- [Speaker] 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 and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Good evening!

You're tuned to Montana Ag Live, originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus we call Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana Public Television System.

I'm Jack Riesselman, long retired professor of plant pathology, I'm happy to be your host this evening.

I have a real interesting program tonight.

Again, we're kind of following the script of conservation and production ag, how they can coexist a profit of everybody.

So we're gonna get in that a little bit tonight.

We have a really special guest that I had to twist his arm to bring him all the way down from Helmville.

And you all go to your map and figure out where Helmville is, and if you can't find it, later on in the program we'll tell him where it is.

(David chuckles) But anyway, we'll have fun tonight.

We're gonna start off with kind of another special guest, with a semi-special guest, Rachel Frost.

- Semi-special.

(chuckles) - Semi-special.

- She is head of the Dan Scott Ranch Management Program here at Montana State University.

It's a great program, you'll learn a lot more about it tonight.

It is something that this state and actually the West really needs.

Special guest, David Mannix.

Dave is from Helmville, part of the Mannix Brothers Ranch up there.

I met him this past summer on a tour, one of the most impressive tours I've ever been on.

We'll talk about that in a little bit.

We imported somebody from the East Coast, (panelist chuckles) and we seldom do that.

We have a border out there (David chuckles) about North Dakota, but somebody from Penn State who has moved here as a retired weed scientist, Weed Society of America President a couple of years ago, Bill Curran.

And Bill is a guest too also this evening.

And we're a little short of weed scientists this fall because Jane Mangold has taken a sabbatical, but she will be back next year.

And Abi, Abi Saeed, our horticulturist, and answering the phone tonight, Nikki Vradenburg, and Merritt Emkay.

And folks get those questions in, the phone number will be on the screen here shortly.

But before we do anything about that, I'm gonna give kind of a congratulatory thing to Dave because the Mannix Brothers Ranch this past year was voted the Environmental Stewardship Award Program, the best ranch in Region V. And that includes Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, I believe.

So congratulations on what I saw up there.

- Mm-hmm.

(panelist applauds) - It's well deserved, there's no doubt about it.

So tell us about your ranch.

- Well, thanks for the introduction, Jack, and thanks for inviting me to Bozeman.

And I'm told, your bride is gonna give us a stake at the end of the deal.

- That's correct.

- So that's the reason we're- (panelists laughing) You are right, so.

Yeah, so the ranch established in 1882, early on...

The first acreage was purchased from the railroad, and then homesteading after that to add to it, largely sheep for most of the early years, shortly before the Second World War switched to cattle.

- [Speaker] Good evening!

- In my father's time of management, manage, and then we got into managing the timber acreage as well.

So in the early years dad was, other people managed our timber, if you will, I mean, he went to experts.

When brother Randy went then as a forester himself, so he's been managing the timber.

So the enterprises we have now, the timber enterprise, we have cow-calf program, of course, stocker enterprise in the last few years, and a grass finished beef direct to consumer.

So there's the enterprises, we're like many of the ranches in Montana, right?

We operate with on deeded ground, but also plenty of leased ground, so our ranch is about a third deeded, about a third either state or federal, and then a third is private lease.

And of those private leases, we have like eight different private- - Private.

- Leases.

I only mention that, in that we are...

The property owners that we deal with have a lot of different values, right?

And so we're practiced I think, it's important to us to understand the values of others.

And that also now that we're in the direct marketing, our customers also, right, have a set of values that often align with us, but often are some different, right?

I might have an opinion about endangered species or grizzly bear or something that, that would be different than how one of our customers might feel about that.

And so, listening to others is something that we've found is one of the drivers for our ranch.

- I understand that, and that's gotta be a tough job to do.

I recognize that.

Tell us a little bit briefly about your conservation programs there.

I mean, you've got a lot of easements with various different agencies that leads to what I consider to be very productive.

- So, yeah, I guess, Jack, the...

I mean, we have the conservation easements with both, US Fish and Wildlife Service on part of the property, on the bulk of our property, but also some with our state fish and game.

So that's just the conservation easement piece, and that's like bringing in a partner on the ranch, right?

If we're thinking about doing some significant changes, we need to consider our partner.

There's been a very good partnership, right?

Frankly, I mean, we might be thinking about controlling sagebrush with fire or chemical or what have you.

There's a biologist that we can go to, to ask about, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

The same would be true with fisheries and those kinds of things.

So when I think about conservation on our ranch, what it looks like is the work we do with a lot of partners, right?

A lot of partners help us.

It might be the Blackfoot Challenge with Carcass Pick Up and range riding, for example, to help with predator control.

It might be, right, in the last few years we were working on the Forest Service with some controlled burn for, for both, sagebrush and conifer encroachment.

It might be Trout Unlimited on stream restoration.

There's many more partners, I haven't mentioned, Jack, (panelist chuckles) but that's what conservation looks like in our property, is taking advantage of those partnerships.

- Yeah, it's impressive.

And thank you.

From Butte.

Abi, is it too late to fall fertilize in Butte?

I'm picking lawns.

- I would say for lawns, I think you're cutting it a little too close, I wouldn't fertilize at this point looking at what the weather is looking like next week.

I'd say, it's a little too late.

- I would agree.

And what about weed control in the fall?

Bill, a lot of times we say, try to control lawn weeds, pasture weeds, just before fall frost.

Is it too late?

- First, I want to make it clear that I'm really a westerner.

- Oh, (chuckles) okay.

