(mellow music) - Hello and welcome to "Farm Connections."

I'm your host, Dan Hoffman.

On today's episode, we discuss with Dillon Heimer of Heimer Drainage, the need for proper drainage, the maintenance of drainage tiles, and the demands of running a business driven by agriculture.

All here today on "Farm Connections."

(lively music) - [Announcer] Welcome to "Farm Connections" with your host, Dan Hoffman.

- [Announcer] "Farm Connections" premier sponsor is Minnesota Corn.

- [Announcer] Programming supported by Minnesota Corn, working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life, and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

- [Announcer] Additional support from the following sponsors.

- [Announcer] Programming supported by R&S Grain Systems a family-owned business, serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call 'em for a quote today.

- [Announcer] Programming supported by EDP Renewables North America.

Owner, operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms in Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR wind Farms and solar parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Announcer] Mower County Farm Bureau Association, a KSMQ broadcast sponsor, advocates for agriculture based on the policies and beliefs of its members.

It's dedicated to making the voices of its members stronger.

You can learn more about membership benefits at FBMN.org.

- [Announcer] Program supported by employee-owned AgVantage Software, Rochester, Minnesota, celebrating their 50th year designing and developing agribusiness software for grain elevators, feed manufacturers, producers, fertilizer and chemical dealers, co-ops, seed companies, and fuel distributors.

(mellow music) - Welcome to "Farm Connections."

We traveled to Elkton, Minnesota and with me today is Dillon Heimer of Heimer Drainage.

Thanks for having us at your shop.

- Thanks for coming out.

- There's a lot going on here.

What do you do for work anyway?

- We do farm drainage.

- [Dan] What is farm drainage?

- [Dillon] Well, we install corrugated tile into the ground.

It's got perforations in it, and it drains your fields.

- You know, when I look at the top of the soil in the middle of the summer, and the sun's warmed up the soil, it looks really dry.

Why do I need drainage?

- Well, in the springtime, you have water from the snow melting, you have rain.

So we drain that water for quicker planting, more uniform drainage, help soil structure.

In the summertime is kind of when it dries out is what you're seeing.

That's normal, but there is still water below the surface.

Three, four feet down, it's still there.

And that's what the crops are thriving on.

- Well, we've got some pictures of you installing drain tile, and it's in the autumn or fall.

It's perfectly dry on top, it was great soil conditions, but if you go down about three or four feet, there's literally running water like a river underground.

Is that common?

- Yep.

Yeah, the last few years though it's been really dry.

So come fall, there's not water down there.

So believe it or not, it does dry out down there.

But on a wet year, there can be water from ground level to eight feet deep.

Just depends on the year.

- And you talked a little bit about that subsurface water a few feet down or even a few inches down.

And you said that's really not available or necessarily helpful for the crop, right?

- Correct, so we lower the water table, putting tile in so the roots grow deeper and create a healthier plant.

- That standing or moving water underground really isn't the water the plant takes up to grow.

- Correct.

- It's from the small soil particles.

It pulls a little bit out.

- [Dillon] Yep.

- [Dan] So what happens when you drain it?

Does the soil change in any way as far as how it smells, how it works, how it reacts with the environment?

- [Dillon] Yeah, so the tile removes the water, the excess water, only what the soil can't hold.

So if you think of dirt as a sponge, when the sponge is full of water, it can't take anymore, where does it go?

It just keeps going down.

You put water on top of the sponge, and it'll run off.

So we remove the water from below, so it can keep penetrating into the soil, but tile actually works reverse of what you think, it drains from the bottom.

So it takes pressure to drain, not from the top necessarily.

It's both, but for the most part, it's from the bottom.

- [Dan] How do you know where to put the tile?

- We go off of soil samples, yield maps, and then just listening to the customer, the farmer of where their problem areas are.

Tighter soils are tend to be tighter spaced tile and sometimes shallower.

It just depends on the soil.

And we don't really know that without looking at yield maps or physically looking at the crop and drowned out areas or seeing where the crop is suffering is kind of the biggest thing.

- Dillon, if we look in the trench that you've excavated on some of the fields, the top part of the soil profile is very dark or sometimes black.

What's going on there?

- It's from the organic matter.

- That's the area where the plant gets the most nutrients from maybe?

- [Dillon] Yep.

- [Dan] What's below that?

And sometimes it changes color a few inches down.

- [Dillon] Usually, it's sand or clay.

Sometimes it's a peat bog, which is almost all oxygen, a lot of air in that.

But for the most part it's just black dirt, which is your organic matter and then either a sand or a clay underneath that.

- [Dan] How well does clay drain?

- Not very well.

It's very tight.

If you think of clay as more of a concrete, it absorb it slow.

