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“Fear can be your greatest enemy. Just look straight forward, put it in gear and let it go.”
— The late No-Till Legend Dave Brandt
For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to the Dave Brandt Memorial lecture from this year’s 32nd Annual National No-Tillage Conference. The panel, moderated by No-Till Legend Randall Reeder, features Indiana No-Till Innovator Rick Clark, last year’s Conservation Ag Operator Fellow and No-Till Innovator Loran Steinlage, Oklahoma no-tiller Jimmy Emmons and Dave’s son, Jay Brandt, as they discuss memories of Dave and how they plan to continue the message of no-till and soil health through farmer-to-farmer education.
Related Content
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- Ask the Operator: Carrying on Dave Brandt’s Legacy of Farmer-to-Farmer Education [Webinar]
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, associate editor of No-Till Farmer. In today's episode, listen to the David Brandt Memorial Lecture from this year's 32nd annual national No-Tillage Conference. The panel moderated by No-Till legend Randall Reader features Indiana No-Till Innovator, Rick Clark, last year's Conservation Ag Operator Fellow and No-Till Innovator, Loran Steinlage, Oklahoma No-Tiller, Jimmy Emmons and Dave's son, Jay Brandt as they discuss memories of Dave and how they plan to continue the message of No-Till and soil health through farmer-to-farmer education.
Randall Reader:
Now, Dave Brandt is really well known and partly because of this meme, it ain't much, but it's honest work. To give you an idea how well known he was, the editor of Ohio's Country Journal, which is the main farm magazine in Ohio, wrote an article about Dave after his passing. And those articles, all their articles are posted online.
And in December, the editor, Matt Reese posted the top 10 articles in terms of viewership. And number one was the article about Dave Brandt. And here's another interesting point about that. He had about five times more views than the second place article. Dave is well known, not just here but around the world. And partly because of that meme, but also because of all the work that he did. And you're going to be hearing more about that.
I'm just going to run through a couple of photos that I took. Here he is with one of our new extension folks a year ago telling her about soil on his farm. He hosted a field day every April, first week in April. And here he is speaking to part of the group there prior to machinery demonstration. And people talk about, oh geez, that cover crop is too tall. We can't plant through cereal rye like that. Well, Dave was out there planting through it and has been for a long time.
And Dave was the kind... Now I put on quite a few programs in my role with the Ohio Council and also with our Conservation Tillage Conference. And anytime I invited Dave to speak, if he didn't have a conflict, he was there. He would be there and never charged. I don't think he even charged us mileage. He was a very giving person, always willing to give a presentation. With that, we're going to begin with, we asked Jay if he would just make a few comments about his dad and the family. And Jay, go right ahead.
Jay Brandt:
Thank you, Randall. Thank you for that introduction and the kind words there. Yeah. We were very fortunate and blessed where we are to farm in that area. My father, David, got introduced into farming through his family. Again, mostly through his mother's side. My grandmother, her father had the family farm and had passed in down through my dad that way.
He was again, had the opportunity to serve in Vietnam and had that experience, which really formed a lot of his interest in supporting people. Because he had that great experience, which was such a tragedy and had a great respect for people's human life and their interactions after that. It really formed a basis not only because of his interest in agriculture, but his support of his fellow man on that. That's again one of the things that really brought him out to help educate and support people with that.
His main interest in conservation was because we have highly erodible soils and he was very conscious of the issues of erosion and his desire for that to just not occur. The loss of your topsoil is really the most valuable part of your farm. And he was a stout advocate in keeping the most valuable parts there as an asset for you.
He had an unfortunate incident where his father passed early after his return from Vietnam. And they had to sell the family farm and basically start over. It did provide that opportunity for him really to get some counseling and guidance as a tenant farmer. The landlady required him to report into a guy giving advice on that that really helped build his understanding of agriculture and held him to some standards on performance that really put together that idea of constant learning and then sharing information.
His association with that, a lot of these pictures show the different people that he was fortunate enough to learn from and to share information with, which is really as we talk about walking on the shoulders of the giants before us. His idea was again, to learn and then to pass on that information, to pass it forward. We have some of those ideas today in everything that we do.
All these things. Also, he was always very excited to come to National No-Till Conference and some of the other ones because of the ability to interact with other producers, to learn what systems they were using. And really try to integrate the best of everything that he was hearing into what his operation was. Always improving, always challenging himself to grow and build on that operation, to improve those things, to learn more.
And he enjoyed mostly, especially with peers like the fellows I have with us, that we could challenge each other. Why did you do that? Or why are you only using two cover crop species? Use more. These are some famous stories that we hear from other giants in the industry. Gabe Brown and Ray Archuleta. How as we began our journey into regenerative agriculture, we were learning how to stretch those boundaries and to build more resiliency into our system. It was that companionship and the generosity that they had in sharing that information, it was very important.
