Farmer Champion Highlight: Lydell Pethke

Lydell Pethke of Ledgerock Farms

On April 13^th, 2022 Shelia from Winnebago County Land and Water Conservation Department met with farmer, Lydell Pethke of Ledgerock, to get to know him and his farm as he starts his journey as one of our new Farmer Champions. Lydell is one of three farmers participating in our “Increase Adoption of Soil Health Conservation Systems in the Rat River Watershed” project. He will be implementing a soil health system (cover crops, no-tillage, and low-disturbance manure management) on his farm for the next three years.

This interview started out with Shelia asking about the history of the farm. Lydell explained that his wife and him established their farm in February of 1989. They started out with 120 acres and 70 dairy cows. In the year of 1996 they had a fire. After the fire he joined into farming with his brother. His brother had taken over his family farm that they had grown up on together. They now have 400 cows; his brother raises all of the heifers. He also owns 650 acres and runs a total of 1,600 acres across Winnebago, Outagamie, and Waupaca County. Shelia then asked about what type of tillage he has been practiced in the past, which Lydell responded with, “Mainly fall chisel plowing. We bought a speed disk, trying to go away from the chisel plowing to leave a little more residue on the top, but still get it manageable on lower ground.”

The next questions that were asked were all about the new practices that he will be incorporating into the farm. Lydell will be doing cover crops, no-till, and low-disturbance manure. He currently has waterways on the farm and practices low-pressure irrigation. When asked if he had any cover crop already in mind he told Shelia, “Rye and some kind of tillage radish.” The crop that will be planted in those fields will be corn silage.

Lydell chose to incorporate the soil health system on his farm because Shelia had talked him into it and the profit sharing, but he also had a concern with the high ground erosion. He stated, “not sure if it is this spring or the rainfall we have had before the crops were out, but I have had more erosion this year than I normally do with chisel plowing.” He also told Shelia about the experience he had with using the high-speed disk, which seemed to work fine on the flat ground, but caused pools of water everywhere else it was used which led to even more issues. With the use of the soil healthy system he is hoping to see less erosion and fuel consumption, and better soil health along with no drag in the yield. If these practices go well he is willing to put these practices onto more of his acres.

Lastly Shelia asked about how Lydell got into farming. It was quite a long journey for him to get to where he is today with his own established farm. Lydell grew up on his own home dairy farm. Once his brother took that over he started to work with a farmer Iola, hoping to someday buyout that farm and make it his own. That deal did not end up working. After another buying plan didn’t work out he decided to take his heard of 45 cows and rent a farm for a year. After renting he entered into another partnership with 90 cows, once again this did not work out for Lydell. After one more buyout deal that did not work out he finally bought his own farm in the year of 1989 after 5 long years of moving from farm to farm.

Learn about the other two Farmer Champions in the Rat River Watershed on the project webpage.

Article content and photo submitted by Emily Dufeck, Watershed Specialist at Winnebago County LWCD
This project is funded by a Great Lakes Commission GLSNRP grant