This episode of the On-Farm Trials podcast features Clint Zenner of Zenner Family Farms in Genesse, ID and his collaboration as a PI on the PNW cover crops project alongside Kendall Kahl of the University of Idaho. A conversation with them highlights years of working together that has resulted in a wealth of knowledge on cover crops, cows, and even earth worms! Listen to their conversation about how they are working together to ask and answer important soil health and cropping systems innovation for the farm and region with their on-farm trials.
Carol McFarland
So it sounds like from a science standpoint, there’s some logistical lifts to make it combine the varying conditions across all of these different farms into more of the scientific framework that is necessary for statistical comparisons. Can you speak to some of what’s going on in the background there?
Kendall Kahl
There’s a lot of learning on the go, right? We had a plan going into the season, of course. You know, when we thought we were going to terminate the crops, everything’s growing at different rates than we thought.
So there was a lot of, like, slight adjustments we had to make so that we didn’t, you know, have these crops go into seed and creating messes, hopefully, for all of our farmers. And so that’s a challenge. But it’s also a lot of learning that happens, you know, and, and taking the time now to go back through and really try to, look at what happened and maybe try to draw some of these conclusions.
So it’s a challenge. But I also think it’s a really great opportunity to learn, and everybody was great. working with us and dealing with sort of just the dynamics, I think that’s one of the things that is important to remember when we’re scientists, when we’re doing this work with the growers, is, you know, we have to be able to be dynamic with them.
And, it really takes a lot of communication, to make sure that the research goals can be achieved and so can the farming. So, it’s a lot of time, but it’s fun. It’s the fun part of the job, I think adds that some excitement.
Carol McFarland
So from your perspective, Kendall, what are the main goals that you know, as kind of written in the project? What are the main goals and outcomes that you’re hoping to come away with or affect or be able to put out into the world at the end of the project?
Kendall Kahl
The way we set this study up was to really understand how the different…the timing of when you terminate a cover crop affects the soil moisture. That was…and partly for the storage for the following crop. particularly in a drier zone, or in the wetter zone, you know, how do we get the most biomass out of our cover crop? Given that we’re less moisture in the air, we’re not moisture limited, really. To actually provide some guidance as far as things to think about, if you’re trying to manage your cover crop to balance getting the benefits from nutrients, but also conserving moisture, just to even understand those dynamics. Certainly the impact of these different species on pollinator populations and then also definitely on the nutrient cycling is important, and it’s a big part of what we’re trying to get out of this.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, I’ve heard that the weed management is another really big asset for the cover crop exploration. Clint, obviously, I’m sure you guys will come up with another collaboration before the end of this cover crop project. But, what do you hope to come away from this project with, are there management decisions that will be supported by the cover crop project?
Clint Zenner
Oh, I think so. Definitely. you know, managing moisture. You know, that’s one of the big reasons why we got into no-till. We thought that, you know, if we increase organic matter, we’re going to increase water holding capacity and be able to grow more crop. You know, that’s, that’s a double edged sword of this, this style of farming is you don’t want to eliminate all your inputs and have a, you know, I may reduce synthetics, but at the end of the day, I want to grow a big crop because if I’m not growing big crop I’m not sequestering carbon. I’m not, you know, you…to sequester more carbon, you need to grow a bigger crop. So we got to grow crops. We have to, unfortunately, feed the globe. And so…
Carol McFarland
No pressure.
Clint Zenner
Figuring out how to do it right without killing our soil is pretty important. The thing that….so the managing [of] the moisture is very important to me, as well as looking at, the entomology side or the, the bug side, the pollinators, you know, there’s some funky stuff on some of these traits and we don’t know what the implications are of these.
And that’s what I love about the covers is it’s a year that you get a plant, something on that field that doesn’t have all the neonicotinoids, and you see it like, I don’t think there’s as many bees as there used to be, personally. Like there just isn’t. The pollinators or, used to be, around our house we have a ton of different pollinators planted.
