- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(upbeat music) - Good evening.

Welcome to another new edition of "Montana Ag Live", originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Took a couple weeks off, went to California to see some grandkids and what a beautiful fall it is there, and it can't be any better there, and it has been right here.

This has been one of the nicest prolonged falls that we've had in a long time here in Montana.

You know, a lot of people have always said, you need to bring more producers onto this program.

And we are going to do that tonight.

And actually, we have a couple more scheduled in this fall series.

As I mentioned earlier, we're kind of focusing on conservation and production ag and how they co-exist to the benefit of all.

So I'm gonna have some producers talk about that for the rest of this fall series.

But before we get there, let me introduce tonight's panel.

Frank Etzler.

Frank is borrowed from the Department of Agriculture.

He's an entomologist.

He's filled in while we're getting some new entomologists here at Montana State University.

Frank, always good to have you here and thank you.

- Pleasure.

- Nate Powell-Palm, a young producer, organic producer, conservation oriented producer here in the Gallatin Valley.

He's got a nice story to tell.

If you have any questions about organic production and how conservation practices work well with organic production, tonight would be a good chance to get them in.

Noelle Orloff.

Noelle is actually invasive plant specialist, but I'll call her a weed scientist.

She's kinda filling in for Jane Mangold.

Jane is on a sabbatical this year, and Noelle knows everything you need to know about weeds and if you live in Montana, you know we have plenty of weeds around.

So weed questions, get them in tonight, and we'll get some good answers from Noelle.

And Mac Burgess, Mac is always glad to be here.

He smiles quite a bit on occasion.

He is a small farms agronomist.

And answering the phone tonight is John Holly here in the studio, and I believe our phone answer at home is Bruce Lobo.

And Bruce, we're always glad to have you join us at home.

So with that, Nate, I did a little research on you and you're impressive.

You started farming when you were about 12 or 13 years old.

You got a loan from the Department of Agriculture to buy three cows when you were 14 or 15?

- 12.

- 12.

So you've worked well with the Department of Agriculture.

Tell us a little bit about what you do here in the valley.

- Yeah, so I'm a product of 4H, and so I had some really great mentors growing up and one of them was Jeanne Reyher with Reyher Embryonics, who is my 4H leader, Marlo Leachman with Leachman Angus.

And I don't come from a family of farmers or ranchers, and so I kind of had to build things from the ground up.

So I got kicked off trying to be a cattleman with this loan that I was gonna have a cow calf operation, and it was gonna be, you know, three cows to start with but it must grow really fast, and that took a minute.

And so as I tried to figure out what is the way that I can still make this a career but still not have a ranch coming my way, no big inheritance down the pipe, and that's when I discovered certified organic.

And so I've grown the operation by leasing smaller plots of land around the Gallatin Valley and a little bit in Jefferson County as well as Sheridan, Wyoming.

And we run just about 1,500 acres now.

Mostly, we're cropping alfalfa into yellow peas and then spring wheat and then flax, and then hay barley with alfalfa back.

All of it is grazed by our beef herd.

And so we've been trying to figure out how do we get as much value out of each acre while getting also a good source of consistent feed for our beef cattle.

- You know, it's really fascinating.

I admire somebody that has a foresight to get into a business like that when you don't have a farming background to begin with.

That's great.

I have a question, and I've always been a little concerned about organic beef.

How do you market your beef organically?

I mean, do you have somebody that processes that beef for you?

- Great question, yep.

So the thing about organic is every single step of the supply chain is certified.

And so from the producer to the hay grower over to the slaughterhouse to the grocery store that's gonna be selling it, everyone gets an inspection.

And so our biggest constraint is like most other beef producers that slaughter that slaughterhouse.

So we have to raise our animals the last third of gestation forward on certified organic feed and then we have to raise 'em out.

We raise ours about two years at which time they're grass-finished, they're about 1,200 pounds, ready for slaughter.

And then we have to find a certified We are really lucky in the valley where we have Amsterdam Meats.

who's a certified organic slaughterhouse.

If we wanna go out of state, we have Pioneer Meats.

We have Stillwater Meats.

And so all of them are actually certified by the Montana Department of Agriculture as organic.

- Impressive, I like that story.

Noelle, and this is a question that comes in every year, we try to answer it once a year, and this person from Missoula would like to know how she can get quackgrass out of her lawn and that's difficult, so.

- Oh, my gosh.

Getting quackgrass outta your lawn.

If I could figure that out, I'd be a millionaire, but I do have a couple recommendations.

I think in general, you know the first thing I think about for weed management is making sure the plants that you want to have there are competitive against the weed that you don't want there.

So for example, if you've got quackgrass in your lawn, you could do practices that make your lawn healthier.

So things like aeration, making sure your fertility is correct, making sure you're watering the right amount for your lawn that you have, I would recommend those things first.

I don't have a great herbicide recommendation for quackgrass in your lawn because, yeah, it's hard to selectively kill a grass in grass especially in a residential setting.

So I would say try to get that lawn competitive and that would be kinda my first step in trying to figure it out.

- You know, you're absolutely right.

When I bought the current place we have, we had a lot of quackgrass, but with aeration a good fertilizer program with pretty high rates of nitrogen about this time of year and also now in late May, mid to late May, I've managed to choke not all of it out, but it looks a lot better.

Nate, in organic production, weeds have always been the biggest issue that I know about.

So how do you manage your weed issues?

