Eldon Farms

John Genho, is a 29 year Ivy League school graduate who reads the Wall Street Journal and farms 7,600 acres of pastureland and forest in Rappahannock County. His crew includes a cowboy from Florida, a former rock-n-roller who had a top 40 hit, two other farm hands, an office person, and a pack of border collies and other types of working dogs.

 

People who live in Rappahannock County know Eldon Farms, if only by reputation, as the local environmentalists eye what might be the largest tract of contiguous land in three counties hoping the owners never carve it up for development. Running all the way from Slate Mills Rd to  Sperryville this sprawling farm cross both sides of highway 522 with 24 rental houses and 100 buildings on the property plus 65 miles of fencing. Unlike so many of the hobby horse and cattle farms in the county—whose owners sometimes say they “farm” although they produce no profit--this farm is a working farm whose revenue pays the salaries, the medical bills, the food, and the clothing for the handful of people who work there.

 

Eldon Farms has for 40 years belonged  to the Lane Family whose founder William “Bill” N. Lane, II  died in an automobile accident near the family's Bell Ranch in New Mexico some 30 years ago. The late Mr. Lane was an astute businessman who bought an interest in a Chicago book binding company acquiring other properties which continue under family ownership as Lane Hospitality, Acco Brands and others. His widow continued to spend time at the house they call “Little Eldon” and his son Nelson still knows people in the county.

John Genho does not deal with the family members too much since Eldon Farms is owned by the corporation and run as a business. The same environmentalists who are eager to assert an easement across the farm will be comforted by the fact that John sits on the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District board, a generally elected position, with Monira Rifaat who of course is an advocate of conservation easements. Cliff Miller was formerly on that board and has put much of his Mount Vernon Farm into the CREP and BMP cost sharing programs which pay farmers to keep cattle out of the stream. Eldon Farms is doing that too although it will take a while with so many miles of fencing to replace. The BMP cost sharing program has been boosted from 75% to 85% plus Rappahannock has a matching funds program from a donor for $50,000 for the 15% gap.

 

John is a Mormon who went to school at Brigham Young then Cornell where he studied animal genetics. He lives on the farm in a large house with his child  ren and wife who likes to take photos and upload them to the family's blog.

 

Farming, of course, is hardly profitable anymore the costs of machinery, grain, and land having put profitability out of the reach of possibility for most family farms. John says Eldon Farms breaks even and has a positive cash flow in the years when he is able to cut timber, the mountainous forest here harboring some veneer quality red oak. Because of the crash in the housing market ,  timber prices have  fallen  to “65-70% of what the value was a couple of years ago” so logging is no windfall.

 

John says, “When you look at our accounting we make money off cattle.” But it won't make you rich adding, “It's not something you would want to take out a loan and start a business. We have 24 rental houses. If we can cut timber we have positive cash flow.”

 

Every day John checks the price of feeder cattle and corn on the Chicago Board of Trade. He says that for years corn traded for $2 to $4per bushel. “But last summer corn was trading over $7 dollars. Grass has all of a sudden become more valuable.” The traditional model for a cow calf operation has been to raise cattle to 500 pounds weight then sell them at the livestock auction where they would be shipped off to large feeding operations in Nebraska or small Mennonite Amish-run operations in Pennsylvania where they would be fed corn until they reach their 1,200 pound slaughter weight. Corn is now back down to $4 per bushel, still feedlots prefer calves that weight 700 to 800 pounds because it takes less time and less money to fatten up the cows for slaughter. In order to each that extra weight 200 to 300 pounds of weight the rancher needs to overwinter the cattle which is difficult to do if you have to pay for hay. Eldon Farms does not have to buy hay because they bale their own  and stockpile fescue for the winter—that means they simply leave certain paddocks ungrazed and unclipped.

 

John has 1,400 head of cattle on the farm including 500 calves which in June will be headed to market. In January he sold those calves which weighed more than 600 pounds to the Winchester livestock market and was pleased by the price in the off season sale. October and November are, “The Absolute worst time to sell them, because no one wants to take them through the winter.”Calves kept over the winter are called “stocker cattle”.

 

Of other parts of the country John says, “Nebraska grasslands are prime cow calf country”. But the disadvantage there is you have to supply hay in the winter while in Virginia fescue grass can be stockpiled for the winter. He says, “The three best things about fescue  are January, February, and March and the worst are June, July, and August.” By this he is referring to the endophyte infected tall fescue grass which dominates the landscape here. The fungus lives in harmony with the plant thus giving it the ability to tolerate the cold winters here. But in summer endophyte causes cattle to lose rather than gain weight as their respiration and heart rate increase. The alternative would be to try and kill all the fescue and replace it with orchard grass or something like MaxQ fescue but that takes time and costs money.

 

To boost protein Eldon Farms plants some summer annuals like pearl millet and small grains like barley but only on a small scale for their heifers that will become breeding stock to give them an extra boost. His focus instead is to maintain the highest quality pasture as he rotates stock from one paddock to another to both improve the grass stand there and keep the animals from overgrazing pastures, which would expose them to lethal intestinal parasites which live in the soil.

