Videographer Joe Dickie discusses soil health, mental health and the art of getting information from Men of the Soil in a conversation with good friend and content collaborator Buz Kloot. By Mike Cox This journey began twenty five years ago while Joe was Senior Art Director for American Outdoor Group when he started taking photographs of his year old daughter. Joe discovered how much he enjoyed photography, much like his great grandmother and great aunt, who were self-taught photographers, and early heroes. After a Fine Arts Degree from the University of Minnesota, Joe went back for a design degree, planning on becoming a graphic designer and art director. But a box filled with old slides from his inspirational relatives changed his mind. “I really grew up seeing these images. Their eye for composition is just amazing. It's what inspired me and so when I started taking photos of my daughter's friends, and their families saw what I was doing, I got this little business going doing family portraits.” Joe also began shooting weddings; his sister trusted him enough to let him photograph her wedding first. While still employed as Senior Art Director, weddings “took over his life.” In 2007, he shot 65 weddings, including 4 over weekends like Labor Day. One third of his shoots were out of the country. The stress level was really high. One day in 2008, Joe had a date conflict with wedding photography; one was a woman getting married in Mexico and the other was Kasja Perman, who he connected to immediately. Joe kept trying to make sure Kasja got the right photographer. Eventually, the Mexico wedding changed dates, so he was able to shoot both. He developed a strong relationship with the Perman family and made a General Mills photo studio connection with the Mexico wedding bride that led to a commercial photography job… on the same day! “But this is sort of how my life has worked.” The connection to the Perman family led to a job doing farm stories with Colette Kessler of the USDA-NRCS. Joe had done some farm stories before, but Colette introduced him to South Dakota. “I worked with Lakewinds organic Co-op, and I did some stories they had on grant recipients. Those are the stories that really got me excited about proper management and soil health.” Doing those stories convinced Joe that proper management and improved soil health benefits the environment. He noticed the absence of chemicals in the organic process and wondered whether his mother, who succumbed to cancer at 53, might still be living had she lived a life less dominated by chemicals. Joe noticed the sounds of the birds, and the difference between the wildlife on organic farms and larger, more traditional farming locations. A long-time pheasant hunter, he remembered how different the soil was during wet seasons in Minnesota where tillage was the norm, compared to South Dakota, where no-till and cool-season cover crops were more prevalent. Moved by how healing the land connected with so many things, Joe began searching for information, and credits Ray Archuletta, Gabe Brown, Shane New, and Allen Williams for “moving him closer to a full understanding” of soil health. Joe also credits Colette Kessler with teaching him how to ask the right questions. Joe had always wanted to “know the why” of any situation. Colette helped him better understand the technical aspects of what they were documenting. A South Dakota farmer emphasized to Joe how high the stress level can be for farmers. The man admitted to Joe he’d strongly considered suicide recently because things were going so badly. His insurance was paid, and his family would be taken care of. All he had to do was step into an adjacent grain bin. He didn’t, and since then, partly due to regenerative land management, his stress level has been reduced significantly. Joe also reveals his personal battles with stress, and how being in the outdoors, and feeling like he’s making a difference, not just for the local farmers but for the planet, allows him to better handle issues like a daughter’s struggles with addiction and a recent motorcycle wreck that left his wife paralyzed from the chest down. “Making a difference for the land has made a difference for their quality of life. You know these people are able to enjoy their lives more and its brought families together… a lot of young people didn't want to stay on the farms and ranches. But now that things are changing due to changing practices, it's become enjoyable to be a farmer and rancher again.” Visit Joe's website at: https://www.joedickiephotography.com/ Joe has also created the Our Amazing Grasslands Series with the SD Grassland coalition and Soil Stories with the SD Soil Health Coalition. All these videos can be found on the SD NRCS YouTube site at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9zz5llW3V0&list=PLg6Jx7lcOmB2YcAWtowbjWSVTRBlCt17o Joe has also worked on the SD NOLO (Non-Operating Landowner) project and has produced many videos for this project as well as the NOLO/Tenant partnership stories. These can be found at: https://www.nolosd.org/ Also please visit the SD NRCS Range and Pasture website for more information at: https://bit.ly/SDGrasslands ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

Mark Hollenbeck chimes in for this week’s “Resilience Rodeo” on not being a “professional fencer," but learning to enjoy ranching with his family through better management practices. After starting out in the hunting and tourism business on Sunrise Ranch near Edgemont, SD, Mark Hollenbeck and his family soon realized the importance of range management and the resources the land offered. To respect and foster these resources, they transitioned into an organic grass-fed beef operation alongside a now seasonal hunting enterprise.” All of our grass that we have here, all of our ranch is native. Very little of it was ever plowed under, and anything that was plowed under was probably plowed under 80 years ago. So, ours are very native grasslands. We've been working to improve that.” 1) What one thing have you done that has been most important to the success of your operation? Far and away the one thing I did for the success of this operation is I married right. I have a fantastic wife that supports all my crazy ideas, and she has been the mother to four fantastic kids. I guess with all the biology we talk about and all the neat things around here that we've seen, my family's the most important. That's really why I ranch, is to raise kids. That's my number one product from this place. 2) Can you recall a moment or time when the light bulb went on for you to change the way you were grazing? My “aha” moment in grazing was when I went to a class of Johann Zietsman in Billings, Montana. We went to the class, and went out in the field and we saw, I think 2,500 steers moving on two or three acres twice a day. That country looked tough, but we did the calculations and they were getting twice as much utilization as I was on our land. And my land looked twice as good as theirs! So, basically, they were doing four times as good a job managing as I was, and I came home and started building electric fence. 3) What surprised you the most when you changed the way you were grazing? I guess I think the biggest surprise to me was just the diversity we started getting and how fast warm season grasses started coming back. As soon as we started giving a rest to our pastures and subdividing where cattle weren't coming back and going to same places every day, we saw much improved diversity and the warm season grasses started thriving. 