- Our biggest hammer we have is the alfalfa crop.

And so we're able to grow alfalfa, we try to get it in for three or four years, sometimes five.

And the worst weed we have is Canadian thistle or creeping thistle.

And we found that if we're able to hay it off before it goes to flower, four or five times, usually we have a fairly clean shot at going into an annual crop after that.

And I found with organic producers across the country, if they have a perennial forage crop where they can choose when to harvest, they don't have to wait for it to go to grain or be ripe.

They can really target the most vulnerable stages for those weeds and are ended up with the cleanest fields.

- Good, glad to hear that.

Frank, a question from Manhattan, they have some ornamental hops and there's a lot of aphids in them.

What can they do to control those?

Any thoughts on that?

- Yeah, aphids are are gonna be a problem no matter where they are.

So one of the best things to do is to really promote natural predators in the area.

So you wanna have natural control that is probably the best way to control for aphids within your hop fields.

And if that doesn't quite work out, you can do probably in the springtime, some neem oil would be a good way and probably a multiple applications - Well, I tell you, they are pests.

I mean, you gotta keep after 'em.

- [Frank] Yes.

- Okay, so let me ask you this.

Suddenly, you get a bunch of ladybugs show up that like to munch on aphids.

Do you stop spraying at that time?

- Yes, right away I would do that 'cause you want to promote them.

- All right.

- So they're doing the control and a lot of times with aphids, if you see a lot of ants crawling up on your plants, that's usually the first sign you have aphids.

- Okay, thank you.

Mac, one for you.

And actually Nate, you can jump in on this too.

This call is from Glendive, and they would like to know are there more small farms in Montana recently than there was in the past?

- Yeah, there's been growth in that market for sure.

- Significant growth.

- No, I don't have hard numbers from the last few years, excuse me, but I know the number of farmer's markets has steadily increased, and we've seen a lot of increase of interest here in Western Montana for sure, none since the pandemic.

- [Nate] Anecdotally.

- [Jack] You're not a small farmer, but... - Anecdotally, I say there's a lot more farms I think of it.

One thing that we're seeing is that we've really dialed in commodities.

We know how to produce corn and wheat and barley really well.

It's got big capital game, but there's a lot of market opportunities for smaller grains, smaller vegetables, smaller markets.

And those are gonna be really well a good fit for these new producers who are coming in and getting started off with less than a fully functional operation.

- Okay, I agree.

Contracting calls here, and I'm trying to sort this out, somebody from Helena is asking, "Are there more yellow jackets than normal this year?

And are they beneficial when we get into that too?"

And the other caller from Big Timber says, "There are less yellow jackets than normal this year."

Your opinion?

- Well, I would say I feel it really depends on where you're at.

- Depends if you have a nest in your... - Yeah.

(overlapping chatter) - That's the main thing.

Do you have a nest around you?

Then, you're gonna see a lot more.

To me, I haven't seen any changes really.

I've think I've seen less this year, but we really got on the nest over the last couple weeks.

- I'm going on the last boat, yeah.

Same story.

- So, but they're still a pest.

Do those yellow jacket traps work pretty well?

- Yes, they do.

They're really good at attracting them It's mostly about keeping the population low so they're not a nuisance.

- All right.

A caller from Whitehall would like to know how to control kochia and whitetop.

- Oh, how to control kochia and whitetop from Whitehall.

Those are two very different plants.

- [Jack] They are.

- And it's hard for me to give a lot of management recommendations if I don't know where they're occurring exactly.

So I guess I can say a couple general things.

So kochia is an annual plant, right?

So it lives for one year, and so it depends completely on seed production for its survival.

So I'd say for kochia, you'd have to do something to reduced seed production over time.

And that could be anything from, you know, mowing before it starts going to seed to, you know, if you had a couple kochia plants, you could hand pull 'em.

If it's in your garden, you could hoe 'em up.

- [John] And where are you coming from?

- And depending where you are, you could use different types of broadleaf herbicides.

And then for whitetop, that is a perennial rhizomatous noxious weed.

So our tactics for that are gonna be a lot different.

- [Jack] Right.

- Right.

You wanna do things that over time are gonna deplete the resources and the underground structures, but still probably wanna decrease seed production to diminish spread as much as possible.

- Tell you what, why don't this person get ahold of you?

- [Noelle] Perfect.

- Find out where those weeds are.

- I would love to talk to them.

- [Jack] And then you can probably give 'em a more specific recommendation.

- Yes, that was very nebulous.

Indeed.

- Okay, Nate, I have a question for you, but before we get there, here's one from Mac.

I like to throw Mac a curve ball.

Big Timber caller has a bumper crop of apples.

What are the best tips for storing apples long term, so the apples can be enjoyed as long as possible and without withering up?

- Well, in commerce, of course, they're waxed and stored in controlled environment with reduced oxygen and in very precisely controlled temperature.

And I don't think someone's gonna do that in their garage in Big Timber, but keeping 'em cold and at a higher humidity would be good.

- So if you take a McIntosh, which is a standard old Apple variety in Montana.

- [Mac] Right.

- And you harvest 'em about now, and you put 'em in a refrigerator, how long are they gonna last?

- I usually eat all mine before I find out (laughs) but certainly not as long as you'll see in the store.

We have really, in commerce, perfected the art of apple storage and with technology that's really not available to the- - Okay, thank you.

- [Mac] Make applesauce.

