Pipe Farmers Expand on their Success with Soil Health

Article submitted by Zach Laughlin, Fond du Lac County LWCD

Dave’s roller crimper in a shed

We are anticipating the start of another growing season with our two Pipe Creek watershed GLRI participants, Chad Tasch and Dave Simon! Both farmers are finding success with implementing the soil health practices of no-till, low-disturbance manure application, and cover crops, and are looking forward to expanding on their success.

Dave Simon is going to be trying several new things on his farm this year. First off, Dave bought a 30 foot roller crimper this winter. Dave, who has been inspired by regenerative farmer Rick Clark, is curious about using the roller crimper to terminate cover crops. The roller crimper is a metal cylinder with grooves that rolls over a cover crop, terminating it by snapping the stem and preventing nutrients from moving up into the head of the plant and producing seeds. At its best, the roller crimper is able to terminate the cover crop without the use of herbicides, and hopefully the mat of dead cover crop—usually rye—can provide enough weed control throughout the growing season.

The trouble with the roller crimper is that it takes a lot of skill and favorable weather conditions in order for the crimping method to be effective, as it requires the farmer to terminate cereal rye when it is in boot stage. We will be sharing pictures and videos of Dave giving this method of cover crop termination a try for the first time, and we will have a small field day, weather permitting. Details to be announced at a later date.

Further, Dave will also be doing weekly Haney tests on one of his fields in order to track the patterns of his organic nutrient availability. Some of this information will be important in making nutrient management decisions, but some of the information—especially later in the year—will likely just help begin to piece together a storyline surrounding nutrient cycling on his land. While Rick Clark does not do Haney tests (yet), the practice of doing different sampling beyond the traditional soil test is something that Dave has been inspired to do from Rick Clark’s biomass sampling, which Dave tried last year and will also do again this year.

Lastly, in early April, Chad Tasch’s custom farming business was featured in a social media post by Bazooka Farmstar—a manure application equipment manufacturer out of Washington, Iowa. Specifically, Chad’s team was using a manure agitator, which stirs up manure in the pit, so that it can be applied in liquid form to fields, without plugging up the equipment.