Where the Hills Begin: A Visit with Nate Hicks of Yankton
- the Growing Resilience Team
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
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 the landscape began to shift. What started as flat, row-cropped uniformity gave way to rolling ground—some of it still in row crops, but much of it was given over to pasture and tree-lined creek bottoms. Like a good conversation, it was as if the land began to open up the farther west we drove. This reminded me that context is everything in farming, as in life.
We met Nate Hicks on his family’s farm, and I soon realized I wasn’t just speaking to a farmer, but to an engineer who honed his profession through study and fieldwork—first in college out West, then on the job in Idaho and Colorado—before returning home with a mind wired for systems, tinkering, and close observation. Nate’s father, a transplant from West River ranch country, brought his cows—and his mindset—to Yankton. That influence still lingers. Nate brands his calves and moves livestock through a web of cross-fenced paddocks, and while they no longer stack hay the old-fashioned way, they do use a loaf stacker to harvest and store cornstalks. That blend of traditions—West River grit meeting East River green—has shaped Nate’s approach. He’s not afraid to experiment, and it shows.
Take his transition to no-till. Rather than invest in a drill, Nate modified his old Kinze planter for 19-inch rows. He added hydraulic downforce and adapted it to plant everything from cereal rye to radishes to millet. “Controlled spill,” he called it. And it worked. He now plants green into rye and often lets his fall-calving herd graze the residue beforehand—but he draws the line after planting. “I don’t let cows graze after planting,” he said. “Haven’t tried it anyway, but not sure it’s on my list of things to try at the moment.”
The cows are central to his system, not just livestock but land managers. They graze harvested fields, cereal rye, and diverse cover crops. He turns them out in dry springs early and captures value from what little forage grows. He lets the rye grow tall in wetter years, laying down biomass and thatch to feed the soil. His grazing rhythm follows the terrain: bottoms to hillsides and back, moving with moisture and regrowth.
We stood in a test strip where rye had grown chest-high the year before. Nate pulled back the thatch to reveal dark, moist soil and earthworms by the dozen. In that single field, he had harvested silage, grazed cows, planted rye, and returned with soybeans. The soil held together like a piece of chocolate cake—structured, but alive.
Nate doesn’t preach about soil health. He’s too practical for that. But it matters. Nate and his wife, Kristen, are raising their young family on the farm. “Kristen and I don’t want to miss our kids growing up,” he said. “So if I can run the planter instead of the feed wagon, that’s the time I get back.” And when the rye rises fast or beans emerge through mulch, he takes note. He doesn’t overhaul everything at once. He tests, observes, and adapts.
That kind of attentiveness feels rare these days.
Out here, where row crops meet rangeland and the wind carries both promise and warning, Nate Hicks is building a system that fits his place—not someone else’s model. His own.
And that, too, is a lesson in context.
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