My wife loves native plants and native pollinators, and it is amazing when I come home and the life around my house and the garden and the flowers around the house, compared to at my farm shop where it’s just grass and rock and I keep all the weeds dead and I never let anything bloom and there’s no life there.
It’s just, it’s crazy when you sit down and enjoy that adult beverage and kind of look around and you’re like, oh, my house is just buzzing with stuff. And when I’m at the farm, I’m like, I, I never get stung by a bee or see a bee.
It’s been probably five years ago with what we’re doing, with these seed treats. So that’s one of the other things that I’m really interested in with the covers is measuring the different life that comes out of not having some of the seed treats in such sites.
Carol McFarland
Thanks for sharing. Not to get too touchy feely about it, but you know, it’s a lovely observation. And one of the things that I am interested in, just on a philosophical and practical level is you’re producing more than food when you are growing something like that. So what does it take for that to make the ROI worth it for a cover crop on your operation? I mean, again, don’t tell me about the nitty gritty of your books.
Clint Zenner
Right. ROI is important, no question. But there’s a cost associated. Like I can’t put a number on it for you, but like, I’m willing to sacrifice ROI to do things better. Because I do think it’s important because someday I’m going to be gone and this place is going to be farmed by someone, maybe one of my kids, maybe not. But I don’t want them to be like, wow, Clint really did a crappy job farming this place. There’s no worms, there’s no bees. The soil is dead. I- yeah, I just- I don’t want that to be my legacy so that it’s…I can’t put a number on it, but, it’s definitely something that I do think about, that I can’t sacrifice income to be better at what we’re doing.
My wife, she does not like me spraying anything. She loves blooming weeds or other plants. It drives me up a wall. Yeah, she helps me be better at what I’m doing. Because if it wouldn’t have been for her, I would never have been aware of these bees and bugs and dog fennel and all blooming and or dandelions. She loves dandelions. And I’m like, if I see a dandelion in my yard like I am a failure as a farmer. Like I gotta have a clean, green, lush yard. so we do…There’s places I don’t spray on the farm for the dandelions.
Carol McFarland
You know, those pollinators really love dandelions.
Clint Zenner
They do.
Carol McFarland
Well, and I bet it’s fun. I mean, you talked about your kids a little bit. I know kids love bugs too, so that’s fun.
Clint Zenner
Bugs and snakes and apples and dandelions and yeah, anything they can make a mess with for sure.
Carol McFarland
It’s a great one to hear your wife’s role in making you a better farmer. really fun to hear about as well.
Clint Zenner
Yeah. She’s a pretty strong decision maker on the farm, but we’re planting hedgerows, you know, trying to increase diversity of what’s on the farm for that reason. Yeah. She’s always coming up with new places to plant things that I have to spray around, which, you know, I know is a good thing.
Carol McFarland
Well, you’ll get to see more of those interesting pollinators while having your adult beverages.
How does this on farm trial complement the rest of your research portfolio Kendall? So what other projects do you have going on, like, how does that play with this kind of landscape level l on farm trial?
Kendall Kahl
Yeah, so, I guess a lot of the work that I’ve been involved in in the last few years has been looking at how to add diversity to our cropping systems, as a way to maybe change our weed management and our nutrient management and help…yeah, help improve our soil. And so those cover crops are obviously a great way to add diversity within a single year potentially, and then just figuring out how to make that work within the system, so that there’s some return on investment. Right? That’s the challenge that everybody’s trying to work through right here is how do we manage them so that we get some benefits, but that they also provide some economic benefit?
Carol McFarland
Or at least even from the perspective of how you’re evaluating it, maybe reduce the risk around any losses that could potentially provide-
Clint Zenner
I actually never profited from a cover crop in any way, shape or form. There’s always been a negative ROI.
