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Watershed Council celebrates successful grazing project
Tainter Creek
Chuck and Karen talk with Elisabeth Spratt
WATERSHED COUNCIL members Karen and Chuck Bolstad are seen in conversation with Elizabeth Spratt of the Wallace Center Pasture Project.

TAINTER CREEK WATERSHED - In a gala event, more than 50 members of the Tainter Creek Watershed Council, along with friends and supporters, gathered at the Kickapoo Creekside Restaurant in Readstown last week to celebrate successful completion of a three-year grazing project in the watershed. Participants enjoyed fellowship, live music and a great meal.

The project was overseen by the Wallace Center Pasture Project, with $1.15 million in funding from the U.S. EPA Gulf of Mexico Division Farmer to Farmer Program. The funding was made available from EPA to study what positive effects increased adoption of managed intentional grazing in a watershed could have on water quality.

Ultimately, EPA’s goal is to reduce nutrient loading in the upper reaches of the Mississippi River Basin to reduce the hypoxic or ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The Wallace Center Pasture Project used the funding in the Upper Midwest, in Indiana, Illinois and the Tainter Creek Watershed to make the connection between increased adoption of regenerative agricultural practices, water quality, and reduction of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” Wallace Center’s Elisabeth Spratt explained. “The Tainter Creek project was the furthest to the north project funded through this program by EPA.”

Spratt said that going into the project back in 2019, goals included reduction of phosphorous and sediment leaving farm fields in the watershed by five percent. This meant the goal was to prevent 1,700 pounds of phosphorous, and 940 tons of sediment, from leaving farm fields in the watershed each year.

Spratt explained that at the front end, the Wallace Center estimated that to achieve these goals would require either conversion of 550 acres of cropland from row crops to managed grazing or installation of 2,500 acres of grazed cover crops.


TCWC Grazing_cost share

Implementation

Locally, the program was implemented by Valley Stewardship Network (VSN), with technical support from two experienced local grazers – Jim Munsch of Coon Valley and Dennis Rooney of Steuben. VSN employees Dani Heisler and Monique Hassman worked extensively on the program, coordinating with farmer participants and Munsch and Rooney, creating maps to support the project, and more.

Funds from the project, described by some as ‘EQIP-Light,’ were made available to farmers to pay for:

• new permanent perimeter fencing

• replacing old perimeter fencing

• temporary fencing

• water systems and pads

• grazable seed

• agronomy equipment rental and services

• livestock equipment rental

Actual projects undertaken on watershed council farms include grazing cover crops, conversion of row crop land to managed grazing, repair of flood-damaged fencing, grazing of prairie seed plantings, repair of heavy use areas, decreasing of paddock sizes, and adding water tanks and a pipeline.


Pic Four: Jim and Dennis
Grazing dream team Den-nis Rooney (left) and Jim Munsch talk to field day participants about what the plan is for Klinkner’s new farm, and the process that went into creating the plan.

Education events

In addition to providing funding and technical assistance, the project held a series of educational events designed to help farmers understand the benefits for their farm bottom lines and stream water quality that can result from managed intentional grazing.

Those events included a fencing and grazing economics workshop held at the farm of Jeremy and Jessie Nagel, and an overview of the economics and opportunities of grassfed beef farming with Rod Ofte and Jim Munsch of the Wisconsin Grassfed Beef Cooperative. Pasture walks to view current or planned projects in the watershed took place at the farms of Jeff Ostrem and Rob and Gail Klinkner.

An event of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council, held at the farm of Jim Munsch, detailed the tools developed by Grassland 2.0 to help measure the economic and ecological benefits of grazing.


Dani Speaks
DANI HEISLER , along with Monique Hassman, of Valley Stewardship Network, worked tirelessly on the grazing project.
Monique Hassman
MONIQUE HASSMAN is the friendly voice farmers interested in participating in the Tainter Creek Watershed Council/Wallace Center Grazing Project program. Not only is Monique super nice, but she is also a whiz at generating all the maps a landowner could hope for to better understand her or his farm.

Farmers can be proud

“The farmers of the Tainter Creek Watershed can be very proud of what they have accomplished through participating in this project and being willing to make changes on some of their working land,” Heisler said. “Along the way, there were many challenges that sometimes seemed like we were trying to build the plane while flying it, but the success we’re celebrating tonight makes all of that worthwhile.”

Heisler said that between July of 2019 and July of 2022, VSN had received 26 applications from farmers in the Tainter Creek Watershed to participate in the program. She said that in the course of initial investigatory work they found that not every applicant found the program a good fit for them, and others began the process and came out of it with a plan they can implement in the future.