Concrete does absorb water.

Clay absorbs water very slow.

So in the tighter clay areas, we'll put our tile closer together and then sometimes a little more shallow.

- When you mentioned intervals of or spacing, what's a common spacing between tile lines?

- Nowadays, it's 40-foot spacings.

So 20 years ago, it was 100-foot or 80-foot spacings.

And now we're going in between those either 33-foot or 40-foot spacings.

And a lot of new install is 40-foot spacings right out of the gate.

- Well, farmland is very expensive.

And so you probably bring its value even up higher, don't you?

- Yep, yeah, so if you buy a farm with that's completely pattern-tiled, it definitely adds value to your farm.

My opinion, you can't farm without tile nowadays.

You can't be competitive.

With input costs being where they are, you can't afford to lose acres that are drowned out or reduce yields where there's no tile.

So yeah, it definitely is a added value.

- Sounds like you're a guy that likes to optimize the soil, the farm, and the yield.

- Yep, it's what we do.

- Farmers must really like you.

- Well, I hope so.

- When you're laying out a tile grid or a tile system, what things do you look for?

- Well, I look at the soil maps first.

That's gonna kind of give me an idea what spacings they are and then topography.

Hills, washouts, stuff like that, and then, you know, listen to the farmer or the owner again.

And they know the land the best.

Depends how long they've been farming it or how long they've owned it, but they know it best.

Sometimes we go into a blank canvas and nobody knows anything, and that's fine.

That's what the online tools are helpful for and just kind of having the knowledge of this is what works, this is what doesn't work, and then we just come up with a plan from there.

- And I'm guessing you need a good outlet.

- Yeah, yep, we're pretty blessed with good outlets around here.

You know, creeks, and drainage ditches, and stuff, but there are times when we have to go two miles to get a good outlet and the main costs more than tiling the farm does, but that's just the way it is now.

Flatter areas, you can put in a lift pump and pump it into a road ditch or a grove, or something like that, but.

- You talked about mains.

Can you talk a little more about what you mean by that?

- So your main line is a bigger tile and all your laterals are the, the pattern of the farm are your laterals.

So all your laterals drain into your main, and then your main carries that water to the outlet, and all your water basically goes that way.

And the main is just as important as the laterals because if your laterals bring your water down to the main and they can't, you know, the water can't get away, it just drowns out that area 'cause it takes so much longer for the water to run away.

So that's what we're seeing a lot now.

We do a lot of main replacements, just upsizing the main.

50 years ago, they weren't planning on putting 40-foot space tile in a farm.

It was a random tile, and now they're doing pattern tile.

So the mains are overloading, they can't handle all the water.

So we'll go in there and put a correctly sized main in there and solve their drowned out areas or their washouts or something like that.

So the main is very vital to the whole system.

- You mentioned the mains being larger.

What's the largest diameter main you've put in?

- I put in a 24-inch, but we can plow up to 15 and then from there, we got to dig it.

Anything bigger than 15, we got to dig it.

- And when you put that main in, it probably can't be flat.

It's got to have some grade or slope, right?

- Yep.

Yeah, we put grade on it.

And your grade is kind of what determines how big it has to be.

Your acres coming into it, the total acres that you're draining coming into the main, and then your actual slope, you can put on the main or what determine how big that main has to be, so.

- You mentioned if the main is too small, I'm guessing there's a lot of pressure up the laterals, what happens to that main if it's full of water and there's a weak spot, for example?

- You get a blow out, water will blow out of the ground.

It's pretty common just to have a hole blow up in your field because the main is so undersized.

- Hydraulic pressure.

- [Dillon] Yep.

- What happens next?

- Well, we go out there and verify the issue.

You could get blowouts from a hole in your tile from a rodent chewing in it or a broken cement clay or something like that.

But we'll go out and verify it, and then we'll take a look at your maps, and hopefully we can come up with a plan.

You got X amount of acres coming into that main, and it'll tell us that you're overloaded or whatever the problem is.

And then from there, we'll just come up with a better game plan as to what we can do to improve that situation.

- So you and your company not only put in new systems, you repair old?

- Yep, yep.

People think if you put tile in, it's done and over with, but there's maintenance that goes along with it, and it's stuff that we have no control over.

A lot of times with, like I said, rodents or tree roots growing in them, it'll plug it up.

And a broken tile or a tile that doesn't work is worse than not having tile.

- [Dan] Puts water in the wrong place, doesn't it?

- [Dillon] Yep, when you don't want it.

- Dillon, you mentioned tile materials.

What did tile used to be made of and what is it made of now?

- So when they first started, it was made out of cement or clay, and now we're using high density polyethylene plastic.