That was pretty much what we see. When we made that transition from tenant farmers to independent operator was when I was graduating high school. I went off to college and still have maintained a professional career off the farm. I was fortunate to be able to come back about 10 years ago. And really the message that dad had been talking to people was not changed much from what he had done 20 years before when I left.
Pretty much the same information about how to utilize cover crops, how to reduce erosion and improve resiliency on your farm. He had been very consistent over that time with that message. Obviously there was new tools as we have more increase in technology and things of that nature that enabled, again, better adoption of those practices from that.
Because we know that a lot of this isn't necessarily easy. It requires a little bit more management. Again, that's why we have the sharing here, which is so important not only in the classrooms but in the hallways, which is where maybe more learning happens as we share these casual conversations and build these relationships in communities. Because again, his interest in supporting the human part of what we have here in agriculture to support one another and let you know that we've got your back. I can answer your questions and help you through these challenging situations that we experienced because we're a small industry and we need that support.
One of the last projects that we worked on and are continuing to come to fruition today is with the mound at Cincinowa most recently named the Fields at Cincinowa, is a program similar to a collaboration of all these conferences. A collection of industry knowledge and regenerative or restorative practices in our culture where it can be a demonstration, actual working farm. And to support the industry in that way.
I wanted to put a little plug in for that, for us to watch out for what's happening at the fields of Cincinowa and how we can all participate in and utilize this region in, that Driftless region in Wisconsin to be a great learning experience.
Randall Reader:
All right. Thank you, Jay. And as these photos are flipping through on the screen, it's amazing looking at some of those, you'll recognize two or three chiefs of NRCS and even soil conservation service, Bill Richards. In fact, there's Bill Richards on my left right now.
And all these people that Dave worked with. Well, we've got three people who were influenced by Dave Brandt up here on the stage with me and Jay. And let's start with Jimmy Emmons from Oklahoma. Jimmy, what was your first contact with Dave and did he tell you anything that changed your no-till operation in dry country in Oklahoma?
Jimmy Emmons:
Well, yeah, if he hadn't talked to me that night, I probably wouldn't be here today. It was at a national conference like this in New Orleans, I think it was in 2010, 2009 or 2010. And I heard Dave presenting on stage and the famous picture with a big tillage radish up. And he'd give a really good message that night about, "You just need to try this. I know it'll work. I've been working on this several years." And he went through a great presentation.
And so after the presentation was over and we had a little break, I went up and got to meet Dave for the first time. And it was just such a blessing to visit with him and he said, "You just need to go back home and you need to really try this. And you need to plant more than one thing." He said, "I learned that a long time ago."
And I said, "Man, it's really dry in Oklahoma." And he said, "Well, how dry is it?" And I said, "Well, we got seven inches last year and nine inches the year before, but we normally have around 20." And he said, "Well, I know it'll work, but the only way to do that is just go home and try it." And I said, "Man, I don't know. There's a lot of pressure back home to we don't hardly have enough water to grow one crop much less two."
And he said, "Jimmy, there's nothing impossible on your farm. The only thing impossible on your farm is something that you won't try. And if you don't try it, dang it, it ain't going to work." I went home, put his knowledge to use. And my golly, it worked and we started learning more and more. And the more we learned, just the more our eyes opened up.
And so our relationship over the years were through the phone and at conferences and up at Lawrence. And it really grew a good friendship. And we talked a lot about how we're going to get the next generation involved and how do we get the next level of participation in cover crops and no tillage across the country and around the world. And that relationship was really... We all need support when you're out of your box and out of your comfort zone. And Dave was a great big supporter.
And he would challenge you and press you once in a while. And like, "Dang it Jimmy, I told you that would work if you'd try it." And then he would talk me into something a little bit more crazy. We always enjoyed sessions like this. And then the back rooms and the back halls of conferences, visiting with new people.
And he called a lot of his kids because he felt like that he had planted a seed with us in the early years and watched us grow. And watched us come out and start speaking on our own. And I always felt honored to be called a kid, especially at my age. And I really appreciate the time I spent with Dave.
Randall Reader:
All right. Thank you. Jimmy. Loran Steinlage, Northeast corner of Iowa. What was your first impression with Dave Brandt?
Loran Steinlage:
First impression with Dave Brandt, you know our story was back, I was signed up to go to no-till conference in January 2009. And we never made it to the conference. And with our son's issue in that, one of the key things I figured out along the way was I had to keep his mind going. I made a list of 10 people I was studying to help keep my son's mind going.