4) What would you say is the biggest misconception people have who are not managing their grazing systems for resiliency and soil health? I think the biggest misconception is that we're professional fencers, and we don't get to enjoy ranching, and nothing could be further from the truth. We do fence, but when you put up good quality high tensile electric fence, it is extremely easy to maintain. You see the results and your pastures are more resilient and you get to see your cattle more often, because you're not out fixing barbed wire fences and haying all day because you ran out of grass. 5) Is there something you'd still like to do that you haven't done yet to improve your soil health or grazing system? Yeah, about a hundred times as much as I already have. I mean it. Every time you do something, you realize you can do it better and I just have never reached, on any part of this place, I have never reached where I want to be. I've made great improvements in a lot of it. Some of what I haven't [done] around the buildings here is tough to manage. You got your saddle horses, and you got every sick animal and milk cow and 4-H calves and everything else. That stuff's hard to manage, but every place on the ranch, I know I could improve. 6) What advice would you have for someone who's considering changing their grazing system to one that's better for building soil health? The advice I'd give someone that's looking to improve their soil health is do it. Start and do it. And the sooner you start, one cross fence helps, two cross fences really help. The more you put in, the more you get back. And building high tensile electric fence is easy, temporary fence is even easier, but start it and do it. When you start seeing what it'll do, it's really impressive. 7) When you walk across your grasslands, what do you look for as an indicator of healthy grassland and healthy soil? Look down, not out. When I walk across my pastures to see how they're doing, when you look out, it looks great. But when you look down, you see the real story. When you look down, you don't want to see bare soil, you want everything covered. You want a thick stand of grass, and you want a good cover on your soil. So, when you're checking your grass, look down, not out. 8) What change have you made that you've at first thought would never work? I think maybe the thing I was most reluctant about was electric fence because I had done some electric fence with cheap wire and cheap chargers, and something would run into it and it would break down and be on the ground. My first attempt was on a summer pasture and every time I went out there, the fence was on the ground because I'd used cheap insulators, I think steel T-post and soft wire. When I went to a real charger that had zap and started using fiberglass posts and high tensile wire, it just becomes super easy. Using the cheap stuff, everybody has steel posts around, they use steel posts, they put an insulator on them, first animal through knocks the insulator off that swings back and it grounds out against the steel post and then everything's gone. So, get an electric fence charger that will knock you to your knees when you get ahold of it and that livestock doesn't like to be zapped any more than you do. They'll learn to respect it fast. My electric fence charger cost me $1,200. My good one. And the deal with a good electric fence charger is it's got a remote control that comes with it. So when you're out working on something, you can shut it off. You can fix your short and you can turn it back on and find out if you have another short. You don't have to go back to the barn or wherever your fence charger's at to shut it off, to come back out and work on it. So get the good stuff. If you're going to buy a tool, buy a good one. 9) What are the signs that your land is resilient? And what does resiliency mean to you? I think the sign that the land is resilient, maybe more than about anything, is the amount of runoff you're getting. If you have a good stand of grass and good thatch on it, your runoff is really minimized, and it should be pretty clear. And then the other thing is, even during dry periods, because if you capture that rain, you're going to still have some green grasses. There's some of these species that are dang tough and will green up with almost no moisture. Your resilient pasture lands will have that, and they'll also have a good mix of legumes. That was one thing we didn't discuss much today, but the number of native legumes I've found is quite baffling because when I walk out there, I'm going, dang, we don't have clover really, we don't have a lot of the stuff that the Eastern guys have, where they get rain. We can't go plant red clover, white clover and get it to grow. But as you look at the scurfpeas and the prairie clovers, and some of the other deals, we do have a lot of native legumes. But you got to leave them alone and let them grow, otherwise the livestock will buzz them off and then you're without nitrogen. 10) Which of the three R words, do you relate to most? Rotate, rest, or recover? Well between rotate, rest and recover, I guess rest and recover to me are really close to the same deal out here because we're typically not able to go through pastures twice. But it is the rest period that allows those plants to recover before something hammers them. My summer place is 1800 acres in one pasture. Now we're up to 12 pastures and hopefully next year we're going to go to 15. But it was amazing when you could just get the cattle off, graze it for a week or even 10 days, which is still too long, but it still made an amazing impact on it by not letting anything go back there for the next 90 days, for the rest of the growing season. 10 days is too long of a grazing period, but it's still infinitely better than 180 days. So, even when you do it poorly, you have improved performance. I mean things improve and a good friend of mine says, "If you won't do it for all the right reasons, do it for the money." I mean, because you will have more grass, you can run more cattle for longer periods of time. If you don't do it for the right reasons, at least do it for the money. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