We continue to do it, and the main reason why I like to do it, and I want to collaborate all the time, and this is something that I don’t feel like the university gets enough credit for. But us as growers would not do these things if it was not for people like Kendall that are looking at the data, analyzing the data, giving us data. They’re the ones that motivate us to keep doing it because we are seeing benefits. We are learning. We are making the soil better, you know? Can I explain how and why my infiltration rates and my biodiversity and all that? Absolutely not. But I can feel it with a shovel and I can see it with the bugs around the farm.
And that’s…yeah, if it wasn’t for getting these, the researchers involved, I mean, there’s nobody would think outside the box. So it’s very, very important to have the worm queen out poking holes in my field every year.
Carol McFarland
I think you have a brand new title. The Palouse Worm Queen. Yeah, the baton has been passed. The scepter.
Clint Zenner
Jody will be proud.
Kendall Kahl
It’s funny to hear you say that, because I feel like I get a lot of motivation from all of your guys creativity and the ways that you guys are trying to make things work. And…yeah, I think you guys, I think you guys are the out of the box thinkers
Clint Zenner
Your research is what helps keep us motivated doing it, like it’s…yeah. If you, if you were like, “Wow. Cover crops are really damaging the soil.” Guess what? We wouldn’t do it anymore. But because of you actually doing the research, it does. Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Well, it seems like it’s just helping to put numbers on, you know, questions and observations that, you know, you know are happening or you feel are happening, and being able to just associate that with quantifiable metrics.
Clint Zenner
Right.
Carol McFarland
The blending of this, you know, intrinsic knowledge that you have of your landscape that you know very well. And then putting numbers on any changes. That’s an interesting dance, it sounds like you guys both, it’s like the best of the collaboration where you’re inspiring each other as well. When you do your reporting and your presentations of the outcomes of this project, how do you see integrating the, well, Clint felt change with his shovel? Like, are you able to integrate that at all and you report back to the funding? This is funded by Western SARE. So when are you going to tell them that Clint noticed a difference with his shovel?
Clint Zenner
Well I did- I do I always, you know, I like all the reports they give us. You know, that show and document all the changes in the things that happened. You know, the water holding capacity and the infiltration rates, bulk density, things like that are getting better. And I wouldn’t know that if it wasn’t for her report. So, yes, the shovel test is always a good test, but how do I quantify that or which the funding source is going to go? Like, I’ve got some goofy farmer just stuck a shovel on the ground, and we’re going to give him more money to do research. Great.
Carol McFarland
I don’t know, they might.
Kendall Kahl
Yeah. I mean, I think those types of observations alongside the numbers are great [and] are really helpful because there’s a lot of times we see something, we see a difference. Right? But we can always capture that in our measurements. We try, you know, I think having both it’s all information, it’s helpful. Yeah.
Clint Zenner
I’ve taken over some different farms around through the years and in…or done custom work for other farmers and growers. And it’s interesting the amount of hours we spent in a tractor, you can feel if the ground’s hard just by driving in the tractor, like you probably poking holes with a soil probe.
I mean, there’s times you’re like, Holy cow, what is- am I in a track? Like, is the whole field this hard? Like, what is going on? I’m not used to this feeling. And then it’s like, oh, wow. Some of this crazy hippie stuff I’m doing is actually making my soil softer. Great.
Carol McFarland
Awesome, the translating into, water holding capacity and infiltration and all and all of that, hopefully also keeping you in business. That’s all great. And I’m really excited too, about, you know, what space there is for these growers as co-PIs and part of their reporting out and how that’s holistic. Maybe the next direction that I’d like to go is kind of circling back to, do you expect to manage things differently based on what comes out of the Cover Crop project, or is it still too early to tell?
Clint Zenner
Well, I think it’ll change my management. That’s kind of why we’re doing it. Everybody wants to be a regenerative farmer and a sustainable farmer, but I don’t know that. I know one. I mean, I’ve heard of Gabe Brown. I mean, we all know those guys, but I don’t know a farm that is truly regenerating soil in our area. I mean, we’d all like to think we are, but I don’t know if we are. So that’s why we have to do the covers, and we have to do the research and…
Kendall Kahl
I don’t know if we know we are, right? Maybe we’re moving in that direction slowly. But it takes …yeah. I mean take a little bit more time.