(Abi chuckles) (laughs) - And that you and I had the same alma mater.

- [Jack] Oh, no kidding.

- I think we talked about that, CSU.

- Yeah.

Yep.

- Yeah.

- Okay, well, you're allowed here then.

- Yeah.

(panelists laughing) This has been an unusual year I think weather-wise, maybe every year is an unusual year, but it's been quite mild compared to some years.

And so I would say, a lot of times people think about Canada thistle and other types of perennials, and I would say sort of the optimum time in our area is probably like early October, early October in a normal year before a frost, but the fact here in the Gallatin Valley in many areas, we haven't had a frost yet.

At least up until today, you probably could still do some good by treating for perennials.

- Actually my wife picked tomatoes today, October 22nd in Bozeman, Montana.

He picked tomatoes, and if somebody would've told me that 25 years ago, I would've given them a lie detector test because that's just not common.

Anyway, do you spray your...?

I know you have some knapweed up there, you're on top of it, and you've pretty much knocked the population down.

Do you spray some of it yet?

- So we do.

Our main focus, the Sieben Ranch has been bringing a band of sheep out for a number of years.

And that's been on the bulk of our acreage where we're most challenged, with the knapweed we've used the sheep.

We still do use chemical on a spot spray basis, right?

Trying to keep ahead of the spot spraying.

- Right.

- I guess that stands for itself, so.

- [Jack] Okay, sounds good.

Rachel, we have a question here.

What is the Dan Scott Ranch Management Program?

- Yeah, Jack, the Dan Scott Ranch Management Program is the name that encompasses a new major at Montana State University, and that major is in ranching systems.

It's a Bachelor of Science that is offered through the Department of Animal and Range Sciences.

And this degree is unique in a couple of ways.

First, it's very broad-based compared to a lot of academic degrees.

It's about a third animal science in the curriculum, a third rangeland ecology and management, and a third finance and business.

So it gives the graduates of this program a really solid foundation in those three areas that are really essential to managing a ranch.

- On that note, and I've never looked at the curriculum, and I should do that, then I wouldn't ask stupid questions, (Rachel chuckles) which I'm pretty good at.

But we're talking about weeds.

Do these students in the Ranch Management Program take courses in Weed Science, so they can manage weeds like on the Mannix Ranch or others?

I know you've got some weeds.

Do they take courses like that?

- Not in Weed Science specifically, but they do take enough Rangeland Ecology courses and plant ID courses that they know how to identify those noxious weeds, and then they also know how to manage those weeds that's particularly within a native rangeland situation, which is where they're most often managing those on a ranch.

- Okay.

A question from Missoula.

This person would like to know if you're related to the Mannixes that deliver beef, grass-fed beef to Missoula?

- Yes, that's us.

(Abi chuckles) - That is.

Tell us a little bit about how that works.

- How it works?

Well, so it's been an enterprise, so I think 2007 is the first we sold a few.

It's grown considerably in the last few years.

So we're selling product beef that we raise ourselves, right?

In our case, it's a Never Ever product, right?

It's been, there's no antibiotics, no growth hormones.

And we try to finish them, we try to have a marble product.

It's not prime, mind you, but we try to have a nicely marble product.

And yeah, we've had, actually Missoula was our... We had some folks in Missoula that encouraged us, they said there's a need here.

There's a demand, as we talked about earlier, there was a demand for it.

And so, we thought we had the product that would work, and so we reached out, started developing that.

It's been very rewarding for two reasons.

One, to connect with the consumer, right?

That's a rewarding thing that we never experienced when we were selling commodity beef, right?

Our commodity beef went to a feedlot in the Midwest and went somewhere, and we just didn't know if it was a good product, a bad product, we wouldn't know.

When you know the people that are eating it, I don't know, I think that's the best food safety thing you can do, right, to sell it to a person that you now know and shake hands with.

And then the other thing that's been great, it's probably afforded a couple of the next generation back.

One thing I failed to say when I was introducing the ranch a little bit is that there's myself, two brothers and our three wives, right?

So there's the six shareholders of the ranch, but we have six of the next generation that are back, so we're really blessed with that.

- [Jack] You are.

- But there's plenty of mouths to feed, and that that direct consumer beef business, that enterprise has been a big piece of bringing bodies back.

Both, for financially, but also from a... Well, it's a rewarding thing to do, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

Grass-fed beef fascinates me because years ago that's all we had in Montana.

When we had cattle here in the 1870s, 1880s, they were all grass-fed, and that's what we fed the miners with.

Then we moved away from grass-fed beef, I'm curious how you you get marbling in an animal that's fed grass?

- So in our case, it's mostly a function of time.

Obviously quality of feed makes a difference, but we can't compete, right, with corn or grains that are higher energy concentrate.

So in our case, we usually have to keep them almost a year longer through a second winter, and then go through the grain season, if you will.

And the best quality feed we have goes in that class of cattle.

- So you don't finish them on grain at all?

- We don't, no.

Yeah, so there's Never Ever, they've never had any grains, any antibiotics, and/or growth hormones.

And so, time is a big piece of it.

Jack, the other thing is, in our case, we find the heifers finish quicker than the steers, simply because they quit growing, and will put on fat, but the steers will continue to grow.

And then we've moderated the size of our cattle too, so that their mature weight is significantly less than many in the industry.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

Moving on to Abi, we have a question here.

What should they do now to winterize trees?

