This episode of the On-Farm Trials podcast features Allen Druffel of Bar Star Farm in Colton, WA. Listen in to hear what’s cooking (or brewing) on his farm and countertop, along with his adventures in cover crops, and cows. In the interview Allen describes his fluid approach to management goals and the balance of soil health along with a sometimes challenging landscape in the commodity market. We also hear about the intergenerational success of the Vico peer network group for supporting cropping systems innovation among friends – and so much more!
Carol McFarland
Today, we’re with Mr. Allen Druffel of Bar Star Farm between Colton and Uniontown. Really excited to visit with you about your on-farm trials today, Allen. Welcome to the podcast.
Allen Druffel
Awesome. Thanks, Carol.
Carol McFarland
Would you share a little bit about yourself, your farm, and who you farm with?
Allen Druffel
Yeah. My wife and I live in Uniontown on the homestead. Our farm was homesteaded in eighteen seventy-six. Our house was built and finished in eighteen ninety-six. They lived in a four hundred square foot house until they had their fifth kid. And then they built the house that we live in today. So they were definitely tougher than we are. We farm pretty diverse rainfall, anywhere from twenty plus inches right there in the Uniontown, Colton area. And then we farm some down in Lewiston, Idaho in the eight to ten inch rainfall. So everything from wheat fallow to three year rotation.
Carol McFarland
Great. Thanks for sharing that. You got some pretty good terrain around here. Do you want to talk a little bit about your topography and your soils?
Allen Druffel
Yeah, it’s diverse. Everything, you know, we’re fifty miles from one end of our farm to the other. And so along with the different rains, we farm about every soil type there is. Some real tight clay where we’re here now just north of Colton up towards Bald Butte then we get towards the breaks of the Snake River and we’ve got some finer soils out there. Certain farms we struggle with pH more than others and then we’re you know it’s it is we have some of the steep true Palouse hills to some more of the level ground in the Tammany area.
Carol McFarland
Great. So earlier you promised that you would tell me a little bit more about your farm name. How did Bar Star Farm get its name?
Allen Druffel
Yeah, so that came from my grandpa. That would be three generations ago. He was in the Army Air Corps during World War II. And if you’ve ever seen the Army Air Corps insignia, it’s a bar, a star, and a bar. So when he came home from World War II, he branded his cattle Bar Star Bar. And when we kind of got out of the cattle, we changed it to Bar Star Farm. And so it, yeah, it came from the Army Air Corps.
Carol McFarland
Cool. Thanks for sharing that story. Do you still have cows in the place?
Allen Druffel
Reluctantly. So my grandpa loved cows, ran cows in the canyons and would bring them up onto the farm during the summer and even had some mountain pasture, canyon pasture. Because my grandpa had cows, my dad hated cows. And so he didn’t want anything to do with them. And so his generation, they went away. I was, I guess, ignorant enough to think I wanted to try cows. And so we got involved in a large-scale grazing operation, I think five years ago now, where we brought in a hundred eighty pairs on a couple hundred acres and went for it. And it was a bit of a disaster. Moved past that and now we’re trying it on thirty acres as part of the Flourish Program with the Palouse Conservation District and I just thought you know instead of leasing cows I should get some of my own. So we have three mama cows and four calves right now, and I have two daughters, eight and five, and unfortunately they’ve named all of our cows and so it could be a little bit tough to get rid of cows.
Carol McFarland
Uh-oh.
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, that’s when you’re in trouble.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. We shouldn’t have named them.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, but you got those two girls. You probably are going to have a hard time avoiding that.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. No, my wife, Tecla, and my two girls, they just love animals. And so incorporating animals back on the farm is important. Well, just for raising kids, I think it’s good to have animals around. They learn responsibility and what comes with raising animals and taking care of another living thing. And so it’s great. It really does make it feel less like this industrial machine and more like a real farm.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Well, and one of our questions is what some of your management goals are. And so I am curious about your crop rotation and then let’s dive into the management goals.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. One of my trusted agronomists told me that my management goals change every other day. So it’s fluid, I guess. But, you know, the long-term strategy on our farm is the reduction of synthetics. And we’re trying to do that by improving soil health and reviving the biology that was native to our soils a hundred and fifty years ago. You know, my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, they farmed with crop rotation using clovers to fix nitrogen and did pretty well on very healthy soils. And so we want to start working our way back towards a more natural cropping system. Organic’s not the goal now, at all. It may be the destination, but I doubt it. I don’t know. I don’t doubt. I really have no idea. So we’re taking it incrementally and trying to do paper cuts and just slowly work towards a substantial reduction in all synthetics, whether that’s nitrogen or any of our fertility inputs and as well as our crop protection stuff.
Carol McFarland
Are you comfortable talking a little bit about why organics might not be for you?
Allen Druffel
Yeah. It’s not that they’re not for me. It’s that I’m not there yet. Our soils aren’t there yet. And one of the challenges that I see in our terrain, we talked about the steep hills, there are organic no-till systems. I don’t have the capacity with our current soil’s health to be there. So, no, I have nothing against organic. And if we can get to organic someday, great. At the end of the day, we’re a business. We’ve got to make money. And it’s just, we’re trying to get there while staying in business, or get somewhere.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Do you primarily sell to the commodity market?
