Will Fulwider 0:00
And Michael, do you have a joke for us? Or Jeff, do you have a joke? I did task Jeff with coming up with the joke.

Jeff Gaska 0:06
I didn’t I did come up with a joke. Yes, yes. All right. So the joke of the day when is a farmer like a magician?

I don’t know.

When he turns his cows into a pasture.

Will Fulwider 0:24
Oh, nice

It makes you think those are the best jokes? And you’re like, Should I laugh at this? Is this actually a joke? Or is it just cows going out in the pasture? It’s a joke I like to do.

Jeff Gaska 0:42
You turn your cows, you turn them into a pasture when people used to take their cattle out to pasture you know, daily after milking, they would open up the gates and turn them out all turning into a pasture to pasture.

Will Fulwider 0:56
Yeah, the best jokes are when you have to explain it after.

Welcome field notes. Today we’re talking with Jeff Gaska, a farmer near Beaver Dam and Columbus in Dodge County. Excited to talk to Jeff today. I’ve worked with him quite a bit over the past couple of years and some of the different on farm research projects that we’ve been collaborating on. Specifically focusing today on interseeding cover crops into 60 inch row corn, and then grazing it off with his beef cattle afterwards. So excited to talk about that today. Welcome on, Jeff.

Jeff Gaska 1:45
Thank you.

Michael Geissinger 1:47
If you could just start, right, like a brief overview of your farm, some of the details of what’s going on and maybe just introduce what your approach is to grazing cover crops.

Jeff Gaska 2:01
Okay, sure. So we’ve been farming on the same ground since the early 1970s. My parents bought a farm and we were kids and just kind of started farming from nothing. We have no farming history in our farm, our family background, so it was kind of out of the blue. And back in that day, it was moldboard plowing and corn planting corn and corn and corn and corn. And we had a few Herford beef animals towards the end of the 70s I think we started to get a little bit because we had a couple of areas that we couldn’t farm so they were grass and we decided to put some cattle on there. And over the years I became to like the cattle part of it quite a bit and as well as the crop farming but you know, we made those changes as other people are making changes to going again from moldboard plowing to chisel plowing, and then we did some deep ripping for a while as we learned a little bit more about compaction and that and then eventually made the switch to no till probably a good 15-20 years ago, I would say we really started into no tilling. And I have gotten no till that we did try some strip tilling few years ago generally worked for us it was what became more of an issue was the timing and being able to get that done. I I farm my wife helps out but she works off the farm and I have two young children. So it’s mostly me doing the work and trying to find the timing to do that was difficult. I liked the idea of strip tilling and it did seem to improve our yield a little bit but again being able to get out there. Now that we’re doing more cover crops I have to find time to plant them in the strip tilling and kind of competed with that. And in the spring, if I can strip till that means I can probably plant and so then you got to balance that and to me planting is probably more important than getting the strip tiller out there. So we’ve gone a little bit away from that I may go back and revisit that at some point. Try and maybe some new things with the strip tiller. But right now no till is pretty much all we do we no till our corn into what would have been last year’s wheat field. And we no till our soybeans into the corn ground and the wheat gets no tilled into our soybeans. So we have a true three crop rotation that we switched to that about three years ago. Just because we wanted to get more small grains and cover crops and then utilize those for grazing our cattle. Over the years our cattle herd has grown up to about 35 cows right now. cow calf pair there we raise mostly Simmental cattle. We do some crossbreeding with Red Angus to help and get that hybrid vigor in our meat animals. So between the crops, the corn, soybeans, wheat, we run about 450 acres total. And again, about a third, a third a third with and as we’re adding more ground into rotational grazing as well. So we took out about 27 acres a couple years ago to go to full rotational grazing on that with our beef herd. And this spring, this coming spring, we’ll be adding another 22 acres through an EQIP grant. And that’ll all be for our beef herd operation, and should be able to set us up really well with that for being on continuous grass during the spring and summer, and in the fall move them to grazing our crop fields and being able to utilize those so

Michael Geissinger 5:50
Awesome. And are you planting 60 inch rows and grazing cover crops on all of your corn ground each year or just a certain amount of it that’s maybe more accessible for the cows or?