And they don't say if they're coniferous or deciduous leafy trees.

- Okay.

Yeah, I can talk about both of those.

So this is the perfect kind of time to make sure that you get, whether they're deciduous or coniferous get a nice, really deep soaking into the root zone of those trees to set them up for a really healthy winter.

We had a lot of issues this year with dieback because we had a really rough winter on our trees, especially our evergreen trees and shrubs.

There was lots of desiccation, and because we had such a long winter.

So ways that you can reduce those types of issues are to make sure that you water those trees really well.

Most of the trees' root systems are between the top six to 24 inches of the soil, and they are about triple that circumference of that tree, about double or triple.

So the area that you wanna aim for watering is, if your tree, imagine your tree is like an umbrella, that drip line where that circumference is, that's where most of the active roots are.

So do a slow soak, make sure that water gets there, gets deep into that root system, and really kind of saturates that going into work, getting some cold weather coming in, and a hard freeze expected.

So this is the time to set your trees up for success.

- Yeah.

And you better do that with coniferous, for sure.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Okay.

Bill, I had a question here that came in last week.

I found out eventually.

Here's one.

Prunella.

A Butte caller wants to know what Prunella vulgaris is.

I don't know why people can't use common names, so we all understood what they were, but what's Prunella vulgaris?

(Abi chuckles) - So Prunella, the common name is heal-all.

It's a member of the mint family.

It's a perennial.

It's not a common weed, it's kind of one of these plants that grows on roadsides sometimes in lawns, maybe on the boulevard where things aren't really being taken care of.

So I would say, it's not really a plant that I think would, you need to aggressively try to manage.

It's probably not an easy plant to manage 'cause the mints tend to be pretty tolerant of herbicides, typically the lawn herbicides that we use.

It also is gonna tolerate mowing quite well.

So if you're really interested in eliminating it, you really have to look probably at the right herbicide's choice, and make that decision.

- Bill- - Mm-hmm.

- Are they native or introduced?

- No, I think it's an introduced plant.

A lot of our mints are introduced, and they're interesting 'cause animals, livestock don't like to eat them, and they sort of have some natural defenses.

You can think about catnip, things like that.

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- So.

- Okay.

A call for both, Rachel and Dave.

This person from Billings says, they're a fan of the TV program, Yellowstone.

Okay.

(chuckles) - Oh, boy!

- And they want to know, (panelist chuckles) do we still have range riders, cattle rangers in the state?

- Range riders, yes.

- Well- (David laughs) - Yeah.

- And livestock agents too.

Do we have livestock agents in the state?

I mean, do you see that?

No, we don't know.

- Like brand inspectors.

I mean, we have brand inspectors, but not- - That's probably the same thing as a- - I've never watched Yellowstone, so I don't know what they're referring to.

(laughs) as far as the livestock agent.

Yeah.

- You guys are in the minority.

(laughs) - Right, we are, we are.

- It's pretty popular, and I won't say it's been good for Montana, it's probably been the reverse because they've shown- - Mm-hmm.

- Some of the most beautiful scenery in the state, and so be it.

But they do talk about livestock agents on there, and this person was curious, but I think brand inspectors is probably the correct one.

- We do have governors.

- Yeah, (chuckles) yeah, okay.

(Abi chuckles) - Well, I guess students that come here because they want the cowboy degree at Montana State 'cause they've seen stuff at Yellowstone.

So that's gotta be one of the questions I ask the students now, "Are you a fan of Yellowstone?

Well, this degree might not meet your expectations."

(laughs) - That's good.

On that note, from Bozeman, this person would like to know where the students in your Ranch Management Program are coming from?

Are they native Montanans for most part?

Are they from all over the country?

- Actually most of them are from outta state.

I literally have students from New Jersey to California, I actually have two students from New Jersey in the program, and all points in between.

It's probably about 60% outta state, and 40% in state, which is still a little bit surprising to me.

I figured there would be more Montana kids that would be part of the program, but that number is growing.

And, yeah, lots of students from outta state, students that don't have any ranch experience, and they just want to move into ag, and they want to become part of that, that industry and that lifestyle.

- So- - Is there a...

Excuse me.

- No, go ahead, Dave.

- Is there an intern component to that?

- There is.

Yeah, I didn't get to that earlier.

As part of the program, the students once they're accepted into it 'cause it's a limited admissions program, we only take 10 students per year into it.

And that's because we have that internship component.

So for two summers in a row, they serve an internship on a working ranch.

And that really then, those students that don't have any idea, no ranching background, that brings them back down to earth pretty quick, (David laughs) when they spend that first summer just fencing, and haying and spraying weeds, and all of the rest of the hard work but- - So over the years, we've had two interns, both ladies, both from outta state.

They've been spectacular, it's been...

In our case, they came through the Quivira program.

- Right.

- But it's been really beneficial for us.

- Good.

- I think it's, I call it slave labor, I'm not sure they think it's beneficial, (panelist laughs) but it's sure been good for our ranch.

Right, just the energy, they bring the network, right?

They bring ideas from professors and other universities.

It's been a good program.

- Yeah.

- And I suspect this will be the same.

- We hope so.

Yes, I work with Quivira Coalition, and we've modeled a little bit of our internship structure after them because they do a really great job.

And yeah, the interns, they bring a lot of energy, they really want to be there, they're excited to learn.

And we tell them to act like four-year-olds, to just ask a lot of (David laughs) questions, right?

(David laughs) Why, why, why, why?