Recognizing and Nurturing a Diversity of Prairie Plants can bring Resilience and Profits By: Buz Kloot I’m not going to lie. Three years ago, I was a Prairie ignoramus. As a scientist, I had fallen in love with soils, but focused on row cropping systems. My world began to change when my work led me to learning from South Dakota ranchers and NRCS-SD grazing land specialists. The first thing that I was made aware of was that we are losing prairie habitat. Yes, the obvious losses, to urbanization and conversion to cropland are no-brainers. But there are also spectacular losses to invasive woody species like eastern red cedar––take a look next time you drive past Chamberlain along the Missouri River. Silent Invaders But what really made an impression on me is the huge loss in productivity and resilience that has come from vanishing prairie plant diversity as prairie pastures are overrun by smooth brome, Kentucky bluegrass, and crested wheatgrass. I realized the loss was staggering when I started seeing this for myself. It is insidious; if you drive along the road and don’t stop and look between your feet, you’ll never know how prolific and damaging these silent invaders are. Had I not been educated by my NRCS and rancher friends, I would have remained ignorant and would have sleepwalked my way through the prairie. Of course, it’s much more important to a rancher than it is to me to recognize and nurture the prairie plants on their land. As rancher Candice Mizera says, “Well, 15 or 20 years ago, I’m not sure what the pasture was composed of because I didn’t know the differences; I knew we could do better, be more resilient and more profitable, and we needed to figure it out. Even today, I still feel don’t know a lot, there's just so much more to learn.” If your pastures are overrun by invasives that don’t last through the grazing season, and you don’t have the healthy, productive pastures you know you could have, you can begin to learn the makeup and value of diverse prairie pastures at the “Good, Bad, and Similar Looking Plant Tour” near Veblen, South Dakota on June 15. Even if Veblen, is a little out of the way, I really recommend you make the effort to attend this tour that’s offered by the South Dakota Grassland Coalition. It’s from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. I do have Grassland Plants of South Dakota and the Northern Great Plains on my bookshelf, and I have made a good faith effort to read through the book. But the fact is that there is nothing that substitutes for a hands-on tour that allows you to look down, see, touch and smell the prairie plants, good, bad and indifferent. Why do I say these 5½ hours could change your life? I say that because knowing what plants are in your pastures is the first step in managing them for higher productivity and profit. The tour will show you first hand that the plants you see in a prairie are an expression of how the land is managed (rotation, rest, recovery, varying times of usage). I have spoken to producers who have more than doubled their productivity on the land and to a person, they attribute observation––recognizing the makeup of their pastures and managing for diversity. During the tour, ranchers and grassland specialists will explain the tools you need to observe the land and better understand whether a particular pasture is going forward or backward. Oh, by the way, this life-changing tour is free, but the organizers would appreciate an RSVP. Here’s a link to the flyer. Editor’s note: Dr. Robin “Buz” Kloot is a Research Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. He has been working with the USDA/NRCS and grassland producers in South Dakota to improve soil health on cropland and more recently grasslands. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By Buz Kloot Producers and partners, please be aware that the USDA-NRCS in South Dakota has announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) for 2023 Conservation Innovation Grants. The deadline is June 2023, so you may want to jump on it. The grants are up to $150,000 each and the horizon of the grant is over 3 years. Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG’s) are intended to apply innovative ideas to the test on farms and ranches as demonstrations. This doesn’t mean that one can’t do science, but it can’t be the sort of multiple replication work one may see on an extension or ARS research farm. There is always a strong outreach component that requires recipients to do field days (there is no shortage of partners who are really skilled at outreach), and adding a social media component is always a good idea. Usually, this sort of collaboration involves partnerships between the producer and organizations like the conservation districts, and grassroots organizations (e.g., SDGrass and SD Soil Health, amongst others); researchers are a bonus, but not a must. In my opinion, a good design and a skilled technician/professional would be a good fit. The grassroots organizations, researchers/professionals/technicians are usually skilled in writing grants, but willing (and excited) producers are key to the collaboration. As someone who has been able to take advantage of these grants in the past, monitoring soil properties (e.g., chemistry, organic matter, infiltration) in response to a management change could be very attractive to the funder. Management change might include livestock integration, cover crops, changing to no-till, reducing pasture/paddock size and rotating to increase rest, I am sure there are many more examples. Right now, I would say that any sort of practice or innovation that increases soil organic matter (and where you measure that soil organic matter changes over time) would probably be favored by the agency since one of the big push this year is “climate-smart” practices. You don’t have to like the “climate-smart” term, but we can all agree that getting more organic matter (about 58% carbon) into the soil is good for the producer, good for the environment and I would argue, good for the plants and animals. Through my own experience in this funding mechanism, allowable costs include salaries, transport, materials and supplies for field work (markers, sample bags, samplers, snips, poly wire, reels, posts etc.), soil tests and or lab supplies for researchers, seed (a big draw for the producer, right?), outreach materials for field days and publications. The only drawback of this mechanism is that you need to come up with matching costs – often the involvement of the producer’s equipment and their time is a big help – the same goes for volunteer and grassroots organizations where staff salaries can be a match. I think this is a great opportunity to generate excitement, innovation, and collaboration between producers, grassroots organizations researchers, and would strongly recommend that if you are in the regenerative ag space, this is a great opportunity. Please note that I don’t speak for the USDA, these are just my own thoughts based on my experience at getting these grants, the final determinant is the Request for Proposals (RFP). If you are interested in writing a grant, I’d be happy to discuss some thoughts and ideas with you. We do have a number of scopes of work that measure soil response to management change that we’d be happy to share with you. Feel free to reach out to me, Buz Kloot, at info@growingresiliencesd.com, and let’s see if we can be of help. Go Soils! Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