So it's made from virgin materials or recycled materials made out of plastic pellets and then they basically melt them together to get that pipe.

- How do you get the water into that?

- There's slots in there, perforations, and like sandier soils, we'll use a closed perforation, looks just like a knife cut or you can use a sock over it to keep the sand from getting in the tile, and it just filters the sand out, keeps the sand around the tile instead of going into the tile 'cause it'll plug it up.

And then tighter soils, we'll use a more open perforation.

But studies have shown that the perforations don't matter as far as the time it takes for the water to get in there.

- What's the advantage to using plastic for drainage tile?

- It lasts longer than cement or clay.

It's quicker install.

We can do a better job with it.

With cement or clay, they get misaligned.

At the time when they put them in, they're probably all in alignment, but over the years, you know, 50, 70 years, they get out of alignment, and that'll actually, when they get out of alignment like this, it actually slows the water flow down because the water has to go over those ridges.

- Do you ever get tile that maybe bellies in the middle or has a low spot?

- Yep, yeah, it happens.

It can happen from there being no structure under where your trench goes, and there's really no fix to that.

We'll dig it up and replace it with a dual wall piece or something like that, but it's very specific situation.

But we see a lot of the older stuff, before GPS came out, a lot of that gets bellies in it because they were going off a lasers and sightings.

So what we do now is a lot more accurate just with technology and it's just a nicer install.

- What's wrong with having a low spot on that tiling?

What problems arise?

- So your water will just sit in there, and you want your water to constantly be moving.

So if water's sitting in there, it's obviously not draining.

Water might run over the top of it or something, but you might always have a spot in it that has a belly in it, we call it, and it might always be wet.

It might drain, you don't know.

- You mentioned GPS, can you expand on that a little bit?

- Yeah, so we have grade control and steering with our GPS, the way we're set up.

So we set in all of our parameters in the monitor as to what depth we want, what grade we want on the tile, and then we push the buttons and drive away, and it goes in, I mean, we put it in the ground that way, and then it steers straight lines.

Back when they first started, it was all sighting flags trying to stay in a straight line.

And then they were also maintaining their pitch on their plow itself, keeping grade on the tile.

So we're pretty spoiled nowadays.

I'll be the first to admit that.

- [Dan] So with your system, you start at the outlet first, right?

The low spot?

- Yep, we start at the bottom, so the water will always run away.

We don't wanna be working in the water.

- And as you're moving uphill, you could actually go across hills and your machine will adjust and get that grade, correct?

- Yep, so we will, we'll survey back and down the line, and that'll tell us any bumps or hills in there, valleys.

It'll show all that on the survey monitor, and then we can set our parameters to that.

And then as we go through them, the machine just automatically adjusts to that.

- Well, when you leave, you've got an improved field, and sometimes you can sight the improved drainage lines over top of the tile.

But how does the farmer know where the tile is after you leave?

- We have a GPS map that we'll give to the customer when we're done, and then some of them we'll take drone pictures of.

And then for us, the GPS is nice.

If we ever have to go back to existing tile or something like that, we have any problems, we can go almost right to them.

- Well you have a very interesting career, don't you agree?

- Yeah.

- How did you find this career?

What drew you to it?

- Well, I was a diesel mechanic by trade, and then I worked in a truck shop for a few years, and then my father-in-law started a tile company, and I just came and thought I wanted to try that, I guess.

And I worked for, I did that for five years and kind of did some mechanic work with that.

And then he wanted to sell out, and I saw the opportunity to make it my own and ran with it, so.

- And now you have employees.

- Yep, we got four employees now and myself.

- And a lot of equipment.

- Yeah, plenty of iron around here.

- So not only are you providing for your family, for other families, helping other families improve their farms.

But when you buy equipment, are you also helping the economy there?

- Yep, you got to pay the repairman, you got to pay the salesmen, you know, they all have families too, and it's just part of it, keeping equipment maintained and constantly updating equipment, and, you know, the electronics, the GPS, all that stuff all has to be maintained.

So there's a lot of people down the line that rely on this too.

- Dillon, what's the worst conditions you've worked in in this business of drainage?

- Well, we do rain, sleet, snow, mud, dry, but probably the worst one I remember is we did 5,000 feet of eight-inch tile, and it was 20 degrees below wind chill and we had to hand feed the tile every foot of it just to prevent it from breaking because the pipe was so cold.

- So every day isn't sunny and 90, huh?

- [Dillon] That's correct.

This is not glorious.

- So what drives you... When it's 20 below, some people are sitting at the coffee shop, or they're playing cards, or something.

What drives you to be in 20 below weather to do this business?

- We got a pretty small window throughout the year that we can do this work, and we got to get the work done.

So weather conditions sometimes hinder that, but sometimes you just got to work through it.