Allen Druffel
Yeah. We, we’ve, I, I’m trying to operate under the assumption that the commodity market is, is the market right now. And so everything that we do has to make money in a commodity world. If we can value add, that’s the gravy. And so we have worked with Shepherd’s Grain in the past. We talked to Joni Kendall Moore, a Snacktivist, and there’s other opportunities out there. But they’re in development right now, and so it’s not large scale. And so we really do try to focus on the commodity market.
Carol McFarland
No, and that’s a tough one, too, because when, well, for a lot of reasons, but when you’re a price taker, not a price maker. I know you mentioned Shepherd’s Grain. That was one of what I understand to be the benefits of Shepherd’s Grain was that you got to set the price above the cost of production.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, that was the model, and that came with its own challenges. When you set the price above the cost of production, then that’s the price you are selling at. A lot of the baking industry is very price sensitive. And so you better have a good story. You better have a good, consistent product. And we did with Shepherd’s Grain. And I wish I was still selling the Shepherd’s Grain, but that was, you know, there was the mill fire in Pendleton. And logistically, the new mill is in southern Idaho. And logistically, it’s too expensive to move our product.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, I noticed you have your Farmed Smart certification too.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Yep. So we’re in the process of redoing that this winter.
Carol McFarland
So, yeah, we’ve talked a little bit about your fluid management goals, and what’s your— do you have a standard crop rotation or what do you commonly grow?
Allen Druffel
We’re pretty diversified. I used to think we were, you know, on the higher rainfalls, we were pretty good at a true three-year rotation. We’re moving out of spring grains quite a bit. So we’ll still do a fall wheat spring something, spring pulse, typically. Our spring something could be hay. It could be a re-crop of fall wheat. We’re growing more and more winter peas. We’re trying to re-crop winter canola this year for the first time in a long time. For this year, it seems to look pretty darn good. I think there’s potential. We are trying to do more fall planting whenever possible and try to stay off the soil in the spring if we can. But we also do forage hay. We’re dabbling in cover crops, dabbling in grazing cattle on the covers. Alfalfa. That’s, yeah, garbanzos, peas.
Carol McFarland
That is a good diversified rotation. Did you come into your operation being that diversified already? Or have you kind of learned new crops as you went? How’s that been going?
Allen Druffel
I was really lucky. My dad’s been progressive since he started farming. In the mid nineties is probably when I started to really pay attention and watch what he was doing. And he was transitioned into a true no-till, which we still are today, or in the early two thousands. And we’ve been fully n -till since then. And after he implemented no-till, he wasn’t afraid to try different crops. I remember in high school, this would have been right around the year two thousand, he planted safflower, and it turns out safflower is more of a dryland, like super dry area crop, and he put it in a sub-irrigated flat. And so we were swathing it in November and then harvested it. In the swathing process, it was so thick, the first swather that he borrowed from our neighbor started on fire and burnt to the ground.
Carol McFarland
That’s not what you want for the neighbor’s equipment.
Allen Druffel
No, no. Good neighbor. Everything went great. Got a different swather, and then I remember coming home from school and having to run the combine that late in the year. And it was just a disaster, but it was a good learning experience. So I was lucky enough to see that it’s okay to try different things. You know, you can find your way through it. And so, yeah, we’ve been diversified. We’re probably a little more diversified now, but it’s something that I grew up with.
Carol McFarland
I like the way you said that. It’s like, it’s okay to try new things. And there’s a way to find a way through it.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. I laugh, you know, right now we’re getting ready for spring work, and everybody’s kind of amped up. We had really good weather last week, so we all got excited.
Carol McFarland
It’s good it’s raining right now.
Allen Druffel
It’s great it’s raining. I’m hoping it snows tomorrow. But I always laugh. I go, you know, our farm’s been here for almost a hundred and fifty years and we haven’t missed a harvest yet. So we’ll figure it out. We’ll get there.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. So I got to ask, we just had some pretty epic spring erosion event across the whole region. Do you feel like your, what, over twenty years of no-till showed up?
Allen Druffel
I think that reduced tillage absolutely showed up across the Palouse. But to me, what showed up more was diversified cropping systems if we had residue in place. Even the single pass after pulse crop winter wheat eroded. And that was across the board. It didn’t matter if you were single pass, multiple passes, conventional tillage, whatever. There was erosion just due to the soil condition. But what didn’t erode was standing stubble and cover crops. Right behind us, there’s a field that was winter wheat last year and then had a multi-species cover crop planted into it in the early September. And it’s got about three inches of growth and it didn’t move at all, and there was no erosion. And so I’m not sure that no-till is the the only factor that held the soil. It’s more crop diversity.
Carol McFarland
Having roots in the soil. Having something that the soil armor I think it’s sometimes called.
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
I actually one of the things I saw was like a hilltop that had been seeded, so it was a little more bare, and then along the side hill there was some standing stubble. So there was erosion kind of down and then it hit the stubble and kind of, at least, you know, that kind of slowed the erosion down, so it didn’t erode away the whole hillside. So that was kind of an interesting thing to see too.
Allen Druffel
It’s good to have the diversity, even in diversity in your field.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, but crazy conditions for everyone. I mean, really, the snow, rain on snow on frozen soil.
Allen Druffel
That was no good for anybody.
Carol McFarland
Would you talk a little bit about, I heard a little bit about your cover crops and grazing. Would you talk about any other experiments or trials you’re excited about this spring?
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
To try in the coming year.