For this week’s “Resilience Rodeo”, rancher John Egleston shares how he’s found success in twice-over grazing systems and expanded his grazing months. Nine miles outside of White River, SD, John Egleston is a 4th-generation rancher on the land that his great-grandfather homesteaded back in 1912. “We would say, ‘Okay, half of the grass is gone’, at whatever point that was, depending on the year. And then we'd move into another pasture. And we might come back, we might not, depending on how long, how good, how much of the grass lasted, how long it lasted. And that was the management, probably, for 30+ , 40 years, something like that.” Since 2015, however, John has gone to a twice-over rotational grazing system, and it’s a system that he has come to love. “The main economic benefit we've seen is the extended grazing nutrition in the grass. So, if you look into the research and you've seen any of the numbers, grass starts to lose its goodies in August, somewhere in there. And with this system, with the way we stimulated the first time through, you can maintain your nutritional requirements until October 15th" 1) What’s one thing have you done that's been the most important thing to the success of your operation? Probably the most important factor in the success of our operation is learning how to manage the grass. We talk about pounds from an economic standpoint, but really that starts with how you manage your grass. We're grass farmers, it’s what we are, and we put cattle on it to make that grass marketable. But you have to look at the healthier grass in your land to get a marketable animal and more pounds on a marketable animal. 2) Can you recall a moment when the light bulb went on for you? Where you decided to change your grazing on your operation? The light bulb went on in 2011. I was in a class, for lack of a better term, called BeefSD, where we went around and toured different ranches and different feedlots and all kinds of things. It was a rancher education thing, where we went all over and I went to a ranch in Mellette County that had already implemented the twice over rotational system and looking at what they'd done, where they started, and where they are now. It just clicked that this is the way, as it were. That was probably 10 years ago. That was probably the moment that everything turned around I guess you could say. 3) What surprised you the most when you changed the way you were grazing? What surprised me the most when we changed what we were doing was probably the recovery that you can get out of this year, or a dry year. So, a lot of pastures, even some of ours, they look not great because the grass just isn't growing. But in 2012 we hadn't really implemented this stuff. The recovery that we got then versus the recovery we've got now is significantly more in this type of system. 4) What would you say is the biggest misconception people have, who are not managing their grazing systems for resiliency and soil health? I think the biggest misconception people have of a twice over versus a traditional grazing system is probably, I don't know how to put this in a nice way, but most people's mindset is just, “that's the way we've always done it”. So, they don't know a different way of doing it. They don't think there's a better way because that's the way it's been done in the past. Well, there is a better way of doing it, and so there is a wrong way to do things. We were in that boat, we were doing it not correctly, not managing the grass the way the grass should be managed. So, I don't want to put anybody down, but the way we've always done it has worked in the sense that it paid the bills, weaned the calves, so on and so forth. But very few people have tried other ways to know that there is something better. 5) Is there something you'd like to do on your place that you haven't yet to improve your soil health or grazing system? Yeah, there's a lot of things that I would like to do to improve what we've already got. As far as the grazing system itself that we have set up, I think it’s going in the right direction, as far as how we're doing it. I'd like to integrate more acres that we have into that system. We still have calving pastures and winter pastures that I would like to graze and go to a different way of wintering cattle; not wintering them on our native range land and having less of an area to calve in. The other thing that we haven't talked about yet is the research from NDSU on the twice over system that Lee Manski did. There is May grazing and that's on crested or brome. We've done a little bit of that, but I'd like to increase that to get better grazing out of May grazing rather than having to feed hay. The other thing that is part of that system as well is from October 15th to November 15th. Grazing either a Spring planted Winter Cereal Crop or a Rye Grass to increase because after October 15th, there's no system where native grass can supply your nutritional needs. It just doesn't happen. You can't do it, but some other options are there to keep putting on pounds before weaning. Whereas if you're grazing out on natives till November, you're not gaining any weight on those calves, even in the twice-over system, after October 15th. The juice, as it were, is out of the grass. So, yes, there's quite a few changes I'd still like to make to fully implement the system. 6) What advice would you have for someone who is considering changing the grazing system to one that's better for building soil health? Advice I'd have for someone who is thinking about changing is just to do it. It's not super complicated. There's a lot of resources to help with the planning of it and things like that. It really isn't necessary to change your whole operation significantly. The pasture we're standing in now is in this rotation, we didn't change any fences or add any water. We didn't have to change anything. The fences were already there, and the water is still out of dams, but the pastures were set up enough we could graze twice through and we didn't change anything. So, moving cattle is really the only change we've made in this system over here. There's not a great deal that, as far as cost, that you necessarily have to put out. 7) When you walk across your grasslands, what do you look for as indicators of healthy grassland and healthy soil? Just looking at it from the surface, you want to have enough litter or soil armor, whatever you want to call it, dead plants from last year to ground cover. You want diversity as far as different species of plants, and the mix of cool seasons and warm seasons. You would look at your height of your grass when it's done grazing as far as whether you're over grazing or underutilizing what you've got. I think those would be the three main things. 8) Is there a change that you've made that you thought at first wouldn't work? I don't think there's really anything that I thought wouldn't work...kind of optimistic maybe in that sense that I don't. When it doesn't work, then I'll decide that it doesn't work, but I'll kind of try anything to a certain extent to see if it worked, because nobody knows if it does or not. I can't think of anything that I thought “well, that will never work”, because if I didn't think it was going to be work, I probably wouldn't try it. There's not too many things that I won't try at least once. 9) What are the signs that your land is resilient and what does resiliency mean to you? I think the signs of resilience that I look for is that recovery between the first two grazings, between the first time through and the second time through, and that recovery and regrowth there. That resiliency is...I don't know if it's the most important thing, but it's very important to the system because in a season long, or more traditional system, that recovery isn't there. Generally, you put the cattle out there, they eat what they eat and then that's it for that year. That's all. So, I think that's probably the difference in resiliency between the two that I can see from above the ground. 10) When we talk about the importance of grazing management, we often refer to the Rs. Of the words rotate, rest, and recover, which one sticks out to you the most and why? So, this is probably a non-answer. I wouldn't say one is more important than the other, but maybe rotate is because if you don't rotate, you don't give it any rest and you don't get any recovery. So, if you were to put them in a hierarchy rotate would probably be the most important one because the other two aren't there without that rotation. 11) Based on the grazing management choice you’ve made, how has the system helped your good soil organisms? It's basically that we're creating more habitat for them, and what I mean by that is your roots go deeper into the soil. That soil is more crumbly. The farther down you go versus a traditional system where it is maybe three to six inches of that soil aggregates and that soil crumbliness. If you want to get it down to a foot or even deeper than that, so your root systems can break up the soil, you'll get more infiltration of water and a better habitat for your soil bugs, which help your plants grow better and you produce more grass. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