- Dillon, when you look out or vision for the future five to 10 years, what do you see with your company?

- Well, I hope we maintain being successful in what we're doing, and helping farmers and increasing their yields and their fields, and keeping food on the table for my family and my employees, and just maintaining that relationship with all my customers, and keeping the quality control intact, and learning and growing every day.

And as the years go on, hopefully, we get better.

- Great vision.

Great vision, and thank you for talking to us today.

- Yeah, thanks for coming out, Dan.

(lively music) (lively music continues) - I'm Brad Carlson, extension educator with the University of Minnesota Extension in the Water Resources Group.

I work with a lot with soil fertility and water quality issues.

The last decade has been extraordinarily wet, and this has been very important for nitrogen application because the loss processes of nitrogen that are most significant are water-based, and that primarily happens when the soil is saturated.

So a lot of people ask the question after a nitrogen application has been made, either whether it would be in the fall or prior to planting, and then conditions get extremely wet is did I lose nitrogen?

And that's a really fine question, and it's dependent on a couple of key conditions in the soil.

One is that the soil has to be completely saturated in order for this to happen.

The two main processes are either leaching, which is moving the nitrogen down into the profile and into either shallow groundwater or field tile or denitrification that happens in the atmosphere.

And so that happens through a biological process when oxygen is absent from the soil.

And because it's biological, it's really keyed in with the soil temperature.

It happens faster and to a much greater extent when the soil is warm as opposed to leaching where it doesn't really matter.

Now, in both circumstances, the nitrogen has to be converted to nitrate before either of these processes will happen.

So most of our pre-plant and of, obviously, our fall applications, fall applications are going to be strictly anhydrous ammonia.

And then our pre-plant applications are likely to either be anhydrous or probably urea.

In both cases, the nitrogen has to actually convert to nitrate first before the loss can happen.

That also is a biological process that happens when the soil temperatures are warm.

So enough time has to elapse as well as the soil temperatures need to be warm enough for that to happen first.

And so oftentimes, when we have extremely wet conditions early in the spring, and there's been a fall application, farmers will say, "Well, it's been really saturated and really wet, did I lose nitrogen?"

Well, not very likely.

A fall application of anhydrous with cold soil temperatures in the fall and, of course, frozen in the winter and then cold again in the spring probably didn't convert the nitrogen into nitrate in order for the nitrogen to be lost.

And so that process happens as we get into the early part of the planting and growing season.

Typically we hit an average soil temperature of 50 degrees on about May 1st.

And so that's when that process really takes off.

And so most of our fall and pre-plant applications are fairly stable for that reason.

It's really then we need to focus on whether it gets wet in the early part of the growing season.

That would be for leaching purposes.

If it's extremely wet, we can move nitrate into the tile, but more significantly in Southern Minnesota's denitrification, which is up into the atmosphere.

Because that is also a biological process and keys in on the soil temperature being warm, it really isn't until the temperatures are warming above 70 degrees and particularly when they get to about 80 degrees Fahrenheit that that is significant.

So really, that process is starts to happen in great significance when the soil is saturated starting in about June.

And so that's when farmers need to really start paying attention to that.

If your soil is saturated, for one thing, it needs to be for more than two days at a time for it to even start.

But if the soil is saturated for more than two days, we can start losing nitrogen to denitrification.

If the soil is saturated for 10 full days, we can lose about half of our nitrogen that we've applied in that 10-day period.

And so really that's kind of the key.

If you've done a pre-plant or a fall nitrogen application is really be watching for saturated soil conditions and particularly when the soil temperatures start to get warm.

And if that is the case, then you're going to need to think about supplementing the applied nitrogen.

- That does it for now.

I'm Dan Hoffman.

Thanks for joining us here on "Farm Connections."

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) - [Announcer] "Farm Connections" premier sponsor is Minnesota Corn.

- [Announcer] Programming supported by Minnesota Corn, working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life, and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

- [Announcer] Additional support from the following sponsors.

- [Announcer] Programming supported by R&S Grain Systems a family-owned business, serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call 'em for a quote today.

- [Announcer] Programming supported by EDP Renewables North America.

Owner, operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms in Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR wind Farms and solar parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Announcer] Mower County Farm Bureau Association, a KSMQ broadcast sponsor, advocates for agriculture based on the policies and beliefs of its members.

It's dedicated to making the voices of its members stronger.

You can learn more about membership benefits at FBMN.org.

- [Announcer] Program supported by employee-owned AgVantage Software, Rochester, Minnesota, celebrating their 50th year designing and developing agribusiness software for grain elevators, feed manufacturers, producers, fertilizer and chemical dealers, co-ops, seed companies, and fuel distributors.

(mellow music)