- Or apple cider?

- [Mac] Apple cider.

- [Frank] I was thinking cider.

- Yeah, hard cider.

- Yes.

- Okay, in fact, there's somebody in town- - It would take a couple months.

- Okay.

- Easily.

- All right.

Nate, from Livingston, what do you see as the greatest challenges for folks adopting conservation farming in Montana?

And I know you do a good job of conservation farming.

Well, give me a definition of what you'd say conservation farming might be.

- I'd say the easiest definition is certified organic because it has a federal definition, and it has all of the different steps that you would take to meet that standard.

We struggle with definitions in conservation farming, especially with the word regenerative being thrown around that it's undefined.

And so I like to lean on organic because the most foundational part of the standard is soil conservation and how we maintain and build that soil and protect that soil.

And so when we think about the steps that we can go about, the tools we have to build soil, we have crop rotation, we have increasing fertility, building soil organic matter, and then just not letting it erode.

And as we look to why folks adopt conservation practices is typically for a market that there's someone out there who's going to pay a little bit more to buy those crops.

With organic, we have the pesticide and herbicide-free component, which is just a big better for me selling point for a lot of consumers.

They want that clean food.

The environmental aspect is maybe sort of an afterthought for a lot of them.

And that's fine because we have the opportunity to use those tools to still build our soil through crop rotation, still use animal manure, livestock integration to build up that ecosystem.

And the biggest thing I think is weeds for folks getting into conservation farming, not having the same tools that they had when they were, say, just a traditional chem Fowler rotation, and we're talking more grain commodity production, but thinking about how to control weeds and then how to find a market.

And those are the two things that I look to, how do we augment those two challenges the most, focus on them the most to be able to provide a nice easy path for folks looking to get into conservation farming?

- Okay, thank you.

It is getting more publicity all the time, regenerative ag, sustainable ag.

- [Nate] Absolutely.

- And from what I've seen in the many years I've been around here is ag practices have improved tremendously, and that's statewide, probably nationwide.

- [Nate] Nationwide, yeah.

- I'd say so.

McLeod caller, and this is interesting, we've never had a call from McLeod before, so thank you.

They want to know how to kill poison hemlock in pastures, that's a tough one.

- Oh, poison hemlock in pastures.

Oh, I feel like I should have this one on the tip of my tongue.

I will say controlling poison hemlock in pastures is really important because it's one of our more poisonous wheaty plants, so you don't want that near your grazing animals.

So this is another one that reproduces only by seed.

So decreasing seed production over time is gonna be key.

However, whatever method you wanna use to do that, whether it's mechanical or another way, it's another plant that does really well in disturbed areas.

So making sure that, you know, you have good canopy cover of your pasture plants to compete with weeds is really important.

And I don't have the herbicide recommendation on the tip of my tongue.

- [Jack] I don't remember it either.

- I don't have it on the tip of my tongue.

- They can call you?

- They can call me.

And we also have a Mont guide on the extension store website that covers poison hemlock in great detail.

So I'm happy to speak with this person, or they can find that information online.

- [Jack] And there's your phone number right there.

- Well, there you go, just give me a call.

- [Jack] Okay, that works.

Frank, I've seen a lot of this.

Tent caterpillars, and we've had several questions about tent caterpillars.

And any suggestion what they could do about 'em?

- Well, I would say break up that tent.

So like when I was a little kid I would go and take a stick and open up that tent and that- - [Jack] Typical entomologist.

- Yeah.

(chuckles) And see all the caterpillars in there and breaking up that cover for them does allow for some predation by birds.

And then if you do wanna spray, if you have a really big population of 'em, and they're taking up a lot of that canopy that'll allow direct contact with that spray.

Malathion.

- [Jack] Malathion was an old product that used to work very, very well.

- That should still work.

- Still available, yeah.

Definitely.

For Mac, they called last week.

They called again this week.

From Great Falls, they want to know if it's too late to cut back lilacs.

- Is it too late?

- No.

Actually, I'm told, and this didn't work very well for us.

After they flower, you can cut 'em back.

And then the flower, I think we cut 'em back too early last year.

I think once they go dormant now would be a good time to cut 'em back.

Nate, is there a link between adopting conservation practices or getting certified organic and revitalizing rural Montana?

And we've had somebody come in on later in November to talk about revitalizing some of these communities, but your thoughts on that?

- Yeah, I think about this a lot, as a first generation farmer, thinking about how do you get to that average age of producers down across the state, across the country, and what does it take to make farming, you know, an attractive or even possible career path for new farmers?

With organic and conservation farming, we are able to access premium markets that are going to be able to pay for these practices in a way that makes it so you don't have to be as big, you can have somewhat lower yields, but you're also farming in a way by the very fact of the standards that you are going to have less money flowing out of the farm.

So almost all of my nitrogen, say, comes from my crop rotation.

Now, I'm gonna grow high protein wheat less often than, say, some of my neighbors, but I'm also never writing a check for fertilizer.

When I think about my seeds or my hay, my entire rotation somehow is driving revenue constantly because of, one, is diversity, but two, how each step of the rotation interacts with the next step.

So when I think about how do we both get more money to rural communities and less money leaving rural communities, these conservation, and specifically certified organic farming because of the premium it drives, I think is a huge opportunity for young folks coming back to these communities that we have across Montana.

- Premiums, I'm curious, so what percentage-wise premium would you expect, say, from an organic pulse crop compared to a conventional raise chickpea or blend of crop?