Carol McFarland
Well, what does that process look like for the Inland Pacific Northwest? And how is that different than other people who are doing it in Georgia or, you know, South Dakota or, you know, all these other places where the agro ecosystem is inherently very different?
Clint Zenner
Our environment is so different than most places. You know, you can go from right here on my farm, 60 miles in any direction and be in a complete different climate ecosystem. 20 miles, it’s crazy!
Carol McFarland
Yeah. I was going to say I’m pretty sure that 60 miles is an overstatement. I really think that it’s closer than that.
Clint Zenner
That’s what…that adds a degree of complexity for sure. For the researchers, for the farmers…
Carol McFarland
Let’s talk a little bit about some of the unintended consequences that maybe you’ve seen doing some of the cover crop work. Kendall, I know you were part of another project, especially with the integrated- I know there’s a learning curve with livestock.
Clint Zenner
Yeah, I went and bought a semi-loader year lens. Planted cover crop, had a cover crop up and running. Looked great. Went about a similar and I turned them out on the cover crop. And it took about four weeks to catch all of them because they scattered like quail.
The furthest one was probably 15 miles away, and it had made it into Washington from out here on the farm several miles away. And yeah, like 19 of them, we had to run down with horses and rope and drag them to horse trailers. They were so wild and so skittish. Was an interesting experience, improving on the relations with neighbors and landlords and…yeah, that added a great degree of difficulty for the summer, for sure.
Carol McFarland
Oh, man, you’re a cowboy, though.
Clint Zenner
I have, I have thrown a few loops in my day. Yeah, yeah.
Carol McFarland
Oh well how about that. So something that really interests me as we think about the mixed species cover crops in particular, is like, are there things that cows or other livestock shouldn’t be eating? And how does that learning curve look? I mean, it sounds like, you know, you’ve got so much experience, like you probably just look at something like, yeah, that’s good. Or like, eh.
Clint Zenner
I think you can get in trouble if you are not careful on timing of grazing and or the mix. This summer, last summer, Eric Oberg had close to 700 goats on his place on a 190 acre field.
They didn’t even get to the entire field because so much biomass grew. But there was buckwheat in the mix and Eric or I, or most livestock operators, if you if you don’t raise goats, you wouldn’t know that buckwheat is…or goats have an allergic reaction to buckwheat. So they had to hand rouge buckwheat all summer long while they were grazing goats.
And yeah, another unexpected consequence of mixing livestock and…cowboys and farmers are definitely two different kinds of people for sure. For a few of us that actually have cows and ride a horse and also are a farmer. Yeah, very few of us.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Sounds like there’s some room for collaborations.
Clint Zenner
The day that Frank Wolff has cows on his farm is the day everyone needs to buy a lottery ticket,
Carol mcFarland
Yeah, other unintended consequences with livestock that you’ve had, Kendall.
Kendall Kahl
Yeah. So we’ve dabbled a little bit in trying to bring cows into our research. And we had one, unfortunately, learning experience a few years ago, where we did lose 1 or 2 yearlings to bloat. And I think it was a perfectly bad storm. Two things. We were grazing them later in the season, and we had a pretty robust crop, a lot of biomass out there. But at this point, the only thing that was really green anymore was brassicas.
And, they were more dominant in the mix than we had intended. And so I…what we think we don’t really know and I’m not an expert and that room by any means that the cows that are probably preferentially, preferentially eating the brassica biomass,which is likely higher in nitrogen. And so, we think that that’s what caused the bloat. They could have that then pretty quickly. And that was okay. But we didn’t lose a lot. But yeah, it’s certainly something of a learning moment for sure.
