In this episode we talk with Derek Schafer about farming between Lind and Ritzville, just around
the corner from the Lind Research Station where their farm has a long history of working in
partnership with researchers to advance the regional cropping system. He talks about his
experience growing fall seeded peas and canola in rotation with wheat, their farm’s transition to
no-till, and managing weeds like Russian Thistle with rotation and spot spray technology.
Carol McFarland
We’re on the Schaeffer farm and ranch right here in between Lind and Ritzville with Mr. Derek Schafer. Thank you so much for having me out and we’re really looking forward to the conversation today.
Derek Schafer
Thanks for coming out.
Carol McFarland
Would you share a little bit more about yourself, your farm, who you farm with?
Defek Schafer
Sure, sure. I’m the fifth generation here, like so many others that came on the wagon train in the late 1800s, and I farm with my wife, Susan, and our two children who are both in college now, and then also my parents are still involved in the operation. So it’s a pretty small family farm, but we sure are blessed to be out here.
Carol McFarland
Oh, that’s great. you are right out here in between Lind and Ritzville right around the corner from the dryland research station with WSU and there’s some pretty fun farming conditions out here from what I understand. Do you want to talk a little more about those?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, fun, I don’t know. That’s sort of a relative statement I guess depending on the year. It’s challenging, although farming is challenging anywhere you are in the world. We have our own unique challenges. It really is nice to have that Lind station so close to us and have collaborated with the researchers down there on many projects over the years. We’ve really benefited, I think we’ve benefited probably more than maybe the research they’ve gotten out of it but it’s been really fun but it is very dry here.
Carol McFarland
Do you want to talk a little bit more about that like your soil, your standard crop rotation and. of course. how much rain you get, usually?
Derek Schafer
We’re right in between Lind and Ritzville and I think the Lind 40 year average is around nine and a half inches of rain a year and Ritzville is actually and a half so in that mile range you pick up two inches of rainfall.
Some of it has to do with moving further away from the range out of the Cascade Mountains and some of it also has to do with elevation. Ritzville’s a little higher in elevation and it seemed to catch a little more rain up there. That’s a highly significant difference, you know, and we see that difference across our farm as we farm some land towards Lind and some closer to Ritzville and you can really see that that’s a big difference.
Carol McFarland
Well, I’m looking forward to hearing a little bit more in this conversation about, you know, how your management goals and the things you try might look different from field to field across such a dramatic gradient. How about your soil? What is that looking like out here aside from being dry most of the time unfortunately?
Derek Schafer
Yeah we have really nice soil. It’s nice, most of it’s a Ritzville silt loam. Really great soils, really productive, just add water and that seems to be the missing component most years.
Carol McFarland
Yeah there’s always, I think that’s the Liebig’s law of the minimum. I think that’s the minimum more often than not out here. Would you describe, so what experiments and trials do you have going on on the farm this year and in recent years or coming up next year?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, so, this year actually we have three different varieties of yellow peas in the same field. One is a variety that’s been out for a while, one is a newer variety that Rebecca McGee released I think last year, and then another one is a new variety from Kurt Braunwurst at Pro Gene. And so we have all three of those and so everybody’s kind of interested in seeing how they come up and how they grow, and of course what the yield is like, but we’re watching that closely and peas are a very new crop out here. I think we’re in our seventh crop year with them, but they are very new, and it’s really been exciting to actually have a crop to rotate to because we have a lot of different varieties of peas that we can rotate to besides wheat.
Carol McFarland
That’s great, well, and can you clarify just whether those are winter or spring peas?
Derek Schafer
They are fall seeded yellow peas.
Carol McFarland
Awesome.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, there have been some trials with- and, actually some production of fall seeded green peas, and they’re having some success with that as well so it’s just kind of uncharted but the rotational benefits are really great and so we’re willing to you know sort of dive into it and figure it out as we go because we’re seeing positive results.