- Typically, we're gonna see 2x on most of 'em depending on the variety you're able to grow.

In the contract, it can be up to, you know, three or 4x.

For my wheat, usually, I'm thinking about three times from a conventional price point to my certified organic price point.

And for other more niche sort of ancient grains or malting barley between, you know, one and a half to two times the price.

- [Jack] Okay, it's significant.

- It's significant, yeah.

- Okay.

Great Falls caller wants Noelle to expand on proper water and answer reducing quackgrass, and I'll jump into that a little bit.

- Please do, you've had success with it, it sounds like.

- It's worked pretty well for me.

- So go for it.

- Yeah.

We water twice a day for about 30 minutes, and I use something like 25, ten, five fertilizer with a little bit of sulfur in there and using that with at least one aeration every year, we've been able to not eliminate the quackgrass but really reduce it.

Now, we're on a well, so I can afford to water.

If you're living in Bozeman, your water rates are not conducive to doing that.

So you might consider zero escaping or something on that order.

- I'm told I can't even water except certain days of the week.

I'd be going twice a day.

- Yeah, so there's a big difference where you're at.

So where I am in a little bit rural, yeah, I can manage it.

But in town, it'd be more difficult.

Okay, we'll let that one go by now.

- [Noelle] Perfect.

- Caller from Bozeman would like a reminder during the show about the recordings available of all shows on Montana, pbs.org.

If you google "Montana Ag Live", you can find all the programs we've done over the last several, several years.

So it's easy to get to, and hey, they're kind of fun to watch.

You'll see that a lot of us have gotten a little bit older over the years, and it shows.

This one comes from Bozeman and the caller asked, "Noelle, what have been the top two or three common weeds submitted to the diagnostic lab this summer?"

- Oh, my gosh.

- [Jack] That's interesting.

- Oh, great question.

I just love talking about this stuff.

Okay.

So in Montana in general, we've been having a lot of concern about Palmer amaranth coming into the state.

I bet Tim's been on here talking about that plant before.

So there's a lot of plants that look like it.

- [Jack] I know.

- So I have really gotten the opportunity to dig into that genus and look at lots of different samples that people suspected were Palmer amaranth.

So that group of plants has been the most submitted this year, which has been really interesting to learn about.

And then always in the top three is roving bellflower or campanula rapunculoides, a lawn weed in kind of residential areas mostly.

And what would number three be?

Probably plants that people think are ventenata, I think.

That's a lot of what we do at the Schutter Lab is, you know, help people tease out whether or not they've got a specific pest or not.

So I've seen a lot of grasses this year that are not ventenata that people thought were, so those are my top three for the year.

- Thank you.

Frank, we had a caller here about heath snail, but before we do that, I think Nate brought a slide or two or picture or two of some of the tillage practices you're doing.

- I did, yeah.

- So if we could get those up on the screen and Nate can tell you a little bit about some of the things that we're doing with that.

And while those come up on the screen, I'll switch it over to Frank until those show up and ask you about heath snail.

This person wants to know how serious it is, and are we gonna do anything about 'em?

- [Frank] I think we'll hold off 'cause of photo.

- [Jack] Okay.

- [Nate] All right.

One of the myths I love to bust about conservation farming in organics is that if we till it all, we're not conservation farming.

And I think that there is such a difference between when we talk about tillage, say, pre-1980 and tillage today, purely from a technical point of view of the sort of tillage implements we have now can do so much more so quickly that we have a lot of the concerns from erosion reduced.

And so here's one of my fields that I farm up in Springhill, and we've got a no till 10-006 great plains.

And a big thing we try to do is leave as much biomass on the surface.

And so we'll go right before we till and do a very quick disc pass.

And this is once a year.

We'll disc right before we till, we'll immediately plant but we'll till kind of chunky, and so that we don't have a really fine soil bed so that we can make sure that we get some good aggregates that don't just blow away because we have the no-till cultures on the drill, we're able to cut through a lot of that biomass and still get good soil to seed contact.

If we jump to the next slide please.

- [Jack] Yep, we'll bring it up here in a second.

There it comes.

- [Nate] And as I think about what a good post field for winter looks like, one that's not going to blow away if we lose snow, one that's not going to lose any soil, this is what I like to see.

So this is a pea field from last year, and I'm just gonna leave that down there.

I know my no-till cultures can get through it, but when we think about how do we farm with tillage and maximize building soil, so a lot of biomass going back into the soil, but also make sure that we have no erosion.

We have a lot of options, and I think that no till culture is one of them, but making sure that we time the weather with our tillage events is also crucial.

So farming on fields that are small enough that we know we can get 'em taken care of, even if weather conditions change.

I think there's another slide.

- [Jack] Okay, we have one more coming up.

- Oh, maybe not.

- [Jack] Maybe not.

Okay, well, if we find it, we'll come back to.

- All right, sounds good.

- Back to the heath snail, you know that's an invasive species.

- [Frank] Yes.

- And this person wants to know what the Department of Ag is doing about it.

- So the Department of Ag right now is just purely monitoring the population.

So it's in a strange limbo for regulatory pests.

So we wanna make sure we know where it's at, and we wanna make sure that it's not spread.

So we're also working together with Montana State University, the USDA and Oregon State University to develop some best management practices so we can kind of give back to the community about how to control for it.

