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“We’ve been farming together for over 40 years, and when we started farming, we took a motto for our farm and it was ‘our soil is our strength.”
— Nancy Kavazanjian, No-Tiller, Beaver Dam, Wis.
For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, editor Frank Lessiter has chosen to pick up a recent episode of the Soil Sense Podcast, created by Farmers for Soil Health. The episode features Nancy Kavazanjian, who along with her husband Charlie Hammer, farms in the south-central part of Wisconsin where they grow corn, soybeans and wheat in rotation. Over the years they have been innovators in no-till and strip till farming and were the first in their area to regularly use cover crops.
Related Content
- [Podcast] A Chat with No-Till Innovators Charlie Hammer and Nancy Kavazanjian
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No-Till Farmer‘s No-Till Influencers & Innovators Podcast podcast is brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture.
SOURCE®️ from Sound Agriculture is a soil activator that gives crops access to a more efficient source of nitrogen and phosphorus. A foliar application of SOURCE provides 25 pounds of nitrogen & phosphorus per acre and enhances micronutrient uptake by stimulating beneficial microbes, and its performance is supported by a cash-back guarantee. Learn more at www.sound.ag.
Full Transcript
Mackane Vogel:
Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Influencers and Innovators Podcast, brought to you by SOURCE from Sound Agriculture. I'm Mackane Vogel, assistant editor of No-Till Farmer. In today's episode, editor Frank Lessiter wanted to share a recent episode of the Soil Sense Podcast from Farmers for Soil Health. The episode features Nancy Kavazanjian, who along with her husband, Charlie Hammer, farms in the south central part of Wisconsin where they grow corn, soybeans, and wheat in rotation. Over the years, they have been innovators in no-till and strip-till, and were the first in their area to regularly use cover crops.
Tim Hammerich:
Hey there. Thanks for tuning into Soil Sense. I'm one of your hosts, Tim Hammerich. Joining me of course is my co-host Dr. Abbey Wick, and we're sitting down with Wisconsin farmer, Nancy Kavazanjian.
Nancy Kavazanjian:
We've been farming together for over 40 years and when we started farming we took a motto for our farm and it was our soil is our strength because we knew as crop farmers here in the middle of dairy country that what we could do best was to grow good crops and we knew to grow good crops, we needed good soils. And what that has evolved has evolved over the years. So we were early adopters of no-till and we're now mostly either no-till or strip tillers. We brought cover crops to the area because we were no-tillers. We saw value in these tillage radishes.
That was one of the first things we planted on a wide scale, but we actually back in about 2000, we had a test plot with all sorts of different clovers and the big tubers and the radishes and the turnips and things like that. So we have been at it for a while and we've tried air seeding, that doesn't seem to work to get it into the corn. But our three year rotation of corn, soybeans, and wheat seem to be the best way for us to be able to use some cover crops up here in north in the colder climates. It's really hard to get any kind of cover crop established after corn, but because we do have a considerable acreage of wheat that comes off in the middle of the summer, we'll be able to get more cover crops on.
Tim Hammerich:
And yeah, talk more about the area where you're at, what's unique about it versus maybe where listeners might be listening from, and the operation itself.
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Absolutely. So we are in south Central Wisconsin. We're in an area that was glaciated, which means we have a lot of rocks. We don't have consistent soils anywhere, so you can walk two feet and the soil is different. And so we have learned to treat every acre that we have differently and separately. We no-till partially because of the stones and not wanting to break our equipment on the stones or having to pick them up. That's really helped a lot. But we do have good soils, but we've also worked over the 40 years in adding organic matter to our soils to make them better, make the soil healthier. And we've learned in the last decade or so that soil really is a living, breathing organism. So we work really hard to feed the soil, take care of it, keep our equipment off of it when it's wet because we do have cool, wet soils. We don't get in there to plant really until May at the earliest usually, and by mid-October, November, we've had our frost and it could snow anytime. So they're good soils, but they tend to be wet at times.
Abbey Wick:
How much of a role did those cover crop plots that you mentioned, how much did those play in your adoption of different cover crops in rotation?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
It's such a moving and evolving science because we really believe in multi-species cover crops, however, they're expensive. For a while, we were trying to do a lot of tillage radishes that gets expensive and trying to put cover crops under the corn canopy to get a stand on corn that doesn't get harvested until October is really hard. So looking at all those different cover crops, it definitely made a big impact. But we have a great agronomist that has led us also down this path of looking at different kinds of cover crops. One of the things we did this year that was a little novel I think, was to try and grow our own nitrogen. Knowing that nitrogen the last couple of years really spiked, was really expensive. We thought we can save some money and inputs by using more of the legumes. Unfortunately, it's been so dry here in Wisconsin that anybody who planted into a green cover crop is struggling this year.