Allen Druffel
Yep. So through our transition, through the buzzwords of sustainability and now regenerative, we try to keep up and maintain our buzzword status, I guess.
Carol McFarland
I like to call it cropping systems innovation and soil health.
Allen Druffel
There. Perfect.
Carol McFarland
I mean, soil health has got its own transition from soil quality and all of that.
Allen Druffel
And that’s our focus. So we’ve no-tilled for a long time. The next step was diversifying the crop rotations. And now we are, we’ve experimented with cover crops for seven or eight years now. We’re getting larger scales. We have several hundred acres planted in cover crops this fall. And we’re going to continue doing that. And really to have that living root and have the biology of the soil having something to feed on this coming spring. Well, this happened two years ago. We started dabbling in biology. We were buying biology from different companies, bringing it in from all across the United States and paying a lot of money for it, and coming up with mixed results. We’d always try to split fields, keep an eye on it, and do our best to collect the data come harvest. But when harvest comes, collecting data sometimes gets put to the side in favor of efficiency.
Carol McFarland
I’ve heard that before.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. It’s not just me then?
Carol McFarland
No.
Allen Druffel
No. Okay.
Carol McFarland
I think that’s a product of running a working farm.
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
As you said, business comes first.
Allen Druffel
We’re farmers, not scientists. And the most dangerous part about a farmer is you only have to prove something to yourself once.
Carol McFarland
You’re supposed to do replications, Allen.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, not a farmer. We’re farming some from the scientific method.
Carol McFarland
I guess it depends on how much you’re paying for the thing you’re trying.
Allen Druffel
And that’s the problem, is that it is dangerous for a farmer because we prove it to ourselves once and we think, oh, that’ll work every time. That’s the bullet that’ll work. And often it doesn’t. And buying biology in totes and in jugs is very expensive. And so we looked this winter at ways to reduce that cost. And so I’m really excited. We’re going to start with compost extracts. We’re going to start working on making our own biology and replicating it in our shop and see where that takes us. So that’s the next step.
Carol McFarland
That’s exciting.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. It’s mainly a cost reduction. So if we can have a product that’s similar for far less money. I read online is that, you know, when you’re at a garden scale or a small scale, it’s pretty easy to focus on having the absolute best results. And somebody that was a large scale farmer in Europe, he commented back was, I need eighty percent of the results for twenty percent of the effort. And that, that has resonated with me because if we can do a very good job, maybe not a perfect job with a little bit of the effort, then it’s worth it.
Carol McFarland
Well, what I see, you know, you mentioned the buzzwords of sustainable and regenerative. And as many people know, I come in with this lens of agroecology and soil science. And I see most of the regenerative movement being about agroecological principles. And as you’re talking about making, trying to make your life easier and cheaper, you know, I see there’s a lot of gains to be had in working with the ecosystem and it sounds like that’s very much what you’re moving toward.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve said that for several years, is we want to look at what the native Palouse soils were doing before we were here. And if we can develop cropping systems that are mimicking that, like that’s the goal. That’s what these soils want to do. And our environment wants us to do. So we’re trying to be a steward with mother nature and not working against her.
Carol McFarland
Now your cover crops, are you grazing those?
Allen Druffel
Some, small scale. You know, we have a thirty acre replicated trial that we’ll be in for four years. And so the bulk of the cover crops, until we kind of prove that the cattle are worth it, we’re not going to. It’s logistically challenging to fence off large acreage and then get water. Water is actually more of a challenge than the fence.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. When we were visiting with Russ Zenner, I think he was talking about Eric’s hired guy, Carl. Never really dreaming that he’d be hauling water for goats.
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
On the best part of his work on the farm that he’d been doing, you know, for like, what, seventy years almost.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Yeah. Carl’s an amazing guy.
Carol McFarland
He was pretty, he was a fun one to meet as well. But yeah, it sounds like he got to haul a lot of water for goats. So that’s.
Allen druffel
And goats drink less than cattle. It’s amazing. I had no idea how much water a pair of cattle need in August.
Carol McFarland
How much water do they need in August?
Allen Druffel
Twenty-five gallons a head a day. And so, you know, if you have a hundred head, all of a sudden you’re two thousand five hundred gallons a day. And so it’s not a little.
Carol McFarland
No, that’s not a little. And then in the winter you get to break the ice off of it, which is also super fun. Watering livestock.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Well, grazing in the winter comes with its own challenges of cowpaction. You know, you put a cow on wet soils and we aren’t sure what’s going to happen. Some people have grazed them in the winter and said that, no, the soils actually come out just fine. And we don’t know yet. But I don’t want cattle in the winter yet. One of our challenges is we used to have a permanent fence on the perimeter of every farm. And I don’t know how many summers I spent tearing out fence. It made it easy for now, but I think maybe someday we’ll have to put it back in.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, but we got the Vence now. They’re going to be all remote control electric collars, aren’t they?
Allen Druffel
We’ll see. I have a joke about that.
Carol McFarland
Is it appropriate for the public?
Allen Druffel
No.
Carol McFarland
Okay, you’ll have to tell me after I stop recording. Actually, have you heard of the, like, have you ever done anything with the winter bale grazing in your adventures with cows? I’ve heard a little few people talking about the winter bale grazing.
Allen Druffel
I can barely stomach cows for three months during the summer.
Carol Mcfarland
Okay.
Allen Druffel
I don’t even want to look at them in the winter.
Carol McFarland
Okay. We can stop talking about them now.