Fast-forward to 2012, finally when I was starting to get back out in public a little bit, showed up at Des Moines show and Garth with GS3 seeds was there. And talking to him, we'd been good friends for quite a few years. And I had heard Dave was coming that day, but never put two and two together. I was always in a hurry wherever I was going and talking to Garth. And I said, "Hey, is Dave going to be here?" And he is like, "Yeah, he'll be here later on, but I got to go. Would you meet me back here in a half hour or so?" And I was like, "Okay, yeah, sure."
I didn't know he was going to airport to get Dave. And to see the connection Dave and my son had at that point, I knew there was something special. And that's the one thing I'm going to ask everybody, what was so special about Dave? If you get nothing out of the conversation today, ask yourself what was different about Dave than any one of us in the room here today?
There ain't much. He was just a good, honest person, told you what he thought and just laid it out there. You heard exactly what he's thinking. I cannot fault the person for that. But through our journey, fast-forward to 2014. Kendra Brandt pulled in our yard. Happened to have Dave with to... It's a pretty cool honor when Kendra pulls in to see your interseeding and stuff like that.
Randall Reader:
And that's Dave's wife.
Loran Steinlage:
Yes.
Randall Reader:
Kendra.
Loran Steinlage:
And as we were getting ready for this, that's one thing I kept thinking about, what's the common denominator between all of us and the forgotten thing when we come to conferences? It's often the wife that stays home and does the work and that.
When we started going traveling and that, my wife was one of those, she was always with us. And Kendra was usually Dave's driver in that. I wanted to make sure she gets a little credit today. But it's just been all the years with Dave. I think it was 2016 here was the first time I actually made it to the conference. That's the first year I was nominated for the no-tilling reward. I didn't know how the conference worked or anything, but there again, thanks to Garth, we ended up out in the hallway quite a bit together.
And to this day, that's why you see the shorts on. That's why you see that because that day Dave was like, "This is why I like you and this is why I trust you. You keep honest, you keep true." And that's all I can tell anybody in this room. Pay it forward and just keep doing in that fashion. You'll be all right.
Randall Reader:
All right. Thanks, Loran. And next, Rick Clark from just down the road here in Indiana. Rick, what was your first contact or first impression with Dave?
Rick Clark:
Yeah. The first time I met Dave was at a conference. It might've been this conference here, I don't really remember the year, but it doesn't matter. I was out in the back hall. And at the other end of the hall there was this guy and about 50 people. And I'm like, what in the world is going on down here?
And I get to looking a little closer, I'm like, oh, it's Dave Brandt. And Dave had just got through speaking and he always stayed and answered every question. It didn't matter how long it took, he stayed because he thought the teaching was the most important part. And I'm in total agreement with that.
And Dave got done. People started disappearing after their questions got answered and he starts moving my way down the hall. And he stops and he said, "I heard you speak, a great job." And I said, "Well, thank you, thank you very much." And then he shook out his hand and said, "I'm Dave Brandt." And I said, "Yeah, I know who you are, Dave. Everybody knows who Dave Brandt is."
And didn't think much of it. And about six weeks goes by and I'm back home and my phone rings. And I look at it and it's a number that's not in my contact list because I don't know who it is. I answered and he says, "Hi, this is Dave Brandt. You have minute to talk?" And I said, "Well, yeah, Dave, I'll stop anything to talk to you. What's on your mind?"
And he said, "Well, I want to tell you, you did a great job in your presentation. And I'm asking your permission if I can use one of your slides in my future presentations." And I said, "Dave, you can use any slide you want." And that was the absolute biggest honor that I ever had was Dave calling and asking for my permission to use a slide in his presentation. And from that point on, that's what started to build our relationship.
Randall Reader:
Well, thank you, Rick, for that. And thank you all four for your personal recognitions and comments on that. Next question for you, and we'll start with Jimmy. And I'm focused on the audience here this morning, all of you out here finishing breakfast. Jimmy, share with the folks here today a tip. Or well, let's start with one tip from you and we'll just keep going, that everybody here can benefit maybe in this year, 2024, maybe in the near future from Dave Brandt's life.
Jimmy Emmons:
Don't be scared to try anything. Don't be afraid of big biomass or trying something out of the box that nobody else or everybody else think is crazy. The first time I had big biomass, I was getting ready to plant. I was really panicked up because I grew up on a clean tillage scenario. And I mean if there was any residue, you couldn't get through it.
And so, I had warm season covers that was almost as tall as the cab on the tractor. And I called Dave and I said, "Dave, you got me into this mess and I don't know how I'm going to get through that." He said, "Does that thing have a steering wheel and a gear shift on it?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well put the thing in gear and go to plant. And then if you have trouble, call me back."