I was on another farmer's farm and he told me, yeah, "For the last two years, soybeans planted into a cover crop were the best soybeans he ever had," but this year that's changed and our crops that have gone into the green cover don't look good. They've struggled because we haven't had that early rain. Now that hasn't turned us off of the cover crops or the multi-species. We know they're all important that when we can get those multi-species in there, that's what we want. But when we take off a crop like soybeans that comes off in October, we don't always have that planting window to get some of those legumes started. So we'll go with something less expensive like a rye.
Abbey Wick:
I'm guessing there's some lessons learned across the countryside from this year. What are you going to do differently next year now that you've had this experience?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Well, I hope it doesn't turn anybody off of cover cropping. We probably should have terminated earlier, but we didn't know it wasn't going to rain for a month after we planted. So I don't know what we'll do differently. We're still looking at... We'll need to see the results of those nitrogen trials. We are working with nitrogen optimization and we've got an experiment going with our local watershed group and nitrogen optimization.
So that may dictate once we harvest it to see what we do next year. But we still have about 400 acres of wheat that are going to come off in the next couple of weeks. As long as we can get some rain, we'll put cover crops on those acres for sure. And then as much as we can on the soybeans, we'll also put a cover crop up. I'd hate to be turned off this year to what we know there is value in the cover crops. There are also some really good programs coming along now with these Climate-Smart programs. We have a local group that's going to be helping us offset some of the costs of the cover crops. So I think we'll be planting as many cover crops as we can.
Tim Hammerich:
Well talk more about this crop consultant that you work with. One of the beliefs of this podcast we have is that soil health is a collaborative effort and it's pretty cool to hear about getting support from them. So can you just talk about who that is and how long you've been working with them and how that relationship looks?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
I think our agronomist, he's a private crop consultant, Bill Stangel, here in Wisconsin. He probably knows our land better than we do. He's worked with us for over 30 years, probably closer to 35 or 40 years. So he really knows our ground. He's very innovative and he knows we have a stomach for some innovation. He's been with us through all the losses and the goof ups, and a lot of times I think a farmer is out there on their own and they need somebody to talk to and to give us feedback and just to talk to and figure out what we should do. And he is a great agronomist. He's part of our operation and I don't know that we could farm without him.
Abbey Wick:
That's great to hear because I do think having somebody to talk to about this is really critical, especially like you said, he's seen the mistakes and he could talk through those with you and he's probably also celebrated the wins. What is some of those really great things that you've done on your farm? What were those moments like when you realized it was working and that you wanted to continue doing that?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Well, the strip tillage, that's really been a journey for us. No-till is wonderful when you can do it, but there are just times when you need to do a better job of warming up the soil in the strip. And because we have stones, that's always a problem. And I'm not sure if my husband is completely satisfied with the strip tillage equipment yet. We work all winter on it. So I do think we maybe have this strip-till bar now that is cobbled together from several different manufacturers. That's been a win.
The other thing is when we were farming, say 10 years ago, we were picking equipment that was the best equipment that we thought, but our tractor was a different brand than our planter, than our harvester, and they didn't all talk. So going to one equipment brand and sticking with it, and I don't know if you want me to say, but my John Deere app has been great because I can look on the phone and see how far along my husband is and when he needs me to get him or when I can expect him to. In fact, my husband told me that when he goes to his meetings this winter, he is going to need to wear a globe on his head so I know where he is.
Tim Hammerich:
I love that. Over the years in all the things that you've tried and experimented with, what stands out as the biggest either breakthroughs or surprises when it comes to kind of improving the health of your soil?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Well, certainly to get cover crops to work when we can make them work, we can see the difference. But to get them to work in every situation is still a work in progress, I guess. Sometimes, I guess I think of the things that didn't work well, I can think back about 15 or 20 years, we had a bar that promised it was going to on the go, test the amount of nitrogen in the ground and then apply it and that didn't work. And then somebody tried to sell us a big kit, a test kit where if we took a soil sample and we mixed up the soil, it would make a reaction with these different chemicals and it would tell us how much fertilizer we needed. Well, those immediate tests don't work either. So I think the biggest thing is to have the data and the mapping.