Carol McFarland
Do you want to talk a little bit more about those? I know you know one of the things everybody kind of talks about when incorporating pulses into the rotations. Maybe you can cut back a little bit on your nitrogen but what else are you kind of seeing as you’re experimenting with the peas?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, so we are in a traditional wheat fallow area like you know the other three and a half million acres that are in that central Oregon through central Washington area. Traditional deep furrow country. Fall seeded crops seem to be the best. We’ve tried continuous spring crops and have not had a lot of success with that. Fall seeded crops are really…really the bread and butter out here, and so, when you know we came across the fall seeded peas, we thought, hey maybe this is something we can try. We’re not seeing a lot of benefit or a lot of gain in nitrogen fixation in the soil, or increased nitrogen levels, but what we are seeing is that by having a broadleaf crop, canola is another one that we have enjoyed trying out here, but by having a broadleaf crop you can mix up the chemistries and you can really clean up the grassy weed issues that are a real problem in this you know continuous wheat rotation.
Carol McFarland
So I got to ask, though, how are the peas, how do those stand up against the Russian Thistle?
Derek Schafer
If you get a good stand, it’s actually pretty good. I think the biggest weed pressure we would face is mustards in the spring. Yeah, and there we do have some chemistry we can use on the peas. I’m hoping there’s some more innovation there or some more chemistries that maybe can come out of the soybean world that may work for peas out here, too, but so far some of those products aren’t labeled for peas.
Carol McFarland
Just driving around this country you definitely see those thistles in the field a fair bit.
Derek Schafer
Yeah they’re a big challenge, they’re a big challenge in our fallow side of the year too you know so that’s something we really have to be mindful of.
Carol McFarland
Maybe we should come back to some things you’ve tried there. I do first have to ask, with your peas as you’ve been trying, has there been any new equipment learning or you know what are some of the things that you’ve been playing with our seeding day? It sounds like you’ve got a few years in the peas.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, and actually the first year that we planted the fall seeded peas it was really dry. I think it was the fall of 2015, and Dr. Schillinger was interested in what we were doing so I was talking to him about it and he helped me gain some confidence to say okay, let’s try a field of these. We seeded them and shortly after, we seeded them really deep. Because it was dry, our drill would go deep, he said, don’t worry about putting them deep. We seeded them really deep. They probably had seven inches to emerge and then shortly after we got a half inch of rainfall which would be the end of any winter wheat planted at you know five inches deep. I mean that’s it, it’s going to crust it won’t come up so I called Dr. Schillinger and I said, “What do I do with these peas?” I said they got rained on, there’s a huge crust on top. He said do not touch them, don’t touch them, they’ll be fine, lo and behold they’re very slow, but they came out, emerged great and had a very nice crop that first year.
Carol McFarland
Oh that’s great yeah they have some push in that I mean that big seed. I think it really helps them get- it’s definitely different than canola. Yeah, so, actually from the equipment side I know being out here it was wonderful when you hosted the canola shop talk this summer. One of the things that you were talking about was how to seed canola in this deep furrow country and you were talking about your drill, you had a cool little video that you showed. Is that your favorite drill for peas as well?
Derek Schafer
Sure, you know, one of the challenges for us getting into direct seed was how are we going to seed these acres because there there wasn’t a lot of well there was basically no equipment designed for deep furrow direct seeding, you know, no till deep furrow, it’s like no one in the world does that, who would do that? And so, the major equipment manufacturers just didn’t build equipment for that, so we built some of our own equipment for a few years, tried a few things, and after a few years of that, we actually ended up working collaborating with AgPro on sort of an initial design, and then they’ve run with that from there, and so they’re actually building a deep furrow no-till drill that’s very suited for our area and does a nice job.
We can seed shallow with it for canola which- the canola, we don’t like to try to make the canola come more than about three inches, that’s sort of, you know, kind of our max depth I guess we prefer to be at, but the peas you can seed you know as deep as the drill will go so AgPro was able to build that into the design to seed both shallow and really deep and so if you can do that then you can also seed wheat with it.
Carol McFarland
Now it’s amazing just from the applied farming standpoint, right? We can talk a lot about soil science principles and that sort of thing, but it is really amazing how much just that that one piece of equipment can make such a big difference in how it goes to try things, and if you’re diversifying your cropping system, or if you’re wanting to make a transition into less disturbance.
So, you did mention that you transitioned into no-till, is that kind of in the recent past?