Allen Druffel
Excuse me. But the winter bale grazing is a great idea. I think that the potential of targeted grazing where you bale graze on hilltops and try to move some of that organic matter up there is awesome. Just not there. We need perimeter fence.
Carol McFarland
Or remote-controlled collars.
Allen Druffel
Or a remote-controlled cow.
Carol McFarland
Let’s go back to the Flourish project, if you don’t mind. So how many years have you had your thirty acres grazed?
Allen Druffel
Two.
Carol McFarland
Two?
Allen Druffel
And I think we have three more left. First year we did a fall seeded cover and then a spring seeded cover on, so half and half, fifteen acres of each. The next year I thought, I’m going to move it. I’m going to put my cover crop in a different spot. So we took all the fence out and planted winter wheat into the cover crop and it looked looked really good. Sometime that winter the wheat price went from like eight dollars to five dollars, and I went well wheat’s not worth anything why don’t we just put the cows right back on top of the wheat and make more of a semi-permanent fence for the next four years so we don’t have to be dealing with this and so we did. Planted a cover crop into the winter wheat. Put some perennials in there, some alfalfa, some clover and even some winter canola. And now coming out of, so we grazed that last year, didn’t put Roundup on it or anything, just let it graze down, die out naturally. And this spring, the alfalfa and the canola are coming a lot better than I thought. So I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to seed into it this spring, but we’re just kind of monitoring and we’ll figure something out.
Carol McFarland
That’s cool. Have you noticed any changes? Anecdotally?
Allen Druffel
I think the water infiltration is better. The one thing that I’m not happy that I did was when we put that winter wheat in, we put a full rate of nutrients out there, so quite a bit of nitrogen. And I think that set us back in a system where I want to really reduce it. But the next three years, knowing that I’m going to keep it in the same spot, will be reduced. So we’re going to try to, I think this spring I’ve got to divide it into half and half. And so one of the halves, I really want to go on a more full biological approach. So I don’t think either half will have any synthetic nutrients put on it. But one half is going to get pretty heavy biological. But it’s quite a bit of compost extract, quite a bit of these different biologies that we can try.
Carol McFarland
That sounds fun.
Allen Druffel
It is fun. It’s fun. It’s a lot more fun. It’s fun because everyone can be involved. You know, I love having the kids out there doing this stuff, going up, seeing the cows, helping to make the extracts. They’re so excited to be able to have their hands in it.
Carol McFarland
Your other cover crop mixes, actually do you get good pollinators on your cover crops?
Allen Druffel
Yeah. It’s pretty diverse so we usually have something that’s flowering out there.
Carol McFarland
What are your management goals for your other cover crop? Is that kind of to hold soil in place, to build fertility, what just bring more life back?
Allen Druffel
It’s targeted. You know that when we first started cover crops that it was the next thing that was going to just, you know, in one year change our soils and work. But that’s not the reality. You have to make a decision on each cover crop. Like what are you trying to address? Are you trying to build soils? Are you trying to break compaction? What are you trying to do? And so then we’ll try different blends based upon what we’re trying to do. Some of them are weed control. And so.
Carol McFarland
Have you. See, I guess I’m trying to kind of get to the like, have you noticed like how, you know, you’ve been using cover crops for quite a while, it sounds like. What are you, what are you noticing at this point?
Allen druffel
Mostly we’ve found an increase in weeds after cover crops, unfortunately.
Carol McFarland
That’s cool.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, we’re learning. I know we’ve talked about a cover crop hangover. We’ll plant a cover crop and then put fall wheat in it, and the fall wheat, frankly, usually sucks. It’s the worst wheat on the farm almost every time after the cover crop. Year two, the crop’s usually the best on the farm. And so there’s something happening with either our mixes or within the soil where we put in the cover crop and then try to go right into a wheat and something’s happening. So I’m not sure what it is. Yeah, we’re still trying to figure out cover crops. I wish I could say, yeah, we got it figured out. By no means do we.
Carol McFarland
I don’t think anybody’s got it all figured out, Allen.
Allen Druffel
No.
Carol McFarland
Well, that was a fun little deep, deep dive into that. Alright. So you were talking a little bit about some of the things you’ve tried in the past, right? You know, maybe you were spending a bunch of money on biologicals and trying something and saying, oh, that works like gangbusters. What do you look at when you try to decide if something works or not? Is it yield, do you monitor things throughout the season? Yeah, what makes you decide whether or not to do that thing again next year?
Allen Druffel
Farming is so dynamic and there’s so many different variables in every crop and everything we try. We try to spread out a lot of these trials and do them in different places, on different climates and different soils. We’re trying to develop a system that’s not going to work everywhere the same way, but that’s advantageous everywhere we go. So yeah, at the end of the day, it’s got to be about ROI. And we’ve got to not only ROI for the current growing crop, but ROI for the soil and the long-term benefit of the farm. And so some of these things, if we can stomach it financially are what we hope are going to be a long-term benefit to the biggest asset of a farm which is the soil and so.
Carol McFarland
I agree with you. I love soil too.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, I didn’t think that’s what would get me excited about farming when I first started farming, but it is. You know it was when I think it’s a young male thing, it was the biggest tractor with the more storage power and the nicest truck. And that’s what I liked about farming was the big equipment. And the older I get, the more I really enjoy the science of it.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, it’s a complex system. I mean, I think the minute we get it figured out, the minute we don’t want to actually have it figured out, we want another problem to solve.