- Yeah.

- That's gotta be part of it, it's just- - Just seems like- - That's why you're doing the thing.

- Yeah, it's so important to bring new people into, whether it's ranching or production ag, trying to bring in that next generation.

- Yeah, you're right, Bill.

It's so important, and especially right now employment is a big issue on ranches.

It's hard for people to find labor.

And I think it's not that there's no one willing to work, which is what you kind of hear all the time, it really is that we just don't know where to look for the people that want to work.

And maybe they want to work, they just don't have the skills.

And so if you have some patience, like I'm sure it took you some patience to work with those interns, and they probably broke a thing or two, and tore a few things up maybe (David laughs) - Mm-hmm.

- But if we can have patience with them, it's sort of like raising our kids, we gotta let them make mistakes, but sometimes we find the people that are the most passionate about ag are not the people that actually grew up in ag and have that background, but they have decided for themselves that they wanna be part of that industry.

- That's great.

Have you been able to find the internships for, how many students do you totally have now on the program, 20, 30?

- Yeah, so we have about 35 in the program right now, but I only have about 15 out on internships, right?

Or that will be out on internships next summer.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And yes, I've been able to find plenty of ranches.

I'm still looking for other ranches because we try to do a really individual job of matching those students to the ranches, so we can put them on places that match their skill, or they're willing to train them if they don't have a lot of skills.

And then also let those students be in areas or on ranches that have different features that they wanna know more about.

So if they wanna know more about being a grass-fed operation, we'd send them to a place like Dave's.

So I'm always looking for more ranches because I'm sort of playing eharmony.com between these ranches and the students 'cause this relationship has to last for two years, and it has to work for both sides.

It has to work for the student to get an education, and it has to work for the rancher, like Dave alluded to, or then it becomes more work than it's worth.

- It sounds like a great program to me.

I don't think I'd qualify.

(laughs) No comment.

From Hamilton, Abi.

- Yeah.

- This person is really taking a chance, they'd planted pear trees.

One is two-years-old, and some of the top leaves have black spots on them.

Is this a cause for concern?

If so, is there something non-toxic I can put on it?

- So what I would say about that, it's hard to say what it could be.

There are lots of different things that have symptoms like black spots.

We had a very kind of moist, high moisture fall here in the Gallatin Valley and in southwestern Montana.

And so, we also had a lot of disease pressure as a result of that, so it's possible.

I would recommend in this situation, one, to any of the leaves that drop, to go and clean those up, and get rid of them from the landscape because any sort of kind of pathogens, your sanitation is going to help reduce that disease pressure in the future.

And then second thing I would recommend is, contact your county extension agent to come and take a look at that, or possibly sending a sample to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, if you still have those symptomatic leaves to kind of confirm what exactly that is, and what's going on.

- You'd better hurry.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Because a couple of days from now, there's not gonna be any leaves left on there.

(chuckles) - Exactly, yeah, mm-hmm.

- Definitely.

We are due for a change, and we talked about this before the program.

This has been one of the most beautiful falls.

I mean, what more could you ask for?

And don't tell people about that.

(laughs) I normally tell people, and in fact we have a question about that, and I'll get to that for Dave in a minute, but where else in the country can you enjoy this type of weather right now?

It's absolutely beautiful.

And on that note, this person from Helena wants to know how you have been able, Dave, to keep the Blackfoot River Valley so pristine?

And I think you can answer that.

- So I could take a shot at it.

There's many pieces of that puzzle, right?

But a big piece of it was a number of years ago, the folks in North Powell chose to do a zoning, a 160 Zoning in...

So right around the small communities, there's room for growth, but out in the ag land, 160 is the smallest.

And up until Covid, that was working, now people are willing to pay (panelist laughs) by the 160s too.

- (mumbles) yeah.

- But then along with that, there's been a lot of conservation easements, and those two things have gone a long ways.

And there's the distance from Missoula and the distance from Helena, that's a factor in those, and that as well, but... - [Jack] Okay, keep it that way.

- That's a piece of the answer, Jack.

I suspect there's more than that.

- And when I was up on your tour, I think somebody from Federal Fish and Wildlife said that, "Oh, there's just under 700,000 acres that exist in that lower Blackfoot River Valley.

About 400,000 of them are under conservation easements.

- [David] That's correct.

- And that's pretty amazing.

And it really is.

We'll get to this in a minute, but another person wants to know, early on we had somebody talking about the increased amount of erosion in the state, and they would like to know if this has caused more tumbleweed.

And I assume that's probably Russian thistle.

- Or a Kochia.

- Mm-hmm.

- Or a Kochia.

- Probably more Kochia- - Kochia.

- Than Russian thistle.

There was an interesting clip last week outta Great Falls.

I don't know if any of you saw that, they played it on the local news.

- It was good.

- And it showed, apparently had 60 mile an hour winds, and there was a neighborhood that was just completely... (laughs) Oh, there it is.

Yeah.

(laughs) - I didn't see that before.

(laughs) - Wow!

- Yeah.

- That's from Great Falls.

(laughs) And that's not unusual.

And it's crazy.

And I think just from, maybe it's some fallow fields that aren't being managed well, but I think most of it's rights of ways and roadsides, and it's just where it just goes nuts, and nobody is doing anything about it.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So Kochia is probably number one, then Russian thistle, those are our two primary tumbleweeds.

- Does that any of that have to do with roundup resistance?

- I would say the short answer is no.

