Why John Heerman Stopped Letting Ground Fall Fallow in Eastern Colorado

0:00 Hey everyone I'm here with John Hereman, one of our friends and customers and sales partners in Eastern Colorado. We're going to be talking—this is a continuation of the fallow fallacy webinar that we did with Nicole Masters. At the end of that webinar we indicated that we'd be making some additional videos that showed people who are taking proactive steps to not leave their ground fallow. So this is one of those videos.

0:35 John farms in Haxton, Colorado, the Eastern part of Colorado—a very, very dry, very harsh environment. Now this year, 2023, they're actually getting some good moisture, but I've known John for more than 10 years and more years out of not they are quite dry. So John, I think you told me you earned about a 17 inch rainfall area in an area where most people will be doing a wheat fallow rotation. But because of your understanding of soil health and the principles of soil health, you don't let anything live fallow because you know the value of growing plants and the value of that biology. So I had John make this video with us to share with everyone the reason that he wants plants growing as often as possible and the reason that he just does not allow land to be fallow on his farm if he can possibly help it at all.

1:34 So with that John, I'm going to just let you give a little bit of your background. You've got a really interesting and unique background, so give us a little background of how you kind of got started farming. You grow a lot of seed for green cover, you clean a lot of seed for us as well, so give us just a little bit of background and then I know we've got a few pictures here that we'll share and we'll talk about as well.

1:59 Okay, yep. I grew up farming with my dad and we were in a wheat fallow system my entire childhood. I guess so it was a wheat tillage system, and then, you know, I kind of started farming on my own as I got out of college. When I moved back to the farm I had just kind of started adding millet and some other things in the rotation, but I still had a fallow period to get back to wheat. And I was at No-Till on the Plains in 2013, I believe. Or maybe it would have been the winter—nope, yeah, it would have been 2014, so the January of 2014. And I saw that rainfall simulator that they—that the NRCS does—and they had a no-till field.

2:57 Switched to no-till as well but they had a no-till field and had no cover on it and I was amazed at how much water ran off of that pan and didn't go in the soil and it really wasn't even that much better than the in the tillage runoff and infiltration on there. And once I saw that I was like, why am I farming like this then? If you don't get that much rain, if you want to utilize all the rain that you get, you better prepare your soil to accept that rain event.

3:32 When I seen that, everything kind of clicked. When you see ponds and fields in a semi-arid environment that shouldn't be there, it's just the soil's trying to tell you a problem. And there's a solution for it. So I guess once I seen that and learned some stuff at the conference, the next three years I kind of immersed myself and tried to find as much information as I could about soil health and building the soil up.

4:03 I kind of discovered that the premise to build soil is that you got to have plants photosynthesizing and putting complex sugars and stuff into the soil so you can feed that biology and you can build up your organic matter. And if you don't, if you have long periods of nothing growing in there, you're not really helping your soil or you're not really helping your end game.

4:29 I guess since I'm younger, I'm more looking at the very long long term of slowly improving my soil. And I guess this will be year nine that I have done cover crops. And you know, when you hear people at conferences or you talk to people about the change that it will take in your soil, when I first got into it, I was like, oh man, one year, and like, this cover crop is magic, you just plant it and you're going to be the greatest farmer in the world and have the best soil. But you know, come to find out, especially out here, it takes a good six years to actually be able to—you can certainly see the difference right away, but as far as fertility or monetary value or anything like that, it's took a long time. It took at least six years before things start to come together, I would say. And when you have really dry years like you've had some of those really dry years, you really don't make.

5:35 Much progress at all but then you get a decent year like what you're having now and you can really see some quicker games I would guess.

5:43 Right and like last year would have been the first that's the first year I didn't plant cover crops in the last nine years after harvest. You know our wheat was just like six inches tall when they when it was to harvest time and just no forecast for any rain whatsoever and not even the weeds were growing so that last year was the first year I had I had never done anything but it was you know just the conditions weren't there for that but you know normally even if it's dry or you were catching a rain here or there I you know I will plant a cover crop because just a little sprinkle will get it going it's just last year's conditions kind of.

6:29 And you know whereas most people have experienced yeah whereas most people in your area are on the girl in you know wheat maybe some sorghum yeah how many different crops are you growing John I know you grow at least half a dozen different things just for us but how many different things are you growing out there.

6:44 I like this year I got rye rye planted by itself I got rye in hairy vetch I got some wheat I got some millet and I got some oats and I did have some winter peas but they didn't like our spring winter so yeah so not as diverse this year but that's I kind of needed some high carbon crops this year to replace the abysmal last year because I didn't get a lot of residue produced to cover my soil and that's one of my you know my big pushes out here is to keep my soils covered as much as possible so that I can capture snow in the winter and then I can have that residue laid down on the soil surface come spring and summer time so and that's why I don't really have a set rotation I've kind of evolved it to meet the needs of what exactly my soil might need.