Clint Zenner
I was always really scared when I first started grazing covers, with the radish turnips. I just knew they were going to choke because it, like, you know, the perfectly round golf ball size or baseball size radish or turnip, you know, they take a big bite of that and get it stuck.
And a friend of mine, he grew up giving me a hard time about stuff and some of my crazy ideas that I’m doing. He’s like, well, you better pack a broomstick around with you just in case they’re choking you can remove the blockage. And so, unbeknownst to me, I raised cows my entire life.
I’ve had to fix them from bloating, never choking, so I did. I had a broomstick in my pickup just in case I had a cow choking. I could ram it down its throat and thank goodness I never had a cow choke.
Carol McFarland
From what I’ve heard, it sounds like they actually really love the radishes and turnips and stuff.
Clint Zenner
Yeah, they’ll eventually completely dig them out of the ground and eat them all. If they graze them long enough.. They love them.
Carol McFarland
And how have you handled brassicas in your cover crop mix, especially what you’ve been grazing? How do you handle that, Clint?
Clint Zenner
So early on, you always…we’re still learning every year, but, but my mix changes almost every single year. But the brassicas do really, really dominate the mix. And so through the years, I’ve kept lowering my brassica amount of seed per acre, just because they do so well. And they’re a really small seed. And when you plant all these different species together, everything just grows. You know, I plant fava beans to canola in the same mix, out the same hole, the same depth, and everything usually grows. The only thing I haven’t been able to figure out how to grow is a cowpea. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a cowpea make it out of the ground, and I don’t know why I can raise Austrian winter peas, spring peas, yellow peas, but the cowpea, for some reason…
Carol McFarland
Maybe they like it warmer than Idaho, I think.
Clint Zenner
I think it’s too cold. Yeah, must be too cold or they’re falling down one of the holes that Kendall has poked in there.
Carol McFarland
That’s funny. One of the things that I’m kind of curious about as we’re kind of homing in after a great conversation, is the landscape level cover crop and how is the plot work translating into the landscape level? From what I understand, there’s a lot of variability in these multi species mix and how when you do it on a plot scale, do you kind of translate or extrapolate out from that versus what you see in that field.
Kendall Kahl
Yeah. Well I guess we use the plot scale trials to add some application to it. at least in, in a controlled way, right where we can try to actually vary treatments in a more controlled way. And then it’s, it’s interesting to then take what we see in a somewhat more controlled environment. And does that translate out onto the bigger field scale? And we’ll take- so we can take similar types of measurements in both locations. And then at the larger scale, we’ll try to bring in some sort of remote sensing type imagery often so that we can extrapolate, out, beyond just the physical sort of point measurements that we can take. And it is always interesting to see how, what we might see in a small plot, how that might translate across the landscape. Do we see it existing in patches or in certain landscape positions or, or is it ubiquitous? Usually it isn’t. but sometimes, and one of the things that’s been interesting with the cover crops is they can be very there can be a lot of sort of very visual, indicators, so we might just put the field in the lit project if we split the field between winter pea, grazed, cover crop and then, either fallow or chickpea, depending on the site. And you could see the differences in the wheat, growth and color based on those…the crop that was there the previous year just visually.
So then, you know, the task is, what do we need to measure to to help us understand what’s actually driving that difference. So I feel like those types of observations are easier to see either through some sort of remote sensing type image. But sometimes you can just see with your own eyes driving by the field.
Carol McFarland
Nice. What do you think about the transferability of the plots, you know, to this field scale? And what have you seen in your experience? Cover cropping on the field scale that might look different than in the plot scale?
Clint Zenner
I spent so much time in the field looking at all these different crops. I probably don’t spend enough time in the small plots as I should. A lot of times we drive by them or plant them and then kind of monitor them throughout the year. But unfortunately, as a grower, like if it’s not 40 acres or more and it’s not going to sting a little bit because of the financial implications of it, we don’t look at it. The plots are like oh, yeah, we can do a plot. Have fun. And unfortunately it’s less usually an acre or two or three in a year, you don’t notice it financially. So that’s a weakness of mine for sure, that I don’t pay enough attention to the small plots. I’m more of a bigger field scale analyzer. I guess.