It'll be nice if we could get more data quicker, but to be able to see in the field where things are good and things aren't as good, so we know we can farm the best soils better. And then areas that aren't good, we'll put into a perennial area. So we have prairie strips on one of our farms. That's a big slope that it was eroding even with our no-till and our crop rotations, we put some prairie strips on there. We have 15 acres of pollinators that are three, four acres into areas that either it was a rocky knoll that we used to pick the planter up anyway and not drop expensive seed or it was a wet area. So knowing those things with the precision farming and the mapping has been huge.
Abbey Wick:
I love all that, Nancy, and I have to ask, with all the things you're trying and doing, did you grow up on a farm or is this just all new to you?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
No, I'm not a farm girl. I grew up in suburban Long Island, so you probably asked me that because of the way I talk. Sometimes there are words that I don't say right. But I grew up in suburban New York, always wanted a farm, found my farmer, came to Wisconsin. I think maybe because I didn't know what I didn't know, I wasn't afraid to try things. I didn't know that women weren't supposed to go to those meetings 45 years ago, the crop meetings and the machinery meetings. A lot of times I was the only woman. There wasn't a woman on staff, there wasn't a woman in the industry, but I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be there, so I was always there. I didn't know that we shouldn't be trying things. Although I did learn in ag econ that innovators don't make money and that we should be early adopters. And I tried telling my husband that for the first 40 years of our life together. I've kind of given up and now we've passed the 40 year mark. We're having a little more fun. I don't mind the innovation.
Tim Hammerich:
That is so awesome.
Mackane Vogel:
We'll come back to the episode in a moment, but first I'd like to thank our sponsor SOURCE from Sound Agriculture for supporting today's podcast. If you want make your fertilizer plan more efficient, SOURCE it. SOURCE from Sound Agriculture optimizes the amount of crop nutrition supplied by the microbes in your soil, providing 25 pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus per acre. It's cost-effective and easy to use. Just throw it in the tank and spray and season. If you want to unlock your crop's potential and increase ROI, there's only one answer, SOURCE it. Learn more at sound.ag. And now let's get back to the episode.
Tim Hammerich:
You had mentioned in that video that you're doing... I'd never heard of this. You're doing a filter bed to take phosphorus out of tile water and then down the road going to add a nitrate bioreactor. I know nothing about any of that stuff, so maybe explain that to me like I know nothing.
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Okay. I'm going to tell you that our phosphorus, our P trap or phosphorus trap was a proof of concept and we proved it didn't work, so we're going to be dismantling that. It worked great in the lab. The years they went to put the P trap in, it was so wet, it never stopped raining. I felt bad for the tilers who the people in there in the mud trying to connect the pipes. And then by the time we got it pretty well-connected, COVID came along. Then we couldn't get all the parts. Then the university we were working with was shut down, would've started up again in '21, it was dry, so the tile never ran. The system never ran. Actually, I should say the first time they put it in, we told them it was going to get clogged. It got clogged. So the reaction is so immediate with the phosphorus that it clogged the bed.
They dug it out. They got some finer material or I think they got larger material because the finer was just... it was too quick a reaction, but by the time that was all done, it got so dry that we didn't have any tile running for two years and then their program run out. They ran out of money. So we do intend to take that out, but we are going to put in a nitrogen bed. And truly where we put that system, there was not a lot of phosphorus coming off the land. There was enough that we could have tested it, but because of our rotations again and our use of cover crops and our no-till, we weren't getting a lot of phosphorus through the system. But one of the great things when we did that, we were tiling the land. So we thought it was a good time to put that phosphorus trap at the end of a tile bed.
And on social media, somebody saw that we were going to tile this ground because you could see the big coils of tile and they commented that, "Oh, look at those pipes going in the ground. It's going to go directly into our lake and all that fertilizer is going to run off." And I was able to say, "No, we are working to make sure that we eliminate any nutrient runoff before it gets to the lake and we are going to try our hardest." So it was good that I could explain that to them. I still think there's a way to do a phosphorus trap when you have a real big problem. We were trying to use gravity feed. We didn't have a lot of gravity there to grab it. Maybe it wasn't in the right place. And I think there are phosphorus traps that can work, but we're working right now with NRCS to look at a bioreactor to grab the nitrogen.