7:50 You know like last year a little residue crops and you know and planting some millet or something into some wheat stubble instead of you know peas because I I need to get some more carbon out there and and get some straw to capture things but yeah you might be able to cycle some stuff or have a different crop rotation come next year and not have so many so much carbon base crops I guess or yep and I think that flexibility is really a.

8:19 Key because you don't know what Mother Nature is going to give you so you just have to be prepared and be ready. You know, after a really dry period I think you're really smart going with the higher carbon crops to get that cover because it all starts at the cover, you know. As you noted in the rainfall simulator, the no-till by itself is just not going to work long term. You've got to have that cover out there as well, right.

8:47 In our area, you combine your wheat in July and generally with the no-till producers, they wait for a rain, wait for a flush of weeds after wheat harvest. That field sprayed and then it sprayed again in the fall in preparation to go to corn or millet or something come springtime. So that's July till next May. Usually you'd have inputs of just trying to kill weeds and not trying to have anything growing where you got 10 months of there.

9:29 I've eliminated that period and what that has allowed me to do is not use the amount of chemicals that would be required to go out and kill all those weeds. Just by getting the seeds in the ground immediately after harvest I can place good in the soil. Or even if you have enough moisture to get it up right away you can get ahead of those weeds and let that cover crop do its work. That has really cut back on the amount of herbicide I would have to use.

10:02 Yes, that cover crop is going to use moisture but I'm looking towards the springtime, towards next year when I can have more residue. I look at the herbicide just as an expense, but what good did it do for my soil or what benefit was it to me or my long-term goals. The cover crop I look more of it as an investment. Yes, I have a seed expense but I'm able to photosynthesize nine more months out of the year than I would be able to.

10:42 Generally I put overwintering stuff in there too so I can go. I like staggering my mixes when after wheat so they're, I got a lot of warm seasons and a lot of cool season. So when we get frosted off in September or October my warm seasons are.

10:58 Dead but then hey look here comes all these cool season brassicas or even the oats hang around for a while and then you know you come next spring you got all these winter cereals or some of the brassicas come back and or winter peas or winter vetch. You can really utilize all utilize the sun. I guess that was my main thing when I you know that's a free resource and I think that's the I don't think there's any way to build soil without photosynthesizing so that's where my push is just to always have something growing.

11:33 Yeah and that's great and you're not going to get that if you're leaving a fallow. You don't get the benefit of that photosynthesis. So John you sent some pictures over earlier. I'm going to kind of pull this up on the screen here because I want you to just share with folks some of what you do in your operation. So you just kind of share a little bit about which what you got going on here and we'll just take a little bit of a hover through your farm here.

12:02 Yeah that's just my air Cedar there that looks like that was a field that would have a cover crop that overwintered and had some weed in it so it that one's just been sprayed off so that's me planting there in the spring springtime and you know it's just a little different compared to the normal normally that would be a barren desolate field with no with nothing growing on it and just gray straw or whatever. All that stuff standing catching snow through the winter shading the ground shaded and cooler and helping with infiltration.

12:44 Right and then what I like to do is you know come springtime I got an overwintering cover crop or I got stuff out there you know depending on the year if it's if it's raining good and it's super wet and it's going to be hard to get the tractor the sprayer or anything in there you know I'll let it go a little longer before I terminate it before I drill but if it's you know a dry year it's been a dry winter and I'm using up the moisture that I have then you know I will go out there a little earlier and and try and determine that that cover crop but like for like last last year was a very dry year and I I probably didn't terminate it as soon as I should have and it you know.

13:31 That particular year was it, you know, live and learn. Yes, I should have got that sooner, but my thought process was I was building a little residue. I was going to recoup that rain come summer time, flip by reducing my evaporation.

13:51 You know, that moisture never came, and by the time the year was done, my crops weren't any worse than the next guy who didn't have cover crops because no one got anything. So I didn't — right, right, that recharge never came.

14:06 Tell us about this picture. You're just getting all geared out to fill the drill here, it looks like. Yeah, that was my first year that I ordered seed for every field. I had a lot of wheat back then. I hadn't — I don't know if I'd met Scott yet, so I hadn't started growing rice. So that's all going behind wheat stubble there.

14:30 You know, I've got better with my mixes or do what's tailored for the soil. Or in like behind wheat, I generally don't do a lot of cool season grasses. I do a lot of broadleafs, and that's one thing that's hard to get into my rotation and get into my soil as a warm season broadleaf. So cover crops in the summer allow you a great opportunity for sunflowers and buckwheat and all sorts of broadleaves that your soil may — I struggle to find the actual crop broadleaf. So those helped me get that four species in there, a lot of times.

