Pete Bauman In the Field In July's Our Amazing Grasslands video , courtesy of SD Grassland Coalition, we marveled at the hidden value in so-called weeds — goldenrod testing out as rich as alfalfa, prairie clovers, and milkweeds that feed both cattle and monarchs. That story, framed by Joe Dickie's steady lens, left us thinking of diversity not as decoration but as sustenance. This August's Our Amazing Grasslands video features SDSU's Pete Bauman walking us onto different

Some of Van’s Soils – Insets are Saprophytic Fungi that consume residue and mineralize nutrients (left), mycorrhizal fungi that live in...

Ray Weil and a Student collecting Soil Nitrate Samples down the Soil Profile Introduction: Beyond Erosion — The Scavenging Power of Cover...

It was the kind of late-summer afternoon when the land itself feels like it’s holding its breath. Ray Archuleta had come in from his home in Missouri to speak at the SC Forage and Grazing Lands Coalition, but before he ever set foot in a lecture hall, we wanted him out on the land, where his words always seem to take root. We brought him to Jason Carter’s farm — a familiar place for us, a living classroom. On one side of a dirt track: Jason’s ground, managed with no-till, lon

Iconic Ray Archuleta Image captured ca. 2013 before a Slake Test Demonstration. Introduction In 2010, I met Ray Archuleta on the farm of the late Ray Steyer. That day changed the course of my life. I was still working as an aquatic scientist, but one afternoon with Ray shifted my entire research and outreach emphasis to soils and soil health. Ray introduced me to the four soil health principles that, at the time, seemed almost radical: 1. Limit disturbance 2. Keep the soil

Heath Bullington (Van’s nephew), who runs the farm with Van Mansheim, Lealand Schoon, Van’s soil Health Mentor, and Van in one of his pastures, October 2020. I first visited Van Mansheim about 5 miles north of Colome, in Tripp County, SD, on his farm in October 2020. When I recently sat down again for a podcast interview with him, the conversation quickly grew beyond a podcast. Van is the whole package: no-till, long rotations, cover crops, bale grazing, livestock integration

Van Mansheim in one of his Cover-Cropped Fields, October 2020. I first visited Van Mansheim on his farm in October 2020, and when I recently sat down again for a podcast interview with him, the conversation quickly grew beyond a podcast. Van is the whole package: no-till, long rotations, cover crops, bale grazing, livestock integration, and even a pheasant hunting enterprise. In the past week I’ve spent hours answering questions on our social media about no-till, inputs, weed

On the South Dakota Coteau, the Michalski family transformed marginal cropland into a thriving, diverse pasture. Discover their grazing strategies, land ethic, and how diversity drives both resilience and profit. It was July 2021 when Joe Dickie and I rolled up to the Michalski spread on the Coteau. Waiting to greet us were Darin, his wife Jessica, and their son Cutler. Darin cut a dashing figure — blue sleeveless button-up, well-worn jeans, cowboy boots planted in the ground

Soil Regeneration Spiral. Source: Anderson 2005 We pulled into the parking lot at the USDA-ARS facility in Brookings, South Dakota,...

On our spring tour of South Dakota farmers integrating livestock, my partner in crime, Joe Dickie, and I left Huron, and a couple of hours later crested the rise where Ryan Urban lives. Ryan identifies himself as a fourth-generation Pukwana crop-and-cattle producer—he jokes that they’re “cattle people who farm on the side.” With a name like Urban, I half expected him to grab a guitar and sing us a country tune. Instead, he grabbed the keys to his pickup, and we rode out into

Dr. Ray Weil Professor of Soils in the Department of Environmental Science & Technology at the University of Maryland, in a Soils Pit (no tilled for 30+ years) on the Steve Groff Farm in Pennsylvania. When I first started learning about soil, I wasn’t a trained agronomist—I just knew we were supposed to take soil samples down to 6" or 6¼". I didn’t question it at the time. Later, I learned that this 6" layer represents the old plow layer—the zone where most agronomic roots li

Some of the forbs in Darrin Michalski’s pasture that form part of nature’s Pharmacy for Livestock. In a short clip taken from the recent SD Grasslands Amazing Grasslands video , we shared Mike McKernan, SDSU’s Pete Bauman, Madison Kovarna, and Josh Lefer’s work clipping and testing dozens of native forbs and grasses to study their nutritional value throughout the season. That video triggered a flood of thoughtful—and skeptical—comments. One in particular stuck with me: "Lots

Jeff Hemenway, former Soil Health Conservationist, pointing out Roots in the Subsoil at 80” in a No-till, Cover-Cropped Field in Brookings, SD When a commenter wrote on one of our recent videos Dwayne Beck, no-till , he put it bluntly: “Without tillage water won’t penetrate. I rented 400 acres that was zero till for decades and it was like a concrete block.” That comment — echoed by others in our threads — hits at one of the most common criticisms of no-till. If the soil is h

We recently posted a video short of Pete Bauman talking about goldenrod on the July "Our Amazing Grasslands" video, and it took off! 110,000 plays and 1,000 likes in just 11 days. With that reach came a tidal wave of comments, and not surprisingly, many folks had strong opinions about goldenrod. They ranged from “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Let’s feed shoe leather” to “Spot on—my sheep will hit the goldenrod, sunflowers, amaranth, giant ragweed, and mares tail first.” In between

This past Friday morning, I was sitting in my local coffee shop, enjoying a cup of joe and catching up on the latest Our Amazing Grasslands video from the South Dakota Grassland Coalition. As I watched, I saw a few familiar faces pop up on the screen—SDSU’s Pete Bauman, that larger-than-life dynamo (seriously, where does he get his energy?); Josh Lefers, the rancher-philosopher who also happens to be Audubon Dakota’s Director of Conservation; Mike McKernan, a boots-on-the-gr

Over the past few weeks, the tillage and no-till debate has sparked surprising and passionate discussion among our readers. We've...

As a response to several requests for more peer-reviewed material on the economics of no-till (NT) vs. conventional tillage (CT), I went digging into the usual suspects — input costs, yield comparisons, and long-term trials. That’s when I stumbled on research from South Dakota State University’s Beresford Research Farm that made me realize: I had a bias . In an earlier blog , we cited a meta-analysis showing no-till yields averaging 5.7% lower overall compared to conventiona

By the Growing Resilience Team I’ve visited Vermillion, South Dakota, several times, usually under slate-gray skies and spring winds that sweep across the flats without asking permission. But in May of 2025, I made my first trip 26 miles west to Yankton—a place I had long overlooked, nestled near the Jim River and Missouri confluence. As Joe Dickie and I drove from Vermillion toward Yankton—and between Joe’s exclamations of “rooster!” or “hey, two hens!”—I noticed how quickly

Anthony Bly In 2023, NRCS’s Marcia Deneke and Kent Vlieger generously took time to guide me through the salinity challenges of South Dakota. We visited the Beadle County Dale Demonstration Farm, Cain Creek, producers like Scott and Jeff Hamilton — and finally sat down with Anthony Bly in Sioux Falls. At first, I couldn’t make sense of one question: Why would salinity increase when rainfall does too? More rain should be good, right? It took conversations with Kent, Ducks Unlim

By Buz Kloot An old friend of mine grew up in Utah’s Cache Valley, where his dad, a worn-out dairyman, would shake his head after a long day and mutter, “I sure hope there ain’t no cows in heaven.” But I’m not so sure anymore—especially after visiting Cody Merrigan, a young farmer just a stone’s throw from the University of South Dakota’s Vermillion campus. Cody runs a mixed operation of row crops, cover crops, and stocker cattle in Clay County, where most folks stick to corn