“I saw cattle bring the desert back,” Ray says, “and transform it back into native rangeland. It changed the local climate. He’s getting more rain now.”

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

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

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

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

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

By: the Growing Resilience Team I’ve long been a champion of the five principles of soil health — things like keeping the soil covered, minimizing disturbance, maintaining living roots, promoting diversity, and integrating livestock. These ideas have shaped my work and my conversations with farmers across the country. But it wasn’t until I interviewed Clinton Rasmusson out in White River, South Dakota, that the sixth principle — context — really hit home for me. Context means

Photo Credit: Joe Dickie By: Buz Kloot Is the art and science of shepherding a lost practice, or can we still learn from it today? In our SoilHealthLabs podcast series, Joe Dickie and I sat down with Dr. Fred Provenza to explore this question in the episode “Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of Livestock to Restore Your Land”. We dive into the skills of shepherds who not only guide their animals but also learn from them, using their knowledge to create a healthy balance between anim

On this week’s “Resilience Rodeo”, Candice Mizera shares her successes and failures in improving her grazing and cropland’s resiliency through goal setting and being flexible. On the Mizera/Olson family operation near McLaughlin, SD, implementing rotational grazing has been a central element to Candice and her husband’s adoption of regenerative agriculture. Candice noticed quickly how rotating animals offered the land one brief stretch of intended disruption and she was amaze