Derek Schafer
Yeah I think 106 around 2016 we had been playing with it for a few years on a small amount of acreage, and then 2016-17 we kind of went all in once we felt like, okay there’s- we have some, you know, equipment now that we can get down deep to moisture, make a furrow and, you know, get plant establishment because one of the things we didn’t want to do was go away from what the things that we knew were successful, and that would be seeding dates and, you know, fall seeded crops and so we weren’t really willing to say, okay we’re so passionate about direct seeding that, you know, we’re going to throw out everything that’s agronomic, you know, that we know from history like, you know, we know the ideal seeding window and so we wanted to try to be able to still get our crops established in that ideal time frame you mentioned.
Carol McFarland
So, you mentioned trying direct seed on the smaller portion of your farm to get your feet under you and learn a little bit about that and then you scaled up I’d love to hear a bit more about that process and if you could go back to talk to yourself the first year that you did direct seed what would you tell yourself to give yourself kind of a leg up and and if that was the right way to do that process?
Derek Schafer
Well, I mean, I never thought it would work, you know, I mean, we were- we were really good at tillage, I mean, we were good farmers at eight passes across the field to get a nice stand of wheat, and I tell you what, it’s very difficult to move away from something that you’re pretty good at doing to something that’s unknown, um, especially those first years when, you know, you maybe the neighbor across the fence has a really nice stand of wheat, and you’re just out there seeding and trying to figure out, how am I going to get this wheat to grow with this drill that’s unproven and I’ve still got to make modifications to? So, that’s a really big challenge. It was pretty scary but also the most exciting thing we’ve ever done, that along with introducing crop rotation into this traditional wheat area, those have been the things that have been, kind of, kept us looking forward.
Carol McFarland
You gotta keep it interesting. And I know in past episodes talking now we’ve been doing the podcast we’ve got a few episodes under our belt, and I think about the transition to direct seed and how it looks to the neighbors when you’re driving past and you see your neighbor’s field and you can see that nice, all that green coming up versus when it’s in the direct seed furrows, it’s a little bit- it looks different across the field, and we’re so conditioned to having it look this way and not this way and and so there’s just a little bit of retraining in in your brain.
Derek Schafer
There’s a lot of retraining, and it really is a shift from, you know, back when I first came back to the farm in 1998 and our mindset was, you know, that clean smooth summer fallow looked really good and, you know, trashy summer fallow was not good. We were getting, you know, the mindset was, well we’re gonna have disease, we’re not gonna be able to seed because we’re gonna plug the drill, and then moving to, I mean, for a few years we ran a stripper header and, oh my gosh, talk about something that looks, you know, a little abnormal, I mean, the fallow year everything looks, you know, rough and it’s hard, like you said, it’s hard to see the wheat coming up in the furrows and, um, but it’s a real big change and, you know, it’s a big change and it’s a real mindset shift to go across now and look at the the land that is really protected by all that straw that’s still anchored to the ground, it’s protecting the soil. We don’t have dust storms around the area as much, the water doesn’t run out of the fields, but it’s a real mental shift and that’s probably I mean, the expense of the equipment and changing all that is a real challenge, but I would say the the mental challenge of being okay with the different look is probably just as significant.
Carol McFarland
I believe that! What did that look like? Can you talk a bit more about that?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, I think it’s really hard on a small scale because oftentimes you, you know, I think the mindset as well we’ll choose a field that is out of the way, it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind, it’s not my best quality soil, and so maybe we don’t really give it as good a shot as we should. As we started out, you know, from that sort of initial trial we started adding more acres, and it was like that this is, you know, we have more confidence in it we can make it work and then it becomes really difficult to sort of have two completely different systems from a timing perspective. It’s like, well I need to be running the sprayer and it’s like, oh well I need to be rod weeding over in these fields and so it’s sort of hard to be caught in the middle and I think once we decided, okay we’re going to go all in we’re going to sell our tillage equipment, then there was kind of like no looking back and and you’re just moving forward and it was actually still a challenge but easier from a planning perspective to sort of do the operations at the right time of the year.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, what, I guess, what convinced you, you know, after trying it, you know, one of my questions here is, you know, how do you decide when something you’re trying is going to work on a larger scale versus, you know, maybe this is something that isn’t going to work out or maybe we need to try it differently?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, so, I mean, our concern over soil loss was ranked right up there towards the top, I mean this, the blowing dust, the water erosion, ditches if the- if it rained during the middle of summer down the the rod weeder tracks you’d have to go fix, it was just like kind of gut-wrenching to see your soil run away, so that, I mean, that was a big consideration but then, you know, once we realized, okay we can make this work, we can we have the equipment that we can, we can do it, we have a direct seed deep furrow drill, then we really felt like the way we were going to make it work here was to add crop rotation so whether that be peas or canola depending on the seeding conditions at the, you know, when we set out to do that at the beginning of the seeding season if there’s enough moisture for canola, we’ll see canola if we- if there’s not we’ll see peas, but either way we’re going to put a broadleaf crop in there, and then the other thing that made it work was adding a spot sprayer to that chem fallow rotation, because, yeah, that’s a Weed-It or now we have a John Deere Cian spray. Any of them are, you know, there’s different ones out there but any of the spot spray technology where you can save, you know, upwards of easily upwards of 80% on an application. That really made it work. It was like okay, we can’t go across all these fields with a full broadcast application especially late in the summer when those Russian thistles that you mentioned are [getting] really difficult to kill. They’re pretty easy to kill when they’re tiny and it’s- and that the conditions are good, but as it gets hot and dry they’re very difficult to kill, and so with a spot sprayer we can manage those a lot better.