However, if you do find any suspect snail, you should immediately contact your local extension officer and send them either a photograph or a specimen, and you can preserve that specimen in a little jar with some isopropyl alcohol.

That would be perfect.

- Speaking of snails, slugs are somewhat related, aren't they?

- They're very closely related, yes.

- Okay, we have several questions about people that have mulched their gardens and mulched their various plants, and they get slugs.

What do you do to control slugs?

- Well, I've learned this from you to tell you the truth.

And it's to put out some beer and so a beer trap will lure them in.

A lot of the yeast in there will kind of be attracted to them and lure them in, and they'll drown within the beer 'cause the alcohol will kill them too.

And the best beer has been studied, and that's Coors Light.

- That's correct.

And we can thank Sue (indistinct) for If you happens to be watching, but Kansas State did that study many, many years ago and that was the preferred beer.

So organic farming.

- Yes.

- In a garden.

- They haven't tried any of the hoppier- - I don't know if they have.

Don't tell about- (overlapping chatter) - Well, if you want you can start your own experiment if you have slugs.

- Yeah, well, you mulch your garden heavily, you're gonna have and lots of moisture.

- See if the IPA will be better.

- Okay.

Noelle, I'll find this here.

Caller from Helena with an organic garden would like to know how to control sticky weed.

And I suspect that's the one that, you know, it grows all over.

What's the common name for it?

- So there's a couple weeds that I might call sticky weed, and I feel like they both are also called catch weed.

- [Jack] Catch weed, that's it, yeah.

- [Nate] That's what I was thinking.

- One of them is a gallium species, which is actually native plant, which is interesting.

And one of them is in the borage family, but they both have like hairs that make them feel sticky.

And if you throw 'em at your friend, they'll cling to their clothing.

It's kind of fun.

But both of those plants for an organic gardener, I would say... Well, two annual plants.

You gotta stop seed production, you're just gonna have a new crop next year.

Okay, so this is a vegetable garden, right?

- Yeah, it's organic garden.

Doesn't say how big, I say just pull 'em.

- Pulling 'em is great.

I would pull, I would hoe.

Do it early in the year before, you know, they get all viney and muddy everywhere, do it early in the year when they're still small.

You can see 'em by their little hairs.

They still feel sticky when they're little.

And what I would always do in my vegetable garden, I would mulch.

I would mulch for little weeds like that, so I didn't have to pull so much depend, but the you'd have slugs.

- [Mac] Slugs.

(everybody laughs) - It's all a trade off.

Right, but yeah.

- Add to that question, she would like to know or they would like to know if a buckwheat cover crop could help.

And have you ever used buck wheat?

- [Nate] Oh, yeah.

- [Mac] Oh, yeah.

- It can be a problem later on, can't it?

- Yeah, so you wanna make sure you have a rotation.

Ideally, that's where an alfalfa hay or another perennial comes in so you can hay it out to make sure it doesn't stick around, but really a powerful weed control.

- Yep, it is.

Yep, no doubt about it.

Question from Helena, "Why is organic considered conservation farming?"

That's a good question.

- Yeah, so when we think about maximizing the ecological potential of a field, we're trying to figure out how do we make it so that we realize all of the potential of that field and minimize the influent outflow of energy, be it nitrogen fertilizer or if we're taking off straw or other biomass that we can otherwise retain on the field.

And so I think of organic as a conservation farming practice because we're really focused on building that soil written right into the standards that we are required, if we're gonna call it organic, that we are reducing or eliminating erosion, that we're building our soil organic matter via crop rotation, cover cropping, and that we're integrating livestock.

And so we're using a kinda a holistic model to produce a business, make a commercial product off of these fields while again minimizing those in external inputs.

- Okay, I have a couple other questions for you here that have come in, but before I get there, you love squash, I can tell you.

You always show up with a bushel pass.

- Every time it's fall, I bring squash.

- You wanna tell us about all these lovely squash.

And how you eat 'em?

- Sure, there's seven different kinds of winter squash here.

So these were, you know, transplanted harvested a couple few weeks ago.

And they will keep all winter long on your kitchen table, just leave 'em right here.

They'll come back in March, they'll be all right.

If I had to eat two of them right now, I'd go for the pepos.

So the delicata and this actually is an acorn squash, it's a striped acorn, but one called starry night.

Those are pretty good to eat now.

We'll get better over the next month or so and all of these kabocha and butternut and hubbard squashes are gonna be better to eat in January or February.

- [Jack] So how do you make 'em edible?

- How do you make 'em edible?

(laughs) Roast them.

- [Jack] Roast them?

- Roast them.

- [Jack] I put brown sugar on 'em.

- They don't need brown sugar.

- Oh, yeah, make soup out of 'em, right?"

- You can make soup out of them.

I really... You know, with these, the delicata the so you can cut 'em in rings this way or cut 'em in slivers this way.

And to be honest, a little miso maple will make way beyond edible gourmet.

But no, there's a lot of sugar in these.

- I realize that.

- And that's part of it.

I think when people don't appreciate winter squash, they're eating 'em at the wrong time of year, and they're buying 'em at the store, and they've been grown in places where they don't let 'em ripen and mature, but these are loaded with starch that will become sugar over time.

And so these kabocha types, you want to eat those in December, January, February.

- You know, I joke about it, but I do like squash.

Yeah, it goes great with ham.

What are the peppers doing there?

- Oh, I just brought some peppers.

