Join this conversation on Eckhart Farms outside of Deer Park, WA where we talk
about cover crops, reducing synthetic fertilizers, building organic matter, mycorhizzal fungi, and
farming with the next generation.
Carol McFarland
Today we’re here with Chris Eckhart on Eckhart Farms. Really excited to be out visiting with you today, Chris. Thanks so much for having me out!
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, no, thanks for coming out. We’re glad to have you here for sure.
Carol McFarland
Thank you. There is some wheat country up here, north of Spokane. It’s great.
Chris Eckhart
Amongst the houses. Yeah.
Carol McFarland
And the trees.
Chris Eckhart
Right?
Carol McFarland
Yeah.
Chris Eckhart
Yep.
Carol McFarland
Would you share a bit about yourself, your farm and who you farm with?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, so we’re primarily a small grain farm north of Spokane and we’re dry land grain farm. So wheat, barley, canola, we do have a little bit of, you know, permanent hay ground in rotation.
And yeah, we’re a small operation. So we’re right around acres, and farm that with my wife, my kids, my mom and dad.
Carol McFarland
Great. Is this the family farm or you?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, I grew up here actually. We’re the first ones here. So we have, you know, roots in Elmira and Bonners Ferry, so fifth generation in the United States, but yeah, definitely. So we’re second, I technically, I guess third generation right here where our farm is at.
Carol McFarland
Okay.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
And your farm here is outside of Deer Park.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, so we’re north of Spokane, south of Deer Park a little ways. And you know, as far as rainfall goes, we’re annual crop. We used to do summer fallow, but we’re pretty much just, you know, annual crops now. We consider doing fallow from time to time, just based on the rainfall, we’re kind of right on that cusp.
Some people say, you know, we’re in a , inch rainfall zone.
It seems more like anywhere from eight to
So, and that makes it sometimes challenging, especially on the lighter ground, you know, when it comes to getting a decent crop that year.
So.
Carol McFarland
Well, and as a soil scientist, of course, I have to look at all the pine trees and think about what is your soil like here and how, and the range and how that might differ across the range that you’re farming.
Chris Eckhart
Acidic, acidic and sandy for sure. So we do have, you know, some moderate clay type soils
that sustain, you know, better crops,but it is definitely one of our biggest resource concerns
is moisture from year to year for sure.
So June rains seem to determine a lot on yield factors just about every year. And then getting crops established enough going into the next winter is a big determining factor
for us too. So do we get those September rains to get our recrop growing? Last year was a really tough year. So it came up under the snow and did not come out of winter very well.
Carol McFarland
Moisture concerns in Eastern Washington.
I’m shocked.
Chris Eckhart
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Carol McFarland
You opened the gate right here at the beginning when you mentioned that your soil is acidic.
Do you want to share anything about those numbers or range?
Chris Eckhart
You know, I mean, we’ve seen into the fours on stuff, but we’re feeling fortunate if we’re ever getting into, you know, five sevens, five eights, like that’s really good for us in our area.
So a lot of soil, five two to five four range.
Carol McFarland
Okay. Are you doing anything, are you thinking about managing for acidity at all,
or are you doing anything for that at this point?
Chris Eckhart
No, basically just because of logistics and lime. A lot of liming to compensate for that in our area.
And we seem to be doing fairly well versus the ground that has been limed. There’s been lime experiments that have gone on in our area with very limited results and whether it just went on heavy enough. I’m not sure about that if it maybe, you know, maybe just didn’t go on heavy enough. Maybe instead of, you know, my neighbor, he did, I think that was up to almost three tons an acre, you know, maybe he needed to go four and that would have been the magical tipping point for him.
But again, you know, just resources of where we’re getting that lime from. And he thought that maybe the sugar beet lime that he was using at the time probably wasn’t the best quality lime either, but it definitely comes down to logistics and trucking and that all of that just isn’t cheap.
And you got to make it, you know, feasible. And, you know, to take wheat ground, to turn it from, you know, bushel ground into bushel ground, you’re still limited on rainfall.
Trying to make things pencil out is tough. So it’s better if you can just figure out how to, you know, grow a good crop, I think, and increase organic matter.
Those have been the biggest determining factors for us.
When I looked at soil where we’ve grown good crops versus not so good crops, organic matter was a big tell on that. And so we’ve really focused on trying to increase organic matter
Carol McFarland
So I guess I just, you know, put in a plug with some of the WSU extension resources
and end with liming, if that is ever something you consider as part of something you want to play with. You know, there’s resources on testing for your buffer capacity, which might be on the lower end, if you have sandy soils, but if you’ve got lots of organic matter input that affects it meaningfully.
And then just the how much lime to apply question is something that we’ve tried to answer
with the body of work on the wheat and small grains website
under soil resources.
So a little plug for that.
And so with that, would you describe some of your management goals and how they might be different by between your whole farm versus by crop, by field and by year?
And if they are different or how do you drive some of those management choices day to day?
Chris Eckhart
In our area, you know, we’re really limited on rainfall. We’re not in an irrigated area. So we’re never really going for top yield as far as that goes. We’re really trying to manage input costs in our area and basically create the best net profit we can per acre. And so a lot of that comes down to managing, you know, fertilizer inputs, chemical inputs, and still trying to get, you know,
a maximum yield out for what those inputs are.
But we’re never going for, you know, a max yield. We’re trying to out yield our neighbor per se.
And also on that, we’re also trying to protect our soil health going forward too.
So we know that, you know, there’s a lot of antagonistic effects that will happen if you are trying to, you know, say fertilize for top yield. But if I can maybe, you know, cut back, say , 10-20%
on fertilizer input to maybe not salt out my soil as heavily, protect organic matter, those kinds of things, that actually helps me out net a better profit into those following years.
So those are factors that we’re taking into consideration just because we have
such sensitive soils in our area and, you know, the limited rainfall where we’re at too.
Carol McFarland
Feel free to answer this one or not. But how many landlords do you have?
Chris Eckhart
Right now, like 42.
Carol McFarland
Okay.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, so not as many as some in our area. So I got a friend that I think has over a hundred.