Are you interested in learning how to improve soil health, water infiltration, livestock performance, and grass diversity on your ranch? If so, don't miss the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition’s upcoming grazing management bus tour! During this tour, you will visit three different ranches to see firsthand how they have implemented grazing management strategies to achieve these goals. Guest speakers Dr. Llewellyn (Lee) Manske, Ph.D and Tobias (Toby) Stroh will share their expertise and principles to follow to increase overall ranch production. Dr. Manske is a Rangeland Scientist at Dickinson, ND Research Extension Center, and Toby Stroh is an expert in the Department of Agriculture and Technical Studies at Dickinson State University. The bus tour will begin at 8:30 a.m. (CST) on June 29th with registration in the parking lot of the Harold Thune Auditorium in Murdo, SD. The bus will depart at 9:00 a.m. and tour two ranches in Mellette County and one ranch in Jones County before returning to Murdo at 5:45 p.m. The tour is limited to a certain number of participants, so pre-registration by June 21st is required. In addition to the bus tour, they are also offering a three-day workshop from November 7-9th titled “Biologically Effective Management of Grasslands.” Dr. Manske and Toby Stroh will return to work with attendees on developing and implementing a biologically effective management strategy specifically designed for their ranch. The workshop will be held in Murdo, and the tuition is $100 for the workshop only, $50 for the bus tour only, or $125 for both. Noon meals are included in the tuition. This is an excellent opportunity to learn from experts and see real-world examples of grazing management strategies in action. Don't miss this chance to improve your ranch's profitability and sustainability. Register now for the bus tour and workshop and take the first step towards achieving your goals! For more information and to register for the bus tour visit: https://www.sdsoilhealthcoalition.org/event/grazing-management-bus-tour/ ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

We want to make you aware of the Northern Great Plains Joint Venture (NGPJV) website that discusses its mission and what they do. In short, here are some of the items we found pertinent to our readers: The Northern Great Plains Joint Venture (NGPJV) is a coalition of individuals living, working, and engaging in recreational activities in the Northern Great Plains region. The NGPJV operates in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota and is concerned about the ongoing loss of grassland resources and the simultaneous decline of grassland bird populations. The mission of the NGPJV is to retain, enhance, restore, and protect grassland, sagebrush-steppe, wetland, and riparian ecosystems, with a focus on sustaining and increasing populations of migratory and resident birds. They recognize the vital role of private landowners and Tribes in achieving their vision of resilient grasslands. In terms of habitat, the Northern Great Plains is home to some of the most intact shrub-steppe and grassland landscapes in North America, providing critical breeding habitat for five imperiled species of grassland birds. Wetlands and riparian areas scattered throughout this region are essential for supporting people, livestock, and wildlife, but these areas face threats such as drainage, conversion to agricultural use, grazing pressure, and invasion by non-native plant species. The NGPJV partners value and respect the traditions and voices of all individuals living and working in the Northern Great Plains, including the 27 Indigenous tribes or bands with ancestral connections to the region. The website hosts a Conservation in Action Page that points the user to a number of tools that include the NGPJV Web Tool, N-GRIP (The Northern Grassland Restoration Incentive Program), and a number of Planning and Monitoring Tools (amongst others), while their Resources Page provides documents and a plethora of funding sites. We invite you to visit this site to find out more! ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

What is a Land Trust? Our partner, the South Dakota Grasslands Coalition, recently sent out a newsletter to raise awareness of the South Dakota Agricultural Land Trust (SDALT). SD Grasslands tell us “The organization was founded because there was a lot of interest in South Dakota for conservation easements, but no organization was solely controlled by farmers and ranchers. The creation of SDALT resulted from a goal to form a non-profit organization that would hold conservation easements to preserve working lands for future generations to enjoy.” For more on the SDALT, please visit their website. So what are agricultural land trusts and what is their function? If you’d like to educate yourself a little more, we took a little dive into the subject and hope you find this useful! An agricultural land trust is a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving and protecting farmland for agricultural use. These trusts work to secure agricultural lands from development, ensuring their long-term availability of the land for farming and ranching purposes. Here are some key functions and services that agricultural land trusts provide to producers: Land Preservation: The primary goal of agricultural land trusts is to preserve and protect agricultural land from being converted to non-agricultural uses such as urbanization or industrialization. By acquiring easements or purchasing farmland, land trusts help safeguard valuable agricultural resources. Easements and Acquisitions: Agricultural land trusts often work with landowners to establish conservation easements. A conservation easement is a legal agreement that restricts the future development of the land ensuring it remains in agricultural production. If an easement is in place, this typically means that the value of the land is reduced because it can’t be resold for development or other purposes and the landowner is compensated by the land trust for this reduction in value. Land trusts may also acquire farmland outright and lease it to farmers or ranchers. Stewardship and Monitoring: Agricultural land trusts can take responsibility for monitoring and enforcing the terms of conservation easements. They conduct regular inspections to ensure that the land remains used for agricultural purposes and to protect against any violations or encroachments. Technical