- [Jack] Oh, they're one- - [Mac] Do you want to eat one?

- [Jack] Not right now.

- That looks dangerous, doesn't it?

No, these are a sweet pepper.

This is called Jimmy Nardello.

It's been a very prolific producer for us.

It's an heirloom pepper, and they're sweet and tender.

- Oh, really?

- It's not spicy.

- [Nate] And beautiful.

- And beautiful, yeah.

- [Nate] Nice.

- All right, enough of the squash and peppers that's- - [Nate] It's getting me hungry.

- Organic questions again.

This person has considered organic in the past, but they're concern that it's difficult to develop a market.

How have you developed your markets?

- I wish that person would tell me what they're looking to market because there's different things.

If you're looking at grain, there's a much more mature market.

If you're looking at vegetables, you're gonna be more direct-to-consumer.

But I start out with my market, Montana has a long history, 30 plus years of businesses developing who are great buyers of organic products in Montana.

And so we have folks like Montana Flour and Grain, Kamut International, even General Mills, who have businesses, buyers, mills in Montana that are constantly pulling from Montana.

And so when I first thought about growing organic grain, I went to each of those businesses that advertised in different publications and just asked them, "What would you like me to grow?"

And so the first crop I grew, which I had never seen grown in the valley, was soft white spring wheat for cookies.

And it was because I could get a contract that they were giving 19 bucks a bushel.

And I knew I had a field that was going to be very low in protein 'cause I was coming out of grass.

It wasn't gonna be a huge producer.

And that's what they wanted for that contract.

And so hard red spring wheat Montana has, you know, as I think we know in all aspects, a pretty good corner on the market that we have a season and environment that produces really exceptional quality wheat that only carries over into organics that all of the bakeries and different consumer packaged goods that are looking to have gluten basically are looking at Montana and trying to get it.

So we have a very consistent price because of those markets.

As we're thinking of beef, the Montana Organic Producers Co-Op was founded in 2006.

I joined in 2010, right after I got certified organic, and they are a group that aggregates certified organic grass-fed cows.

So small producers like me, who had three animals to start out with, could throw those three finished calves on a trailer along with three other producers who are making up the 50 necessary to have a pot load.

And we have been shipping 'em over to basically the Whole Foods in Northern California for the last 10 plus years.

And so for animal proteins, co-ops are the biggest thing.

And so the Montana Organic Producers Co-Op deals primarily in beef, but also a little bit of lamb.

And so giving them a call would be a great opportunity if you're thinking about animal protein.

They also are co-op for grain production.

And so they aggregate different contracts that are bigger than any one producer can handle and put together that load so that they could then meet that contract, say 40,000 bushels of hard red spring wheat or something in the pulse category.

For vegetables, there's the Western Montana Cooperative and that's, again, an opportunity to feed into something where you're not having a direct market to consumers.

And then, if you're in the sort of direct-to-consumer there is always that challenge, or your farmer's markets I think, that consumers come up to you and say, "Are you organic?"

And if you're not certified organic, you have to sort of say way too many words where you're just saying, "Well, I use organic practices, and I never really spray."

And instead of just saying, "Yes, I'm certified and it's getting it off," one myth about certified organic is that it's very expensive.

That's a myth I love to bust because in the Farm Bill, the federal government through the Farm Bill reimburses 75% of the cost.

So you're out maybe a couple hundred bucks, and so it's something that's pretty accessible.

And if I may give a little pitch for transition to organic partnerships, which is part of the Organic Transition Initiative was a $300 million program announced last year by the USDA that is providing funding to match interested transitioning organic farmers with mentors who will pick up the call, be paid to pick up the call whenever they have a question, and we'll kind of walk them through and give them the opportunity to visit those farms.

And that's how I learned, that's how most organic farmers in Montana learn to do it.

And we're actually going to have the Undersecretary of Agriculture, in Springhill on Tuesday to celebrate year one and learn from farmers about how to make the program better.

- Sounds great, very good information.

- You know, Jack, I might recommend they would go to the Montana Organic Association- - Absolutely.

- Meeting, which is coming up in December.

I think it's in Great Falls this year.

And not only are there other producers there, but definitely a lot of those businesses that are contracting will be there.

- December 7th.

- Yeah.

- The number of organic producers growing in Montana.

- They are.

And so the total acres... Montana's the number one organic wheat producing state in the country.

The total acres are going up...

They were going up, you know, 10, 12, 15% a year.

It's a little slower now, but it's still, you know, five, 10% a year.

And the major drivers of that are twofold.

The organic livestock industry was the biggest driver of organic.

When you think about a consumer going to the grocery shelf, the first thing they reach for are milk or eggs.

- [Jack] Right.

- And that eats a lot of organic grain.

We got so... We grew that industry so fast that we ended up actually importing a lot of grain because we couldn't grow it domestically.

We didn't have that capacity.

And so we're now starting to displace that import with domestic growers.

And those domestic growers are then allowing that acreage expansion.

- Fascinating, I like it.

Noelle, there's a very smelly plant with yellow flowers growing on the side of the road to my house in Big Sky, what do you think this plant is?

This is an email question that came in.

- Hmm, interesting.

- [Jack] Smelly, I would've guessed spurge, but I don't think that's right.

- I have a guess.

I get a couple questions about this one every year at about this time you see it around crosscut a lot, Mac.

What I would suspect this plant is mountain tarweed or madia glomerata.