- [Jack] Okay.

- We do have roundup or glyphosate resistance in Kochia, but that's gonna be in farm fields, the wheat guys in the fallow part of that rotation.

And this is just, Kochia is just going crazy.

And it's not, I mean, 95% of it, or more is not roundup resistant.

- Okay, thank you.

A question from Ovando, and that's kind of in your home stamp of stomping grounds.

They would like to know, they've heard a lot about regenerative ag practices.

And are you using regenerative ag practices?

And if so, kind of explain what they might be.

- I suppose it depends on who you're talking to, right?

It could be a lot of different practices.

So yes, I think we are using some.

If I can recreate this conversation, this conversation this afternoon with my son, knowing what we were talking about this afternoon, and I asked him what...

So the picture he tried to paint, if I can relay that from a 30,000 foot level is that, if we're talking about a waterway, we can get water from point A to point B in a canal really efficiently.

- Right.

- Or we can do it in a stream, probably not as efficiently, but that stream has a lot of, adds a lot of value, right, that that canal does not.

And he's comparing regenerative practices.

So a lot of regenerative practice may not be efficient as commodity production might be, but there are a lot of other values to that, right?

So the point he was trying to make is that, if we're doing practices that allow for, let's just take, for example, because they're prevalent in our area, big predators, wolves and grizzlies.

If we're doing practices that allow for them and accommodate them on the landscape, chances are there's inefficiency for agriculture.

I mean, there's a reason that we, there's a picture that was on our ranch here just a couple of years ago.

There's a reason that they wiped them out a number of years ago, right?

- Hmm.

- And now we're beginning to understand that, maybe that was a mistake, maybe we need to in this day and age with climate change, we need to manage habitat, right, for the good of all.

In other words, if a habitat can handle those predators, it's probably also better for us as humans, right?

Climate change with the whole carbon cycle, all of the above.

So anything we can do to help that carbon cycle in general.

So in our case, in some cases it's intensive grazing, right?

In some cases it's not as intensive, but it's intentional.

I like to think about intentional grazing, right?

Depending on the case.

We're talking about a dry landscape, right, with shallow soils, maybe it's not as intensive grazing, but maybe it's adding fire to the landscape in some cases.

In some we've been partnering with, I say we, as if it was our initiative, Blackfoot Chapter Trout Unlimited has done a lot of stream restoration, some in the valley, exceptional amount in our valley, some on our property, which has really benefited the riparian areas, fish, and also our cattle.

I mean, they're helping us with off stream water, right?

- [Jack] Mm-hmm.

- So all of those things in my mind are regenerative.

And maybe the last point I'd like to make is the reason regenerative is important beyond sustainable, right?

Even on our ranch, we have letters dating back to 1869 from my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side, not on the Mannix side, but on my mother's side.

He came from Virginia, he wrote letters back to his family saying, you need to come out here, the resources are inexhaustible.

Right?

- Right.

- And that was kinda the mindset, right?

For decades until we found out we could exhaust them, right?

And it doesn't matter if we were doing it with timber, with grasslands, with all of those things that are renewable, right?

But they weren't being managed renewably.

And so, then it takes a lot of time to recognize that, then it takes more time to figure out how to continue production without degrading the resource.

And so, in our case, on our property we've managed, we need to do some regenerative work in order to get it back where it should have been.

So that's why it's needed, and there are many practices that can be regenerative, and it depends so much on the habitat and the economic piece of that puzzle.

- One of the things that impressed me on your operation up there is the way you have cattle on a pasture for 24 to 36 hours, or whatever the case may be.

And those pastures are more productive now without additional fertilizer with that grazing management system than they were when you were using fertilizer and grazing them a little more intensively.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, that is correct.

On those irrigated lands, we were able to manage that way.

We quit fertilizing, we're using less water, and the production is about, at this point it fluctuates some.

This year is a great year, right?

- Right.

- Mm-hmm.

- But still, and we haven't been doing that long enough to know what the long-term projection is, but in the last say six years, maybe five that we've been doing this, our production is about 25% more with zero fertilizer.

And I think I'd have to ask my nephew, Brian, that manages that.

I think 25% less water.

- That's pretty impressive- - Wow!

- [Jack] When you think about it.

- So that's fun, right?

And that's what, if the next generation can come back to that, that's...

It's not all about dollars and cents for the next generation, if they have something that they, that's exciting that they can work towards.

- [Bill] I just kinda feel like regenerative is being overused a little bit.

- [Jack] I think you're right, I mean, it's a hot term right now.

- It is, it's sort of is replaced sustainable, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

- And everybody wants to be regenerative.

It's interesting, if you go back 20 years ago, regenerative used to actually mean organic.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- And now it's become the hot thing to do.

- And it's not really well defined- - Mm-hmm.

- But I think it just gets back to, as Dave was saying, just really working with nature, bringing back some of those natural processes.

And how important is that now with the price of inputs?

- Yeah- - Going up to be able to do that through your management practices.

- And a lot of it is soil management and building soil, and all the good things that come with better soil quality.

- Bill, how long has it been...?

This is funny, we're a multi-generational ranch, it's only been the last few years we've talked about soil health.

- Yeah.

- Right?

I mean, like really?

Shoot it.

(laughs) - It is a hot new term.

- It took us that so long.

- We have a federal agency that's in charge of soil health now.

(David laughs) - Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, I did not know that.

- Yeah.

- Well, if you look at- - Well, NRCS basically.

