Grazing success on a large scale

Jordan Settlage has found creative ways to make it work

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

St. Mary’s, Ohio — A decade ago Jordan Settlage started a dairy with seven cows. Today he’s milking 350 head on 400 acres with 270-300 days on pasture each year. Grazing has been key to profitability every step of the way.

Even back in elementary school, Jordan was sure that he wanted to be a dairy farmer. His father, John, grew up milking cows and wanted to make sure his son knew what he was getting into, so Jordan started helping out on a neighbor’s conventional dairy when he was 14.

He worked off and on at the dairy for a dozen years with a few years away for an Army tour of Iraq and college, and it confirmed for him that he wanted to milk cows and that he didn’t want to do it in confinement.

So Jordan dove into creating a grass dairy. He had a leg up, since there was a family farm to come home to and some existing infrastructure — his grandpa and uncle had milked until the late 80s on this farm before John took over the farm and did crops and pastured livestock.

The 1986-built milking parlor was still there, although the equipment had been gutted and sold. For just under $50,000, Jordan, with help from John, made the parlor usable again, including pouring the deck higher since the pit was too shallow.

August 6, 2024August 6, 2024

Finding opportunities in obstacles

From low milk prices to 100% raw sales with the CSA model

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Alfred Station, New York — After four decades of dairying, hauling costs and low milk prices made shipping grassfed organic milk unsustainable for the Snyders. Sometimes the milk check hardly covered the electric bill.

For Kelby and Kristina and Kelby’s father Jerry, there were two choices: stop dairying or massively scale raw milk sales.

The odds looked stacked against the raw milk option. The farm isn’t in a densely populated or wealthy area, New York regulations only permit on-farm sales, and current raw milk customers were relatively few. It was going to take some serious creativity to make a go of it.

In the face of the unknowns, the family took a leap of faith and gave notice to their milk buyer in November 2022. The milk truck came for the last time on April 29, 2023.

CSAs were the ticket

Existing raw milk sales were consistently 30-50 gallons a week. The 45-cow herd milked once a day was producing about 500 gallons weekly, so the Snyders needed to make ten times the current sales. A tall order, but they believed the demand would be there and therefore didn’t scale down the cow herd.

June 4, 2024

Custom heifers and direct-sale meat

Redetzkes build a farm around grazing and diversification

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Colby, Wisconsin — Flexibility and fluidity are the strategies of choice for Mike and Gina Redetzke as they pay off their farm and raise a young family.

They started out planning to raise and finish Holstein steers, but when beef markets were down and a family member needed a place to raise replacement dairy heifers, the couple decided to pivot.

“There were opportunities, and we took them,” Mike explains.

Soon, more dairy farmers came knocking, and custom raising heifers for a handful of confinement dairy farmers became the main farm income in addition to a growing direct market meat sideline.

March 29, 2024

A Kernza research update

Grain and grazing combo a work in progress

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Kernza continues to gain traction as a perennial grain crop, with about 2,400 acres grown in the U.S. today. Kernza is the trademark owned by The Land Institute for intermediate wheatgrass varieties (IWGs) developed for grain harvest.

But long before it was selected for that use, IWGs were being used as forages. A number of studies have been done recently on utilizing Kernza both ways. Since the last article in Graze (February 2020), more data has become available on the topic.

One such trial was conducted by Alan Kraus of Clean River Partners in cooperation with Jacob Jungers and others at the University of Minnesota, along with southeastern Minnesota farmers Kaleb Anderson and Dan Honken.”

June 10, 2022July 12, 2022

Four simple tools for measuring progress

They don’t cost much, either

By Allen Williams

Interest in regenerative agriculture is growing exponentially. With the rapid rise in almost every conceivable input cost coupled with ongoing weather extremes, we are seeing more farmers and ranchers express significant interest. The flood of inquiries is often overwhelming.

This interest is coming not only from farmers and ranchers here in the U.S., but from farmers around the world. Weather extremes continue to be the norm. Drought in the Extreme to Exceptional categories continues in many areas in the western U.S., while others are experiencing flooding conditions.

For all of us, the time to reinvigorate our regenerative efforts is now. We simply cannot afford not to.

The question for all of us is: “Are we doing enough, both on our own farms and to persuade our neighbors to make positive changes?”

In order to know where we are and to track our forward progress, we need measurement tools that allow us to quickly, easily and simply make progress. Within Understanding Ag, we use four simple tools to monitor our soils and conditions on a routine basis.

Anyone can use these tools. Anyone can afford these tools. They do not require collecting samples and shipping to a laboratory and waiting days or weeks for results. They do not require ongoing expenditure.

March 1, 2022July 12, 2022

Figuring the dollar value of fodder and pods

Trees can offer much more than shade

By Austin Unruh

In looking to add trees to a grazing operation, the first thing on most people’s minds is shade.

Shade helps growing animals gain weight faster, give more milk and conceive at higher rates. The value of shade is quite well established.

Yet a grass farm needs more than just shade. Among those needs is supplemental feed at times of year when forages are in short supply. For most folks that means winter and the peak of summer.

For summer, tree leaf fodder can be an alternative to hay. Leaf fodder can come from trees that have nutritious, palatable leaves, grow back readily, and put on a lot of leaf biomass. Mulberries are probably the best at this, followed by willows, poplars, black locust and others.