Allen Druffel
I totally agree. And that’s why our management style is so fluid. Every time I think I have something figured out it changes and then there’s so many different opinions on how we need to get to a system that reduces our dependency on synthetic inputs that you’ll think you get something figured out and you’re super proud of what you’re doing. And the next thing you know you’ll add molybdenum or copper to a biological blend and you go out and you spray that on and you spend ten dollars an acre on a thousand acres and get done with that and somebody tells you that well that killed your biology you didn’t do anything. Which has happened on our farm, so it’s complicated and we’re learning. But I do think that biology happened to make it, but maybe I’m convincing myself.
Carol McFarland
I mean, it’s hard to know. And I think, you know, that’s some of the other dimensions of this podcast include where farmers and scientists work together to help ask and answer questions together. And so I think there’s room for all of it, right? What proves things out for you as an individual and then when to go deeper into some of these questions. And I was thinking when you said you put molybdenum down, that’s great. I bet you’ve got a lot of really happy nitrogen fixing microbes because that’s a co-factor for nitrogen fixation.
Allen Druffel
That was the idea. And then we were warned that it could be detrimental to the biology that we were putting down.
Carol McFarland
And yeah, also just, you know, where is the science at? Microbial community analysis and not just who’s there, but what are they doing? And I think that the what are they doing part is, we’re still working on that because there’s a lot there in the soil ecosystem.
Allen Druffel
I don’t think I ever used the word biology up until about four years ago, in regards to farming. And so we’re adding this complete other dimension to what we’re trying to think about. And to be concerned about the mineral inputs that we put in our fertility and wondering how they interact with the biology of the soil is, it’s infinitely complicated. So we’re just trying to do our best to balance that until we learn more and so that role of having the biology department up at the university help us and have these scientists interact with us as we learn is going to be really vital.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s keep it going. So you mentioned ROI on trying new things on, on your place and let’s see, how, how do you determine ROI for a practice? Is it just a numbers thing for you or what do you, what goes into that equation for you?
Allen Druffel
I try not to get bogged down into the year that you’re doing it because some of these things are for the long-term benefit of it. But at the end of the day, especially as a farmer kind of in the middle of my career, I have to be really concerned with cash flow and returning a profit to the farm or at least a break even. Right now in today’s ag climate, the best way I can be sustainable is to be financially sustainable. We have to make money. And when you can make money, then you can reinvest that in the soil. And so I determine ROI just like any other business would.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, I guess I think about some practices take a lot of time. It’s been really fun to do this podcast series and you know, yeah, I’m not sure. Like, did you calculate that you were like up in your shop at four in the morning, like putting your biology on your thing so, you know, is that part of the ROI for you?
Allen Druffel
I think if a farmer put a value on their time, nothing would make money. So it’s, that’s the old farmer mentality is that our time is not worth much, and so it’s rarely calculated in. I don’t think I’m the only one that does that
Carol McFarland
No I think that’s true. What I also heard from you is the way you’re maybe amortizing some of these things over the longer term and what that also looks like in in your ROI.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Yeah we definitely think about what we’re doing to the soil, and so there’s absolutely a that plays a huge factor in it. Is trying to benefit the soil for the long term and increase its value by increasing its soil health. And that’s determined by landlords, by farm ownership. And so when you have a landlord that that’s a goal, it’s a lot easier. And you can come to the table with them and talk about what you’re doing. It’s fun. It’s fun to see when the landowner gets excited about what you’re doing on their farm.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Landlords are such an essential piece of that and having them be on the same page with the soil health journey and that soil as capital.
Allen Druffel
Yup. And when you can share the risk and have the understanding with a good landlord, that’s huge.
Carol McFarland Yeah. Thanks for acknowledging that.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. One comment about, you know, I was just thinking about the time investment into some of this stuff. And I have a young family, and part of that is that work-life balance. And as we become more biological and less toxic with our inputs, having the kids out on the farm is a huge factor in making some of these decisions. And I want them to be able to be out there, and I don’t want to have to worry about them getting splashed with whatever toxic whatever we’re putting out. And so having some of these products that I’m like, if they get it on their hand, that’s no big deal.
Carol McFarland
The worm poop didn’t hurt them.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, they can go shove their hands in the worm poop and it’s perfect.
Carol McFarland
Get their own biology going.
Allen Druffel
Yep, yep.
Carol McFarland
Gotta love the farm kid life. So what’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned from a past trial? Do you have a specific thing that comes to mind?
Allen Druffel
Learned a lot of what not to do. You know, we have a lot of failures, and I feel like I talk about the failures more than I talk about the successes. One of the earliest ones I can remember doing was with my dad, and he had us out there trialing molasses. And we would split fields all the time. In the fall, especially on burndown with glyphosate, we’d add Roundup. And we’d spray half the field and then leave half the field out. And you could see a significant difference in residue breakdown over winter by adding sugar. And so that’s been a success. And there’s not an acre that goes out without a sugar source to this day.
Carol McFarland
Well, you know what? We were talking a little bit earlier, too, about the residue accumulation and how some people in the area find that the high residue from growing all this great Palouse wheat can be a barrier to no-till adoption, whether it’s like hair pinning or dragging on the drill or whatever, but you mentioned that you really haven’t had as much of a problem with residue in your direct seed system after like the five year mark.