Carol McFarland
Like Dusty Walsh on the previous episode who nominated you.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, right. So I don’t know how he manages that, but that’s one thing where we’ve had to, you know, set aside more time just to go and have these conversations. And so you can’t be as friendly as you want to be with everybody on some of that. So a lot of the people we got, honestly, I mean, of the landlords, we got most of them are all super cool people. So we don’t farm for them unless we have a good relationship with them. And they seem to be pretty understanding and we’ve created great relationships going forward.
Carol McFarland
Well, it sounds like you’re in a position where you’re really thinking about investing a lot in the ground that you’re working on.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, yeah, they like seeing the cover crops. People always ask questions about the cover crops we’re doing. They love seeing that, you know, when’s our field going to be in a cover crop?
And those are fun conversations to have, you know, what is that growing out there? And, you know, oh my gosh, there’s so many bugs and so many butterflies and the birds love it. And we love the wildlife and yeah, so fun stuff.
Carol McFarland
Sounds like it’s a good sell on the front end.
How do you justify that on the other end of that? If you want to speak to that.
Chris Eckhart
Oh, I knew you were going to ask that question too. As we’ve gone forward, like it’s one of those things where the more you know, the more you don’t know. We started experimenting with the cover crops and we have places where we’ve put cover crops in where we still see the results in the crops that are growing today from where we had the cover crops to align with it was a part of a field. You know, we’ve been able to see it. And then we’ve had cover crop failures along the way too, where it’s just like, was that worth it? Was that, you know, I mean, where we burned up moisture? And this is one of those years where the cover crop did not turn out how I wanted it to. It’s not putting on the growth that it wanted to. And it comes down to a management situation where I knew what I grew last year, but I didn’t look at what I grew two years ago out there. And turns out two years ago was , we had canola out there and we were trying to manage that canola very intensively to try and still get a crop out of it to then not really have much of a crop either. And we had basically Beyond and Chlorpiralid out there in that field on what is the sandier ground. This is acre field that we were trying to manage weeds in our canola in really intensively at the time too.
So we were growing a full rate and then had our winter wheat the following year after that. And if you look at the label, I mean, there’s a month minimum plant back interval on that. And we’re seeing a lot of that chemical sensitivity in the cover crop this year. And so it’s just not taking off like it usually did. So this big gang buster cover crop, we’re gonna have some dusty cows graze on part of it. And it just stunted the growth on it. We’re like, holy cow, this is not turning out how I wanted it to. So we’re gonna have his cows on a better portion of the field, but just antagonistic effects where you’re trying to protect the crop one year is coming back to bite you two years later on something where I just, that was a management thing. I needed to go back farther in the records and see what it is that we did and what could have potentially been an issue. But as you’re making decisions and spring work’s coming along and you’re just making all these decisions kind of on the fly of how you’re gonna rotate things around. You’re like, oh yeah, that’s an issue I didn’t think about. But-
Carol McFarland
You didn’t take time to bioassay that field?
Chris Eckhart
No, no, definitely not a bioassay on the field, no. So we did 150 acre bioassay is what we’re doing right now.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, you just did it on a field scale.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, uh-huh.
Carol McFarland
Super, that’s always fun.
Didn’t they just relabel on herbicide a bit for the PNW?
Chris Eckhart
Mm-hmm, yeah. And so it used to be like 18 months and then they bumped it up to 22 and especially in the sandier soil. And that’s what we saw in part of the field, the upper part of the field where it was sandier soil. The cover crop was just not doing cover crop things. So it’s there and it’s six inches to a foot tall but we should be seeing this stuff explode right now and it’s just not. So we had to, we were planned to do the grazing at, we expanded that and kind of shifted that where we’re gonna do it some. And so the cows have good grass and dusty cover crop mix where we added sorghum, Sudan and millet to it so that the cows would have some good grass and stuff in there. And it turns out we’re beyond the plant back interval in that area and that was in the heavier soil. That’s looking definitely better. But in the sandier soil, the chemical just didn’t break down in that long of a time period. So just like what the label says .
Carol McFarland
So you should read the labels.
Chris Eckhart
Well, we read the labels, but-
Carol McFarland
I mean, you’re just as a general best practice when you’re doing on farm trials, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re following those things.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, but I mean, on the sandier soils, those chemicals are definitely persisting. So especially with limited rainfall, we got quite a bit of snow last year too, but whether all of it went in the ground, I don’t know.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. I’m sorry, it definitely sounds like an unintended consequence. One of the things that I was sent here to ask you though is what is in your cover crop mix?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, so we’ve been staying pretty consistent with this mix of radishes, turnips, facilias, sunflowers, mung beans, cow peas, field peas, sweet clover. And primarily like when we were looking at things when we were trying to address the resource concern in our field, we’re dealing with years of plow pans and the same type of crops, wheat on wheat on wheat rotations. And the radishes were something that we saw really breaking up those hard pans for us. Those roots going down four or five feet, pulling up nutrients from years gone past, stuff that the we just wouldn’t go down and get anymore and having really good results after having these radishes out there. But the radishes do better if we have a lot of other stuff with it. It seems like just as we’ve done a straight cover crop of radishes, it didn’t turn out that well. And when you plant a diverse mix, one thing I tell listeners on this podcast is do a whole field of cover crop and see what happens. Cause most of the Palouse I think is pretty varying soil types, varying terrain. And if they put a pretty diverse mix out there, get your brassicas, I’ve kept grasses out of my mix just from a management standpoint, but do some cool seasons, do some warm seasons and do some legumes, do some brassicas. Don’t put a cover crop in just to fix nitrogen.
.