And I did. And amazingly the drill performed and it was so easy. And he called me in about an hour and he said, "How's it going? You haven't called me back." And I said, "Well, it's going really well, Dave. It's amazing." And he said, "Well, you just got to think about that a little bit." He said, "It's so much easier to drill it standing up because you don't have to cut through all that stuff." He said, "If you lay that all down, you got to cut through all of it. And just keep going."
I think that's back to his military. He told me, he said, "Don't be afraid." He said, "I've seen a lot of things in war and travel." And he said, "Fear can be your greatest enemy. And just look straight forward, put it in gear and let it go."
Randall Reader:
All right then. Can't beat that. Put it in gear and let it go. All right. Let's go to Loran. What is a tip that you can share with the audience here that they'll benefit from?
Loran Steinlage:
Probably the biggest one I'd go back to, I mean there's several of them, but focus on the fundamentals. Don't overthink it. Just learn how to set your planner, stuff like that. That's what you control. The best way I always look at anything anymore is we are dealing with a pyramid. We've got mother Nature's got the lower 90%, we're playing with that top 10%. Well, the little influence we actually have, we've got to get very good at setting our equipment and learning how to manage that. The rest of it's Mother Nature.
Randall Reader:
All right. Rick.
Rick Clark:
Yeah. Dave called me one day and he said, "I'd like to come over and visit your farm." Said, "I'd love to have you Dave. Come on over." Dave comes over and we're sitting. And that's a whole nother story and I won't go into that right now on how he got there. But Dave sat there and we talked for about four hours. And he said, "I just, I need to know how to try something different. I'm over here on your farm because you're no-tilling, you're organic, you're no chemistry, you're all of these things. And I am here to learn how to do something different. I need to step out of my comfort zone."
Here we are. I mean what an absolute honor to have Dave, our teacher, our mentor, the person that got us to where we all are here today asking for advice on how to improve his operation and keep going and the next step, the next level. And that's what I so admired about Dave.
And then the other thing I admired about Dave was he's always teaching. And when he stopped at my place, he was on his way to go teach somewhere the next day. It's just humbling. I miss Dave. I think about Dave every day, but we have to move forward. And we have to continue to grow the seeds that Dave planted.
And everyone in this room is a seed that he planted. Many people could be up here on this stage. It's not just us, it's a lot of people that were influenced by Dave Brandt and still are and always will be. He was just basically larger than life. He was a great man.
Randall Reader:
All right. Let's come back to, well, Jay, do you want to add anything to that?
Jay Brandt:
Probably just to reiterate a lot of what we heard here today is the continuing education, excuse me, the idea that we want to always improve where we're at and challenge our thoughts and concepts and what we're doing. Again, that's why he really enjoyed engaging in conversation with people to find out what their practices were. And how he could take that small grain of what's working for them and apply it in our context, which is an important thing to consider.
In talking to Jimmy and how to work in an arid environment, how can we take that and where we're usually super saturated with our types of weather conditions? How do we take that gleam of information? How do we look at what Loran was doing with relay cropping and apply that in something to help us in a scenario where we want to use wheat in the rotation, but we know based on that particular ground maybe it's not going to be a very profitable crop? Can we use this technique to make it a viable option and improve the resiliency of our soil by increasing the rotational aspect of what we're doing? How can we incorporate mechanical control of our cover crops during planting with techniques used at what Rick has come and showed an example of?
Those are things where finding those associations and building on that and trying it in a scale where it makes an impact, but it's not going to cause too big of an issue. That's what dad always said, "It's got to be enough to impact the wallet but not enough to shut the farm down on what you're doing." That's that delicate balance in there of what he was interested in people trying to do and adopting those principles. Again, we encourage everyone to look forward to that and to use these scenarios here where we can build community and relationship on that to support us in our journey.
Randall Reader:
Thank you, Jay. Jimmy, come back to you for another tip for the audience.
Jimmy Emmons:
One thing that I really admired about Dave and I strive to do that in my teachings is just be humble. We don't know it all. We're all learning this together. And you would think that the Godfather of all of us here wouldn't be asking Rick or Loran or I or any of you out there about a tidbit that he could take back to his farm.
And I really admired that mentality and I strive to do that today. We all come to these conferences and everybody thinks we're so-called the expert. Well, we're not the expert. We're here to learn from y'all just like you are from us. And I think that sharing and that humbleness that we can do this together is one of the great attributes that we need to look at and really admire.
Randall Reader:
Loran.
Loran Steinlage:
How many people here wish they'd went to Dave's one last time? Next time you say you can't afford to go or you don't have the time to go, remember that statement right there. Go back to me and my wife, we made the commitment when we seen Kendra starting to fail a little bit. We knew Dave was starting. We made the commitment, any chance we could get, we were going to get out there one last time. There was no regrets.