Assistance: Land trusts can provide technical assistance to farmers and landowners, offering guidance on sustainable agricultural practices, soil conservation, water management, and other land stewardship techniques. This support helps farmers optimize their operations and maintain the productivity of the land. Access to Land: They can facilitate access to affordable farmland for new and aspiring farmers. They may offer leasing options, provide assistance in securing financing, or help connect farmers with available land opportunities. This access to land is crucial for supporting the next generation of farmers. Education and Outreach: Land trusts often engage in educational programs and outreach efforts to raise awareness about the importance of farmland conservation. They collaborate with farmers, community organizations, and policymakers to promote sustainable agriculture, advocate for agricultural policies, and foster a greater understanding of the value of agricultural lands. Farm Succession Planning: Agricultural land trusts assist farmers with succession planning, helping to ensure that farmland remains in productive agricultural use as it transitions from one generation to the next. This service helps preserve the farming heritage and allows families to pass down their agricultural legacies. By providing these services, agricultural land trusts play a vital role in protecting and supporting the agricultural industry, promoting sustainable practices, and preserving the availability of fertile land for future generations of farmers. For more on the SDALT, please visit their website here. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

When Dan Mehlhaf heard weather forecasters warn in early May last year that a strong storm was on its way, he and his family took precautions. Both he and his wife went home early from work to their Hutchinson County, South Dakota home on May 12. Around 4:00 p.m. they watched out their window in disbelief as daylight turned to darkness in a matter of seconds. “When I say darkness,” Dan recalls, “this wasn't just kinda dark, this was pitch black where you could not see your hand in front of your face. I had never experienced anything like that. It reminded me a lot of some of the pictures and some of the accounts I had heard about the Dust Bowl days of the 1930’s, and it was quite scary.” The darkness lasted a few minutes. The intense straight-line winds of the derecho storm that followed lasted only 15 minutes, but the damage they caused was immense. Corn seedlings were sandblasted and shorn. Soybean plants were cut down by the wind. Trees and buildings sustained major damage. Some vehicles were thrown into road ditches, car windows were blown out, and car panels dented with interiors filled with gravel and corn stalks. A wife of a friend was blown around so violently while she was shutting the doors on a machine shed that she broke an ankle and sustained torn ligaments. Dan farms with his son in Hutchinson County, about 30 minutes from Yankton, where he works as the District Conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. He recently spoke with Buz Kloot in a Growing Resilience podcast about the derecho, and the significant soil losses that occurred from two storms only a few weeks before. High-damage winds a month earlier The spring of 2022 had already set out distinctly windy and warm. But on April 14, 40-50 mile-an-hour winds blowing through the fields shocked Dan and his neighbors. That day, Dan noticed a relative of his online noting particularly bad wind erosion on a field about 30 miles northeast of Yankton. Dan drove to the field to meet his relative and was again shocked– the wind and flying dirt were so intense in the thick of the storm that he couldn’t even get out of his truck. “Our pickups were side-by-side in the road,” he explains. “We rolled the windows down to talk, but we could only carry on a very short conversation because the dirt was blowing into the vehicle so bad, getting in our eyes. I took videos that day but I couldn't get out of the truck to do it.” A few days later, Dan returned to the field. It had been tilled and then cut for silage, with no cover crop. The loose, dry Egan-Ethan soil, a silty-clay loam, had been totally displaced. Dan noticed so much soil material had been blown into the road ditches that the ditches were level with the road in some places. He dug into this displaced material and found that it was all sand– a loamy sand that behaved like the sand in an hourglass. It would collapse easily in on itself. He pushed a yardstick down and discovered that it was 29 inches deep. “There is a very small portion of sand in a silty clay loam,” Dan says. “It’s not very much. So what this tells you is that the smaller silt and clay particles that make up the predominant portion of this silty clay loam had gone airborne and just disappeared, blown who knows how many miles down the road. The only particle left was sand, which had bounced along the surface and ended up in the road ditch.” Dan took a sample of the soil in to be tested, and found surprisingly high levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur. Based upon the value of fertilizer, Dan did the calculations– that is $996 worth of nutrients in the road ditch. Another storm hit on April 23rd, 2022, with 50-60 mile-an-hour winds. Dan and his son had been out in the field and they had to seek shelter in a shed, as they were physically being blown around. They could see soil from their neighbors’ land flying through the air. 15-ton soil loss in 15 minutes The derecho on May 12 was modeled by USDA/NRCS National Erosion Specialist Chris Coriel, who found that 15 tons per acre of soil had been lost in those 15 minutes of straight winds. That 15 tons of soil lost from an acre would fill a dump truck––but what was more significant to Coriel was even more soil was lost on yet a third day of strong winds on May 7, just 5 days prior to the derecho. Coriel’s modeling showed that the 12 hours of sustained 20-25 mile-an-hour winds on that day– a more common occurrence in South Dakota, produced more soil erosion than the more exotic derecho. Dan Mehlhaf was not surprised by the results of the modeling. He recalled distinctly hearing soil particles hit the car body and windows during the high winds on April 14 as he drove by unprotected land. Dan notes there was clearly a difference in soil loss from fields that had been clean-tilled compared to those with standing cover residue, or a cover crop. For example– the Egan-Ethan silty clay loam that had blown so badly on April 14 was countered across the road to the south by a field with the same soil type. Both had been cut for silage, but this second field had been planted with a cereal rye cover crop after the silage was cut. The cereal rye was green and growing well, and that field did not blow. Dan explains that a well-planned cover crop is a primary factor in protecting soil from wind erosion, assisted also by no-till practices and good, intact residue. Tillage trends change slowly Though it is a slow process to change anybody’s mentality, Dan notes, he has observed through conservation tillage surveys a very slow trend in the direction of less tillage, and even towards no-till practices in some places. The biggest change he’s seen is a skyrocketing of cover crop usage. “We really are seeing the adoption of less