Carol McFarland
I actually heard Dr. Burke was just on the Wheat Beat talking about the Russian thistle management so, you know, if you’re in the business of listening to podcasts, that…he was talking about that when they were smaller and, yeah, there definitely that’s the time to get them.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, for sure, for sure that was an early mistake of ours was not wanting to go across the field too many times so we’d wait a little longer thinking, well maybe a few more will pop up and we’ll get, you know, the second flush, but if you wait too long and they’re too big then you really have a problem.
Carol McFarland
So I gotta ask now, we’ve been talking a little bit about more precision weed management and over the last couple episodes that we’ve had some recent ones, how long have you had that technology on your farm?
Derek Schafer
So, I think we are in maybe our…about our seventh year of, I mean, we had this spot sprayer right away, we could see the benefit of it, so we had one of the- we had the first Weed-It. There was a weed seeker made by tremble and then the Weed-It is a similar concept that’s made in the Netherlands and, actually, Adam Hutton had a distributorship for weed in Australia, he sort of saw thought that there would be a possibility to make it work here in the United States. He came over from Australia and was touring around, and we bought in and put the first one together and sort of haven’t looked back since then.
Carol McFarland
Oh, that’s great. So, what are some of the things so, you know, that sounds like another thing you’ve been trying on your farm and maybe working to figure out how to best use it as a tool in your system. Are there some things again that if you were to look back and, you know, talk to yourself when you were first using it, what have you learned in the intervening time that you would maybe share to shorten that learning curve?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, I mean, several things about the spot spraying, you know, initially we wanted to use it really early in the season and weeds were really so small and they’re so easy to kill that it really doesn’t take much chemical to kill them, so realizing that we were missing weeds because some of them weren’t emerged yet, it was just too early. We now make- we plan on two broadcast applications before we start using the weed, so, because even that second broadcast application the weeds are, you know, small, easy to kill, and the stuff that’s microscopic in size, we still get a kill on that, so that delays our first spot spray application, and then from there it’s, you know, once again not waiting too long, going out there a little earlier than you think, you might have to, even though you might have to make another pass late, you know, sooner across the field. It’s- they’re just easier to kill, and when you’re- when you’re not broadcast spraying and you’re not spraying chemical over all the acres, you know, really it’s just the time to run the sprayer across those fields.
Carol McFarland
Sure, and I guess I’ve heard of that, maybe happens a little bit more frequently with the spot spraying, but also that you have maybe more tools in your toolbox, have you been leveraging maybe different kinds of chemistry than you would use for a broadcast application?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, absolutely, different chemistry higher rates more water, you know, I mean you don’t have to fill as often so, I mean you can instead of filling, you know, six or eight times a day for the sprayer you might only fill once a day, and so, knowing realizing that we have upped the amount of water so that we’re getting better coverage and higher rates, so sort of doing both, and we’ve had really really good luck doing that.
Carol McFarland
So, a recent episode with Jesse Brunner, who talked about nozzle selection, are you a bit of a nozzle connoisseur, or have you- have you been playing around with those at all?