Focus on breaking up a hard pan or creating biological diversity or something like that in your soil. Besides just fixing nitrogen. Cause of all the guys I’ve heard, we did field peas, we did clover, it failed, it burned up moisture. Do something diverse and get a big mix out there. And I think you’ll be amazed at what you see take off in different parts of the field. I remember specifically in one acre piece that we had that had bottom ground in it all the way up to sandy soil. And in one part of the field, I mean the sweet clover was as high as the hood on the tractor. Another place the sunflowers were growing like crazy in it. Another place the Phacelia was growing like crazy in it. It was all seeded at the same depth at the same time. But I believe in my understanding, that every part of the field needed something different. Every part of the field had a different problem going on with it. It had a different benefit that it offered and those cover crops were expressing that in different areas. The wheat crop following that cover crop that year was one of the most even wheat crops we’ve ever grown in that field. And I think a lot of it had to do with that cover crop in basically evening out what was going on out there. So that’s the best way that I can describe what happened. But I couldn’t have gone out there and picked, oh yeah, we need sweet clover in that part of the field. We need radishes in this part of the field and sunflowers in that part of the field to make it better.
You can’t do that.
And so what I learned from that is when I talk with people that have done different things with cover crops who said, yeah, those different plants have different organic acids in the root tips and they’re able to go and pull nutrients out of the soil that your wheat plant can’t get. And when it dies and decomposes, it’ll release that nutrient basically on top of soil will be available the next year for those plants. And whether that was molybdenum or copper or something like that, that was so tied up in that soil or so bound up that a wheat plant couldn’t access, now it could the next year. And it followed along with the succession of nature kind of how that works too.
Carol McFarland
I’ve got three follow-up questions.
Chris Eckhart
Probably.
Carol McFarland
Well, I’ve got a lot of follow-up questions, but I have to keep them limited.
Chris Eckhart
Okay. Yeah.
Carol McFarland
In the interest of time. But okay, agronomy questions. When do you plant your cover crop? Actually, I’ve got another one. When you plant your cover crop, what do you seed it with and how do you terminate it?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, those are great questions. So we’ve gone really, really early and really, really late with the cover crops. And I still don’t have figured out when the right time is. So one year I gave up on doing a cover crop and a buddy of mine convinced me still to do it in the 4th of July. And I’m going, no way. This was in , an incredibly dry year. He goes just seed it deep enough to where you could find moisture and just see what happens. I’m like, there is no moisture in sight. Like he was “just punch it in and see what happens.” And sure enough, I kid you not, we went out there a week later and stuff was popping out of the ground. And a week later, the ground was covered. Like, I mean, not a hundred percent, but pretty well covered. By three to four weeks, by like the end of July and the first half of August, the whole field was covered and you couldn’t hardly see any sunlight touching the ground.
I was like, you have to be kidding me. Like it was absolutely amazing. To where we’ve also seeded, you know, around Mother’s Day, May, we’re really doing a lot of warm season type crops. And what we’re doing those years is we’re doing some, early tillage in the spring for there’s some reasons why we’re doing that with our fertilizer practice that we’re doing right now. a chance to do some basically weed control mechanically early in the spring. And then we will either mechanically or chemically control the weeds again. So like we’re trying to get, you know, wild oats under control or clout grass or something along that line. And then after we’ve done that about a week or two after that, then we’ll go in and plan our cover crop after that. So, you know, if we’re trying to control grasses, we’ll use clefted in or there’s some kind of, you know, really strong outbreak of, you know, pigweed or something like that, we’ll put a 240 out there.
And then we’ll usually wait a couple of weeks before we try and seed a cover crop into that, let that, you know, chemical subside and then we’ll put our cover crop in it. We’ve had really good results doing that. Just trying to control, you know, get a fallow year in there, can, you know, break up some hard pans that we have in the soil, maybe go find some nutrients that were lost, putting this diverse cover out there. And then the way we terminate it, that’s worked the best for us so far is we have like, basically what’s called a, you know, light disc or a disc harrow. It’s just basically just like a double disc. It has a few more discs per foot on the gang on it. And ours is like, it’s a Case tandem 330 turbo. And we’ll set that to about an inch, two inches deep in the soil. And that will basically go and pinch off all of those plants.
It’ll mix them in, in the top inch to two inches. And that seems to get pretty good termination. We’ve also directly no tilled into the cover crop too, like basically green seeded it. We had better results when we did the tillage. instead of, using the spray or whatever, and then hopefully by fall, you know, somewhere in there, we’re getting a freeze. That’s knocking the stuff back and the wheat’s coming up. And hopefully the frost will kill whatever else is growing. If for whatever reason it doesn’t kill it. And sometimes those radishes are really, really hardy and they’re coming up to spring. They’re easy enough to kill with a, you know, like 240. I will pretty, pretty easily knock them back. But those tubers get huge. I mean, we’re talking like two, three foot tubers. And they, there’s a lot of starch and there’s a lot of growth potential for that thing to be able to, you know, maintain its energy and overwinter. And so, but it leaves giant holes in the ground for moisture to go in the ground.
Yeah, there’ll be a foot, two feet in the ground. And, you know, a foot to a foot and a half sticking out of the ground. They’re huge, yeah. I’ll show you some pictures.
Carol McFarland
That sounds fun.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Okay. You did, oh, my last question was, well, sort of, about the cover crop is, you said, fascia. That’s not something that I’ve heard always in some of these mixed cover crop blends. Can you talk a little bit about your choice of adding that in?
Chris Eckhart
On a whim, kind of. So we’re wanting to throw something else in there that I think it was Keith Burns that actually mentioned it to me. But I’d seen in a few other people’s mixes of how it really helped with just diversity and biology in the soil and the pollinators also liked it. And so I’m like, okay, we’ll try it. It turns out it worked great. So for our soil type and in our situation, worked out good. So we’ve kept it in there every year now.
Carol McFarland
I’ve seen it as a great pollinator.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, it’s a beautiful, beautiful plant. But easy to control too. It’s not invasive.
Carol McFarland
I’ve also heard a little bit about cows and, do you run cows on your cover crops? Or what is that?
Chris Eckhart
No, this is our first year where we’re running cattle on it. We’re actually doing a grazing trial out there on there working with the Palouse Conservation District. They have a moisture meter out there where they’re checking where we graze the cattle versus a check spot that, ideally, I don’t know if we got them, both meters out there yet or not, but we’re supposed to be checking where they grazed versus where they haven’t grazed and seeing if we’re using up more moisture, from stressing that plant out. You’re losing shade and then the plants being stressed.
