve ever had that early on in the in the growing season after it was planted. Field B showed deficient. So no, no biosolids in its history showed deficient in nitrogen. But yet the plant showed optimal for nitrogen.
And so that validated everything we were told because we got that. We got those introduced nitrogen and phosphorus and sulfurs away from that seed zone and put worm castings there. Or back in the day, it was the chicken litter. We quit hosing up all of that whole…rhizophagia is the new term. And you know the work that Dr. James White is doing just get all of that out of there and let the biology handle it. Just just let everybody play nice the way nature intended. And I feel like those tests validated all of that. Everything that I’ve always heard was validated in a couple of tests. And so that you have anything that we’re excited. The last test that we just ran through. We’re actually looking at everything from a carbon nitrogen ratio determining where we think the soil is from a succession standpoint. And what we ought to be raising there. If that ratio is way down, then we don’t have a very functioning soil. If it’s higher on that progression, then maybe we can try some things like sorghum. And it’s helping us place our crops a little better as opposed to just going out there blind. So that I’m excited about.
The tests validate everything I’ve been told by the list of everybody I’ve got written up there.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, you do have a very impressive whiteboard. No offense to any of the other whiteboards that I’ve seen. But this is a good set of them.
Douglas Poole
Well, we’ve had, we’ve you know, I have the good fortune of people stopping by and they kind of want to know about the journey. And I’m like, oh, I’ll summarize the journey right there. If you’ll just start reading, I mean, we’re so far from having it figured out. I tell everybody if if I’m able to hand my son when I retire, just hand him the keys and go, hey, I think it- I think it’s operating pretty good. I’ll have probably got what I needed done.
But we have our screw ups, our unintended consequences.
Carol McFarland
I’m suspicious that you’re just going to be able to hand him the keys and have him be satisfied with that, because if he’s your son, I’m going to guess that through all of this being on this journey with you, he’s just going to keep moving it forward.
Douglas Poole
Well, he’s funny. He, he saw very little tillage growing up and then he actually left was trying to decide what he wanted to do with his life. So he actually went and took underwater welding and all that. Decided to come back to the farm. And so he missed this whole beginning of the journey. And so he rolls his eyes, rightly so, rolls his eyes a lot.
I this– back to a continuous learner. I need constant reinforcement. I don’t know. Maybe I was raised that way. He doesn’t seem to need that. He’s like, we’re getting it in place. Do we– how come we got to keep going to conferences and stuff like that? He doesn’t need that reinforcement because he…he’s so far ahead of the journey. And so I’m proud from that standpoint, he doesn’t have to break old norms. I still find myself thinking, oh, man, probably shouldn’t have gotten rid of that cultivator. I shouldn’t, you know, all of the tillage equipment’s gone. So I can’t be tempted anymore because it’s all gone. But there are times where I drive by and go, man, if I just you know better, what are you thinking? And he doesn’t have to do that. So I’m jealous of him. Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Sounds like you really shifted the paradigm.
Douglas Poole
I tell the story. In 2013, when I was toying with the idea of going to no till the NRCS, she– the gal in there said, hey, have you ever heard of Ray Archuleta? Look him up. Ray Archuleta, Ray the soil guy. So I looked him up and I’m like, oh, yeah, that’d be kind of cool. She’s just like, I’ve got there’s only thirty people can go to this. But if you want to go, I’ll take you. I’ll get your name in.
And so my wife and I loaded up and we went down to Colfax. And at 7:30 the morning, here’s Ray, the soil guy in the basement of some church speaking to us about this. And I mean, I was in the first hour just hook line sinker. This man, we got to we got to do this. And at 10:36, I remember looking at my phone. My wife gets up, she’s sitting there listening to us and I’m like, it’s not a break. Where are you going? And she goes, I’m going to Pullman to go shopping. She says I don’t understand why you guys don’t get this. So in three hours, she saw all she had to hear from Ray, the soil guy. She was in it. And here I am 13 years later. Still got to have that constant reinforcement.
So I love telling those two stories about my son and then her Had the good fortune to Ray come into the ranch here a couple of years ago and getting to tell him that story. And he claims that he kind of remembered her getting up and how at that time, how rude it was that she just got up in the middle of these thirty people. But he got quite a kick out of it that he was able to impress upon somebody in three hours. What some people probably are still struggling with.
It’s hard. This paradigm that we’ve been so conditioned that it we have to have an input. Whether it’s fertilizer, a chemical, iron, you know, some sort of tillage equipment. Big Ag really has us conditioned that that’s where it’s got to be. And the journey I’m on has pointed to there’s another way. Will we ever have it figured out its nature for God’s sakes, if there’s that kind of biology in a teaspoon, how will I ever figure, you know, and get it all functioning in place? There are people that are doing it, you know, with some successes.
Carol McFarland
I’m noticing one of the things on these whiteboards here is that it says ecology drives economics.
Douglas Poole
I believe everything’s alive.
Everything out, whether it’s just my yard or, you know, or the pasture land across the thing, you know, we’ve tried over there, that’s pasture cropping. We’re trying to play with that. but everything’s alive in my mind. And so for me, that that should take care of the economics. And it I liken everything right now to because we don’t have the system fully in place the way I would like it.