Derek Schafer
A little bit! I think with this related to the spot spray, we just feel like flooding them is the best and so we’re we’re sort of back to just the flat fan spray with lots of water, so droplet size is big because as you move up in nozzle size, the droplet size and drift isn’t as big of a concern as it is with a real small orifice size.
Carol McFarland
I imagine too because you’re so dry out here that you don’t want to have too much of a mist or it will just evaporate.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, yeah, especially when it’s hot.
Carol McFarland
Where do you go to learn more about a new practice before you try it?
Derek Schafer
I attend a lot of meetings, you know, the the direct seed conference is great, but there’s a lot of interaction just in conversation among farmers and neighbors and texting and phone calls and winter meetings, the sidebar conversations, as you well know are some of the biggest benefit of of going to some of those conferences, the presenters are, you know, usually have wonderful information but then you’ll be out in the hallway chatting with a neighbor, hey have you tried this, have you tried that, so some social stuff, you know, I mean, there’s groups on social media that you can follow, and things I don’t do a lot of that, but yeah I think it’s just the interaction with other people who are trying new things and understanding that, you know, we each all farm in our our own sort of unique environment. What works on my farm may not work on even my neighbor’s farm, but there’s lessons to be learned. You can glean information from what someone else is trying.
Carol McFarland
That’s part of what we’re hoping to do in this space too, right? And thanks for hosting the canola stop and talk out in this area this summer, that was such a fun conversation to be here in your shop and just hearing some real canola legends swapping stories was a pretty great experience.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, yeah, we’re really pretty new to the canola, but it’s been so fun. It’s so fun to see a tiny little seed that, you know, is smaller than a poppy seed and have it become a plant that’s, you know, six or seven feet tall at harvest time. It’s amazing of course then the bright yellow color during flowering is really beautiful to see, and so different from what we’re used to seeing out here, and then, I mean the main reason that we grow canola and peas is once again for that crop rotation, the break in the disease cycle, and the ability to target grassy weeds with a different chemistry that, you know, a lot of the chemistries that we have for wheat targeting grassy weeds in wheat crops just are not that effective anymore. We’ve overused them, and so they’re wearing out and there’s not a lot of new ones coming down the road.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, I’ve heard that. [Are] there other rotational benefits you see? Because it sounds like canola is really making people some money but at the same time, you know, it seems like a lot of the crop rotation is still about: how do we grow really great wheat because this is still fundamentally wheat country, and so can you talk a little bit about rotational benefits?
Derek Schafer
Oh my gosh, it’s amazing, I mean, it’s amazing and, yeah, we’re actually trying to put our farm into a rotation crop every year and a broadleaf crop and we’re- after you do that for a few years you really start to see the benefits of it and you have clean wheat crops, you know, higher yields for the most part. I think the higher yields come from possibly a break in the disease cycle but also you don’t have the weed pressure, you don’t have those grassy weeds out there, I think we underestimate how much those can reduce our yields even if we, you know, can spray something on them to sort of keep them under the canopy, I think they still, you know, the cheatgrass and coatgrass it still reduces your yield, I think, more than than we realize and so, I mean, we grew the peas when they were six cents a pound, you know, since then they’re much better priced and they’re actually economic to grow and when when we have the wheat price what it is today, you know, six dollars locally, you know, peas compete really nicely with wheat especially if, you know, as I talked about before, if you only have to seed the peas once and this year we were facing dry conditions seeding the wheat, some of it got rained on, we had to seed again. Pea seeds [are] expensive, it’s not cheap, but if you only have to seed it once versus seeding wheat twice to get a crop, you know, there’s one more thing in it, and it also has broken up the timing on both seeding and harvesting, so the canola, we feel pretty comfortable. Anything, any date after August 10th, if we get a rain shower or conditions allow for us to seed canola, we’ll go ahead and start seeding canola, then we’ll start seeding our peas a week of when we would normally start a week ahead of when we’ve been normally start seeding wheat so that, you know, broadens that timeline a little bit, spreads that out, and then the peas are usually ready to harvest 10 days before the wheat crop canola can be really variable, depending on the year, sometimes it’s not ready until after your wheat is, but the peas are pretty reliably 10 days ahead of your wheat.