If you start living like that, you'll live in Dave's honor. And that's the ultimate compliment you can give to anybody is just take the time for him and give them that little as said, that conversation out in the hallway. That's when the real learning goes on. If you'd been with me and Rick at 2:30 this morning, that's when the real learning's going on folks.
But you can sit here and listen all you want, but until you take it home and practice it, that's where the rubber meets the road. And then go actually, if you have a question, go to that farm and see it in action and figure out how to bring it home to your farm. That's when we start making differences.
Randall Reader:
All right. Thank you. Rick.
Rick Clark:
Yeah, I just think, I just always go back to teaching. Dave was one of the best teachers I'd ever been around. He was just so calm and so quiet. And you knew, you just knew like what Jimmy was describing. How in the world am I going to plant in this six foot tall rye? But you just knew that when Dave was telling you with that calm, stern voice that everything was going to be fine.
And we have to remember that we need to always be trying something different on the farm. Now we cannot jeopardize the livelihood of the farm and doing that. Go small, start with small pieces. There's a lot of great speakers here this week. Take one or two ideas from several people. Take them home and try them on your farm. That's what Dave would've done.
And I just always think about the minivan that he drove. I mean, I don't know how many thousands of miles he put on that minivan, but he's always going somewhere. He was going somewhere to meet a group of 50 farmers. And actually get down on your hands and knees and get in the soil and show them what they're doing right or maybe what they could improve on.
He never told them what you're doing this wrong. He never had that. It was always, let's try this. Or let's find something that's working on your farm and let's expand on that. Very positive, and you always want to be around positive people. And Dave was always very positive.
Randall Reader:
He was definitely very positive. We're going to have a microphone roaming around here. I want to get questions from you folks in the audience for these four folks up here. And I'll remind you, and I realize this completely. So many of you knew Dave. And we could go on until noon here if we open it up and let each of you give a little testimonial or a speech about Dave yourself. Just focus on asking a question and we'll see how it comes up here.
As you're thinking about your questions, I think a theme that has come from all four here is that Dave wanted everybody to succeed. Yeah, he sold cover crops in the last few years, but he wasn't there to make money selling cover crops. If a general recommendation might've been you need 60 pounds per acre of this particular cover crop or this mix, Dave might look at your situation and say, "No, you know really, you only need 30, so let me sell you 30 pounds per acre."
Just think about that. Here he was cutting his product volume in half, but he knew that 30 pounds would be more successful than the 60.
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. Do you want to 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 a cost-effective alternative to live biologicals that you can throw in the tank and spray in 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.
Randall Reader:
All right. Who has a question? And with these headlights focused on us here it's hard to tell.
Speaker 7:
This question's coming in from Whova, our event app. What are some of the first field actions that should happen to reduce the time it takes to get no-till dirt working for you? I think they meant soil, not dirt.
Loran Steinlage:
Well, for us, the simplest thing was once we started learning to implement cover crops and that's going to be the biggest challenge. How do you implement them in your territory? I mean the living root is the key to making no-till work.
Jimmy Emmons:
Yeah, I think we heard yesterday as Roy was talking about, it's the living root and it's the diversity in the living root that really kicks the system in. We've taken that out in a mono situation and a lot of fallow in between over the past several decades. And we just got to think about that, that life is the way forward.
And so the longer that we can keep a living root, whether that's a second crop or that's a cover crop. And the diversity of that to add more crops into the diversity. In Oklahoma, like I said, we were in wheat country and a little cotton here and there in the bottoms and alfalfa. And now we grow 14 different things.
And that comes with challenges, but it comes with opportunities as well. I really think that the living root is the most important thing that we got to think about to really get things kick-started.
Randall Reader:
All right. We got another question over here. Jay, are you going to be able to continue the farm? Jay.
Jay Brandt:
Certainly. Oh, yeah. My eldest son, Christopher has really taken over farm operations on a day-to-day scenario. We have a lot of help, not only from our friends that we have here on stage, but locally, continue to support with agronomy advice and things of that nature. Yeah, the farm is still very strong. We're implementing some new practices. Obviously as you have that generational change, we have a little different ideas about how to do some things, but we're taking control of our situation. And it's really working well for us and we have a bright future going forward.
Loran Steinlage:
I'll add a neat little story for those of you that didn't know the last year or two, Dave was aware that Isaac and Chris needed a little room to thrive, I guess I'll put it that way. And I was fortunate enough he was staying at our place for a week or two. And the phone calls some mornings were entertaining. But he knew he had to step out of the way. And I'm in that same situation myself right now. Thanks to what I seen Dave go through, that's why I'm stepping out of the way and trying to do some of the other stuff. Give that next generation a chance. How many father-son duos are here today?