Carol McFarland
So where do you give these guys their research site on your farm? Did you put it in your back 40 or did you put it on the road or…?
Clint Zenner
Right out on the road, right next to the county road. Luckily for me, I don’t farm next to any highways, so people have to draw- it’s a dead end road. So it’s kind of in the back 40, but I do get some window traffic, I guess you would call it out there from neighbors and whatnot.
Carol McFarland
Do you have signs out there talking about the project?
Kendall Kahl
We don’t. We’ve talked about trying to do that. Actually, that came up at our winter meeting. One of our collaborators suggested that. I don’t know that it would be a great idea. Your spot per se, not a lot of traffic there. But one of the things we’ve talked about doing is so now the plots we had last year were in cover crops are all now in winter wheat, and in the spring, we’re going to- all of the flags that have been marking them, I’m pretty sure are gone at this point. But we’re going to go out and at least mark the corners so that if we can see something visually, it might help catch your eyes, maybe as you’re going by and maybe you wouldn’t notice it otherwise.
Carol McFarland
Big flags. Big ones.
Clint Zenner
Yeah, yeah. We- I do look at a lot of NVDI data and that’s always interesting. I ‘ve got a field. I split , I did a big field split with 100 acres, split of a 200 acre field and did three different practices with compost and then other fertility along with them from three ton to 1 ton to the acre compost fertilizer and then no fertilizer. And that’s been interesting to watch all fall long. And we’ve had an awesome growing…awesome growing conditions this winter fall, but I’ve never seen any color difference even where there’s compost and absolutely no fertilizer that week looks just as uniform as can be. It’s interesting.
Carol McFarland
And that’s just your own trial.
Clint Zenner
That’s my own trial right across the road from Kendal’s trial. The lit trial and…the lit trial and the cover crop trial were both in the same field.
Carol McFarland
Okay, You are having fun. So on your farm, you’ve got this compost. That sounds pretty interesting. You also have your Flourish project. What else do you have going on in your farm that you would like to talk about? This PNW cover crops is just part of your research portfolio.
Clint Zenner
Right. You know, different fertility management. I’m trying to reduce my reliance on infertile nitrogen and I want to do more foliar application. So I kind of set my fall, last fall and harvest and whatnot up for this spring to start down that road because I really love growing a good winter wheat. And I had a hard time cutting other than the 100 acres of compost. But this spring I’m going to try some spring wheat seeding with zero seed trade in compost tea for the fertility and then just totally full or foliar feed it from there on out. One of my mentors is Doug Poole on the Mansfield area. Completely different environment climate, just a totally different style of farming.
But if he can make it work in that super dry, arid, rocky climate, why on earth can I not do it where I get rain? So I’m taking one for the team, for Douglas and them, and then I’m going to try to mimic what he’s doing up there. We’ll see.
Carol McFarland
Hmm. Sounds like he needs to have his own interview soon.
Clint Zenner
I think you should have Douglas. He’s good at talking.
Carol McFarland
He already suggested that he might be up for that. So I’m looking forward to more of that. Great. This is so exciting. And especially your collaboration, it’s really fun to hear about this kind of long term collaborative, synergistic work where you guys are inspiring each other in this process and Kendall’s pulling a lot of soil cores from your field. I’d love to hear about what’s the most annoying part about working with a researcher.
Clint Zenner
By the end of spring a guy’s usually tired of driving around a plot and trying not to hit the white boxes, battery boxes or whatever those things are? And I’ve only hit one in the combine all year,
Carol McFarland
That’s a continuous collection of data, right? You don’t want to hit that one.