15:10 That's a great point. You know, if you've got plants that your soil needs and you can't really grow it or don't want to grow it as a cash crop, make sure it's part of your cover crop mix. That's a great way to get it integrated into what you're doing there.

15:25 So this is me drilling into a wheat double, and I use a Shelbourne stripper head, which I think is pretty critical for when you're doing cover crops, especially when you're doing it immediately behind the combine. You know, even if you're — I think you can still do it with a sickle head, but it makes it very challenging to set the drill. Cutting through that fresh straw is pretty hard in my experience, so that Shelbourne allows me to go right between the old wheat rows with my drill, and I don't have so much trash on the ground and I can get better seed to soil contact with my cover crop.

16:08 Seed and generally I try and follow the combine the same day or the day after and I don't know give my cover crop the best chance to get a head start on anything and avoid having to spray it because inevitably if you wait for the rain your weed's already got a head start on you because they're five days into you and you gotta now you got moisture and now you got to go plant but now you got you know Mother Nature already sprouted all your cover crop weeds in the soil. So yeah dry wood I try to get it in as fast as I can after the combine. Yep timeliness is very important there for sure.

16:49 So here's some coming up on you. Yep so yeah that'll be a couple weeks after just coming up through that wheat stubble and you know you could it was a pretty clean field to begin with at harvest time there so now you know this field has allowed me to you know I had a fallow period essentially there where the wheat dried down and took me a while to combine but I'm changing that to four weeks instead of ten months I guess so now I'm starting to build some more soil right here just some millets and buckwheat and then brassicas kind of showing the diversity that's put in there.

17:33 Now John are you removing any of this through grazing or is this all just returning to the soil or do you have animals out there? Well when I generally for the most part I just let it all grow and return to the soil, especially in our area. You know we're not out here we're not going to get six foot tall cover crops after a wheat harvest and you know thousands of pounds of biomass. So you know usually it's not the prettiest looking cover crop usually I mean it's we're dry and it's hot in the summer so you know I'm more look of it as the soil benefit and using the photosynthesis and trying to get that residue so generally after wheat harvest I have avoided grazing it unless it's a super prolific year and I can grow a ton of biomass and I can raise a little bit but you know taking even grazing it lightly and taking 50 percent of a little bits you know it's.

21:20 Piles, but you know when you drill through it, you've got a cover crop growing. It kind of stitches it all together, it ties it all together, and the residue is much easier to manage.

21:31 So you got some things blooming here. Yeah, some buckwheat and red clover and looks like something, bunch of brassicas and some maybe some mug beans there or something in the bottom. So just you know, kind of showing the diversity of what you can get in a mix, especially after summer harvest. You know, they're pretty big opportunity. You can look at the green cover catalog or wherever and you can pretty much plant any seed you want during that time of year. So that'll kind of give you a lot, a lot more flexibility and a lot of cool things you can do with those summer ones as opposed to, you know, just the fall or your limited cool seasons or even the springtime when you can't get the warm seasons in there. Yep. Yeah, it's a great time of the year to plant a cover crop.

22:24 I am today drilling a cover crop into rice stubble. We're looking at what's up, already been drilled. You can see I'm splitting the rows of the rye, the old rye rows, laying the seed right in between there. And we're going to go over here and show you what it looks like where it's been drilled and where it hasn't been drilled.

22:59 Besides the combine track, you can hardly tell the drill's been through this field. It's a very low disturbance.

23:09 Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot, I'd say, you know, one of my concerns is being out there with the drill is mowing down my residue, but by being there right away after harvest, the at least the cereals, they still kind of got a spring in their step and they kind of pop right back up after you run the drill through it. And with the GPS today and RTK, I have all my lines set up and I don't generally go at an angle or anything. I just, I'm on seven and a half inch spacing. I just move my GPS line over three and a half or four inches and split the old rows. And I got narrow gauge wheels on that cedar. So I got some extra tires in there on the drill, putting residue down, but otherwise my openers or anything aren't putting much residue on.

24:05 The ground. And so this was this was the cereal green you got the cover crop planted into it and then you'll go to a spring-platted crop most likely the following spring.

24:17 Yup that's correct yeah this was rice double and I just have planted mostly a warm season mix in there and I'll have some volunteer eye that'll come on later and then some other winter ones like Harry vetch or winter peas so then you know come springtime I'd have the opportunity I could spray that out and plant peas or a warm season crop like buckwheat or Millet or sunflowers or corn.