Jeff Gaska 6:05
Yep, so what we done is what we’ve kind of figured out through planning 60 inch row corn is I don’t think you would do it for just grain production. So you have to have an added benefit because there is a yield hit to doing it. So we strategically placed those the 60 inch row corn so that it can be utilized by our cattle. The rest of the corn that we plan is all in the standard 30 inch row corn. We do some interseeding where we’re playing around with the interseeding in those other the 30 intro corn trying to see if we can make that work. Eventually, I would like to be able to interseed all of our corn, the 30 and the 60 intro corn but for right now our main focus is on trying to get the 60 inch row corn to be economical with through grazing, getting a good yield of corn and then through grazing and deciding what kind of cover crops to plant.

Michael Geissinger 7:01
Yeah, definitely. So when you are interseeding cover crops into that 60 inch corn, what species cover crops are you tending to look for, for you know, the best grazing approach and whatever your goals are, and when would you be establishing those in that corn?

Jeff Gaska 7:20
Okay, so we’re a corn gets planted, usually beginning of May like we would normally do that. And then we come back about six weeks later. So if it’s the beginning of May, it would be towards the middle of June, when we would do the interseeding in the corn, the corn should be about three to four, the v3 to v4 stage of growth. So six inches, maybe maybe eight inches tall or so. And now that’s also the time that we apply our sidedress nitrogen so we split apply nitrogen on our corn, we put some in with the corn planter and the remainder with the at at the side dressing or that v3 the v4 stage. So the nice thing about doing the interseeding is not it’s not creating another pass and additional pass through the field we can do at the same time we’re doing a nitrogen. So we’re planting around that middle to the end of June, once the corn gets established, so we got a corn that’s actively growing and established well. This year or this year 2023. What we did is we did a couple of trials where we looked at different species mixes for in the corn, the idea being what can we find that can produce the most biomass for our cattle and have the least impact on the corn production. So again, we’re planting corn we still need that corn to produce a good crop, but we need we were looking at biomass also for the cattle and so we did three mixes one mix was a very heavy brassica mix it had a lot of turnips and radishes and canola in their rapeseed. The second mix was a we had a little bit of brassica, we use dwarf essex rape at about a pound and a half per acre and then we also mix that with the grass mix which was Italian ryegrass with some festuolioum and timothy and a little bit of red clover and alfalfa. And then our third mix was just a base. I’ll call it basically a straight grass mix. It did have a little bit of legumes in it alfalfa and clover, but they really what we found out is they amounted to a very minor percentage of the mix. So it was mostly ryegrass, Italian ryegrass, annual ryegrass that was in that mix. So we had those three mixes. Watch them during the year will came out took some biomass samples looked at those and definitely the mix the full brassica mix, they had just an unbelievable amount of biomass in there. Would have had a ton of food for the cattle. But it also impacted the corn. You know, the greatest says you would kind of think that would be the case that it was competing with the corn it grew almost as tall as the corn. The corn in the field was a little bit shorter this year just because of the dry conditions that we had. But it was a very tough, tough condition for combining. They call it a green carpet mix and it should be called the green jungle. It was quite a quite a mix in there and a lot of vegetation. The the mix with the dwarf essex rape and the grasses. Even at a pound only a pound and a half of the rapeseed it still was pretty competitive. It suppressed the grass mix that was underneath it in a lot of situations. But again provided a fair amount of tonnage and some good food. The nice thing about the the rape is that it isn’t affected by the frost as much. So we had hoped to get the cattle out there in early October to graze, the corn just didn’t mature rapidly this year. So we had wet corn and we had to hold off for a couple of weeks. It was towards the end of October when we got in there and the corn moisture was dry enough. And so we had a couple of really heavy frosts in there. And a lot of the turnips and radishes, those leaves basically melted. They don’t like the frost very much. But the kale, I’m sorry, the kale, though rapeseed was those plants could withstand the frost really well. So they were available yet for the cattle to graze on it. But if I were to redo that mix at all, maybe I will need I want I would cut back the the kale or the rape in there quite a bit. I mean, from a pound and a half to maybe you only got half a pound or something. The cattle enjoyed it, they they ate those leaves and they liked it. But again, it was pretty tall, it got about as tall as the corn. The nice thing though it did not bolt and it did not go to seed. So we may have some issues with that in the heavy brassica mix. The third mix the grass mix was I would call that the perfect scenario that I was looking for a nice green carpet on the ground, you know, 8-10-12-14 inches tall, a fair amount of biomass and impacted the corn the least. So

Will Fulwider 12:23
So you’ve talked talking about all these different mixes, trying to figure out what works in your interceded corn for both the corn grain and also just provide the amount of biomass and the quality that you want. I’m just kind of curious, like, this is a as I’ve worked with you over the past couple years in this system, this is not the easiest thing to get rolling and get working perfectly as we’re trying to articulate it, you know, I think we’ll find out what works the best. But why, what is your motivation towards moving towards this and trying to get this to work on your farm?