tillage and more use of cover crops in these dry years,” Dan explains. “There’s been just enough moisture to get the cover crops to grow and do what they’re supposed to do, thank goodness for that, because they’re really making a difference. This past winter, you really had to drive around and look to find a field that somebody tilled last fall. It’s not commonplace to till in the fall anymore. “These past two years have really changed some mindsets on how much tillage we think we need to do,” Dan says. “And there’s less tillage being done, at least for the time being, and more cover crops. The rye is green and growing, and up about 2 inches right now (April 12, 2023) and looking beautiful.” That would be gratifying news to former NRCS state conservationist Jeff Zimprich, whose vision was to “move the needle in soil health”– not just for producers but for people across the state. Dan is seeing that needle beginning to move. He’s seen a steady increase in adoption of conservation practices in the last two years. Even in 2019 when it was too wet to plant corn, he saw farmers planting a cover crop. “They saw the value of it in a wet year. Now they are seeing the value of the practice in a dry year,” Dan says. “Ideally this practice can become standard and habitual, and replace some of the conventional farming practices that had left soils thin and fields vulnerable to forces like the derecho.” Additional Notes: What is a derecho? https://www.weather.gov/lmk/derecho SD NRCS’s derecho playlist shows some of the image and video material that Dan collected from April 14 to May 12, 2022 Kurt Lawton’s excellent article “Winds, tillage steal soil productivity in Dakotas” in the Dakota Farmer. Keep an eye out on our Growing Resilience Website for an additional podcast with national Soil Erosion Specialist, Chris Coreil and more material on the derecho on our blog page. Follow the Growing Resilience SD stories wherever you get your social media. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

For this weeks “Resilience Rodeo”, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member Dugan Bad Warrior shares how he changed his paradigm to focus not only on the animals that make up his operation, but to focus more specifically on the pasture. Dugan Bad Warrior knows the importance of family in the ranching lifestyle. He has and will continue to make changes to his management to improve that life for himself and for his children. “Years ago, before I started this, I was still conventional ranching, calving in late March, early April, going through some tough times and my kids seen it. And I went through a bout of depression and I didn't know it, but my kids got to the point where they told me they didn't want to ranch. That was one driving factor to help me realize there's got to be a better way.” By changing to practices that gave his pastures rest, Dugan was also able to experience that same rest. “The way I look at the land and the things I do for it is, it brings me joy now. It’s fun. My girls actually want to do this with me.” 1) What one thing have you done that has been most important to the success of your operation? What one thing has been most important to the success of the operation, is probably changing my paradigm and understanding that there are other ways to ranch and better ways to ranch for the pasture, and not specifically look at the animal but look at the pasture. 2) Can you recall a moment or time when the light bulb went on for you to change the way you were grazing? The time that the light bulb went on for me to change the way I was grazing, was when I first went to Ranching for Profit and they showed me different managed grazing videos and practices. It showed that I got to do something different because I was hurting the ground and helping it at the same time, but I wasn't doing the best job I could do. 3) What surprised you most when you changed the way you were grazing? What surprised me most when I changed the way I was grazing was how fast the land responded to just making changes and giving it proper rest. I didn't see it in my animals right off. I think the biggest thing was seeing that response the land had to the changes. 4) What would you say is the biggest misconception people have, who are not managing their grazing system for resiliency and soil health? I think most guys who are still doing it the way they've always done it still think they're doing a good job. They just don't understand the plants stages that need to happen. And I think that they need to understand that there is rest that needs to come when a plant is stressed, it needs to have the rest and recovery time in order to get the production back. 5) Is there something you'd still like to do that you haven't yet to improve your soil health or grazing system? I think a lot more cross fencing to get me to manage my ground a lot better is something I would really like to do. I think because of the terrain I have, it's real challenging to do temporary. Temporary is great to do, but I would like a lot more permanent cross fences that I can pull off of and not have to run temporary so far. And water. Water is always going to be one of the big things that I want to continue to improve. But those two things I think are things that I really, really would like to do yet. 6) What advice do you have for someone who is considering changing their grazing system to one that's better for building soil health? I would try to reach out to as many places as I can and get educated on it, because you can hurt the ground if you're not careful by just sticking a lot of animals on there. I think you need to know what practices work in order to make it effective and not just understand that a lot more animals on a pasture is good, but that it can hurt it because of time. Time is one of the biggest things people don't understand with grazing, time is the biggest factor. 7) When you walk across your grasslands, what do you look for as an indicator of healthy grassland and healthy soil? When I walk across my pastures, what I look for to indicate healthy soils is the more diversity of native species. The more species you have, I think the healthier your soil is, the less species you have, it means you probably got something wrong, something is going on that you need to address. But I think the most species I can get out there would show me that I'm doing something right. 8) What change have you made that you had first thought would never work? The change that I made at first that I thought would never work and it took me a long time to do it was changing my calving dates. I always thought because I was chasing pounds for years and years and thought that was the way to be profitable. Once I moved to May calving, I will never go back to anything but that. Calving with nature, that is something I was very afraid to do because I was afraid to see the results in a negative way, but they've been nothing but positive. 9) What are the signs that your land is resilient and what does resiliency mean to you? I guess the signs, as we've seen today, in a pretty major drought, is that my pastures are healthy and got a lot of diversity in it. My ground is pretty resilient, but what does resilience mean to me? I guess resilience to me is being able to withstand major weather events, is the more resilient your ground is to that is, to different weather events, is a good thing. 