Allen Druffel
Well, yeah, it’s been a transition. Absolutely. It’s, it was tough and we had fields with piles and struggled with residue for a long time. And over the last, oh, maybe eight years or so, we’ve really seen a marked difference in our residue breakdown to the point we actually have struggled a little bit on maintaining residue cover. So, you know, we’d go out and do our little residue measure tests and we would see winter wheat break down completely in a year, and to where you would have almost a black soil. You lose the armor, but I think we’re cycling that residue into nutrients, which is a very good thing. And so there’s hope. We’ve done some seeing it where in other fields that are short term that we’ve either taken over the lease or done some custom seeding where you don’t see that residue breakdown quite as quick in a field that’s transitioning or new to a direct seed system. And I’m not sure that’s all direct seed. I think some of that is. We’re also adding a lot of biological amendments. We’ve used a lot of humic over the years. We’ve been using sugar for twenty years and trying to focus on having the biology work with us.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, that’s really cool. It’s fun to hear a little bit of it. And your dad is Lee Druffel?
Allen Druffel
He is, yeah, Colton Lee.
Carol McFarland
Yeah.
Allen Druffel
There’s two Lee Druffels. So there’s a Colton Lee and a Pullman Lee.
Carol McFarland
Oh, I got it.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, we’re Colton Lee.
Carol McFarland
Well, I mean, I heard a little bit about there’s the VICO group, from what I understand. And are you a part of that now?
Allen Druffel
Yeah. So VICO was started in the early nineties by four farmers that wanted to learn about no-till. And a fifth farmer was, oh, man, that would have been the early two thousands when that family joined. So there were five families working on direct seed in the early stages. Now we’re talking more about diversified crop rotations and some different amendments. So we bought a dry spreader together. We switched all our sulfur to gypsum. That was through some trialing, and now it’s all over our acres. And we got into forage crops. And so we bought a baler together and swather and put together a pretty nice forage harvesting system. And so we equipment share. We knowledge share. That was built on friendship before farming. And that’s an important part of that group. And so I’m really lucky that my dad was part of that and helped start that group. And now it’s all second generation now.
Carol McFarland
That’s pretty cool.
Allen Druffel
Super cool. Yeah, we’re really lucky. Boy, it’s thirty years old now, which is pretty remarkable.
Carol McFarland
So just a point of logistics is, you know, you got to make hay when the sun shines. Who gets the baler first?
Allen Druffel
Me. No, I’m kidding.
Carol McFarland
You paper, rock, scissors that out.
Allen Druffel
And that’s, that’s been part of the learning on, you know, who gets to baler first. And so it mostly comes down to the climate where you are. There’s so many microclimates in the Palouse. And so there’s areas that are on the brakes of the Snake and the Clearwater river that don’t dew. So first cutting alfalfa, those get knocked down first because they don’t dew. And so we know we can knock those down with swather and bale those first. Then we’ll come inland to the next driest region and then we’ll start going to the wetter regions. And that works good because typically the wetter it is, the colder it is. So the hay will be less mature. And so we’ll kind of follow that and we’ll try to stagger our swathing and just make it work.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. It sounds like you have found a legitimately great logistical solution there.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, we tried. The biggest thing was we hired a full-time bale maker. We have one guy that he’s awesome. He just runs the show. We’ve tried to take it out of each individual farm’s hands and just put him as the manager of the hay enterprise. And it’s a group. We’ve talked about all sorts of stuff. It’s like, do we market this together? That way we can share in the quality. So, you know, if somebody doesn’t get rained on and they have really good quality and then there’s rained on hay that’s bad quality, is there a way to compensate? We haven’t figured out that program yet. All those conversations are being had. The key is open communication. So group texts are really good at that. That way everybody’s in the loop.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for sharing a little bit about that too. Tell me about the most memorable time you experienced unintended consequences.
Allen Druffel
Oh, that’s cows.
Carol McFarland
I think I saw you give a talk about cows like a few years ago and it sounds like it was a real learning experience.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, the first year we went cows, we went too big, too many cows, too little forage. It was a cold, wet spring. And so we planted it all. It was middle of May almost before we got it planted. And the cows were coming in June. And they had no alternative pasture. And so we brought them in with the crops too small. Too many cows on too few acres. If it could go wrong, it went wrong. And cows have to eat and drink. And both of those things have to be twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And I just didn’t put it all together. It seems like such a no-brainer looking back on it. Like, you dummy, how could you think this was going to work? But I didn’t. And so the cows were out as often as they were in. They were everywhere, mostly in the neighbors. All of our neighbors. And luckily we have really good neighbors.
Carol McFarland
dDid you have a barbecue after?
Allen Druffel
No. I should have. We did, not one of our own cows. I’m not that vengeful to a cow, but we did buy a couple of Costco freezer packs of steaks and individually vacuum sealed them and put little notes on them, sent them to all our neighbors that, you know, hope you like our cow on your grill better than your lawn. So just trying to make amends. We came home from the Whitman County Fair or Palouse Empire Fair, excuse me. It was about eight at night and got home, put the kids to bed at about nine that night. I get a call from our neighbors who were at the fair, saw them that day. And said, hey, we just got home. There’s between seventy-five and a hundred cows in our lawn. And I said, I will be right there. So that was pretty memorable.