Jeff Gaska 12:57
I would say there’s a couple of motivations. One is to better utilize our crop ground. I’ve kind of developed this idea in this thought that instead of growing my crops to feed my cattle, I want to grow my cattle to feed my crops, using them in the soil health mix to really improve our soil structure our organic matter our nutrient levels in our in our crops, and have a cover on our crops, you know, and when you do corn after corn after corn, it’s really hard to get cover crops into that mix. So this allows us to do that. Two, we have this beef herd that we want to be able to feed as inexpensive as possible. And to be able to utilize a lot of the things that we have on our farm. And if we’re not doing 60 inch row corn with covers, we’re feeding them hay. And so there’s a lot of management with hay, baling it, making sure it’s dry. If we can’t do that on our farm, then we have to purchase it. So we’re buying hay to feed our cattle, we have to deal with the manure, we have to deal with the management of feeding hay. And I don’t want to do that. I’m looking for a simpler way to raise cattle. And so doing this made the most sense to give it a try. And like I said, We’ve played around with it, we’re trying to figure out a way to make it economical. Right now if you just look at grazing and the the yield loss and the grazing, we’re probably not at breakeven, but that’s a it’s looking at only a few things in the economic part of it. What we haven’t been able to delve into yet economically is the benefit to the cattle in weight gain, cover, you know, growing weaning heavier calves having heavier, better calving at birth, those types of things. They can be hard to quantify some of them are easy just weigh a animal before it goes out and you weigh it when it comes in. But the other non tan intangibles, but are important in any kind of livestock raising, you know, the health of the animals, things like that, we can’t always put a dollar value on those. I think if we could start doing that, I think it would take away that loss and yield much quicker and make it probably profitable, if not, you know, for sure, breakeven, if not profitable. So that’s our next goal. There’s a lot of things going on a lot of things we want to look at. But I think our next goal with this project is to look at the economics on the cattle end of it a little bit more, and see what we can do. So you know, that I want to, I want to do what’s right for the farm for the soil, reduce our inputs, reduce our workload, again, it’s mostly me doing the work. So finding an easier way to do that, and being able to do it simpler. All those things kind of go into this, but I kinda have an enquiring mind, I like to get in the dirt and figure things out and try new things. So that kind of adds to it to, you gotta make it fun. I want farming to be fun. I don’t want to be just the same thing going out plant crops, harvest them and be done. This kind of adds to that excitement of farming as well.

Will Fulwider 16:14
Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And it’s fun for me to have been able to work with you on a lot of this stuff. So I’m gonna set you up for a question that I might jump in later on, as well. But I want you to drill down a little bit deeper into kind of, you’re talking about the economics and taking what into consideration. And I’m curious, even though I already know the answer, but I’m curious for the audience perspective of how did we look at how did it pencil out, you know, how do we determine what was profitable versus not?