Jimmy Emmons:
One of the funny things was last January we started an award for the David Brandt Legacy Award. And so I had called, reached out to the family and told them we was going to try to surprise Dave. And so, Jay and some of the boys had come up with Dave and drove in. And then the rest of the family was driving in later. And Dave got a call about some seed.
And so he called the boys and say, "You need to get the auger set and we need to get this grain over to this person." And "Well, we'll get on that granddad." And he's like, "No, no, you need to get on that." And well, they were on the way out there and they weren't going to get that shipped. And Dave was getting a little apprehensive. And I thought it was real humorous when we was trying to keep it really quiet.
But he allowed the boys that opportunity to start taking over the operation slowly and trying to get them to engage more on themselves. And I think that's a great example of what we got to do. It's hard when you get to our age and start trying to step back a little bit to let go of the reins and trust what you've taught.
Randall Reader:
Yeah. Let's go back to Jay for a moment. There you talked about the farm operation. What about Walnut Creek Seeds?
Jay Brandt:
Right. Currently we're maintaining all of our operations on that. Yeah, our seed business is still fully functional and we're in fact still shipping seed even here in January, so it never slows down in regards to that. We're trying to keep our heads centered on the functions of what we have here. We have a very good customer base that's been very supportive from that. And we're very pleased to be able to help them in their journey to grow and utilize the resources that we have here.
We much appreciated for the community here for your support in all that. And we're continuing with that as well as diversification on the farm. We're looking at growing and increasing some diversity with heritage grains and participating in a local pseudo co-op with some fellow farmers in the area that are like-minded with what we're doing.
In supporting them in that area, we have some on-farm milling that we're looking at growing that business. It's fairly small right now as we learn and feel our way out, like we do in any small enterprise on the farm here. But there's a lot of opportunity with that that we see. Especially in our location as urbanization is coming like a great tidal wave against us here. And how do we manage that, which is one of the challenges in maintaining the agricultural business in a more urban environment that we have.
These types of activities as we look forward in what we're doing, allow us that opportunity to maybe become more of a educational and learning experience as, or if our acreage in the area shrinks just because of urban development and things of that nature that's out of our control.
Randall Reader:
Well, the business can always continue. And the reason Jay's wife, Ann, is not here is she's at home running the Walnut Creek Seed business today. All right. Next question.
Walt:
Would Loran and Rick talk about the quilts, if a second please? That's a pretty special part and fabric that you guys were involved in.
Randall Reader:
Yeah. Kendra was famous for making quilts and I have one of those. And when it gets really cold, I'm sleeping under one of those. Who wants to go first?
Rick Clark:
Go ahead.
Loran Steinlage:
I guess how many people have ever spoke at the Brandt Family Farm?
Rick Clark:
A dozen or so.
Loran Steinlage:
One of the neatest things when you show up at Brandt family farms to speak, a quilt will show up. Probably one of the coolest ones I have is I think it was 2017, a bunch of us got together there at Brandt Farms and we had a T-shirt.
Well, if you knew the backstory, Kendra was not feeling very good at that point. And she couldn't be out amongst the crowd but by the time we got home, there was a quilt in the mailbox with that T-shirt. Dave's T-shirt that we gave to Dave, she had sewed that in a quilt. That was number two.
And then Rolland, he got a quilt. And then last summer, Dave, after he'd stayed there, he met all our grandkids. And then a couple weeks later, here a box of quilts showed up again. I'll let Jay tell the story on them. But well, we were told that they were, Dave finished them up.
Jay Brandt:
Oh, yeah, yeah, with my sister working on the machine.
Loran Steinlage:
But then I think your sister told me that, no, them were actually Kendra's favorites or something.
Jay Brandt:
It's pretty possible. Yeah.
Loran Steinlage:
It's something like that. Like I said, I think we're up to six quilts in the family now. It's just one of those subtle things. And that goes back to the whole Cincinowa deal, the fabric that brings us all together. And all these years of the quilts and that you didn't even... You had the hints and that, but the forethought and all that that went into that, it's the fabric that brings us all together. And that's how we're going to keep moving forward.
Randall Reader:
All right. I wasn't paying any attention out there. Any other questions?
Jay Brandt:
Rick has one.
Rick Clark:
I'll go ahead and I'll go ahead and tell my quilt story, Randall.
Randall Reader:
Oh, go ahead.
Rick Clark:
Well, thanks for the question. Appreciate it. This goes back to what I said a few minutes ago. I'll tell this story and I'm going to tell it now. On Dave's first visit to our farm, he was about 15 miles away and the phone rang. And he says, "Rick, well I blew a tire on the van and I need some help." And I said, "Okay, I'll have somebody, we'll send somebody down and pick you up. Just leave the van there and we'll take care of it later."