Abbey Wick:
You seem like ideal cooperators. You said the university already and NRCS and what other things do you have cooking with those organizations?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Well, we work with everybody. We even work Sand County Foundation. US Fish and Wildlife helped us with some of our seed when we put our prairie strips in, Sand County were great technical experts and NRCS when we put our prairie strips in, some of them are in CRP, but not all of it. So half of the prairie strips are in a CRP. The rest we just put in ourselves because Sand County said that would be the best thing to do for, we didn't want to lose the soil there. We'll work with anybody, but we've worked with industry groups. We've had university trials on our farms. We've had industry trials of corn and soybean to varieties. So right now we're working with our local watershed. In Wisconsin, we have these farmer-led watershed groups. There are over 30 of them now, and our county watershed group has a nitrogen reduction study and they're getting some funding through the Climate-Smart program, I believe to fund this nitrogen optimization program.
So we're working right now with our local watershed and anybody else, Discovery Farms comes out and looks at our things. So I think we're having a field day in July with Discovery Farms and Sand County over on our prairie strips. We've had local lake associations that have helped us pay for cover crops. There's now one of our buyers, our crop buyers is actually going to pay us for cover cropping for reduced tillage for tree establishment because we do have 30 acres of woodland in some of our ground. So it's one of those Climate-Smart grant programs. There's just a lot of opportunity out there. And I would say to any farmer that is thinking about doing cover crops, if you need some help technically or financially, there are programs out there and to look for them.
Tim Hammerich:
And how do you find all those? Or do they all find you?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Well now they are kind of finding us now, but we look for them. I would say we read AgTalk daily. We're on the internet, we're connecting with farmers going to winter meetings. Sometimes it's just you strike up a conversation with the right person. So you got to network at our winter corn and soybean expos and our national meetings and talk to the trade show people, talk to people in the hallway. I'm involved with the United Soybean Association, so there are 70+ farmers from all over the country there. And it's neat to compare what they're doing and what their crops look like and where there are opportunities there as well.
Tim Hammerich:
If you encounter another farmer who says, "Yeah, I get it, if you have areas that you're not going to plant anyway to let them grow," but I don't understand why would you do these prairie strips or pollinator habitat or trees. Even though somebody's going to pay me to do all of it, it just sounds like a hassle. What would you say you feel like the benefits or the rewards or the, I don't know, the reason why you think it's really a good thing to do?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
If you're a farmer, you know that farming is not a get rich quick profession. Sometimes we operate on really pennies or nickels of margin. So why wouldn't you do everything that you possibly can to make your operation better? I mean, we even did a whole farm energy audit years ago that helped us to know where our energy sources were best. We have solar that powers our shop now. We had a personal wind energy system, so why wouldn't you do everything from cover crops and prairie strips and anything that's going to make your operation better? You have a finite amount of soil that you can plant, so you want to take good care of the good soils, and if you have some poor areas, you want to try and improve them because everybody will tell you nobody's making more soil, nobody's making more land. We got to work with what we have and it's hard to come by to get new land, so let's take care of what we have and what we're working with.
Abbey Wick:
Gosh, I'm trying to think of maybe there's some really good takeaways on the process also of how you logistically do these things on a field. And so maybe you could walk us through what that would look like.
Nancy Kavazanjian:
It can get really frustrating. So I'll tell you, we were working with one of the biological companies because we're looking at biologicals because that's something that can add to our operation. And when you have to put in test plots with repeatability and you have to stop every so often, it's very frustrating to the person planting and the guy who wants to get it done. And then it's going to be frustrating at harvest time too. So logistically, our agronomist is out there, the person who wants to plot, they're out there. And then sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and know that it's not going to be easy because if you want to try something on your farm, it's going to take a little bit of management and a little bit of patience.
So working through it logistically, I don't know, it's all hands on deck and keep your fingers crossed and hope that you can get through it. That's about the way planting season goes anyway, isn't it, Abbey? I mean, planting season isn't much different when you start and it's time to go plant and you get your planter ready and you've calibrated everything, you go out to the field, is it going to be right immediately? Maybe too dry, maybe too wet, maybe too cold, and then you plant it looks good and then it doesn't rain for a month, so then it looks like heck.
Tim Hammerich:
And which part of your system are you thinking about most right now as far as, "How can we tweak this next year," or in the future?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
I think planting green, it just looks so bad this year. I hate to say it. We need to maybe terminate that cover crop earlier. And then the other problem we have is with slugs and they're feeding on the cover crop as well. So that has always been an issue for us. We really want to make cover crops work, but the other thing is we are growing wheat and that wheat should be counted as a cover crop except that we harvested. So we do try to keep our soils covered, whether it's corn stalks and leaves or soybeans spread out, we don't moldboard plow. So sometimes maybe that's the best alternative.