So are you losing moisture by grazing the cows out there on the cover crop versus trying to maintain the moisture?
We believe from what we’ve seen, we actually maintain our moisture better by having a cover crop out there versus just shallow ground. So that 2021 year was that trial year for us when we had that cover crop out there that we seeded in the 15th of July, that cover crop terminated it in the middle of September. And we also have summer fallow, but we’re talking straight up, rod-weeded summer fallow and seeded into that, got the seed into moisture and stuff too, but where we had the cover crop, we got a better stand where we had the cover crop than where we had just straight fallow.
You asked how we seeded the cover crop and just with a double disc drill, we had Great Plains double disc drill.
Carol McFarland
I did a trial on a research farm a couple of years back and just navigating the mechanics of your seeding rates when you have these mixed species cover crops, getting them through the drill and at the rate you want them is its own trial.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Man, that was so true like this year too. I mean, they do really good at sending me these mixes and how many pounds they are and what to seed at per acre and stuff and how it’s going out of the drill. If anybody’s farmed and set their drills, they know that seed size makes a big difference. I mean, there’s a rate chart on the drill and everything, but you’re doing it with like seven or eight different seed sizes on this.
Carol McFarland
Phacelia versus sunflower? I mean, seriously.
Chris Eckhart
Oh my gosh.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, how do you make that work?
Chris Eckhart
I’m like, my dad was actually running the tractor and he comes back and he’s like, we’re out. And I’m like, you’re only half done. Like, how are you out? You know, or it’s like, I’m looking at the rate and when I have the seeds, like this went out way faster than I thought it was. I wanted to go a little bit heavier on the rate. I ended up going up like % over. So, you know, doing a trial calibration is probably definitely worth your time.
I didn’t do a trial calibration. I’m like, I know what I’m doing and bumped it to the numbers I thought it needed to be and go, you know, this was kind of one of those years where it’s just like, you know, you’re doing like damage control the whole time. Every farmer knows about this, you know, you’re doing damage control in the springtime. It’s like, we just got to go, you know, get it running, put it together, put the duct tape on it. We got to go kind of a thing. And, you know, one of those days we’re just like, yep. All right, go. And so, yeah, we needed more cover crop seed to finish the field.
Carol McFarland
Well, that’s its own part of the trying different things on the farm, isn’t it? how do you build that into your management? The time and space to try stuff.
Chris Eckhart
Oh yeah. Well, for me, we have downtime in the wintertime where you spend time on YouTube and go into PT and DSA meetings and learn about all kinds of crazy stuff. And you talk to your friends and they’re like, yeah, I’m going to try this. And I’m like, yeah, I’m going to try this. And we come up with a bunch of ideas that we want to try. And we feel we’re really successful if we get about half of those implemented. And we’re learning to try and, at least me personally on my farm, I’m trying to cut it back, you know, even, you know, another 30% beyond that to where things that we are trying, that we’re really trying to put maximum effort into that.
Cover crops, one of those things that we’re trying to put maximum effort into. Cutting back our fertilizer rates is something that I’m trying to put maximum effort into. We’re trying to do a lot better research on that of what we’re actually doing because we’re finding out we can cut back our fertilizer rates a lot more than we had previously thought with some of the stuff that we’ve implemented on our farm.
Carol McFarland
That’s a great segue into: what is the most interesting thing you’ve learned from a past trial?
Chris Eckhart
The best thing we’ve learned that we’ve stuck with that we’re not changing or experimenting with anymore is inoculating our seed with mycorrhizal fungi. And that was something that we did a trial on and we had some success with. And then over the years, you know, tried different products and got to a point where we were like, okay, this stuff really works.
One of my other friends, he tried it and had some crazy good results with it. I’m like, okay, there’s something to this. And we didn’t even know what mycorrhizal fungi was at the time. We’re like, how does this work? And we started to learn about it, why isn’t everybody doing this? I don’t know, maybe there’s just not a lot of money in it, you know, and it’s not marketed to us. Where unless it’s like dangled in front of our nose in a giant commercial, we never know about it. And so, because when we’ve shared the idea with people, other farmers and that kind of stuff, I mean, we joke around, we call it fairy dust. I mean, it’s just this powder that we put on the seed, but it has such magical properties in the soil and has really changed some huge dynamics on our farm just in terms of like fertilizer usage and overall yield, crop quality, those kinds of things. And I think it’s been just one of the biggest game changers for us long-term. We don’t plan on going away from it. We’re trying to figure out how to build upon that now at this point.
Carol McFarland
Which crops do you primarily inoculate with mycorhizzae?
Chris Eckhart
Anything grasses, yeah. And yeah, I mean, there’s other crops that we inoculate too, like the guys inoculate soybeans and they have their own stuff that, you know, they’re trying to inoculate with that. But we’re inoculating the wheat with not just micro-risin now, but also as an factor and fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere on our wheat. So some general rules of thumb that we’ve heard now, you know, from going to different meetings and things that we’ve learned is you can factor in about a 10, how was that, 10%? About, like if you have, say, 1% organic matter, you can maybe factor 10 pounds of nitrogen fixation. If you have 4% organic matter, you can factor maybe 40 pounds of nitrogen fixation on your wheat plants.
It doesn’t, it’s not like nodules on there, but it definitely shows up in your protein that you are growing in your wheat. I mean, when we’re growing, you know, on a wet year, we’re still doing, you know, , 10-11% white wheat, our protein on our white wheat. We’re like, damn, we over fertilize this, you know, like what happened? You know, why is this going on? We didn’t need to put that much fertilizer on. And we’re hitting yield goals and stuff consistently. And so we keep cutting back our fertilizer rate and still having the same yield and protein not going down. We’re like, man, we need to cut back on our fertilizer some more. So there’s some other factors in there that we’re doing too.