Dave comes to the farm and he was there about six hours. And we got done with our conversation. And it's time to get Dave's van fixed. And we're in the field or something, but it didn't matter because I was taking my time to be with Dave, so I didn't have anybody that could go fix the tire. Dave and I go down and we get the tire off and we get it fixed and we put it back on. And Dave is on his way. He's headed west. Matter of fact, Walt, he's probably coming your way I believe.
And about six weeks later I'm going to guess, I get a phone call from Dave. And he says, "I'm coming through your neighborhood. I need you to be home at 11 o'clock on Thursday." "Okay, Dave, I'll be home at 11 o'clock on Thursday. Got it."
Dave's there within two or three minutes of 11 o'clock. I mean, he was right on time. And he's carrying this white trash bag. And he says, "This is for you." And I looked at it and it's this beautiful quilt and I'm like, "Dave, you don't need to give me this." He said, "No, no, you don't understand. This is yours." And he said, "I want to tell you a story about this quilt. This is the last quilt that Kendra and I worked on together and it's yours." And I'm like, "Dave, I cannot take this quilt. This one has to stay with you and your family." He said, "No, you are deserving of this and I want this quilt to be yours."
That quilt to me is so special. I believe it was finished. Jay, by both your parents. I think it was a finished one. But he said it was the last one that Kendra had worked on him with to complete. It's a very special quilt and that's just the way Dave was. He would've given you the shirt off of his back if you would've asked him. And he was always thinking about somebody else.
And that's an emotional story for me because I always, when I think of Dave, that's one of the first things that comes into my mind is that story of the first time he came to the farm. And then he came back six weeks later with the quilt. Thanks, Walt. I wanted to get that story out and you let me do it. Thank you.
Speaker 7:
Another question from the Whova app. What are some of the farmer education initiatives that were served recently in Dave's memory and with his inspiration?
Randall Reader:
Cincinowa.
Jay Brandt:
Yeah. We've been mentioning that, the fields of Cincinowa there in the Driftless region. That's based on the property owned by the Dominican sisters there. That's going to be the most current one that should be functional here later this year.
Again, we have efforts with Ohio No-Till Council, donations in David's memory there go to support the education scholarship portion of that and other activities to support the farmers locally in Ohio area. Understanding Ag has a continuing education fund or donation in both David and Kendra's name to support young farmers. Especially starting women in agriculture as well, which is very dear to, of course, mom's interest in that to support.
As well as with No-till on the Plains. I don't know if we've exactly figured out where to put the donations for that. But again, it's to support adoption and further education of holistic practices in the region. Those are primarily what we're looking at to support that idea with continuing to pass it forward in education in our industry.
Randall Reader:
Yeah. And speaking of the Dave Brandt fund, we have one set up at the Ohio No-Till Council, just like they've got the one at the No-till on the Plains. If you're donating, don't give all your money to No-till on the Plains.
And the one in Ohio, as Jay mentioned, two purposes of it. One will be a scholarship for college students studying agriculture. And the second one would be funding to help, and I'll use the word new or young no-till farmer or somebody wanting to transition to no-till to come to a conference like this. We would help them out.
And I know Mike Lester already said, "Hey, if you find somebody and you pay their expenses, we'll give them a free registration." That's the purpose of the Dave Brandt fund within the Ohio No-Till Council. Any other questions?
Speaker 9:
This question's for you, Jay. I know we all like to share our stories of something that we did that didn't work out quite the way we thought. Do you have anything you'd like to share about a project that you and your dad did on the farm that might've been a disaster at the time, but you really learned something from?
Jay Brandt:
Just about any project. Nothing particular. What I would say is I was very fortunate to have a very good relationship with my father on that. He was always incredibly supportive with the interests that I had. Especially when I came back right to the farm and brought the family home. That was probably his most proud time for us to come back to be with him on the farm. It meant a lot to that, that he could provide that resource for us. It was a big deal on that.
He would be so excited to see how Christopher and Isaac are performing on the farm today. That's the big thing there. I mean, we had several projects where we put things together that might have lasted a portion of the desired thing that was going on. Because we're not great mechanics or welders or anything like that. Usually it was not very pretty when we were done, but functional. That's the key takeaway from that.
I think Loran was the big one, innovation by needs. You figure out what you need and you get it done to that extent. A lot of projects were rather crude looking, but functional. And then we were able to improve later on. But thank you.
Randall Reader:
Okay. One more question.
Speaker 10:
Yes, I listened to Dave talk a lot. And one of my favorite stories is that he worked with the FFA kids. And one of the ways he worked with them, he let each kid plant one row or one pass with the planter. And when it came to this freshman kid, he said, "Well, they were planting corn 30-inch rows." He goes, "Well, let's put down the 15-inch rows and plant in the middle." And he said, "Well, they still have soybean seeds in them." But Dave, his attitude was, "Let's try it."