Jeff Gaska 16:47
Okay, so basically, there’s two parts to that one is the grain part, the corn part, the cash grain, and we’re doing cash grain farming, we have to look at the yield and the the economics of that. And then we have the, the cattle part of it, which is the grazing the interseeded covers in there. So the looking at the cash grain part. So planting corn 60 inch rows, basically, you save yourself, okay, you’re missing a row of corn every to every row of corn, there shouldn’t be another row of corner at 30 inch spacings. How do you make that up? So the easiest way to make that up is to just increase the population of the 60 inch row corn. So we normally plant our 30 inch row corn at about 35,000 seeds per acre. When we’ve taken that roll away, we double the seed in the 60 inch row corn. So over an acre, we’re still planning at 35,000 seeds per acre. But in the row, we’re now it’s 70,000 seeds per acre. So those corn plants are really close together. Some corn varieties can handle that better than others. And we’re looking into that part too. But planning them that close, they stress each other more and you get end up with more ears, but they’re smaller. What we found this year, comparing 30 inch row corn the way we normally grow it to 60 inch row corn, we lost about 30, just over 30 bushels to the acre. So we have to consider that all our inputs were the same whether we grew 30 inch or 60 inch row corn, the same number of seeds, same amount of nitrogen spraying all that kind of stuff was the same. So really, the only difference we have is the the yield in the corn. So 30 bushels times $4.30, whatever corn is going for now, we have to make up that difference somehow, because that’s a lost revenue source on the farm. So we plant the interseeding covers, we have the cost of the covers that we’re putting in. And depending on the mix, we use the range from I think $12 up to 30 some dollars an acre for the mix. So we have the yield loss from the corn plus the cost of the cover crop seed that we’re putting in there. That cover crop then has to make up that difference in the yield and the cost of the seed. But it the other side of that is if we’re not grazing the cattle on those covers, then we’re feeding them hay. So we have to consider that we save we save the cost of hay feeding by putting them out on the covers. And basically what we look at is how much does it cost us to bale buy hay or bale our own hay and feed it how much are the cattle eating of that, hey, there’s a dollar value there. We compare that dollar value to the dollar value of what we spent on corn and the cover crop seed and the loss in the yield. This wasn’t a great year for corn yields in our area. We missed a bunch of rains. You know 100 We ended up with 160 bushel per acre on the 60 inch row corn With the covers the field right across from it where we did our control was about 200 acres. So our 200 bushels per acre, I’m sorry. So 30 Some bushel drop there. Different year could have a lot of different results. I think we’re, I’m happy where we’re at. I think we have new ideas for this coming year that we’re going to try. And so I the potential is still there, we’re not banging our head against the wall doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results, we are getting different results. And we’re learning. So…

Will Fulwider 20:34
We’re not insane, right. That’s the definition of insanity.

Michael Geissinger 20:39
Yeah, so you mentioned a lot of different things in there that you’ve included in sort of your budgeting analysis. I’m curious. Did you look into like the value of the manure, like as a fertilizer out there? And does that, I mean, are they out there long enough to really contribute enough fertility to maybe cut down on fertility needs through the rotation? Or have you seen yield bumps or anything in the following year, like the next the next year’s crop? In the areas where you graze cover crops versus not graze them?

Jeff Gaska 21:18
Yep. So the the manure question is a big question. Everyone’s trying to find ways to reduce inputs and utilize whether it’s cover crops or animals to add additional manure, nutrients to the soil. We haven’t seen a you know, like a significant increase in the phosphorus or the potassium in the soil, the potash in the soil and things like that we monitor that we do soil samples every three years, our thought, our kind of takeaway in the way we’re kind of running the farm is that we’re going to continue to do soil sampling, we’re going to see what’s out there, we’re going to continue to add nutrients per our soil tests. But we’re going to watch those. And if we continue to do this, on the same acres, you know, every three years, we’ll be able to graze the cover crops every, every third year, we’ll be able to graze winter wheat, and cover crops, if we can start to see those numbers, shift and go up where we can start adding less fertilizer, we will. So generally the you know, I don’t think there’s a direct relation, you know, you can, if you’re spreading manure out there, you can kind of gauge how much is going out there. And you can do sampling, and there certainly is benefits from the manure, if you’re spreading manure out there, I know there are benefits from the cattle, their manure being put out there, the urine, all that kind of stuff that, you know, working the plants into the ground, the organic matter is changing in those fields, it is going up, we’ve been able to kind of track that over time. But I’m a little hesitant on just saying oh, we’re counting them all the manure is all our nutrients, and we don’t have to do anything. So we’re taking a kind of like a trust but verify, approach, you know, trust that the cattle are doing something out there, we know that there there’s a benefit, but we need to verify that somehow. And I think our by continuing to do soil sampling continuing to add some nutrients in we, you know, we’re at the point where we can our nutrient levels are at you know, good levels through the soil tests, and we’re just doing replacement values out there, which economically helps you know, with the farm as well. So being able to do that I think helps a lot and it does I do think we gain we are gaining we just need to see that down the road.

Michael Geissinger 23:38
Definitely yeah, and it would take time with the size herd that you guys have versus like a 5000 cow dairy farm.

Jeff Gaska 23:49
Yep. But we do it you know, field by field and we rotate those fields around. Like I said, we’re on a three year rotation and two out of every three years we can put cattle out on those fields and utilize it as far as for the next crop. The one thing that I can say we have noticed so all of our all these fields that are corn are going into soybeans the following year. When we plan our soybeans into those fields, first of all, they’re generally the fields we can get into the quickest the just the cattle working it up, whatever it is kind of helps the you know infiltration. They dry out quicker that way. But they are always our highest yielding soybean fields. Every year are the fields that we graze whether it’s a grazing a cover crop with the interse eded corn or just corn stover, some fields, we just great graze the course they are always our highest yielding soybeans. So I can’t say it’s all because of the manure. There’s a lot of things that go on because the cattle are out there. But yeah, definitely see a benefit in the soybeans.