Carol McFarland
To circle back, do you need any special equipment to harvest or plant peas?
Derek Schafer
Not really. If you have a deep furrow drill, you know, for out here I mean because, you know, you need to be able to see them deep, you need to see them deep into moisture. No, I mean, you could do it in traditional fallow, you could do it in direct seed, you don’t really need any special equipment.
Carol McFarland
Even for the harvest on the peas?
Derek Schafer
For harvest you are, you know, the peas are pretty close to the ground so having a header that, you know, maybe it has a flex cutter bar or it’s a hinged draper like a McDonough or the newer John Deere headers that allow you to cut pretty close to the ground, that’s- that is helpful. I think you could harvest them with a rigid header if it wasn’t too wide.
Carol McFarland
Are there things that you do on your farm where you manage toward trying to create more consistency or evenness around your yield?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, I think it’s back to the initial comment about rainfall here. I mean, it really is our most limiting factor but, you know, we just try to put ourselves in a position to be successful if the rain comes and I think, you know, overall our yields are moving up, I mean, genetics on the crops are better we eat with canola peas everything’s better. There’s been improvements, you know, consistently over the years on the genetics of the crops we grow, but our yields, I feel like have actually gone up now that we’ve sort of got a handle on how to seed in this direct seed system, and I think we probably have more moisture in our ground than when we were tilling. All in all, I think it can get in the ground in conditions that it can’t get in the ground in a fallow situation when the ground freezes really hard, you know, we’ve got some capillaries that, you know, the snow melt and stuff can get into the ground, and maybe we don’t maybe it doesn’t run off I think some of the shading from the residue on top helps keep the ground cooler and all in all we, you know, we feel like our yields are as good or better than when we were in the fallow system.
Carol McFarland
Nice. My soil science brain thinks about the organic matter and especially in such a dry climate that might be really helpful in in terms of, you know, helping to buffer some of the worst of the conditions you all out here don’t have quite as much of the highly variable terrain of the kind of poor Palouse region. But, you know, looking at some of those fields and you look across the landscape, you know, there is a lot of variation in the soil condition so i’m wondering how that looks out here for you.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, it’s interesting, some of the, I would say the most sensitive areas of field, some of the south slopes that were, you know, really tough to grow a crop on in the tillage system seem to have improved quicker than what we would consider the better soils, the north slopes, and better soil areas. It’s really interesting, and oftentimes during seeding those areas that were the toughest in the tillage system to get a wheat stand on are the easiest for here. It’s really been something to watch.
Carol McFarland
I bet it has been. You know, when you’re talking about trying starting to try the no-till you said, you know, you put it in your kind of worse conditions for us in the backfield so nobody could watch it so as you’re trying things, you know, as now, you know, some of the things you’re trying on your farm, where do you put that? Has that changed, and when you do try it, how are you representing what kind of field conditions are you representing, and how do you make sure that it is- how do you make sure that it is sounds like you repeat year after year to get a good understanding of what it’ll do with that kind of variation, you want to just talk a bit more about your process there?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, I think a lot of it too is, you know, as you overcome that worry and fear about, oh my gosh , what are people going to think, what are my landowners going to think, what are my neighbors going to think, and you realize that, okay we’re on the right track, we’re protecting a valuable resource out here, and we’re still growing a crop and, you know, making some money doing it, once you realize that’s all possible then the fear of, you know, what people might think and they see your field has a lot of residue on it, and it looks maybe ugly to them, that goes away, you just don’t worry about that, we’re just focused on, you know, trying to do the best job we can here. I think there is some strength in numbers, I think it happens with a lot of things, you know, as maybe the first neighbor tries it, you know, they’re kind of out on their own and then pretty soon somebody else does it, and then your next neighbor says, oh my gosh, I see that’s working i’m going to try it too, and so it’s sort of a cluster effect, and I think we’ve had that out in our area. There’s definitely more direct seed acres out here than there is tilled fallow.
Carol McFarland
You have some fun neighbors out here in this country.
Derek Schafer
Some real innovators, actually. So I mean, we’re early adopters, I don’t know that we’re, you know, cutting edge, but we’re early adopters, if we feel like something will work then we’ll go ahead and try it.
