Pope County, Minn., farmers build productive pasture

Jennifer Olson is building up a herd of beef cattle as she works with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to develop a more productive pasture on the Pope County, Minn., farm where she grew up.

“Our end goal here is farm-raised beef. We’ll do some farm-to-fork eventually,” says Jennifer, who farms near Villard.

She introduced British whites to her Charolais-Angus mix, selecting animals that exhibit a docile temperament and finish well on grass. She’ll add diversity to the bromegrass-dominated pasture, land previously enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program.

Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) assistance from NRCS will offset the cost of fencing the 155-acre pasture, installing a watering system and seeding 4.2 acres with a native plant mix. As a beginning farmer, Jennifer, who recently took over the operation, qualifies for slightly higher payment rates.

Jennifer and her husband, James, recently completed the second year of her five-year NRCS contract. Their three-year rotational grazing plan is designed to support 50 cow-calf pairs.

On weekends and evenings between full-time day jobs — Jennifer’s a Farm Service Agency program technician in Glenwood, while James works in automation manufacturing for Aagard in Alexandria — they’ve erected all 5,000 feet of four-wire perimeter fence and about a third of the 12,000 feet of single-wire interior fencing.

The finished pasture will contain 20 rotationally grazed paddocks, more than 1 mile of buried water pipeline and nine shared water tanks.

Rotational grazing results in more lush, green grass with well-developed root systems that help to stifle weeds. By keeping cattle out of streams, water systems address water quality and erosion concerns.

Help from NRCS

Jennifer has one of about 20 active grazing contracts in Pope County, where NRCS soil conservation technician Melissa Behrens works with producers to improve pasture.

“So much of the land is either in production or it’s in CRP. We had to better manage the pastures and grassland we had. I think that’s where some of this came from, is there’s a shortage of land for grazing producers,” Behrens says.

Throughout Pope County, 2,860 acres were enrolled in NRCS grazing contracts in 2020.

Perham-based NRCS regional grazing specialist Jeff Duchene worked with Jennifer on her rotational grazing plan.

Recycling the nutrients tied up in dead plant litter on CRP land sitting idle for several years can take time. Productivity will improve once native grasses and forbs take hold, and as the cattle spread seeds while they graze.

“The idea is to get some cool-season native grasses for early in the season, and then some native warm-season grasses, and then add some forbs for diversity — and hopefully make some habitat for native pollinators and other wildlife,” Duchene says.

For the 4.2-acre native prairie seeding, Duchene suggested adding to those cool- and warm-season grasses a legume-heavy mix of forbs —including purple prairie clover, white prairie clover and Canada milk vetch — plus golden Alexander, Maximillian sunflower and long-headed coneflower.

“Ultimately, with grazing management, they should be able to build productivity over time on the pasture. In general, with a well-managed pasture, you’ll have virtually no soil erosion if you maintain good ground coverage in the pasture, and very little runoff. A well-managed pasture will soak up virtually all the rainfall,” Duchene says.

Jennifer will receive about $59,500 in NRCS reimbursements.

“Without NRCS assistance we probably would have still completed this project,” Jennifer says, “but it would have taken us a lot longer to accomplish. We would have been looking more at a 10-year to a 15-year plan versus a five-year plan. So it allowed us to move forward a lot faster, and thus benefiting water quality and environmental concerns through the rotational grazing.”

The Olsons plan to install the watering system over the next two summers. Meanwhile, Jennifer continues to improve herd genetics.

3 generations raising cattle

A current member of the Glacial Ridge Cattlemen’s Association, Jennifer grew up showing cattle in the Villard Livewires 4-H Club and participating in Future Farmers of America at Osakis High School. She went on to earn a biology degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris.

Jennifer sharpened her cattle judging skills by accompanying her father to sales, and then helping to decide which heifers to keep.

“I remember going to a lot of auctions and a lot of sales with Dad through the years, and I was helping pick out bulls and trying to decide which cattle we would keep. He’d ask me, ‘Well, what color should we get this year? Should we try a red one? Should we get a black one?’ Then we’d go shopping and find a bull,” Jennifer says.

They would watch the cattle, bet on which cows would calve first and analyze traits. Jennifer became skilled at recognizing family lines.

“We’ve just been kind of building the herd since then and trying to improve a little bit every year, and make some gains on quality that way,” Jennifer says.

As a female farmer, Jennifer occasionally has encountered veterinarians or sales reps who ask to speak to her husband. James sets them straight. He helps with the cattle, but his primary involvement centers on mechanical work and haying.

“Managing the cattle is my passion,” Jennifer says. “As far as marketing, breeding, veterinary care — all of that is kind of my wheelhouse. … We’re a team. We do it together. But the cattle are primarily my operation.”

Jennifer’s grandmother milked cows alongside her grandfather. By the 1990s, her parents, Deb and Emery Evenson, had gotten out of dairy. They raised Holstein springing heifers for a while, and then started a beef herd. Emery died a few years ago. Deb Evenson owns half of the current cow-calf pairs; she plans to transition out of the operation as she nears retirement.

“It was just sort of a mixed bunch of whatever we picked up at the time,” Jennifer said of the herd she had helped her father develop.

Remnants of those mixed beef calves — two Charolais, two Herefords, a couple of Angus, a couple of Simmentals — remain in the current commercial herd.

“Since then, we’ve selected for the cattle that we like being around,” Jennifer says. “I think that there are merits to every breed, and you just have to decide which ones work for you. The basis of our current herd is primarily Charolais and Angus genetics. We like the finishing ability of the Angus, the hardiness and temperament of the Charolais. We’ve selected within those cattle for docility and for type for the structural type cow that we appreciate — not necessarily characteristics of those breeds 100%, but individual animals within our herd that we liked the lines of and have kept.”

They’ll continue to experiment.

Most recently, they’re watching the line of British white crosses, which could add a smaller animal with a docile temperament. Jennifer didn’t have anything in particular in mind when she saw the British whites at a bred-cow sale.

“They walked off the trailer into the drylot, walked around, and then came back to the gate and ate corn out of our hands that first day,” Jennifer says. “They are super-docile, super-good mothers, good milkers, they don’t have a lot of size. They’re kind of slow-growing. But I’m OK with that. I don’t need them to finish fast, I just need them to finish well.”

Pipelines vs. surface water

Many producers with available surface water don’t see a need for a pipeline system.

Behrens points to benefits that include increased weight gain, and less erosion and compaction.

“Most people are leery about the pipeline system, and it’s really key to the whole grazing system,” Behrens says. “We have so much surface water available, they think the surface water is just as good as their clean water source.”

Spreading out the water sources leads to more uniform grazing, which in turn leads to higher-quality forage, less compaction and less streambank erosion.

Over the past five years, most new pipelines have been buried at least 6 feet deep, which eliminates concerns about lines freezing in winter and gives producers the flexibility to graze longer into the fall.

Wessel is an information officer with the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, based in Waite Park, Minn.