Michael Geissinger 24:50
Cool.

Will Fulwider 24:51
So we’re talking about this system that you’re trying to kind of perfect and you know you’ve been there doing this for several years figuring out what works and then trying to kind of articulate the system to then meet the next challenge. And so this year was a challenging year with the drought and everything. But I’m just curious, like, overall, what have been some of the challenges that you’ve had trying to get the system to work? And how are you taking those into the future and addressing them, you know, for example, this next coming growing season?

Jeff Gaska 25:22
Yep., so one of the challenges we face is weed control, for example, we, when you plant a cover crop into a cornfield, you got to account for that you can’t, you can’t have a residual herbicide in there because the cover crops won’t grow. So we’ve had to kind of change our, our weed control ideas on the corn, what we do now is a burn down at planting or immediately after planting to kill any weeds that are growing in there at a time. But that is normally in our 30 inch row corn when we would put a residual in the mix. And then that would should, under normal conditions, keep our weeds at bay for the remainder of the growing season. So we can’t do that we have to do something that just it has either a very, very short residual like a day or two or something like that, or no residual at all. And then when we come back in and plant our covers, which is about six weeks later, we have to do another herbicide pass through there. And so we’re killing everything that’s growing at that point. And again, we cannot use that residual at that time, just because that is the time that we’re planting the covers and our covers need to be able to grow in there. So we’ve had to watch that closely and see we so far we haven’t had any major negative impacts from the weeds. The lat where we did the heavy covers in the 60 inch row corn this year, there was enough cover crop growth to suppress weeds. There were occasional leads out there mostly lambsquarters, a little bit of waterhemp, but not concerning amount. So the cover crops seem to be able to control to some degree those weeds in there. Well, we did notice in a second study that we did, where we just use the rye grass, Italian ryegrass mix. The way our interseeding planter was set up, we left about a 10 inch or 20 inch gap, where the where the where normally you would have that third, when you’d planted on 30 inch rows where you normally had that other row of corn that we took out, we did have weed growth coming in through there. And so that was a challenge this year. It did. It didn’t hurt the crop too much, but it’s there and it’s producing weed seeds and so we have to address that. And the way we’re going to address that, again, a challenge is adjusting our interseeder unit and being able to fill that gap where we had no cover crop growth, move the row units together more so that we don’t have a 20 inch gap have nothing growing in between the 60 inch row corn. So that was a challenge. You know, we didn’t we did this last year, but we didn’t see that gap in there. The cover crops didn’t grow quite as well in 2022 as they did this year. So again, something you see you get different rains different growth, you learn things that you see so we have to make that change. I think we can overcome that situation though. As far as harvesting the cover crops. Not a big change when the cover crops are low to the ground like our Italian ryegrass mix, which was really easy to combine where we had the really thick, lush brassicas growing in there. We ran into issues because it was growing right in the cornrows it was leaning on the cornrows, it was intertwining with the cobs, I had a put a bar in front of the corn row on my corn head on the rows we weren’t harvesting to push the covers down as I was combining them otherwise they were getting caught up in the combine and being brought into the combine and mixing with the corn seeds. So we had some issues there. It made it a little more interesting the combine a little slower. But again, it’s a challenge but it’s a learning experience. At least I was able to quickly fabricate some metal bars to put in front and and reduce it considerably from what it would have been if we didn’t do that. So those are some of the challenges but you know we’re learning as we go and kind of seeing what we can do to evaluate that and and not make those mistakes but continue to try new things. So

Will Fulwider 29:39
Yeah, if you hadn’t had those bars on there, I might have had to sit on top of the head and push down the covers as you rolled past.

Jeff Gaska 29:47
I’d give you give you stomping shoes, snowshoes and you would have walked in front of me all down in front of me.

Will Fulwider 29:54
would have been a great image extension, helping with harvest as they as best they can. And one thing I also just want to add to that and I thought was really interesting. Where you did the 30 inch row interseeding with it annual ryegrass, which was just on a couple of things, you know, you were talking about the weed issues in the 30s, with the annual ryegrass I didn’t see a weed out there, it was totally clean. And so I think, like you were saying, pushing those row spacing, you know, obviously, there’s more shading in that, but pushing those row units closer together, will help to really be competitive against some of those weeds and you know, you can get away with just to burn down passes rather than than spraying a residual. Right?