Carol McFarland
You guys are an inspiration out here especially with how dry it is and, you know, I imagine that that makes trying things a bit of a different equation than it might somewhere else.
Derek Schafer
I think one of the biggest challenges has been that there was not seeding equipment produced by a major manufacturer that was available to move to a no-till system, and there still is not. Ag pro’s been wonderful but, you know, thank thank goodness somebody like that has stepped up to the plate, because for John Deere or case there’s just not enough acres out here for them to say, okay, we’re going to build a drill specific to farm, you know, three million acres, I mean, they want it to work, they want it to work all across the United States and in every country in the world if they’re going to do it, so thankfully all the tractors and combines, you know, are universal for every area, but as far as seeding equipment, yeah we sort of had to kind of go down that road on our own.
Carol McFarland
As you said, you guys are innovators, and it’s really inspiring. As we wrap up, I’d like to hear a little bit more, and you’ve spoken to this, a little bit more already, but how do you determine your return on investment on a new practice?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, I mean we’ll sit down and do an enterprise budget, you know, and compare the the peas to the wheat and the canola to those, but it’s not just the economics return on that crop, it’s about having a system in place, and even if we take a loss on growing peas, the system is so much better for having it as part of the rotation that we, you know, we know it’s sometimes it’s really hard to measure economically because yields vary so widely, it’s the way, I think, we really have to look at a much longer time frame, you know, maybe a 10 year horizon instead of a, you know, a one or two or four year horizon even and just say, okay we just see the benefits here, economic and soil health, and all the above, so a little bit hard to measure but, I think after you do it for a while, you just sort of have a sense like, oh my gosh, this is the right way to go.
Carol McFarland
Awesome, so what are the next things you’re trying?
Derek Schafer
Oh wow, I feel like we’ve tried so much, we’re just trying to sort of get better at the things we’ve already put into place. I think one thing we’re trying to get better at is our timing and to be as timely as possible with our operations as we’ve added more direct seed acres and added more acres to the farm. You’re going to come up against some constraint and direct seeding for us, anyway, it’s not as fast of an operation as when we were using the traditional tillage method and traditional deep furrow drills, because at that time, all we needed to do was seed. Now we’re seeding and fertilizing all at the same time and we’re pulling, you know, a shank through the ground for the first time of the year, so it pulls more like you’re chiseling than like, we’re then like you’re seeding with a traditional fallow deep furrow drill it pulls really hard, you know, it takes more time, so trying to figure out how to get enough hours of operation, you know, on those to still complete seeding in that ideal time window is ideal. Time window is, I think that’s some of the stuff we’re working through right now.
Carol McFarland
I’m just going to throw out another thank you for having me out during this time of year.
Derek Schafer
I know we’re at the end but, you know, It’s been a really challenging year, I think all across the region for people trying to deal with residue whether it’s tilled fallow or direct seed fallow and then, you know, in this specific area, the drought and the dry conditions some areas have received some nice rains, and they’re seeding into moisture but we’re seeding into really marginal conditions, and then received some rain in areas. That was a crusting rain and so wheat that, you know, should have come up so it’s been a real challenging year, but, you know, hopefully it’ll be a wet winter and a wet spring and we can make something out of this crop.
Carol McFarland
I really hope that for you too. I’m sorry to hear of the struggles.
Derek Schafer
Oh it’s, you know, we everyone deals with it, so everyone has their unique challenges on their own farms and, you know, we’re used to it and we just deal with it.
Carol McFarland
I don’t think it’d be farming otherwise, right? That’s why this part of the world has got some of the most awesome and resilient folks I know. So what’s something you’d like to try but maybe can’t because of some sort of limitation, whether that’s equipment or finances or just, you know, whatever that might be?
Derek Schafer
I feel like we’ve tried quite a bit and I feel really pretty good about the the things we’ve implemented, I love the crop rotation. I’ve told people the only thing I regret about the crop rotation is not having more acres of it. So we may push our comfort zone a little bit more on that and just continue to target the fields that have the worst grassy weed issues and try to put in more acres of peas and canola. I love the canola, I mean, it’s just, it’s an awesome crop, it’s really difficult to get established at the right time in the fall out here, so it’s sort of like, kind of think of it like an opportunity crop. If we have the opportunity, we’ll grow it, and so we just want to be geared up and be ready that, you know, shortly after harvest or even during harvest that if we get a significant rainfall we can just go out there and get that canola in the ground.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, [it] makes seed buying maybe a little tricky.