Carol McFarland
That sounds really memorable.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, yeah. That was, you know, you talked about the virtual fence. And I was asked that question somewhere I was at. They said, oh, the Vence. And I said, oh, yeah, Vence. That’s the virtual fence. And I said, well, we have fence, fence. There’s another F word in there because I’m not a big fan of fence. We need better perimeter fence, single strand hot wire. If a cow wants to get through it, they’ll get through it.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. I’ve actually heard with the Vence that some people can, like cows will still break through it, but then you have data on which cows are doing that, and you can select your herd accordingly.
Allen Druffel
I’m sure there’s a place for it, and I’m sure that it works. We’re not there yet. You know, one of the hard parts is there’s so many new and exciting things that can be implemented on your farm. Sometimes you just have to turn a blind eye to some of them. And that’s just not our focus at this time.
Carol McFarland
Well, it sounds like you learned your lesson around why your dad doesn’t love cows.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. I think cattle skip a generation. It’s like raising a lentil. My dad always said he raises a lentil every ten years and then he remembers why he doesn’t raise lentils. Just a nightmare to harvest, and so cows are kind of the same way. You have to have a cow to realize why you don’t want a cow.
Carol McFarland
I think weed control on lentils is also a special undertaking, isn’t it?
Allen Druffel
Very much so. Weed control on harvest is, you better be patient, which is not me.
Carol Mcfarland
But we are the home of the Lentil Festival, so it’s almost obligatory to grow them, isn’t it?
Allen Druffel
I’ve grown an obligatory lentil in my career.
Carol McFarland
Once every ten years.
Allen Druffel
It might be farther apart than that.
Carol McFarland
Do you have things you’ve tried in the recent past that you’re trying again this year to see if it has a similar outcome.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, we’re continuing with biologicals. We aren’t necessarily using the same brand name product, but we’re using a lot of the same biology that’s in those products. So we’re going to continue down that path. And so, yes, for sure.
Carol McFarland
Cool.
Allen Druffel
Winter pulses. We’re expanding acres on winter pulses all the time where they fit.
Carol McFarland
Is that mostly peas or?
Allen Druffel
Yeah, peas. I’m not sure there is another. There might be a winter lentil. I’ve heard rumors.
Carol McFarland
Right. I think there’s rumors. You know, we just talked about lentils and how much you love them.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Somebody else can try that.
Carol McFarland
What is one thing you’d really like to try but can’t right now because of some sort of limitation? So that can be equipment, precipitation, money. Time.
Allen Druffel
Time. I’d like to be more conservative with nutrient inputs, but there’s a fear of losing yield. So if I could just go in and cut seventy-five percent out and see what happened, I’d like to try that. And I’d like to do more of that on larger scales. There’s a financial fear. So we were weaning ourselves off slowly and just trying to monitor that progress.
Carol McFarland
Do you do precision nutrient application?
Allen Druffel
Yes. And yes. I wouldn’t say we’re full rate. We’re, we’re pretty far below what I would probably consider the county average. I try to look at nitrogen. Everyone talks about nitrogen and it’s an easy one to talk about. So we’re trying to talk in terms of nitrogen efficiency rather than overall applied nitrogen. And so if we can be at like a one-to-one, one pound of nitrogen for one bushel of wheat applied is good. I’d like to be at a point seven five to one. And I think that’s totally achievable, totally achievable. And I think we can do better long-term, but for now that’s kind of the next step.
Carol McFarland
It sounds like it’s already kind of been a stepwise goal for you and you just want to keep pushing in that direction.
Allen Druffel
Absolutely.
Carol McFarland
What’s the biggest barrier to trying new things on the farm?
Allen Druffel
Money. Always money and time, but money. Right now, farming’s tough. Wheat is below cost of production. Garbanzos make a little bit of money, but canola is below cost of production. Peas are about break even at best. Inputs are high. Equipment’s expensive. Overhead’s expensive. Labor’s expensive and hard to find. So we’re really focusing on our margin and keeping things as low cost as possible. Money and time.
Carol McFarland
A moment of silence for that.
Allen Druffel
That’s the reality, though. Sometimes we go and we talk and it’s almost like this religion to talk about soil health and how exciting it is and how we’re going to change our soils and change the farm and change agriculture and change our food system. And that’s great, but we’ve got to make money at the farm level. And without that, we can’t reinvest in the soils. And so I’m not embarrassed to talk about like, that’s the big factor. That’s just is what it is.
Carol McFarland
One of the memorable ways that another guest on this podcast talked about it is that if I go broke investing in soil health, the next person is to take over this ground is not going to make that same mistake. I hear the challenge and especially with the commodity market being the primary market for the crops. Yeah. The margins are not high right now or the, yeah.
Allen Druffel
They’re negative. Yeah. It’s, that’s just the reality. We’re always optimistic. It’d be really tough to farm if you’re a pessimist. We’ve got to think that this year is going to be better, and hopefully it will.
Carol McFarland
What’s the most fun thing about trying new stuff on your farm?
Allen Druffel
The opportunity to do better. And not just stay stagnant. So I really like being able to try this stuff and having positive results, you know, both for the soil and for the grown crop. And so it’s fun. It’s fun to see, make changes that actually work. And we have changes that we definitely think are working.
Carol McFarland
What does that mean?
Allen Druffel
It’s such a complex system. Sometimes I get nervous that if something’s positive for the year or maybe two years in a row, there may be some detrimental effect downstream that we are just blissfully unaware of. And so I try to stay very cautious and just say, yeah, nope, that works.