10) Which of these three words, R words, do you relate to, or do you think is most important and why? Rotate, rest, or recover? I would say rest is probably the most important, because if your ground isn't getting the proper rest, it doesn't have the chance to recover. So having the proper amount of rest is the biggest thing. You can rotate as many times as you want, but if you don't give it the rest, you're never going to see any recovery or any sort of gains in your pastures. 11) You got the five principles of soil health. One of them is animal impact, which obviously that's something as a rancher, you just naturally do, but the Gabe Brown and Ray Archuleta and those guys have added, they say that there's a sixth principle, which is observation and basing your changes on observation. So how much of what you do is based on observation, how in tune with things are you really paying attention to things and adjusting because of this? I think observation is a big thing, because when I make a change, I usually try to photograph it. Either that or if I don't photograph it, I've definitely got a mental picture of it. And I come back again to see what this practice has done. Has it hurt it or negatively impacted, or positively impacted? I think observing what you've done is a big thing to move forward or to change your practice. Observation is a huge thing, which we teach in the South Dakota Grassland Coalition’s grazing school. You got to have your sites where you come back and observe what you've done, because if you don't, then how do you know you're really making a positive or negative impact? ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By: Buz Kloot I remember last year my friend from South Dakota sent me some images and video of a dust storm that caused havoc across southeastern South Dakota on May 12, 2022. The most unsettling video I saw was the view from the inside of the car on the I-90 between Mitchell and Sioux Falls. It was dark outside… and yet it was 4 pm. This was the first time I heard the word ‘derecho’ in this context, which refers to straight-line winds that exceed 58 mph. I was born on the (very dry) west coast of Africa and was familiar with the Arabic term ‘haboob’ a phenomenon found in the Sahara and the middle east, but a haboob, or derecho in Eastern South Dakota? At Growing Resilience, I wanted to make sure we remember the derecho (or haboob), and May 12, 2023, is the one-year anniversary of that day because the dust-bowl-like conditions remind us of how brittle the system can be if it is disturbed and not covered. We didn’t need to beat the bushes too long to find folks willing to share their expertise and experiences with us. We talked to Chris Coriel, the National Erosion Specialist based at the NRCS’s Central National Technology Support Center in Fort Worth, TX, Daniel Mehlhaf, USDA-NRCS District Conservationist in Yankton, SC, and Frank Kralicek, Jr., a farmer in Yankton and ended up with a lot of material. Our senior staff writer, Kurt Lawton wrote an excellent article and we were excited that Dakota Farmer published this on May 10, 2023. In addition, we were able to have fascinating discussions with Dan Mehlhaf who experienced the storm, and with Chris Coreil who did the erosion modeling for the SD- NRCS and we have these discussions in our SoilHealthLabs podcast (wherever you get your podcasts) or you can locate them on our podcasts page at https://www.growingresiliencesd.com/podcasts Thanks to Dan Mehlhaf’s quick thinking, we also had some amazing images of April 14, a month before the derecho, and have compiled 9 short videos of some of these experiences these are on the “Cost of Uncovered Soils” playlist on SD NRCS’s YouTube channel. Please also feel free to follow Growing Resilience on your favorite social media outlet where you’ll see the above stories come out during the week that we remember the day of the derecho. As is typical of our human condition, we are slow to learn; the May 1 dust storm near Farmersville, Illinois that killed 7 people in traffic is a stark reminder of that notion. Was it luck that folks weren’t killed in South Dakota? I don’t know, but what I do know is that if our fields were covered with residue or some sort of small-grain or cover crop canopy, we could appreciably mitigate the consequences of such a storm if we were to see those winds again. Pass this on. Share. Let’s do all we can so that we, our children, or our descendants don’t have to see a storm like this again. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

The annual bird watching tour in South Dakota is fast approaching, and it promises to be an exciting event for bird enthusiasts and nature lovers alike. This year's tour will be hosted by Jeff & Kim Zimprich, who have a wealth of experience in bird watching and conservation. Participants are encouraged to bring their digital cameras and binoculars to capture the stunning sights of the birds, livestock, and wildlife in the area. The tour will take place on June 2-3, 2023, at Pasque Hill on Beaver Creek in Brandon, SD. Current members can attend the tour for free, making it an excellent opportunity for anyone looking to explore the beauty of South Dakota's prairies. As with any outdoor excursion, please dress appropriately and wear sturdy, enclosed footwear since the terrain may be uneven, and the weather can change quickly, so it's essential to come prepared with clothing that protects against the elements and potential injury. Presentations from landowners and conservation experts will cover various topics related to bird conservation and habitat management. Here are some examples of what will be covered: 1. Habitat restoration and management: Landowners and conservation experts will discuss different techniques for restoring and managing bird habitats, such as prescribed burning, invasive species management, and the creation of wildlife corridors. 2. Threats to bird populations: Experts will discuss the threats facing bird populations, such as habitat loss, climate change, and pollution, and what can be done to mitigate these threats. 3. Monitoring bird populations: Experts will talk about the importance of monitoring bird populations, and how different techniques, such as bird banding and citizen science projects, can be used to gather data on bird populations. 4. Working with landowners: Landowners and conservation experts will discuss how they can work together to promote bird conservation and the benefits that can come from these partnerships. 5. Bird-friendly land management practices: Landowners will discuss how they have implemented bird-friendly land management practices on their properties, such as the use of native plant species and the creation of bird nesting boxes. 6. Success stories in bird conservation: Experts will share examples of successful bird conservation projects, and what made them successful. The annual bird watching tour promises to be an unforgettable experience for anyone who attends; this is an excellent opportunity for you to immerse yourself in nature, learn from experts, and witness the beauty of South Dakota's wildlife. Anyone interested in bird watching or nature conservation should mark their calendars for June 2-3, 2023, and join the tour. To Register visit: https://sdgrass.org/bird-watching-tour/#Bird-tour ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com