In all, a total of 10 projects were implemented in the watershed, with four additional farms having achieved creation of a grazing plan for their farm. Total funding spent in the watershed on the various practices funded by the project was $173,000, and the project was implemented on a total of 986 acres in the watershed. Through the project, a total of 1,640 acres in the watershed came out of the project with a grazing plan.

 “We blew our initial goals out of the water with this project, and it has been a wild success,” Heisler told the group. “Through this project in the Tainter Creek Watershed, we achieved 135 percent of our goal for reduction of phosphorous leaving fields in the watershed, and 170 percent of our goal for reduction of sediment leaving fields in the watershed.”

Heisler said this meant that phosphorous leaving farm fields in the watershed each year is reduced by 2,300 pounds (initial goal was 1,700 pounds). Reduction of sediment leaving fields in the watershed each year as a result of the project is reduced by an estimated 1,600 tons (initial goal was 940 tons).

“This project was a great success,” Spratt told the group. “Now, the Wallace Center Pasture Project can use the results of this project on a national basis to promote the positive benefits of regenerative agricultural practices.”

Tainter Creek Watershed farmer Chuck Bolstad shared in the celebration of success.

“I’m proud of what the Tainter Creek Watershed Council has been able to accomplish since we first came together in 2017,” Bolstad said. “We’ve come a long way since that first meeting attended by Grant Rudrud, Jeff Ostrem, Bruce and Sue Ristow, Berent and Luther Froiland, and my wife Karen and I. And we couldn’t have done it without all the support from Vernon County, VSN and the Wallace Center Pasture Project.”

Jim Munsch summarized the role he and Dennis Rooney played in the successful project.

“Two grazers, each with 30-40 years of experience, had a great time with two women – Dani and Monique – telling us what we had to do,” Munsch said laughing.


TCWC Grazing_impacts

 “We blew our initial goals out of the water with this project, and it has been a wild success,” Heisler told the group. “Through this project in the Tainter Creek Watershed, we achieved 135 percent of our goal for reduction of phosphorous leaving fields in the watershed, and 170 percent of our goal for reduction of sediment leaving fields in the watershed.”

Heisler said this meant that phosphorous leaving farm fields in the watershed each year is reduced by 2,300 pounds (initial goal was 1,700 pounds). Reduction of sediment leaving fields in the watershed each year as a result of the project is reduced by an estimated 1,600 tons (initial goal was 940 tons).

“This project was a great success,” Spratt told the group. “Now, the Wallace Center Pasture Project can use the results of this project on a national basis to promote the positive benefits of regenerative agricultural practices.”

Tainter Creek Watershed farmer Chuck Bolstad shared in the celebration of success.

“I’m proud of what the Tainter Creek Watershed Council has been able to accomplish since we first came together in 2017,” Bolstad said. “We’ve come a long way since that first meeting attended by Grant Rudrud, Jeff Ostrem, Bruce and Sue Ristow, Berent and Luther Froiland, and my wife Karen and I. And we couldn’t have done it without all the support from Vernon County, VSN and the Wallace Center Pasture Project.”

Jim Munsch summarized the role he and Dennis Rooney played in the successful project.

“Two grazers, each with 30-40 years of experience, had a great time with two women – Dani and Monique – telling us what we had to do,” Munsch said laughing.

Measuring success

A major part of the reason that the Tainter Creek Watershed was selected as the location for this project was because of the long-term water quality monitoring efforts by VSN in the watershed. This provided a baseline picture of water quality in Tainter Creek to compare to measurements taken after implementation of the grazing projects.

“We kicked off the project in July of 2019, but in reality most of the projects weren’t implemented until the 2021 and 2022 growing seasons,” Heisler pointed out. “So for purposes of measuring the impacts of the project on water quality, we won’t start to count the actual measurements until 2021.”

Heisler explained that the 2019 and 2020 water quality measurements will be considered to be ‘pre-implementation period measurements.’ She said that drought or near-drought conditions in the watershed in 2022 had complicated measurements, and caused the group to adopt a ‘chasing rainstorms’ approach to measuring water quality.

Nevertheless, initial measurements indicate that water quality in Tainter Creek appears to be improving as compared to the ‘control’ watershed, Halls Branch Creek. Halls Branch Creek was selected as a nearby, very similar watershed to Tainter Creek. In Halls Branch Creek Watershed, there is no watershed council operating, and so it is considered to represent what a local watershed would be like without conservation interventions such as have been implemented in the Tainter Creek Watershed.