Like I said, we’re horrible scientists in isolating things because in some of these, we also were playing gypsum. And gypsum is one of those things that we found also really increases our nitrogen use efficiency between the calcium and the sulfur both, you know, the calcium helping make the nitrogen more available, but then also having a sulfur there too. we’re working on considering going like , , like to where it’s like, we’re matching for every pound of nitrogen we’re putting on, like putting on gypsum as well. So that when you’re looking at your budgeting, for every dollar that you’re putting on in, you know, fertilizer that we’re matching that with gypsum, does that make sense?
Carol McFarland
Okay.
Chris Eckhart
Most of our soils, if you pull a soil sample, we’re deficient in sulfur and calcium. especially on the canola side of it, the canola’s really benefited from having the sulfur there.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, I’ve heard that about canola for sure.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, I mean, what’s the only other available sulfur source that you have other than gypsum, right, to put out there? And so you’re talking about like a really high salt-based sulfur, and if we’re dealing with low pH soils already, like how else should we be getting sulfur out there? And so if we have these soils that are deficient in calcium too, we just need to invest in that, you know, calcium sulfur component, you know, try and make our soils one hold moisture better and have better nitrogen use efficiency to them. As we get that soil pH lower, our nitrogen use efficiency goes down. So if we’re not having to apply as much nitrogen-based fertilizer, like chemical fertilizer, hopefully we’re not salting out our soils as much.
So that goes back to that whole question that you asked me early on, you know, how are you approaching your farm? Those are some pieces to it that, that’s how we’re approaching it. You know, from a management standpoint, we’re trying to manage the input side of it, right? And not, we’re not going for maximum yield by throwing fertilizer at it. We’re trying to really think about it from, you know, a long-term standpoint, if we’re gonna put gypsum out there, one, we’re gonna get the calcium benefit, you know, for the nitrogen use side of it, but also like if we’re gonna be doing canola, hopefully having sulfur available also. this wheel that it has all the different, you know, elements, chemicals that the plants need, you know, copper and all this. And calcium’s tied to most of them.
Carol McFarland
Well, because I think one of the things is it’s a critical component of cell walls, right? And just like cellular structure in plants.
Chris Eckhart
So- So sulfur, like sulfur is one of those ones that we noticed that we can get better plant survivability through the winter time. If you don’t have cell elongation, if you have enough sulfur, you don’t have the cell elongation because the plant wants to grow up, right? And if it doesn’t have enough sulfur, it’ll just stretch those cells out and those cells are more prone to rupturing.
But if it hasn’t enough sulfur, it will build more cells and more cells are stronger. You know, it’s like a bunch of little water balloons compared to like one water balloon that’s just stretched super thin. And they’re able to survive better. They survive frost better, they survive heat better. So yeah, they’re just a stronger overall plant. Magnesium, magnesium is one of those other ones, but-
Carol McFarland
Do you have a different way to get magnesium on there? I’ve heard crazy things on that. Maybe if you do ever put some lime down, then maybe it could go with the dolomitic flavor.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, yeah.
Carol McFarland
All right, well, thanks. This was so fun. I really appreciate your sharing about some of the systems thinking that you’ve got in as part of your management as you’re trying all these different things.
Chris Eckhart
It sounds crazy talking about it. So hopefully it’s coming across here.
Carol McFarland
No, that’s great. Well, you know, maybe the next time you’re at one of the grower meetings, you’ll get to somebody that’ll be like, hey, I heard you on the podcast. You know, let’s talk. We’re all good. It’s great to be having these conversations because it’s also, it’s not just about what you’re trying, it’s also about how you’re trying it.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
What sources are influencing your thinking and how you’re making time for it, both in the planning stage and the implementation stage and how you troubleshoot, kind of overcoming some of the barriers, like the seeding rate, you know, getting it through, getting your cover crop through the drill and how, what you do with those unexpected outcomes. And, you know, I also heard you talk about you’re doing the trials with the Palouse Conservation District, is that part of the FLOURISH project?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. So what are those trials looking like on your place?
Chris Eckhart
Well, that was part of that cover crop this year that didn’t turn out as good as what I hoped it was going to, right? Because of the chemical residual from the year before. But I think that the flourish project, what they’re doing, it’s a real farmer led program, right? They left the rules really loose on it, and which is really cool. We just had to come up with our own trials that we wanted to do, right? And then we get basically the help from the other people to come in and help gather the data, the stuff that we don’t have the time or that we don’t have the skillset to do really well. We actually get help doing that to figure these things out. So some of the stuff that we want to figure out on our farm. If we integrated livestock, how does that affect soil moisture in our area? We’ve heard stuff in a lot of other areas how it worked great for them. And then you talk to people here, they’re like, oh yeah, it works there, but it doesn’t work here. So we wanted to be able to basically try and figure that out for ourselves in our area and how it works.
Carol McFarland
I think that’s awesome. And what I also heard was that you like it because there’s not a lot of rules. So you’re telling me that farmers don’t love programs with lots of rules?
Chris Eckhart
There’s just, we’ve watched some of the NRCS stuff that has come out with some of the best intentions fall so short in areas because a lot of it gets, led through the Midwest and resource concerns that they’re trying to address. And they have these programs written in ways versus like, yeah, we want you guys to implement cover crops. And the criteria that it has to adhere to at that point is you either qualify or don’t qualify. There was just a lot of logistical issues to some of these programs that didn’t make sense. And we wanted to answer questions that we had in our area specifically.
Carol McFarland
What a fun concept. So what does the layout of those trials look like on your place?
Chris Eckhart
The one trial, it was like acres that is basically under trial per se, of that acre field. We took a section that we knew that we could get water to that had a little bit of burying terrain. It had, we know three different soil pipes in it. And to see what that looks like over the course of a year. The one thing that I wanted to share on this that I think a lot of farmers are up against and that we deal with with these trials that we talk about is I’m coming up on 40 years old. I know that I have 20 to 25 good harvests left in me. Right, like with good Lord willing that I have 20 to 25 good harvests left in me. So a lot of what gets made day to day decision basis on our farm and long-term when we see these trials, we get kind of some hopes and dreams wrapped up in some of the stuff that we’re trying. And I don’t have solid data on the gypsum. I don’t have concrete data on the mycorrhizal, but I have some theories and some experiences with it that I feel work.