Carol McFarland
There’s that head game again.
Allen Druffel
Oh, I’m in my head about this all the time.
Carol McFarland
Balancing the optimism versus the pessimism. What’s the most annoying thing about trying new things on the farm?
Allen Druffel
Being confident in your failures. It’s just a tough deal. And if you’re going to push hard, you’re going to have failures. And just being able to say whatever. You try to make them small. It’s hard when you do trials, on-farm trials, to be small enough that it’s not going to have a big effect on the bottom line, but be big enough that it matters. Because if it is too small and it doesn’t matter at all, you won’t pay attention. It will be easy to harvest through it and not take the weigh wagon out. It’s easy to just not do the extra application or whatever you’re going to do. And so to find that balance of big enough to matter, but not too big to hurt.
Carol Mcfarland
It’s a good pro tip.
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Well, and when you talk about kind of being able to own your failures, I mean, even terming them a failure is maybe a misnomer, right? But I think about that boxing quote, right? It’s like the guy in the ring is the one that’s really doing it. That’s you.
Allen Druffel
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
That’s you and a lot of other folks around. But yeah, it’s easy to sit back. But that’s when you know you’re doing stuff is when maybe it doesn’t work every time.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. If failing is the mark of innovation, I’m an innovator. I’ve failed a lot.
Carol McFarland
Well, like I said, I’ve heard you talk, and there’s a reason I came to talk with you, Allen. Alright. Okay, if you could ask a scientist a question right now, what would it be?
Allen Druffel
What’s the silver bullet? I don’t think it’d be one scientist. I think you need more than one. You need a biologist. You need a soil scientist. You need a plant scientist. And we need all of them to be in the room and all of them to be in the room for several years. It’s not a snapshot in time. This is a long-term game. And the interaction between the synthetics that we put in, the biology that we put in, the crop rotation, the climate, it all matters. And it would be just to get everybody in the room together, everybody having the discussion that’s open. And then how do we apply that at the farm level? That gets hard because then you need the economist in the room and the accountant and you need the marketer. And it’s just a big group of people that it takes to make the decisions on what’s going to be successful on the farm. So I don’t. It’d be hard to ask one scientist because then the other one’s going to tell you something different.
Carol McFarland
It’s also kind of a testament the way you just described it. You also have to have the engineer to work on the equipment to do the things. And really, I think it’s a description or a testament to how many hats you wear.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, there’s a lot of different hats.
Carol McFarland
There’s a lot of hats.
Allen Druffel
There’s a lot of literal. Yeah.You just kind of balance it all, I guess. I don’t know.
Carol McFarland
Get your kids trained up real fast.
Allen Druffel
Yeah. Yeah. Let them do this.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. Do you have any final thoughts? Like if you could go back to some of, you know, give yourself some words of wisdom in your first kind of years of, it sounds like you’ve kind of always been immersed in progressive farming. But if you could go back and tell your, you know, excited to drive a nice big new pickup truck, early career self, something about on-farm trials, what would you share? Aside from maybe don’t get cows. Don’t get so many cows.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, don’t get so many. That’s that. Yeah. How big do you want to be? Or how big a mess do you want to make? So I wouldn’t say don’t get cows. If you want to try cows, try cows. But try it on a scale that you’re capable of handling. And do your research. I’m pretty guilty of trying it first, researching it later. And then, talk to your neighbors. That was one thing. And talk to those that have tried it already. There is so much knowledge in our area, whether it be the farmers or the universities or the extension or conservation districts. Everybody has so much knowledge. And that’s in your twenties, you knew it all. And you get to be in your forties and you recognize the more you know, the less you know. And so peer groups are huge. I have found more value in peer groups that bring in different farmers and agronomists and being able to have open conversations with like-minded individuals. And I also didn’t realize the power of just having a tribe that think similar. I, the, the phone calls that I have on the daily basis, we’re talking about the things that we’re trying that are kind of out of the box. And without those conversations, I would have given up on it a long time ago.
Carol McFarland
That’s really powerful. Okay. What did your daughters name the cows that you still have?
Allen Druffel
Oh boy. So, yeah, we have three cows, four calves, Stamp, Cookie, Crazy Cowboy, and I don’t remember Crazy Cowboy’s kid’s name, unfortunately. And then the newest mom that we got, my eight-year-old named, so the mom’s name is Taylor. We got her pregnant. The girl was going to be Swift. The boy was Travis. So now we have Taylor and Travis.
Carol McFarland
Thanks for sharing that.
Allen Druffel
Yep.
Carol McFarland
Is there someone you’d like to nominate to be on the podcast?
Allen Druffel
I’ll have to think about that and get back to you.
Carol McFarland
Sounds good. Thanks so much for participating and being a guest on the On-Farm Trials podcast, Allen.
Allen Druffel
Thank you. It wouldn’t be possible without, honestly, to do any of this without the support of my family. That’s been huge. So, you know, my dad and mom are who I’m taking the farm over from have given me an opportunity to try this stuff. And then my wife who puts up with it and she, I, you know, I’ve been brewing lactobacillus on our countertop and if anybody’s ever done that, it essentially smells like stinky cheese. And so I really appreciate that she can kind of just allow me to do this and gives me the time. So, yeah.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. Well, thanks again for sharing your experience. I appreciate you having me out today.
Allen Druffel
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for coming.