“We also have to acknowledge that lots of other good work has been implemented in the watershed that didn’t result from this project,” Heisler said. “That includes other initiatives by the watershed council such as increasing acres planted in cover crops, projects implemented by producers outside of the watershed council’s efforts, and streambank restoration projects undertaken by Wisconsin DNR and the Trout Unlimited Driftless Area Restoration Effort.” 


TCWC Grazing_Randy, Jeff and Jeremy
GRASSLAND 2.0’s Randy Jackson (left) is seen talking with Tainter Creek Watershed Council members Jeff Ostrem (center) and Jeremy Nagel (right).

Grasslands 2.0

Heisler made it clear that monitoring the positive impacts of the project on water quality in the creek would be a long-term project. In the interim, another facet of the project was collaboration with UW-Madison and the Grasslands 2.0 project, and the Wallace Center Pasture Project, on development of the ‘Grazescape’ tool, which allows the positive impacts of implementation of managed rotational grazing to be modeled.

“The positive impacts of the project as modeled through ‘Grazescape’ give us an estimate, and something to compare future water quality measurements to,” Heisler explained.

Grassland 2.0 is a collaborative group of producers, researchers, and public and private sector folks working to develop pathways for producers to achieve increased profitability, production stability, and nutrient and water efficiency, while improving water quality, soil health, biodiversity, and climate resiliency through grassland-based agriculture.

The program spans multiple states, and taps a variety of different subject matter experts. One of the tactics used in Grassland 2.0’s work is to convene ‘learning hubs,’ where they can take a deep dive into a region, work with local producers, share information and learn. One of those learning hubs was convened in the Driftless Region.

Local grazers Jim Munsch and Dennis Rooney, along with many Driftless Region producers, worked with Grassland 2.0 to develop the ‘Grazescape’ tool, which is based on a SnapPlus meta-model.
Pasture walk focuses on profitability of bird-friendly grazing
In the Driftless
Ashley Steinke speaks at Rod Ofte's farm
ASHLEY STEINKE, Audubon Great Lakes’ Grassland Ecologist, discusses the efforts grazier Rod Ofte has made on his farm to foster a bird-friendly environment.

DRIFTLESS - Great River Graziers (GRG) held a pasture walk on the farm of rural Coon Valley grassfed beef producer Rod Ofte. The June 3 event was held despite the heavy rain that had fallen in the Driftless Region that day, and was designed to highlight the profitability of bird-friendly grassfed animal agriculture.

Ofte is an old-hand at grassfed production, and general manager of the Wisconsin Grass-fed Beef Cooperative. In recent years, Ofte has undertaken measures in his pastures to make his operation more bird friendly, and based on the number of birds viewed or heard on his farm, is realizing success. Audubon Great Lakes Grassland Ecologist Ashley Steinke attended the event.

The pasture walk drew participants from counties across the Driftless Region, as well as the neighboring states of Iowa and Minnesota. The event, according to GRG coordinator Amy Fenn, was sponsored by Sand County Foundation, Audubon Society, Grassworks, Wisconsin Grass-fed Beef Cooperative, Crawford Stewardship Project. Some of the funding for the event came from USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

“It's great to see everybody even with all the rain,” GRG’s Vance Haugen told the group gathered in Ofte’s barn. “We're going to divide you folks in half, and half of go on the wagon right away, and we’ll be talking about bird-friendly grassfed production to the other half that stays here.”

Bird-friendly

Haugen pointed participants to a publication written by his friend and colleague Laura Paine 25 years ago. It provides a detailed explanation of how to foster a bird-friendly environment within a grassfed production system. He said he’d reached out to Laura before the event to ask what the one thing was that she would want event participants to understand.

The publication can be downloaded from the internet at University of Wisconsin-Extension, SKU A3715. The name of the report is, ‘Grassland Birds: Fostering Habitats Using Rotational Grazing.’

“Laura said, first, think about concrete,” Haugen recounted. “Then, she said, that the next level of unfriendliness to birds, is corn and soybeans. She said you're not going to be bird friendly with crop farming. Then, she said the next thing that's just a little bit better is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), still not good, but it's better. It's supposed to help wildlife. It does help. It helps it more than what concrete and row crops do, but because of what is allowed to be planted, unless you plant an expensive bird friendly CRP, it's garbage. And then you can go up to rotationally grazed, and that's one of the best if you're looking at some economic things, but it has to be done correctly. And then, the cream of the cream is a diverse wildlife area that has burning and grazing and other things. So that would be the continuum that she wanted to talk about.”

Management changes

Haugen emphasized that profitable, grassfed, bird-friendly production can be relatively economically benign, and works wonderfully. Haugen asked producers present what they are doing on their farms to make their operations more bird-friendly.