They put this planter down with beans in one row and corn in the 30s. And so he came back later. You correct me if I'm wrong, Jay, but he dug up the soybeans plants and the corn roots had wrapped theirself around to acquire the nitrogen from those soybeans. And this was an accidental ah-ha moment. And I'm just wondering if any of you have any of those accidental ah-ha moments.
Randall Reader:
Yeah, thank you. And let me interject here for a moment because Dave worked with Bloom-Carroll High School and they set aside a piece of land. What, how many acres there? Maybe 30 or 40 acres.
Jay Brandt:
A little less. But yeah.
Randall Reader:
And they farmed that. They held a program there in October in honor of Dave. But I think here's something you can take home with you. If you've got a local FFA at the school and they can find some land available, one of the best things you could do is to volunteer your time and your equipment to help them establish no-till and cover crops and get going like that. Go ahead. If got any other comments, Jay, go ahead.
Jay Brandt:
No, it's exactly pretty much as you said it. That experience there where he would always encourage that interaction with the students. He thought it was very important because even in our environment, as I mentioned where urbanization is something, there's very few farm-based family is in the school system anymore.
He always thought just participating in educational events like this for the children and the next generation to see that and to experience it, to get a hands-on approach was very important. That was one of his great enjoyable events was to do that and work not only with Bloom-Carroll, which he was a graduate from, but also our other local school, Liberty Union. Those are the only two with remaining FFA programs locally.
Randall Reader:
All right. Let's wrap this up. Let's all stand up for a moment. I'm going to start with Rick. Just a quick closing tip.
Rick Clark:
You want to stand up?
Randall Reader:
Yeah, go ahead and stand up here so everybody... I know there's people in the corners that probably have been listening to these voices and don't even know what you guys look like. But Rick, what would be one closing tip for the audience here?
Rick Clark:
Just keep pushing forward. Don't let the seeds that Dave planted, don't let them wilt away. Just keep your head up. We're in tough times right now in a lot of situations around the world locally. Keep your head up, keep pushing forward. And when you take these two or three ideas home with you from this conference, do not jeopardize the livelihood of your farm. Do it on two or three acres. Take a look at it, try it, and then start moving it across your farm.
Randall Reader:
Loran.
Loran Steinlage:
I think one of the proudest moments I ever had with Dave Brandt, we were standing on the home farm of Norman Borlaug. And they introduced Dave Brandt as the father of the brown revolution at the home of the green revolution. As I was preparing for this whole deal there, I went back in time there and I listened to Buffett's presentation here from several years ago. One of the few other guys that recognized the brown revolution that we're in. Be paying attention to that this afternoon.
Randall Reader:
All right, Jimmy.
Jimmy Emmons:
I stayed true to just plant a seed, whether it's helping a young FFA member or a 83 year old father-in-law like I did, to take the next step out of their comfort zone, to be supportive. Because we need a pad on the back once in a while when we're trying something that we've never tried before. And a lot of the peer pressure and neighbor pressure is pretty extreme. Plant a seed and move forward and never look back.
Randall Reader:
All right. And I think two closing comments from me. Well, one of them from me. I think everybody up here would agree that Dave wanted everybody to succeed. That's why he would spend time on the phone. If you had a question, somebody commented to me, "Didn't matter if you hadn't even bought cover crop seed from Dave. If you had a cover crop issue and called him, he'd help you figure out the problem."
And let me add a comment from Bill Richards. You've seen his picture at least two or three times on the screen. He was the chief of Solar Conservation service under the first President Bush when it transitioned then to NRCS and he and Jim Mosley did a lot with no-till to promote it at that time.
Well, Bill had this tip that he would share with you if he was here. He said, "We need 3,000 David Brandts." And by that he meant every county in the country or something like 3,100, but if we had a David Brandt in every agricultural county we'd be a whole lot better off. Now here's a tip. Several of you can be that David Brandt in your home county. That's the challenge for you from the panel here this morning.
Jay Brandt:
To build on what Randall was saying, again, pay it forward. The whole idea here is that we're going to support our communities when we go home. We're real fortunate to have a Ohio State University close by that can help us out with a lot of things.
Really had a great opportunity to build it with Randall through his organization and all that. Encourage you to reach out to your neighbors, reach out to your land-grant universities for assistance and encouragement. It only took Dad about 15 years where they would start writing positive articles about cover crops as no-till. We're making advances everywhere. Thank you so much for your support and it's our encouragement to you to pass it on.
Mackane Vogel:
That's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers and Innovators podcast. 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 no-tillfarmer.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.