24:49 And that you know come you know maybe I'm planting Millet into that field and you know end of May so maybe I have to terminate that in May but first part of May to conserves some moisture out here and still have something get the seeds up but you know I just yeah at least had something growing from July till May and eliminated at that fallow period 30 days instead of 10 months.

25:15 Yep yep. And I think one last picture here because this this tells a pretty good story right here go ahead and share what this story is telling us.

25:26 Yeah you know things I've noticed over the years and especially the last two or three years is how my soil has significantly changed and some of the fields that I'm farming I remember farming those as a kid they've been in the family for a while and I remember you know working the ground and we'd get a one inch rain or whatever and have to go work summer fallow and we would always be driving around these little lagoons and out here in Northeast Colorado it's pretty flat I mean these are like these lagoons are sloped yeah but it's a very small slope.

26:10 And over definitely over the last four years I very very rarely see water standing in my fields and I very very rarely even make a track with my drill or my combine or you know I see other guys fighting mud with their combine or and I'm just driving through it all and not having a problem and I think that's a direct result of having something living in the ground and photosynthesizing and building up my soil over the years and just by taking a shovel and looking

26:48 At it and sometimes I go over the neighboring field just maybe I don't remember what it looked like. I was I have a new guy who's helping me farm and we were drilling some oats this spring and he asked why I was doing this, while I was doing that, why do I have all this residue out here and we were out back checking the drill and checking the seeds and we were along kind of real close to the it was like 100 feet to walk over.

27:21 I dug up a part of my soil and then he was checking the drill I ran over there and I still just borrowed some soil from the other field and I brought him over and I sat them side by side and he's like holy cow I was like what, where do you want your food grown or if you had a garden what which one would you grow your garden on. He's like yeah yours. I was like yeah. He's like that you do that in one year. I was like no that's took a while.

27:48 You know especially in our area with the infiltration I've noticed that I can get the water in very very good and very very quickly. There's a guy came around last year from the NRCS and did they were doing a training for the infiltration test with some of the employees and they said that just come from a farm and it was a half inch an hour and I wanted to do mine and when they finished it I think it took 12 minutes for the second inch and he said if you can get around that 10 minutes you're doing really good and so it equated to six inches an hour.

28:34 And you know I probably built a half inch an hour every year that I've been doing cover crops and no-till so I don't know because there's times that you doubt yourself or you know just drive through the countryside and don't see necessarily everyone else doing what you're doing or wonder why you're doing what you're doing but you know it's kind of moments like that that reaffirm you know that this is why I'm doing it. Yeah look at that, you know if I get if we get one of those gangbuster rains you know yeah it took me seven years to build it but you know I might cash in on it this year.

29:13 Well and you know I do a lot of traveling and everywhere I go everybody agrees that their rainfall events are getting less frequent and more intense.

29:23 And so you know we do tend to see those bigger rains less often and so you're right if you can't get it in the ground and if you don't have the carbon in your soil to hold it then you're missing out and you're not going to have the benefit of that subsoil moisture to carry you through until the next rain so I think that's one of the reasons you're able to do what you're doing and it's one of the reasons why people struggle initially because you know they're not getting that infiltration and they don't have all those benefits it adds up and it's incremental.

29:58 And so kudos to you for hanging in there through some tough years to get to the point where you're at now where you've grown a tremendous amount of resiliency into your system because of your diversity and your commitment to having plants growing and not having fallow out there and so I just want to thank you John for the time that you shared with us here and folks if you haven't watched the webinar with Nicole Masters called the fallow fallacy make sure that you click on the link here and go watch that as well because it all kind of ties together what John is showing you that he's doing in his field Nicole is kind of talking about in a bit more practical term so John any closing thoughts or comments?

30:46 Yeah I was going to like I think it's you know when you first start it's harder you want to see those results right away and see how everything works but I think it's you know it's a long game you gotta keep after it year after year and see those like you said those incremental improvements and yeah it'll eventually things kind of come together and start working better for you.

31:15 You know moisture wise once your soil can it's like you're growing your crops in this teeny little flower pot right now and you had to grow a cover crop you're going to use up all that moisture in that teeny little flower pot but if you can grow that flower pot to get bigger and bigger and not evaporate so fast or hold more water then you can eventually start doing different things or more things that you know might have not been possible before yeah they won't work here or whatever when you first start but as you think or really get better and better it opens up possibilities of things that you can do or different things you can do.

31:50 Yeah absolutely so folks if you're interested in some of the mixes that John planted or you want to get some seed for your own ground to start building your soil up like John has done just give us a call or shoot us an email at greencoverseed.com we'd be happy to help you get to the point where you are no longer buying into the fallow fallacy as well thank you.