Abbey Wick:
I like that. I think sometimes we forget to include our crop rotation and the diversity piece, so we try to get so much diversity in the cover crop that we forget about the rotation and the importance of the diversity in that.
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Yeah, one of the things I've heard that is also going to be really important for farmers is looking at deforestation. And that's why I say a lot of our fence lines have been taken out because it just makes it easier to farm. But we may be looking at putting some of those tree lines in to protect our soils a little bit better and getting paid for it. So I don't know, maybe there's trees in our future. We do have 30 acres of beautiful, they used to be CRP and we have several acres of black walnuts that I say, "That's my legacy," that I know I will be leaving to the next generation to harvest someday. Those black walnut trees will be worth a lot. We'll never see that, but they look great. So when I look to the future, I think maybe we need to think more about some of those other things.
Tim Hammerich:
And along those lines, is there a next generation that's wanting to take over your farm when you and your husband are done farming?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
So we say we're growing our next generation. They are our grandchildren. They're 8, 6, 4, 1 and one on the way. We'll see if we have a farmer in the future, we're not ready to give up. So I think it'll be a really good timing for us. Our daughter and son-in-law have about a small farm, 60 acres. They've been doing u-pick it strawberries. They've rented some more ground this year. They're growing corn and soybeans on, and we're helping them learn how to no-till and use more cover crops and do things like that.
Tim Hammerich:
That's awesome. Well, I want to go back to something really specific. You mentioned earlier you mentioned tillage radishes. Are those still a part of your cover crop mix or... I can't remember exactly what you said about them, but it made me want to ask if you were still using them.
Nancy Kavazanjian:
We first started using tillage radishes. It was pretty much a whole field was tillage radishes. And then if you remember, when they start to disintegrate after they freeze, they give off a unique odor that has all the neighbors up in arms and the police looking for dead bodies or rotting fish or whatever. We still do like the tillage radishes. We've cut back quite a bit. Again, they're expensive. They go in a mix with the purple top turnips and the legumes like peas and cow peas and obviously some rye or oats or something like that. But we do have them, and I love to always throw in a bag. I'll go get a bag of black oil sunflowers to throw in the mix just because the sunflowers look pretty and it makes the neighbors notice. And we've had people say, "Hey, can I pick a couple of radishes or a couple of turnips?"
I've roasted a couple of turnips from the field. They taste pretty good. Not a big fan of the radish. But yeah, so we do still use radishes in the mix, but not a solid stand of radishes. And I don't know that anybody's recommending doing a solid stand of radishes anymore. But really you do want that diversity, again, of the roots in the system and the different crops. We know that the radish and the turnip will scavenge the nitrogen. We know that the legumes will help us add nitrogen to the mix. And then some of the other deeper roots and shallower roots, they all play a part in the cover crop and the soil nutrition.
Abbey Wick:
So you mentioned your neighbors and are they trying some of the things you're trying or interested in it?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Well, so in Wisconsin here, we have a lot of non-farm neighbors. We have some rural neighbors that live adjacent. But yes, our neighbors are trying it. Again, we've been very active in our watershed. We've had field days here. We've opened our farm for people. People always calling and asking us, "What are you doing here," or, "What do you suggest?" So we share all our knowledge as much as we can.
Tim Hammerich:
Well, this has been awesome. Thank you so much, Nancy. One of the questions we always like to ask as part of wrapping it all together, is if you could stand up and give a presentation among your peers of other farmers around the country about soil health that are on different points in their journey, what would you want the take home message to be?
Nancy Kavazanjian:
Soil health is a journey. There's not one right way. It's not going to happen overnight. It's a long-term payoff to keep your farms healthy, and in the long run, it'll be worth it. We've been at this for 40+ years, and we are seeing the rewards of taking care of our soil. So I would say try it, stick with it. Always evolve and look for new ways to take better care of your soils and your crops.
Mackane Vogel:
That's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers and Innovators podcast. Thanks to Nancy Kavazanjian and Farmers for Soil Health for letting us share this episode of the Soil Sense Podcast. And thanks to our sponsor, SOURCE from Sound Agriculture for helping to make this podcast possible. A transcript of this episode and our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at notillfarmer.com/podcasts. For our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Mackane Vogel. Thanks for listening. Keep on no-tilling and have a great day.