Responses ranged from converting row crop land to pasture, establishing a lightly-grazed, native warm season prairie, splitting up pastures to allow more time for the grasses to rest and grow, establishing refuge areas within pastured areas with flash grazing, and putting in farm ponds surrounded by refuge areas.

“The idea that you totally exclude animals, the idea was that then you would have a paradise, right?” Haugen commented. “If you look at some CRP where that was done, was that correct? No, it was absolutely terrible. So, the idea is that you should have some disturbance, and you can do that in different ways, but flash grazing is a real nice way to do it.”

Haugen explained that ‘flash grazing’ an area means you bring in a huge amount of cattle into an area, let them graze everything down, and then have a very, very long rest period.

 “So the stuff might be 20-30, maybe even 40 inches tall. You bring in the cattle, and you wham it down to maybe three, four inches. But then you might have 90 or even120 days of rest, and it does tremendous things. Cattle are a wonderful thing, and fire is a good thing, done correctly. Done correctly, the mixture of those two things does some tremendous stuff for our birds and for our grazing.”

Grazing and streams

Haugen also recounted the history in the state of allowing grazing on the banks of streams. He put forth the proposition that eliminating trees in riparian areas (on the banks of streams), and having grass grow right down to the streambank, is better for the stream.

“Many folks here can remember in the 80s when the Wisconsin State Legislature tried to ban grazing near streams,” Haugen said. “How many people here know personally streams and creeks where grazing has gone away, and has the stream improved? Or has it degraded? Well, in most cases, it is degraded, and the reason for that is that trees have very large roots, and they don't hold the soil very well, and they fall over, and they can cause all kinds of different things. So if we can have grass growing right down to the edge of the water, you're going to have a lot better stream. “

Haugen posed the question, “doing these bird-friendly things on your farm – will it detract from your bottom line?”

“The answer is not necessarily. “One of the studies we cite in the information provided to participants today demonstrates that its possible to both increase production on your acres, and increase habitat for birds and other wildlife.”

Vance Haugen speaks at Rod Ofte's farm
EMINENT GRAZING authority, Vance Haugen, discusses profitable, bird-friendly agriculture with participants at a pasture walk on Rod Ofte’s farm in rural Coon Valley.

Soil health

Haugen also touched on the growing practice of using cover crops to increase soil health and prevent erosion. One of the most common, winter-hardy cover crops planted in northern regions is cereal rye.

“When you terminate the rye, let it go to at least 12 inches,” Haugen advised. “The soil is a living thing. It has mycorrhizal fungi, and micro and macro insects. All of those things have to be fed. And if you think about it as a solar collector, what happens is that the plants take the sunlight, convert it into carbohydrates and other things which go to the roots. And the roots have exudates that the plant uses. So, it's a symbiotic relationship.”

Haugen talked about a billboard he sees along the highway enroute to Minneapolis. The billboard says, ‘Don’t Farm Naked – Plant Cover Crops.’

“What they're talking about is that you're never supposed to have bare soil - you're supposed to have something green on it all the time,” Haugen explained. “And when we're grazing and we've got grass, there's always something that's growing. And under the soil there’s always things working. It might get real, real cold, and some of it will freeze, but there's always some living things, and we feed those living things with that living cover.”

 Haugen explained that new data is showing that as the soils get more exudates and more diversity, you can actually grow more tonnage with less inputs.

“It takes a while, and it's not overnight, but it is measurable, and it is becoming substantial for some of the folks who've been doing it for 20 and 30 years,” Haugen said. “So in the short term, you got to pay the banker, but in the long term, we can make money by grazing. So, we can be tree-friendly, we can be bird-friendly, fish-friendly, and mycorrhiza-friendly, and it can all benefit us.”

Haugen emphasized that rotational grazing can get a lot of benefits for wildlife, for the environment, for people, but it is not a natural system. He said rotational grazing mimics nature, but not perfectly.

“So we do the best we can, trying to incorporate having the outcomes that we want to have with the biological systems that we have to work with,” Haugen explained. “Just this morning, Laura Paine said the word she really wants everybody to think about, whether you're taking a look at your grazing, whether you're taking a look at your bird friendliness, whether you're taking a look at your soil health issues, is to think about optimizing things rather than making it the best.”

“So, sometimes we might have to get by with just a little bit less, maybe pounds of beef per acre, but we want to have those birds over here, or whatever,” Haugen explained. “So you have to think about optimizing, and sometimes that means that we have to compromise some of the things, but that doesn't mean that we give up on any of our goals. So if anything else, think about optimizing what you have going on. And as far as making it possible to be bird friendly, you can be bird friendly, maybe not to every bird, but to many birds.”