There’s these movies. Remember Escape from New York or I don’t know, Escape from L.A., when there was a fire, there was an earthquake and they’re all the the stars of the show are driving down the road and all the buildings are falling down behind them. I feel like that’s where I’m at right now. I says, my God, we missed that building and made it another block. we live to see another day. And that until I get out of that feeling, we will continue to push and prod and in trial and implement different things because I’m just tired of living that way. Living that…just waiting for the next building to fall down behind me and hope it doesn’t hit my car as I’m speeding away from doom and disaster.
I was just in town this weekend. Everybody’s waiting for the next federal program. Who? Well, it’s an election year. Well, we’re going to get a check.
Carol McFarland
Also the market prices right now. I mean, I’ve been hearing a lot about those.
Douglas Poole
Yeah. And so you have that. And so the answer to that is, is we’ll wait for a handout. That doesn’t sound fun to me. It’s not fun anymore. You know, at the same time, having to replace equipment that just it’s it’s too expensive.
Carol McFarland
Oh, we haven’t even talked about input prices.
Douglas Poole
No. You know, and some of those have kind of come down, but fuel still up and and some of these other things. And so I just I see this as my way out to not have to live, live and farm for the man or, you know, industrial ag or government or whatever else. We have more control here on our farm if we start to implement some of these things. That’s my attraction to the whole thing.
Carol McFarland
There’s a lot of potential for it to come…come with resilience again from those the changing economics, changing environment and changing social conditions. Right? I know you mentioned Snacktivist. A big lean of that is gluten free. Yes. And, you know, I like me some great gluten bread as well. But also there’s a big, social component toward having, you know, gluten free options available too.
Douglas Poole
Well, I and an attraction to get back to the land races. There wasn’t a gluten issue until we started breeding some of this stuff in, out, around. And again, those were all well intentioned, still continue to be well intentioned. All of that research still has its place.
Carol McFarland
Well, and the markets still have their place, right? You know, all the specialty soft white wheat that goes to specialty markets. I mean, there’s…
Douglas Poole
All of that’s there.
Carol McFarland
It seems like it doesn’t have to just be one thing.
Douglas Poole
The space that I’m in. We talk about whether this is conceded or whatever else we talk about being the two percenters.
Carol McFarland
Oh, you’re definitely a two percenter, Douglas.
Douglas Poole
Yeah. Well, you know that term. I the 98 percent puts me in a in a market that I can’t control. And so call me a control freak, but I don’t see any control out of that. My my kernel of wheat has no identity preservation from my neighbors. And it’s not my job to tell them or her or their family how to farm. I need to distinguish myself from that and get to a manner where they want to come and have my product.
Carol McFarland
Well, and have it be part of a vital living ecosystem.
Douglas Poole
And some of the things that, you know, people that don’t– I guess, have to have the reinforcement that I have to when I go to all these conferences. What I’ve noticed in just the last five or six years is that there’s usually a human health component. There are doctors out there that are embracing regenerative Ag, and on their trumpeting, the fact that if we have a healthy soil, we’ll have a healthy body. And we don’t right now. There’s a system that’s broken. All of our food is being grown in integrated soils. And we, in our case on my farm, I have a chance to break that. And I’m not going to be, you know, this big Pollyanna show. Oh, my gosh, I’m going to solve human health. I can sure work towards it, even if I take one step. It’s still a noble goal to get one step closer to not needing to, I guess for this, you know, be this homogenous pile that I’m just lumped in with everybody else.
Carol McFarland
You’re doing all this great work, creating…
Douglas Poole
With all the great work comes great wrecks and learning moments and unintended consequences that we continue to learn from all those.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. It’s a learning journey. And I’ve heard the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step and keeps going kind of one step at a time.
Douglas Poole
What’s the one you hear that you’re going to eat the elf? You just eat one bite at a time.
To me, soil health, the whole goal is kind of been handed to me. I didn’t have to come up with any of this. Implement the five cell health and principles and it’ll take care of itself. You know, the ecology will drive the economics. And so those seem…I don’t have to spend a lot of time coming up with a strategic plan and all of these, you know, initiatives and everything else. We funnel everything through those five soil health principles. If it’s if we’re addressing one of those, we’re probably doing okay.
Carol McFarland
Great. Well, I would like to thank you very much for sharing your story here on the on farm trials podcast today. You’re an inspiration and thank you for being a strong influence and suggesting that this podcast should happen.
Douglas Poole
Who would have known you were going to take up the idea? I’ve learned with you now.
Carol McFarland
Careful what you wish for. No, well, it wasn’t a single source attribution, but it was definitely part of it. So it’s fun to blame you.
Douglas Poole
It’s going to pay off in spades.
Carol McFarland
Let’s hope so. People seem to be listening and we’re glad to have that.
Douglas Poole
Good. Good.
Carol McFarland
Anyway, thank you.
Douglas Poole
Thanks for coming clear up here.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. It was a pleasure. Thanks for being an inspiration. Keep it up.
Douglas Poole
Thank you.