It's a plant in the sunflower family.

It's actually...

If I'm right about what plant it is, it's a little, well, can be little.

You know, it's an annual plant in the sunflower family that's native to Montana, and it has like glandular hairs on it that it really does smell.

- [Mac] What's it smell like?

- Like tar.

- Interesting.

- It's very pungent smelling and people, you know, to my knowledge, it's not toxic or anything like that.

Sometimes I think about that with kind of smelly plants, but to my knowledge, it's not toxic.

And places where it grows are places like along roadsides and along like open disturbed areas in forest understories and things like that.

Personally, I would recommend... Oh, sorry, I'm touching my microphone.

I think I would recommend tolerating I think it's nice having some native colonizing plants around to compete with weeds that we don't want.

But if you wanted to decrease it a little bit, maybe you could try mowing it before it set seed.

- Do insects like bees like it or not?

- You know, if only Abby was here, I would guess it is.

So it flowers later than a lot of other things, so I would guess it would be an important kinda late season source for pollinators if I was guessing.

- Okay.

- [Frank] I would agree with that.

- [Noelle] Oh, you're an entomologist.

- [Frank] Yes.

- [Noelle] Hello, Frank.

- Yes.

- I'm right here just- - Sorry, sorry.

- That's okay.

- Okay, here's another one and everybody can jump in on this 'cause it's an interesting question.

It's from Valentine.

The caller says hunters are encouraged to wash vehicles before and after they enter fields to hunt, but the ag community drives on and off their fields regularly without washing fields.

The caller asks, "Who is most responsible for spreading noxious weeds?"

It's an interesting concept.

- It is.

- It's something to think about.

I don't have an answer.

I don't think anybody has an answer, but it is a way that noxious weeds are spread.

- Absolutely.

- There's no doubt about that.

- Who's got mud?

- Yeah.

- Both.

- Okay, from Helena, "Who are the players besides farmers who can help expand opportunities for - I assume that one's for me.

And I would say when we think about expanding conservation farming, oftentimes we just think about the farmer.

All the onus is on the farmer.

It's there.

We're asking them to do more and more with less or the same prices, but we really need to have a pull of those ingredients that are produced through conservation farming.

And so I think of those startup businesses or those existing businesses that are going to be the buyers of those organic goods.

Folks who would buy the organic beef.

Putting a little bit more effort into sourcing that supply chain.

Figuring out how to increase slaughter capacity, how to have more of a pole off the land.

As folks start food businesses, thinking about if I'm going to have a clean slate of what I'm going to use as ingredients, trying to orient your recipes around those products that you know are products of conservation.

You mentioned buckwheat, and I think that there's a huge potential for buckwheat.

Very few people know what it is or how to eat it.

And so the folks who are the connectors of eaters and farmers are those businesses who are making the foods we all love.

I think of also agronomists who are going to be giving the advice to producers on how to manage weeds, how to manage insects.

Those folks who are going to be the first stop for advice becoming more aware about conservation practices or what it actually means to be certified organic.

- Okay.

Frank, from Alm, since we touched on pollinators a little bit, this call came in, it's kind of interesting.

The Alm caller had noticed that no bees showed up until late June well after most blossoms died off, the bees finally showed up around July 1, and were in great abundance in August.

Their garden had total crop failure on early Boston plants, cherry tomatoes, which blew 'em at the time, had a great crop, so forth and so on.

Is there a reason why the bees were so late this year?

- Not that I could think of.

It really depends on the bees too.

So if it's honey bees, that's usually about the time they come back to Montana is about the time you saw that 'cause honey bees are treated as livestock.

If it's a native bee, it could be that... We had a wet spring this year, so that could kind of affect a lot of the bees flying.

It could promote fungus and disease if it's a wet spring.

- So late spring, but we had a very dry May.

- Yeah, that could affect it too, so.

- Okay, we're not sure in other words.

Okay.

- Not sure.

- Nate, I'm gonna give a plug for the Department of Ag.

Have they continued helping organic producers here in the state?

- Absolutely.

- Tell us a little bit about what the Department of Ag has done to help you.

- Yes.

So just started off with that junior ag loan, where they just magically give up, I think, $5,000 to 12 to 18 year olds, which is just the coolest thing.

And I use that line across the country.

They're like, "Your Department of Ag does what?"

And I think it's a really special thing that, you know, they give opportunities to make sure folks can start it as early really as they want.

Building on that, the Montana Department of Ag has an organic certifier.

So the USDA owns the seal, the USDA seal that you see on organic food, but they actually offer accreditation and state departments of ag to administer the certification.

So we, in our Department of Ag, actually have a certifier, which is a huge asset to have a certifier who knows Montana, they know dry land grain, they know the type of growing season we're working with.

They know in the northwest corner the type of fruits we're growing.

And so to have that sort of expertise where you're not calling someone in California or Vermont to tell them about Montana, it's a Montana entity dealing with Montana producers and offering that input has been fantastic.

I would also say that the Growth Through Ag Grant Program, I've been a recipient of that a couple of times.

And so we've built a sea cleaning plant and started to build a flower mill to add value to our products.

And just the, you know, foresight and investment in making sure that farmers have their products, leave the farm as valuable as possible, or to create a local ecosystem of processing and making food from the commodities that we produce here has just been exceptional.

And I think that as we look to other Departments of Ag, the Montana Department of Ag stays very close to producers in this state, and I think is very sensitive to what we actually need.