Jeff Gaska 30:36
Yep. Yeah, that’s a good point. I, you know, I think we did, we were surprised with what the 30 inch rows, you know, with the ryegrass interseeding mix could do. So we’re going to play around with that a little bit more this year, as well as changing around the roll units in the 60 inch row, I think we have some benefit there. The other thing we’re going to try a little bit with is maybe adding some nitrogen so right now the way we’re set up, we have Y drop nozzles on our applicator that basically puts the nitrogen right at the base of the corn plant. And so the in the middle of those 60 inch rows, there’s no nitrogen applied, and we might try applying some nitrogen to that ryegrass. For two reasons one to see if we can’t get more ryegrass growth, maybe we get a more biomass that way. But two, by providing that ryegrass with some nitrogen, can we maybe cause it to not steal it from the corn, you know, maybe it’ll have enough nutrients there that it doesn’t have to go and rob the corn for those nutrients. So we’ll learn some stuff from that maybe applying a couple of different rates or something and see what we can get out of that. But hopefully, it’ll work.

Michael Geissinger 31:50
We kind of ask a variation of this question for everyone that comes on the podcast or field notes with us. But sort of, you know, you got started in this at some point, right? So if there was somebody out there that’s kind of interested in some of the things you’re talking about and wants to get started, is there any way you would kind of point them in the direction of to go for more information or resources that could help them?

Jeff Gaska 32:19
Yep, so I know, you know, cover crops are new, but really gaining steam, I would say, you know, there’s a lot of people doing a lot of different things from something as simple as putting rye in after winter, or after soybeans, to the whole soil health thing, you know, and planning covers and planting green and using cattle in the mix and things like that. So there’s a lot of information on Facebook, YouTube channels, there’s a lot of farmer groups, our Dodge County farmers for healthy soil, healthy water watershed group, we have people trying a lot of these different things as well, I would say probably the key thing is to get a mentor. I think having someone that you can call, anytime of the day or night, you know, and talk to that has done what you’re trying to do is really key because there are a lot of challenges, there are a lot of things you’re going to run into that you never thought you were going to see when you’re doing this. And having someone to talk to having you know, a mentor isn’t a single person or a farmer led group that you can contact and you can become involved with that you can work with the UW Extension has a lot of resources, you know, the crops and soils agents, those types of people can help. Or they can get you in touch with mentors to do that type of work, but really talking with someone working with someone because you’re going to fail at some point. So when you’re doing cover crops, just like you can fail when you’re doing corn you can be you could have planted corn for 50 years in a row and at some point in there, you failed it didn’t work the way you wanted it to soybeans are the same thing wheats, the same thing you know, you there’s going to be an issue that comes up that makes it difficult but you need support a support group to help you through that to talk it through and look at find out what happened and what you can change the next time and I think that’s probably the the key I I’ve seen too many farmers tried cover crops and fail. I don’t want to say fail but it didn’t do what they expected it to do. And then they quit and they’re done with it because it wasn’t the silver bullet and it’s not cover crops are not the silver bullet. They are a bullet in the gun that you can use to improve yields and you know, help soil health and help the environment and all that. So knowing that there are going to be issues it’s not all easy, but that there are options out there to help, I think are the key things.

Will Fulwider 35:02
Yeah, there’s definitely no silver bullet unless the silver bullet is calling Jeff, to ask him questions and serve as your mentor. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s always super fun to talk about these systems and trying to get into work on your farm and sharing that information with everybody out there. We really appreciate it.

Jeff Gaska 35:24
Yep, not an issue. I enjoy doing it. I think if I can help someone, gain some knowledge or try something new or get into cover crops. That’s a win for me, so I’m happy to help.

Will Fulwider 35:41
Thanks for listening. This has been field notes from UW Madison Extension. My name is Will Fulwider regional crops educator for dane and dodge counties. And I was joined by my co host Michael Geissinger, outreach specialist, in Northwest Wisconsin, for the nutrient and pest management program of UW Madison. A big thank you to Joe Ryan for creating our theme music and Abby Wilkymacky for a logo. If you have any questions about anything you’ve heard today, or about your farming practices in general, reach out to the extension agriculture educators serving your region