And so I’m choosing to invest in some of these things long-term because I want to see them work. I don’t have 10 or 15 years to do trials. I think that it’s gonna increase stuff. And so I’m gonna do it over the whole farm now for these next years in hopes that it’s gonna work out. And I think that’s what a lot of farmers are doing in some of these ways. And it’s just, we’re really limited time-wise. I mean, you’re making year to year gambles on stuff, right? With the best data that you can gather at the time with your specific situation and stuff. And so some of this stuff is just kind of, yeah, it’s going on a little bit of, you know, our own personal experiences with it. We get the best information we can make these decisions and put it out there. And hopefully it’s gonna work long-term. And maybe in five years, we’re like, oh, okay, this isn’t working. And now we need to change and shift directions. So that goes along with that. The more you know, the more you don’t know.
Carol McFarland
I feel that.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. What things do you do now as part of your standard management that started as trials?
Chris Eckhart
The one, the mycorrhizal. That’s the big one that comes to mind just because I try telling guys about it. And I think it’s the one thing they can do that’s easy to implement on their farm that we’ve seen just increase soil organic matter massively, like way more than what we previously thought we could increase. Like going from, if I was to give guys numbers from the time I’ve been using it. So since probably 2014, I’ve gone from like a percent and a half, 2% organic matter across most of our farm to like three and a half, 4% organic matter across most of our farm. And that’s a big shift for us in a lot of areas. You know, you talk to Gabe Brown, well, that’s nothing. You know, but Gabe Brown, he experienced his own stuff, you know, by going to no-till and then eventually to perennials and then eventually to cattle and that kind of stuff. What I’m saying for annual crop farming in our area, limited rainfall to go from a percent and a half, 2% to three and a half, 4%. That was a big shift for us. And that meant massive things for us in terms of how much we were spending on fertilizer inputs year to year and being able to have harvestable crops on years like 2021. So that was a really tough year for us in our area. I mean, seven tenths of an inch of rain since the middle of March, you know, clear through harvest is seven tenths. And on that year, I think we were somewhere still in the, you know, , 20-40 bushel range, which it was survivable for us that year, you know.
Carol McFarland
Do you think your investment in organic matter helps buffer some?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, yeah, definitely. A year like that, and especially buffering our farm just in terms of thousand dollar a ton fertilizer. You know, that was something where, you know, we’re not putting out 70, 80, 100 units of N anymore. We’re putting out, you know, 30, 40 units of N. Sometimes we’re looking at some of that, like maybe we didn’t need to fertilize that much. We always used to see fertilizer skips in the field. Now the fertilizer skips aren’t standing out as much as they used to.
Carol McFarland
That’s a great segue. How do you determine your ROI on a new practice?
Chris Eckhart
So I had the funny one, you know, that’s where you look back in the hopper, you’re like, oh, it looks like it’s coming in pretty good. Right? Also return on investment also matters if Russia is deciding, you know, to let Ukraine move weed out. So that makes a big factor on determining return on investment. So you can make all the changes in the world if the wheat price goes from $10 to $6 Didn’t really matter a whole lot now, did it? But…
Carol McFarland
Well, and also what things cost too. I mean, I know there’s been some supply chain issues as well, and just, there’s been a lot of things affecting the front end and the marketing end.
Chris Eckhart
I think a big shift for us is when we put yield monitors on our combines. You know, now combines come with yield monitors, stuff on it. I think it makes sense to have your yield monitor working, you know, to some degree. Whether or not it’s calibrated is, I don’t know. I don’t think you have to spend a lot of time calibrating it, but you are looking for differences out there, you know, and you can see a difference in the field. The one thing I will, you know, a disclaimer on this, the biggest difference that we still see today amidst all the changes that we made on our farm, soil type still matters. So the yield data that comes across on our combines still reflect the soil maps that NRCS did. What was that, in the 70s or something like that, where they did that giant survey of soil data, and the yield maps still show that. I’m not gonna go out here and make a claim saying that a guy can take a sandy ground and make it produce as well as the Palouse can. I mean, clay definitely has an effect in moisture retention, right? So, but I think a guy that also has clay type soils can make a soil more permeable by, you know, adding calcium or gypsum or those kinds of things to that soil and make it be able to absorb water more and not run off their field as much.
Carol McFarland
Well, you won’t get any arguments from me about soil mattering.
Chris Eckhart
That’s good.
Carol McFarland
I did want to check in actually about, you know, as you’re running the cover crops, what does your return on investment look like and how you’re framing that up in terms of, you know, making those really pence out for you?
Chris Eckhart
We try to keep the cost, the input cost down on them
where they are, you know, around $25-30 an acre in terms of seed, as long as we have our seed right, right? Or seed rate, right? It, you know, at $20-30 an acre. And then of course, we’re taking that ground out of production for an entire year. And then, you know, putting the winter wheat crop back in next year. But what we’re seeing in terms of yield increase on that after that year, one, we’re not dealing with the weeds as much. We’ve had cover crops, we don’t have as much weed pressure the following years. And I say years because what we’ve seen on fields where we’ve done a cover crop, I mean, we’re seeing the benefits now three, four, five years after doing the cover crop. So, what does that translate to in terms of, you know, a better yield?
Five, ten, fifteen percent, you know, at least, where we had some winter wheat last year on a part of the field where, you know, it was a section, there was not section like 640 acres, but I’m talking about a section of an acre field that had the cover crop versus what didn’t. It was yielding, oh, what were the numbers? I’ll probably, I’m gonna goof this up. One was, there was a spring wheat crop, but it was 40 bushels where the cover crop wasn’t and 55 where the cover crop was. So 15 bushels. And so, you know, if we had had the cover crop or not had the cover crop in there, there’s a whole year where we could have had profit on there. But on that year, you know, last year where the wheat was like, you know, $10 a bushel, you’re talking a hundred to $150 an acre difference on that. So I feel like that more than covered the cost of the cover crop seed and the rent on the ground for that year, and we have healthier crops. Did it offset taking that field out of production that year? Maybe not, you know, for what we would have got, you know, a return on that, but overall, I think that it does. And I see healthier crops after doing the cover crops. It just gives it a whole year to rejuvenate and try and get some weeds under control, specifically grassy weeds. Cause that’s our, you know, wheat still our bread and butter here. Winter wheat is our best way to build carbon in the soil too with the straw content. I know that we definitely, you know, after implementing canola, canola has been a great, it’s been a great crop for us, but I think that we’ve definitely burned up some of our, our carbon, you know, it’s just, it’s a way lower carbon to nitrogen ratio. And so going back to heavier wheat crops, wheat, barley, that kind of thing. We want to do more of that to build up our, our same to your soils long-term.