Derek Schafer
You kind of have to have it, you know, almost on hand and put it in the barn if you can’t seed it and save it for next year. So yeah, that’s a good challenge.
Carol McFarland
That’s a good way to adapt and overcome being around the corner with the Lind research station here. You’ve done a lot of work, I think, in collaboration with the research community here, and I know that’s greatly appreciated by WSU. I know you were a big part of getting Dr. Singh in place here at this station, as well as your past history so, what- do you want to maybe talk about a favorite project that you did with that, and also if you have other questions that you’d love to, you know, hit up the research community that are on your mind?
Derek Schafer
Sure, yeah, I know it’s just been wonderful. I am an Idaho Vandal, so, you know, I hate to mention that here, but Vandals and Cougars seem to cohabitate okay, so we’re doing fine. I just have so enjoyed that relationship with the researchers and staff at the Lind station over the years. Dr Schillinger and I worked together on a few projects on our farm, and I love the evolution of his thought about conservation farming out here. I was part of the undercutter project back when that was sort of the the latest greatest idea here. We did a lot of that trying to, you know, increase conservation on the soil and he was really mindful to change things at the right pace and not push new ideas too quickly on farmers. We’re, you know, we’re creatures of habit and we’re good at what we do, and we need research to support that, but at the same time sometimes we do need to be pushed a little, and I feel like the timing is right for Dr. Singh to be here and have such a great focus on soil health, and I don’t- it is maybe just a buzzword, but we’re seeing that we can, you know, improve soil health and still grow really nice crops, so I think we can do both, and I think he’s the right person at the right time, and we are really lucky to have that research station so close to home and, you know, to serve the farmers out here in this region who, you know, can’t benefit from some of the research directly in the high rainfall areas.
Carol McFarland
Oh, you said so much there, that was wonderful. So, I guess one of the questions that I’ve actually asked Dr. Singh, what is- what in your mind what does soil health look like out here in the Lind region on your farm?
Derek Schafer
Yeah, I think I’d be curious what their answer was. I’ve talked with Dr. Singh about that just a little bit, but it’s really hard to measure. But I can tell you when you walk across the soil of a field that’s been in direct seed for, you know, four or five crop years, it’s different. It’s different. You can tell it under your feet, you could close your eyes and walk across the field and tell the difference, you can dig in the ground and you can see the difference, you can see the root structure still in place. I think some of the positive changes are, you know, the residue on top but I think maybe more importantly is what’s happening underneath the surface with those the root structures that act as capillaries and keep the soil from fracturing into large soil clods when we take the drill through there, we’ve seen that. I will be the first to say I never thought it was possible. I did not believe there would be a change. I didn’t believe it, I was, you know, not on the no-till bandwagon, and I thought, oh that’s no way, but then you see it for yourself, and it is, it’s really fun to watch, so it’s been really rewarding to see that change.
Carol McFarland
It’s been so much fun talking with you today, Derek, I really appreciate everything you’ve shared about your experience, and your perspective on trying things on your farm, and making sure that as we’re thinking about these new technologies, like how does it work in this context for you, and what your processes are for that.
Derek Schafer
Well, I appreciate you coming out, we’ve got a lot to learn. I know that, and that’s- yeah, we all do, and that’s really the fun part, that’s what keeps us going, and so, you know, when you ask what are we trying next, I think it’s sort of right now for us, it’s maybe, sort of, just sit back and try to catch up on the learning with, you know, all the things we’ve implemented by changing- completely changing the going away from a tillage system and then adding these crop rotations, it’s like, okay we need to catch up a little bit, and just even catch up a little bit, and just even try to get better at those things.
Carol McFarland
Awesome, thanks again for having me out, is there anyone you would like to nominate to be on the On Farm Trials Podcast?
Derek Schafer
Let me give that some thought, I will get back to you on that.
Carol McFarland
I’ll look forward to it.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, but there are so many names I could come up with, but I will think about that and get back to you.
Carol McFarland
I’d like that very much. Thank you so much again, and you have a great rest of the season.
Derek Schafer
Yeah, thank you.