- Oh yeah, NRC.

In fact, next week we have the NRCS Soil Health Specialist- - Well, there you go.

- So, yeah.

- So that's been about 10 years maybe at the most.

- Okay.

- That they have a division that's called Soil Health.

- Mm-hmm.

- All right, a question from Bozeman.

This person would like to know, in that Ranch Management Program, what are the opportunities in addition to ranch management that somebody that would graduate from that program could do?

You wanna jump on that a little bit?

- Oh yeah, that's a great question.

And I think we haven't even tapped into that yet because the program is so new.

We've only been around for four years.

We have graduated three students, all three of those are in the ranching industry.

Two of them work on ranches, one of them went back to a family ranch, but with such a broad-based degree, and realizing that employers nowadays, you don't walk out of college trained to go into a specific job.

You walk out with some skills and abilities and the employers take you, and then train you for whatever job.

So I think this broad-based degree is really limitless to what students could walk into.

And then they have, not only just the experience of working on the ranch and getting those skills, but they have the experience of dealing with conflict, working with a lot of people and walking into new situations.

So I think the sky is the limit for where these students could end up with this broad-based degree.

- Okay.

- And the experience that comes with it.

- Good answer.

I agree with you entirely.

A question, this person from Bozeman would like to know, what does leafy spurge look like?

And I think by chance we have a photo of that.

- Yes, we do.

(chuckles) - [Jack] If we can get that up.

We will.

- Yeah.

- There.

- [Bill] So the photo on my right, the distant shot is leafy spurge.

This is actually near Whitehall.

I was working with this grower trying to help manage leafy spurge.

And that's sort of early June, so it gets to be a foot to three feet tall.

It has very narrow linear shape leaves, and then it's obvious when it starts to flower, as you can see the flower on the left-hand side of of the screen.

And it's a member of what you call the Euphorbia esula family, which is kind of a interesting plant family, a number of poisonous plants.

And one of the things, its characteristics, that has a milky sap.

And so the euphorbes tend to have milky saps and they tend to be poisonous.

It's a perennial, it's one of our longtime difficult that we've had here in Montana, and really in the west.

You said you don't really have leafy spurge problems.

- Not too much on our property, but there certainly is some in the watershed.

Exceptionally deep-rooted, right?

- It is, and it's really persistent.

Folks have used grazing, and maybe you've been involved with some grazing activity on leafy spurge maybe, but... And it's typically not real successful, there's some biocontrols out there.

Herbicides have traditionally been used.

Tordon is the number one product that's used for leafy spurge, and it's still widely used.

And there are, the project that I was involved was testing a new herbicide that was probably equivalent to Tordon, but not really any better.

It was sort of what I saw.

So we're gonna continue to have problems with leafy spurge, but it certainly is being managed better than it was 20 years ago.

- 25 years ago it was considered the Missoula county flower.

(laughs) But they've done a pretty good job over in Missoula.

Jerry Marks county agent over there, you gotta give him a lot of credit.

- See a lot of it along the river bottoms.

If anybody does any rafting and fishing on our creeks and streams and rivers, it's usually it's just loaded with- - [David] Which makes it so hard to manage.

- Yeah, because these places you can't use herbicides.

- Yeah.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

And thank you for the photograph, it's a pretty weed.

- It is a pretty weed.

(Bill chuckles) There is some ornamentals that are related to that.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it's one of those kind of classic examples of an escaped kind of ornamental.

- [David] I've always stayed away from those ornamentals- - Mm-hmm.

- Just because I know about leafy spurge.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Okay, a quick one for Abi.

I planted garlic for 10 years, always been nice, this year they have a bunch of brown spots on the garlic pieces.

Any idea what that is?

- I'm not sure what it is.

It's possible it could be kind of like a post-harvest kind of injury 'cause if there was some sort of, any sort of injury at harvest, garlic is pretty sensitive to that.

It could potentially be a pathogen, that this might be another good one to send to the (Jack mumbles) Schutter Diagnostic Lab.

- You buy garlic, awful lot of them have little brown spots.

- Yes, yeah.

- And I think most of that's mechanical.

- Yeah.

- But I'm not absolutely sure.

Interesting question for Dave.

You'll like this one.

This came in from Lewistown.

They own a small ranch in Fergus County.

They're always under pressure from various agencies to do this or to do that.

Any words of advice on how to judge what to do and what not to do?

And that's a tough question.

(chuckles) - Yeah, and so like, as far as what to do and what not to do, I couldn't tell you unless I knew what they were being asked or encouraged to do.

But our experience has been partnerships work really well.

So I would listen and consider, and then, I mean, I'm sure these folks have other mentors, right, that they could reach out to, to ponder these questions.

The management changes, maybe they're being asked to make, I don't know, but we've had, it's one of the best things our ranch has done is partnering with agencies.

- And you've partnered with Federal Fish and Wildlife, Montana Fish and Game.

Anybody else?

- Well, I mean, we use, we're big users of the EQIP program with NRCS.

- Okay.

- We showed a clip a little bit ago of the burn on our place.

And that was largely the Forest Service with the help of (indistinct) and encouragement from us.

I wanted to be the guy packing the matches, (chuckles) and they wouldn't let me do that.

(laughs) They just put me in charge of staying long ways away.

(Abi chuckles) But it's been a real good tool for us, and it's a tool we couldn't have put on the landscape without them and their resources.

- Something I did see there that really impressed me was your forefathers built a dam, which was the thing to do at the time.