Carol McFarland
Have you tried compost tea?
Chris Eckhart
Yes, we’ve tried compost tea.
We’re having, we’re having some success with compost teas. So I will, I’m not going to totally get into this stuff, but I will say that, you know, David Johnson’s talk on bacteria, or fungal to bacteria ratios in the soil matter. And we’ve had some good results so far, but I, that is definitely one of those things where the more that I know, the more that I don’t know going forward because I’ve, it is, you get into bio, biology, you know, like the mycorrhizal fungi stuff. That’s, that’s easy. The bugs in the jug is easy. You can start getting into the weeds pretty deep on the biological stuff. You get into like the Korean natural farming stuff and culturing things from your area because it’s better for your local environment. And I don’t discredit any of it.
Carol McFarland
There’s definitely some research questions around compost tea with some of our collaborators that we’ve been thinking about.
Chris Eckhart
It can go wrong. It can definitely go wrong. And so I think there’s some big differences. I’ll say this. We have done compost tea and had good luck with compost tea. I think that if people are gonna experiment stuff, experiment with compost extract over the teas first, like you can get great results from brewing the teas. And I use air quotes for brewing the teas, but just doing the extracts are good because like timeframe matters, the product that you’re using, how you’re feeding the tea matters, the extract, you don’t feed it. You just extract it, put it on, but know what you’re putting on and know what’s in it and know the difference between anaerobic and aerobic. There’s definitely some things there where you can create a pretty toxic mix if you want to.
Carol McFarland
There’s a lot of questions, I think, in that space. Maybe we’ll get a chance to answer some of them from the research space too. But all right, well, what’s your biggest barrier to trying new things on your farm?
Chris Eckhart
I think that piece of gray matter between my ears, I think that my own self is kind of one of the biggest barriers to trying new things on our farm because you’re trying to figure out how to implement, how can you make it work on your operation, right? And then eventually you just run into, eventually the work has to get done and you have to cover the ground and get on with what it is you got to do. And so time, time is one of those things, time and knowledge. And I only have so much time to absorb enough knowledge to implement what I want to implement. But I do believe that there’s always a better way to do things. And so we’re always intrigued and willing to learn new ways of doing things for sure.
Carol McFarland
Why do you think some farmers don’t experiment more often?
Chris Eckhart
Because they want to go fishing. I want to go fishing. I haven’t gone fishing enough. Like it’s so easy to do the old thing. Like, I mean, if I could just go back to, chem follow and half my field is winter wheat and the other half is just chem follow and I cover it with my sprayer three or four times a year, it would be so much easier, so much easier. But like, I don’t know. I’ve gone down this other rabbit hole and I can’t go back now.
Carol McFarland
Well you have critters too, don’t you?
Chris Eckhart
No, well it just, well, so the neighbor’s gonna run their cattle and stuff on it. But yeah, I don’t have, we had had sheep at one point and I probably want to bring in sheep again. I think the sheep were really fun. We had a good time with the sheep.
Carol McFarland
Nice. Did you say you were doing a little bit of feed marketing as well?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, so we’re just working with a local mill and then selling our product to them and then they’re distributing out from there but they’re wanting to source product locally and we’ve been supplying them they’re doing well. I mean, it’s a tough business for them to go into, especially with as high as the crop prices have been and so they’re battling against that, trying to have to buy a product high and then by the time they got to market it, then the price is low. And so they’re fighting that and when they’re selling to people that are raising animals, a lot of times people that are raising animals, they’re trying to buy the cheapest stuff they can. They have their own challenges for sure.
Carol McFarland
Of the trials that you’ve experimented with, what’s had the biggest impact on your farm?
Chris Eckhart
Again, Carol, I don’t wanna sound like a broken record on this but if I could just get farmers to experiment with, mycorrhizal fungi, like find a brand and supplier that works for you, try a few different ones and see what works because that’s what we did and it’s just so easy to, once you figure out how to get it on, get the right ratios, just learn about it a little bit and what it can do in the soil, its ability to access phos in the ground. I would say that most farmers probably have enough phos tied up in their soil that they wouldn’t have to put on phos for the next few years at least. I don’t wanna make any outrageous claims on this but the mycorrhizal fungi will go and access that phos for them and to where they’re not gonna be putting more salt-based phosphorus into their soils and phos is expensive to you. If they could just cut their phos application, cut it in half, I don’t know, try some different things, see what happens out there and experiment with mycorrhizal fungi, learn about what mycorhizzal fungi does, what it can do not just to access fertilizer now and then make your crop more sustainable when it’s not as wet out, those little high-fade, the way they can go and access nutrients that the plant roots can’t get to, they also build organic matter in the soil. So that’s, I think, something that all of our soils could benefit from is building that organic matter long-term in their soil.
Carol McFarland
Absolutely, again, no argument over here.
Chris Eckhart
Okay.
Carol McFarland
No, that’s great. Do you have a favorite inoculum that you like?
Chris Eckhart
There is a product I like, and disclaimer on that, there wasn’t a lot of people in our area that there wasn’t anybody that sold those products. And so I became a distributor in our area. If somebody wants to seek me out and ask me what I use, that’s great, they can do that. But I want them to figure out also, products that they want, if they want to figure out something that’s fantastic for them, that’s a good thing for them to do. But it really come down to, I don’t have enough time to try every product. And so I would like other farmers to try other products out there and find something great too, because I know that there are so many products out there. It was a handful that I tried, about four or five different ones, and I found one that was consistent, and it gave me the results I want long-term. So we’ve stuck with them now, but I don’t have time to try more products now at this point. We’re moving on to try another stuff now to increase soil health too, so.