Clint Zenner
That was one of those days. The dust was hanging just right, the sun was in my eyes and I thought I missed it. I had to call kiddo and say, Well, I hit one of your little white boxes. I’m sorry.
Kendall Kahl
I was just worried that we ruined your header. That was my bigger concern. That monetarily is, I think, more important than my battery box, it’s replaceable.
Clint Zenner
The definitely the most annoying thing about watching Kendall and her team is it doesn’t matter how cold it is or how hot it is, they’ll be out there working, taking samples in the blazing heat or the freezing cold, and I’m in my climate controlled cab thinking to myself, man, I feel like a real big wimp right now. Because Kendall’s out there and it’s 105.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, you’ve got to be hard core. It’s definitely…doing the field research on the ground in the plots.
Clint Zenner
That’s hard core.
Carol McFarland
It is hard core.
Clint Zenner
Farmers, we’re soft. We get, like 72 degrees with our refrigerated cupholder and…
Carol McFarland
Listening to podcasts while you’re in the cab.
Clint Zenner
Listening to podcasts.
Carol McFarland
There’s no part of farmers that are wimps, but it is pretty hardcore to do that, field sampling. All right Kendall, what’s the most annoying part of working with a farmer?
Kendall Kahl
What is the most annoying part? I think there’s not that much that really annoys me about it, honestly. But I think trying to get information from you guys documenting a lot of the little details and that’s probably as much on me as anybody as on you guys.
Clint Zenner
We’re not very detail-oriented, that’s for sure.
Kendall Kahl
That’s right. It’s like pinning down certain details can be hard. But it’s, it’s just this game we play at the spot.
Clint Zenner
Guilty. I think she finally got some information she’s been waiting for since August, like a week ago or two days ago.
Kendall Kahl
Yeah. But you pull through in the end, and that’s what matters.
Clint Zenner
Her deadline’s tomorrow. We’ve got to get this to her.
Kendall Kahl
I feel like everybody’s just really great at being accommodating and we try to be flexible and it feels like yeah, when it comes down to the important things, it’s yeah, the communication isn’t actually a problem. Now I gotta ask early or write it down when I have them in front of me in person often.
Clint Zenner
And lots of reminders. Like keep bugging me because I will forget. I promise you.
Kendall Kahl
We all need reminders. Yeah.
Clint Zenner
I had a question for Kendall, too: what do you want to see studied next? What do you want us to try?
Carol McFarland
Careful. We’re going to make you answer that one, too.
Kendall Kahl
That is a great question.
Clint Zenner
Maybe you’re already doing it. I guess you must be rather passionate about what you’re doing If you’re getting your Ph.D.
Kendall Kahl
What would I really…? I guess one of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about is, you know, what’s the nutrient benefit that we’re getting from these cover effects? We don’t know how to adjust our fertilizer rates based on the nutrients we’re going to get from our cover crops, partly because we don’t know how much fruit to expect or when to expect it to be ready or available.
Carol McFarland
Like cycle through.
Kendall Kahl
Yeah. When is it going to actually go from living biomass and nutrients to be available to the next crop? And so I wonder if we need to include in our studies with these cover crops in a trial where we’re not fertilizing just to eliminate that from the equation so we can see what we really do get from these cover crops. Obviously we want to do that on a small enough scale that it’s not hurting anybody’s situation.
Carol McFarland
But if you do it big enough, then he’ll watch it.
Kendall Kahl
Right, right, right. Yeah, you got to find that balance. But I think that’s…when as I’m looking through all of the data that we’ve been collecting like that, that’s one of the pieces that I think would be really interesting to help us understand really how to use it better.
Clint Zenner
It’s completely mirrored the exact same thing because I…we do all this stuff on the farm it’s really hard to shut the fertilizer off because we know that it works. And we know deep down that if I put nitrogen down, I’m going to get more biomass. I want to figure out how to do without that stuff. I agree 110%. I would love to do that research on farm.
Carol McFarland
Or on the nutrient cycling.