- [David] He got a conservation award for it.

- He got a conservation (David chuckles) award for it.

70 years later they're tearing that dam out and putting ladders in for cutthroats.

- [David] They didn't take the dam out, right.

- [Jack] Okay.

- [David] Because we are using it for irrigation.

So here's a shot of it, right?

But Trout Unlimited helped us.

Well, they helped us.

We got out of the way, so they could put in a fish ladder, right?

(Bill chuckles) So we have fish passage, right?

So we still have the irrigation function- - That's cool.

- With our reservoir.

- Yeah.

- But now, now the cutthroat, it's mostly a cutthroat habitat.

They have access to spawning above and below the reservoir.

And so those kinds of partnerships has just been... And in my mind, so my grandfather got for water storage, right?

- Right.

- And now we realize, oh hell, fish gotta travel here.

(David chuckles) (Abi chuckles) Whoops.

So part of the regenerative thing is, well, how do we address that?

How do we fix that?

And the interesting thing, I'm tying this back in now to our direct marketing piece, right?

But the same people...

I don't have to love a grizzly bear, I don't have to love a cutthroat fish, but if my customers want them, maybe I'll listen.

(Jack laughs) - Right?

- Mm-hmm.

- That's pretty cool.

- And that's a very good point, no doubt about it.

Rachel, this person is a veteran, and they're curious.

Do veterans get preferences if they wanted to join or be accepted into the Ranch Management Program?

- We have quite a few veterans that are in the Ranch Management Program.

In fact, about a quarter of the students are, in the program right now are veterans, and they're doing fantastic.

Whether they come with experience or not experience, they don't need preference points, they come with life experience, they come with maturity, they come with a work ethic that puts them up above most of our students who are coming in as a typical undergraduate.

So we love to get veterans into the program.

They do fantastic in there.

Our first veteran will graduate this May in the program.

And, I mean, the sky is the limit for him.

And he came in without hardly any experience, but he has just, he has worked so hard, and he learns and he asks questions, and he's such a humble person that... Yeah, I'm excited for him.

We have another one that's a junior right now, and is doing fantastic in the program.

I have two freshmen veterans coming in.

So, no, they don't get preference points, but in my experience they don't really need preference points because they are already a step above.

- Good.

Good answer, thank you.

This is kind of a comment here, and it's from Bigfork, and this is in response to a question from last week in reference to controlling Canadian thistle, Canada thistle.

She has an antidote where goats came down and ate the thistle patches, and they did such a good job that nothing came back this summer.

Are goats that devastating on the landscape?

- Goats have the reputation, they're browsers, and they'll sort of pick away at things, and they have the reputation of being very good weeders.

The challenge is, is that not everybody has goats, (laughs) but there are outfits out there that actually lease goats for weed control.

Not common, but Colorado, I hear about it a lot along the front range of Colorado.

So if you can, get some goats, and fence them in an area that has thistle, I think within a year or so, they'll do a pretty good job.

- Bill, it would surprise me that what happened within a year, I would've thought that there were more of a... - Well, I'm not saying that it'll be gone in a year.

You said the next year, right?

- Yeah, that's what they said.

- Yeah.

So the next year it'll be back, (chuckles) so you're gonna have to do it more frequently than that, but- - What would you guess, three, four years of managing that with grazing?

- Well, I think... Yeah, I think what's gonna happen is, I think if you go in and you mow off a thistle patch, say 50% of it comes back, you mow it again, 30% of it comes back, you mow it again.

And I would...

It's similar.

What goats are doing to thistle is like mechanical mowing, they're eating it and they're...

But they're continually doing it, so they're putting that selection pressure against that weed.

And if you have them in there for three or four years, I would think you might, you could get to a point I think where you would be good for three or four years, and then slowly it would- - It's interesting- - Start to come back.

- That their experience is one year out, that's really surprising.

- Yeah, I would say, it'd be- - I can't remember the reference, but there's some pretty good citations in the literature about people using goats, and the number you need per acre, and how long you leave them in there, and those sorts of things.

- So a little bit of information about goats, do you realize Montana is one of the biggest goat producing?

It's over in the Billings and Hardin area, there's large herds of goats, and they're being shipped to Denver area where they're used for human food and quantity down there.

So it's an industry here that we don't hear a lot about.

And I bet you didn't even know about that, did you, in your Ranch Management Program?

(chuckles) - I didn't know that we were one of the largest goat producing states.

I was gonna tell the caller that your biggest challenge is keeping them in though because if your fence (laughs) won't hold water, it won't hold goats.

(Abi laughs) I think so.

- They always say- - There's a challenge.

- If you really wanna use livestock to manage weeds, you should have cattle, sheep, and goats, all three types 'cause they all have specialties, and some eat some things and others eat others, and- - Mm-hmm.

- So, cattle, sheep, goats, and not horses, right?

(laughs) - I don't think horses are mentioned.

(laughs) - Okay, let's get serious here for a moment again.

From Butte, and this is a tough question.

And I love to have the people that we invite on the program, throw them a curve once in a while.

Don't look at me like that, this is... (laughs) This person wants to know the best way to get rid of Hyoscyamus niger.

You ever heard of it?

- Is it Deathcamas?

- It might be Deathcamas, which allegedly comes from sheep droppings.

He has been pulling it for three years and it keeps coming back.

I'm not sure what it is.