- I agree entirely.

- [Mac] 100% agree.

Yeah, not biased.

- [Nate] Nope, nope.

- Not at all.

Okay, Mac, here's a question.

Again, on the organic line, I'll let you do this one.

Do you see any potential for organic vegetable production in the state?

Profitable organic vegetable production, small farms.

- Small farms, yeah.

You know, I think there's a significant amount of demand for local consumption type things for things that we can grow exceptional quality because of a shorter distance to market.

You know, are we gonna become the next commodity producer of organic carrots?

Probably not more for logistical reasons really than anything else, but can we grow great quality carrots for our communities?

Absolutely, and I see that growing.

- So let me throw this out.

Organic hemp, are you growing any of that?

- I'm not myself.

- Is anybody growing organic hemp in this for CBD oil?

- Yes, indeed.

Yep.

CBD oil, but also just the grain and as well as the fiber.

And so there are bedding companies that are buying up organic hemp.

There are clothing companies buying up fiber.

And then the grain has been, I think IND Hemp has been a big buyer of organic hemp around the state and are, you know, just the food product of the organic grain coming off the hemp hearts.

- You know, I've tried that and it's really on salad.

It's not all that bad.

- Right.

- Yeah, it's a little bit nutty.

- Yep, yep.

Popping with protein.

- You're right there.

You grow some flax though, don't you?

- I do, yeah.

- And you sell that as a grain?

I sell it as both a grain and as a seed.

And so that was sort of the catalyst for getting my own seed cleaning plant was I grew this seed for the first linen mill to be restarted since World War II in America, which is over in Oregon.

And they said we need to grow out some seeds so that we can actually grow the stalks, that'll become the linen fiber out in Oregon.

So starting in 2019, I expanded their seed.

They gave me like three bags, which they said was gold, don't lose it, it's from Europe.

And luckily, I didn't.

We made it into several hundred thousand pounds over the next few years, and that is now producing linen out there.

The organic flaxseed market for both just bulk bins as well as oil and supplements has just been popping.

I mean, it's been like 30 bucks a bushel, and I can usually get 17 to 20 bushels an acre and has just been a awesome sort of nitrogen scavenger that fits really well in my rotation.

- Yeah, it's interesting.

I gave a call talk a couple weeks ago about evolution of agriculture in Montana.

And during World War I, Montana and North Dakota and Saskatchewan produced about 95% of the flax, which was used in airplane wings in World War I.

- [Nate] Yep.

- And when they went to metal, the flax market died, but I understand it's coming back strong right now.

- It's an awesome opportunity.

- Is that fiber flax?

Taller than the flax, I think of.

- It might be a little bit taller.

They try to get 36 inches, and so usually you pull it, you red it, so it's actually coming straight outta the ground, ripping it up by its roots so you get the whole stock, but typically they're fairly close in genetics.

Jack, if I may answer or jump on that question about organic vegetables.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- I have seen several processors try to get into organic vegetables, but because they don't have a consistent enough supply, they haven't been able to get off the ground.

But things like carrots is one that I see as just like bleeding money out of our communities.

We can grow some banging potatoes, we can grow some banging carrots.

And the thing that separates us from a lot of this carrot growing capitals is we have water here, we have irrigation that's pretty good here.

And as we figure out that infrastructure piece for how do we get the coolers, the cleaners, the trucks that are gonna manage it, ICS is getting into produce in a big way, and we really need, again, that pull, getting infrastructure to come here first so that growers have a market.

- Back in the '20s, we grew a lot of carrots here in the valley and very successful.

Anybody's ever grown carrots here, they're the best carrots in the country.

- Absolutely.

- They're sweet.

- Yes.

- They're really good.

- Great quality.

- We do.

(overlapping chatter) - I won't buy carrots anymore.

And sorry for carrot producers.

Good carrots are hard to come by.

And if you don't grow 'em here, you don't get good carrots.

Okay, we're running a little low on time.

I want to get this one in because it's kind of interesting.

Noelle, the call from Great Falls has a weed, and he's calling it a stinky weed.

It smells when it's pulled.

Any idea what it is and what might be able to do to control it.

And if not, we can sure send it in.

- Send it in.

There's a lot of weeds that smell really bad or plant maybe, you know, who knows?

We'll see.

I would be very interested to see it.

- Yeah, I'm not sure what that would be.

Absolutely.

- There's not a lot of clues to go by.

- [Jack] Okay.

- I need a clue or a sample.

I do like verbal plant ID, but that was too hard.

- All right, we're gonna correct something that I'm going to thank everybody.

Helena caller said that she was told during a Master Gardener Programming that lilac should be only pruned within two weeks after blossoms have died off if you want the lilac to blossom next year.

So we're corrected.

- All right.

- Okay, and I'll buy that.

I think we'll verify that, but don't go cutting your lilacs right now.

With that, folks, we're getting down to the very end.

I want to thank Frank.

Nate, thank you for very much.

You've provided a lot of good, useful information as you know.

I like what I'm hearing.

Noelle, we'll have you back in.

I think you're back next week again.

- I'm back next week.

- Okay.

It's always good to have you and your squash here.

- Thanks, Jack.

- And next time bring some recipes other than roasting them, okay?

You can do that.

I use it for dog food and the dogs love it.

Okay.

Next week, County Ranch Sustainability Alliance will be here.

See you then, goodnight.

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