Kendall Kahl
Yeah, just sort of creating something on this extreme scenario to help us understand what’s really happening.
Clint Zenner
And what a report card for what we’re doing. I mean, if it’s the crops turn or maybe it takes three years for this stuff to start working, we’re like, Holy cow, we should have just been patient.
Carol McFarland
As we wrap up here, you guys want to share what’s the most fun thing about working with a farmer?
Kendall Kahl
Oh, I love…I love having conversations with everybody we work with about what they’re seeing, their perspective on the land that we’re studying or just the way they see it all coming together, it makes my understanding of what I’m saying so much richer I think and. Yeah. I think a lot of the folks, Clint included, that we work with are really creative in the way that they try to solve these problems that I always find to be very inspiring.
Clint Zenner
I guess for a farmer, the thing that I love about working with Kendall and her crew is, is we have these assumptions that what we’re doing is right, but we really don’t trust ourselves and believe it until they can show us with data. We’re like, sweet. I was like, What are you seeing on my farm? And I always want to know, am I better than the business as usual guy and the conventional guy? Am I-am I making moves forward like? Is this stuff really working? And without her, I guess research and proving that it’s like, yeah, we have to have it.
Carol McFarland
That’s really inspiring. So one of these days she’s going to say “Clint you’re doing it wrong. We have to do another set.”
Kendall Kahl
“We don’t know yet.” I feel like that’s often…unfortunately I feel like I say that too often.
Carol McFarland
Well you know, in these complex puzzles, like how…you can just keep going, it’s a rabbit hole I mean, you know you’re talking about how, like no-till wasn’t really just…
Clint Zenner
I wanted to give a shout out to U of I, WSU and all the research that everybody does around here because we have to keep doing this. And I hope that you get a bazillion likes and subscribers to your podcast.
Carol McFarland
Oh, thanks, Clint!
Clint Zenner
Because I think it’ll, it’ll help, it’ll help us secure more funding to do more research, because without the funding, it’s kind of hard to do the research and it’s super important for continuing to figure out better ways to feed the globe without the traditional methods of farming.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, thanks for that. Well, and hopefully part of this process is learning from each other so that when we go seek more funding, we have really great and solid collaborations that help advance to the next question that is meaningful for everyone involved as we go forward.
Kendall Kahl
In terms of resources that we’ve got currently, the PNW Cover Crops Project has a website that we’re hoping to build and we’re in the process of building that as sort of a hub for everything. For all the research that’s been going on with cover crops in the area, we have also the Landscapes and Transition project. So the project has a website and the U of I extension has done some work as well. There’s some publications out there, but we’re hoping to kind of try to bring all those resources together in our current projects website and create actually more of an interactive space within the website to get comments and- comments and input from folks that are actually doing these things.
Carol McFarland
That’s awesome! and I think part of the PNW Cover Crop Project website is also the decision support tool. There’s also a forum with some light interactive conversation that could be facilitated in that space should people choose to engage with it.
Kendall Kahl
Certainly, and the decision support tool, is something that will come from the research that we’re sort of in the middle of.
Carol McFarland
So it’s being built kind of as we speak.
Kendall Kahl
Exactly.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. All right, Clint, do you want to nominate anyone to be on the On Farm Trials podcast?
Clint Zenenr
Oh, definitely. Douglas Pool and also Tom Conklin. He better give his 2 cents as well. And Alan Druffle over in Uniontown.
Carol McFarland
Well I love that you said that one of the most exciting things about working with a farmer is these great conversations. And I just really want to recognize and appreciate both of your time for letting me be part of one of those conversations and recording it and hopefully inspire our listeners. Thanks so much for having us out to the farm.
Clint Zenner
You bet.
Carol McFarland
Your shop is awesome and keep up the great work. We look forward to maybe hearing how this project and maybe some future work progresses. Thanks, guys.
Kendall Kahl
Thank you.
Clint Zenner
Yeah, thanks, Carol.