- So this was... You're coming at me then, is that what you're- (laughs) - Well, you're kind of a guest, we gotta throw you a curve- (Bill mumbles) David, take this one.

(laughs) - I'm familiar with Deathcamas, which is a pretty common plant that grows in rangeland, and it's a poisonous plant.

And a lot of livestock producers are very scared of Deathcamas.

- Would it go through a sheep without damaging the sheep?

- No, it's toxic to sheep.

- Yeah.

- I don't think anything really is, it's not poisonous to anything, but... And it comes up kinda late, and it's a perennial, it's a bulb.

- Yeah.

- I think it's a lily.

- I'm trying to remember if- - Carrot family, isn't it?

- No.

- It's an onion family, I think.

- Oh, yeah, I think it's a lily.

- I think so.

- Okay, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

- 'Cause it comes up from a bulb.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it gets a pretty white flower on it, I think like midsummer, and usually livestock are only gonna graze it if there's not sufficient other vegetation to consume.

And so typically drought or overgrazing would be where you run into problems there.

But I know of sheep producers that lose sheep to that every year.

- Interesting!

- Mm-hmm.

- And it's not an easy plant to kill.

- Okay, I'm gonna say, if they gave us a common name, we might be able to answer that question a little better.

(laughs) - Mm-hmm.

(laughs) - And I'm not good with scientific names of weeds.

I know them by common names, as do most of- - Well, I could cheat for a minute, and I can figure out a little bit more- - You can't do that.

(laughs) - Okay.

A question from Missoula.

They hear a lot about hunters transporting weed seeds.

I'm having a little trouble getting through this one.

You are in the Block Management Program, it's walk-in, so you don't really have an issue with weeds being brought in by outsiders.

- Yeah, not so much.

We do allow people to drive in to get down game, but any access, right, could be our own vehicles, right?

And any vehicle access will spread weeds, for sure.

It isn't a big problem for us because of the access deal with walk-in, but you certainly can imagine where it would be.

- Okay, yeah, that's something, we've had a couple of questions about that.

A caller from Great Falls has a comment about the discussion about spots on garlic.

She had the same thing happened and sent it in for study, and the answer came back, Fusarium.

And Fusarium, well, it's a fungus that- - Yeah, it's possible, yeah.

- Attacks almost everything.

So a question for Abi, (Abi chuckles) and we had this on last week.

It's a garden carrot grown here in Bozeman, actually my garden, and two or three people emailed me and wanted to know what the little tiny carrots on the big carrot, and why they're there.

So there you go to explain.

(laughs) - First of all, this is a magnificent carrot.

(laughs) Yeah, so when you see kind of growth like this out of like root vegetables, it's usually something that's impeding the growth of that.

So it could be like rocks, gravel.

We have pests that can do this kind of damage too where it kind of changes the growth, but I think it could be just something that got in the way of that growth, and it resulted in just more, more different sections coming off of the- - [David] And you see double carrots quite often.

(David laughs) - Yeah, exactly, there's- - Yeah, you do.

- Something got in the way- - Yeah.

- And, yeah, you split that.

- A rock (mumbles) yeah.

- Exactly.

- I suspect that's what happened there.

- Mm-hmm.

- Because I do have a lot of rocks in the garden.

- Mm-hmm.

- Will you eat that carrot?

- [Jack] Yes, and believe it or not, it's absolutely delicious.

- [David] Hmm.

- Carrots in Montana are better than any other place in the United States because of our warm days and cool nights, and the amount of sugar that's stored in these roots.

- I think garlic too.

- Yeah.

- Garlic is excellent here.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, definitely.

We're getting down a little bit.

We have a question from Helena, and they want to know, have you had issues, Dave, with wolves on your property?

- The answer is yes, but not a lot.

- Okay.

- We've had three I think confirmed kills over the years.

And we have, we've summer in wolf country.

And the thing about predators, right, is that often times with your summer loss, you don't know, right?

You just know how many didn't come home.

- Right.

- But you don't know, if pneumonia got them, lightning got them.

I'm up there driving around and ran over it probably, I don't know, but our... (Jack chuckles) So we have had three confirmed kills, but our historic loss over the summer isn't much different than it was before we had wolves.

So I think it's fair to say, we haven't had significant problems.

But the other thing I would like to say, if I don't overdo our time here is that not all areas, watersheds, whatever are created equal 'cause there are some producers that really suffer a lot.

- True.

- And we've been blessed in the Blackfoot, maybe with the Blackfoot Challenges work with things like Carcass Pick Up and other things that we just haven't had, but I can't explain why others have had this.

So to say that we don't have a problem doesn't mean that someone else doesn't have a real problem.

- And I know, they do.

And by the way, I'm just gonna put a plug in for the Blackfoot Challenge, which is one of the associations that help take care of and promote conservation ranching in the area.

The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance that we had out of the northern part of the state last week, 20 years ago, these did not exist.

And as you said before the program, they exist now out of necessity.

And I think that's a good point, and they do a great work.

So you guys that have promoted and worked with them, I am impressed.

I really am.

Folks, we're getting down to the end, I wanna thank everybody.

Rachel, thank you for coming again.

Last time she did this program was in the kitchen.

(Rachel chuckles) Dave, excellent, thank you for being here.

Our guest, pseudo guest, you'll be back sometime, Bill Curran.

And you, Abi, always good to have you here.

Next week, Soil Health with NRCS.

Folks, we'll see you then, have a good week.

Good night, and stay healthy.

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