Carol McFarland
That sounds like a good plan.
Chris Eckhart
But that was simple. It was the most simple product, and it stayed on shelf good, and it was easy to put on the wheat.
Carol McFarland
So in that vein, what research questions would you like to see answered at the land-grant university level, and how do we best share those results?
Chris Eckhart
Well, that’s a great segue, because with the mycorrhizal product, like I said, being a distributor for that one is great. Would I switch if something better came along? Absolutely. And so I would like to see land-grant universities do mycorrhizal trials. Would be something fantastic to see go on, especially a wheat-based land-grant university, because I know how well wheat works with mycorrhizae. I think that the farmers themselves could benefit a lot from that type of research, especially because there’s so much to biology. We don’t have enough time ourselves to experiment with all this different stuff, but if the universities could do some of it and help us with that, because the universities know how to do real research. We’re generalists. We have a hard time doing real, reduction-based, science-based research.
Carol McFarland
Is it the mycorrhizae versus all the other factors and generally comparing it, if it is gonna be consistent and likely to work across various fields in the region in various years?
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, it works great in Colorado. How’s it work here? Because there’s products that are sold all across the United States and manufactured in different places, but what’s the best mycorrhizal strain for our area? Yeah, I think that matters.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. All right, Chris, do you have kids?
Chris Eckhart
I do have kids. I have four girls.
Carol McFarland
Do they like to farm?
Chris Eckhart
They do. Yeah, they do like to farm. They love spending time out on the tractor and being out in the field and seeing the plants and all that, so, yeah.
Carol McFarland
Do you think they’ll farm?
Chris Eckhart
I hope so. Yeah. I hope so.
Carol McFarland
Do you think things will be different on your farm and in the ag space when it’s their turn?
Chris Eckhart
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I hope that it’s a positive environment. I hope that people learn to talk more and have more of these conversations and not be so polarized on, you know, their ideas of how farming should be, so.
Carol McFarland
Great. Well, we have one of your girls here with us right now, don’t we?
Chris Eckhart
We do.
Carol McFarland
I feel like we were talking a little bit earlier. Do you, first of all, do you consent to her voice being heard on the podcast today?
Chris Eckhart
I do.
Carol McFarland
As her parent?
Chris Eckhart
I do.
Carol McFarland
Okay, and legal guardian and all of that?
Chris Eckhart
Yep, yep.
Carol McFarland
Okay. We were talking a little bit about farming and you had a question for her.
Chris Eckhart
So, Eva, in your opinion, what do you like better? Do you like farming with like tractors and machines or do you like farming with animals more?
Eva Eckhart
I think I like farming with tractors more. Yeah. Just because they smell a lot better and you can go on a vacation and you don’t have to worry about if they have enough food or water.
Carol McFarland
Okay. That’s great. I think that’s probably a shared sentiment among a lot of farmers. Now, your sister had a little bit of a different perspective when we were having that conversation earlier.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, Charlotte definitely enjoys the animal aspect. The fact that they have babies and they’re making noise and all of that. So, yeah.
Carol McFarland
Eva, do you like the cover crops?
Eva Eckhart
I do. I like going out and collecting all the sunflowers and then we like to eat the radishes. So, that’s really fun.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. Are you gonna come back to the farm?
Eva Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Or just never leave?
Eva Eckhart
Probably come back.
Carol McFarland
That’s a good plan. Awesome. Well, maybe I’ll come back. Hopefully I’ll be back in like 20 years and be like, what are you trying on the farm? Hopefully you keep the legacy going.
Eva Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing today.
Eva Eckhart
Yeah, thank you.
Carol McFarland
And for being on the podcast.
Eva Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
And big thanks to your dad for sharing all of his learning and journey. Oh, we’ve got Charlotte here.
Chris Eckhart
Charlotte. Hey, Charlotte. So, what do you think? You like farming better with tractors or animals?
Charlotte Eckhart
Animals.
Chris Eckhart
What do you like about the animals?
Charlotte Eckhart
There’s baby sheep and they’re so fluffy.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah, so we did have sheep at one point and we might be getting sheep back on our farm again. So.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. Do you think you’re gonna come back and be a farmer?
Charlotte Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Definitely?
Charlotte Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Awesome.
Chris Eckhart
Okay, Allison, so I’m going to ask you now: would you rather farm crops with tractors or pastures with animals?
Allison Eckhart
Tractors with crops.
Chris Eckhart
Really? Okay. Alright.
Carol McFarland
Why?
Chris Eckhart
Why’s that?
Allison Eckhart
‘Cause I like riding in tractors and I like to drive combines when it’s, like, harvest.
Chris Eckhart
Alright!
Carol McFarland
Do you like to work on tractors?
Allison Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah? Do you like the wrench and the grease and all that?
Allison Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah? Awesome.
Allison Eckhart
Except for when they break down.
Carol McFarland
That’s true. Do you think you’re going to come back and farm when you’re a grown up?
Allison Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah? Awesome. Good luck.
Chris Eckhart
Okay, Penny, I’m going to ask you now: do you like tractors better or animals better?
Penny Eckhart
Animals.
Chris Eckhart
What do you like better about animals?
Penny Eckhart
Horses.
Chris Eckhart
Oh, you like horses? Okay. So you want to be a cowgirl?
Penny Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Awesome, well, we have our answers. Thanks for sharing! We’ll look forward to some future farmers.
So, you really are all farming together, aren’t you?
Chris Eckhart
For the most part, yeah.
Carol McFarland
It’s a good place to be.
Chris Eckhart
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. Well, thank you all for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate hearing from some of your experience and lessons learned and.
Chris Eckhart
Carol, thanks for what you do. This has been a great experience and getting to hear everybody else’s experience that they have too, that’s how we really learn and keep things moving forward. So, thank you for taking the time to do this.
Carol McFarland
I appreciate it. It’s all about you guys. Thank you so much.