 

John's ideal pasture management system would be to sample 20% of the pastures each year and then apply fertilizer according to the soil sample. But prices have wrecked havoc on the ideal situation. He says, “What we are really interested in is getting the phosphorus and potassium right and for nitrogen we figure if we can clover into the field nitrogen will take care of itself. Unless we are stockpiling fescue we cannot afford to put nitrogen on the field.” But he ads, “Potassium prices went from $100 per ton to $1000 per ton so we cannot afford to buy that. I would love to put potassium and phosphorus  down on our field. Nitrogen gives you a short term bloom but it leaches out pretty fast. Potassium and phosphorous give you a good healthy field.”

 

The two cowboys Robert Gainer and Rich Bradley and the farm manager John Genho offer to saddle up the horses and move the cattle on horseback for the visiting journalist but pick up trucks and dogs will do just fine. Ray Bennett is waiting at the other end of the pasture several miles away as the  lowing herd is marshalled toward tender new ungrazed grass at the other end of the village of Woodville. The grass here is a mix or orchard grass and clover with some blue grass and fescue mixed it—it is what the farmers would call “lush”. A dozen bulls barely lift their heads as we drive by in a pickup truck in order to meet the cowboys and the herd. The bulls have long ago worked out which one is dominant and the lesser males take care to stay out of the way of the largest. John says each year a couple are injured killed fighting.  He says, “This is what it means to be a male.”

 

We have completely blocked one of the winding lanes leaving Woodville as the herd is turned down the road. The working dogs snap at the heels of the cows as they push them along. There are so many cows one wonders for a moment whether you  would  be crushed if they stampede. John's border collie is meant to be at the front of the pack but is working at the back as he responds to John's verbal signals. The border collie lurks behind a few stubborn cows then nips at them as the cows briefly challenge the dog then retreat. A couple hundred heifers are in the pasture on the other side of the road and crowd the fence trying to join the larger herd. Traffic, if there were any on this almost abandoned road, would not be able to pass as the animals have taken over a ¼ mile of unpaved roadway. The cattle kick up dust on their way to the other pasture. The herd moved to the new location the cowboys return to their never ending task of maintaining the fences.

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Eldon Farms

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What Happened to All the Silos?

Drive across the landscape in Virginia and the observant person notices that practically all of the silos here are no longer in use except on some dairy farms. Instead of being used to store silage—that is, grain that is fermented so that it will not spoil—trees are growing up through the middle of these ghosts of the landscape which have not been used for some years.

There is an old saying which is very much true for those who bale hay: “Make hay while the sun shines”. When you cut hay you have to let it dry for a couple of days in the sun before you bale it up. Otherwise if you bale it damp it will rot. Not so for what is called “bailage”. This is grass which is cut then baled straight away and wrapped in air tight plastic. The bales ferment turning into something akin to vinegar. Cattle love it, the cow hands at the 7,600 acre Eldon Farms in Rappahannock County say they even lick up the juice from the plastic and the ground.

In the past sillage was made by lifting grass or corn stalks into the anerobic (i.e. oxygen free) environment of the silo. Sillage can also be made by shoveling forage into a pit into the ground and covering it with plastic and tires. Or you can just bag up some green grass in a plastic bag and wrap it up tight.

Jim Bowen farms wheat, cattle, and hay on 3,700 acres of land in Culpeper owned by the Germans. He has been working here since 1981. His farm is well-known throughout the state having hosted the annual Virginia Ag Expo which is the largest event in the state for row crop farmers. Jim is well-positioned to explain why there are no more silos.

Standing in front of an enormous 8-tire 248 horsepower tractor in front of empty silos and functioning grain elevators Jim explains what he does here.

“I have silos and grain bins and grain elevators I don't use the silos. Mostly what we do is we use it grain for sale corn and to store [soy] beans for grain.”

For his cattle he says, “All I feed is hay but I feed sillage hay. I use ballage which is sillage wrapped in plastic. You can make the hay at 50% moisture. All I do is cut it and bail it.  No need to dry it. With ballage you can bale it the next day.Wrapped it tight and it ferments. Used to be, to make a bag you would push 50 rolls into a bag and you would cut a little slit it in but now you don't have to do that because we wrap it so tight. Almost all dairy farmers use silage.  It is a great feed. Pits work the same way. You put the sillage into pits and you pack it as you put it in. Cover it up and keep the air out. Uncover it as you feed it. So it won't turn into compost you need to pack it good. You don't want air to get all in it.” He says most sillage pits are made of concrete..

Jim says, “You can make hay and sillage out of winter rye. Its a real early crop its almost ready now [April]”. At this time of the year area lawns and pastures are still grey from winter but rye and wheat feels are bright green especially if they have been fed nitrogen.

Asked about fertilizer he says, “I will put nitrogen on the wheat in the fall or early spring. I just put nitrogen on it last week. Last fall I bought nitrogen. I paid $450 per ton right now it is $200 per ton that costs 70 cents per unit—I can hardly make money at that”

Jim runs about 200 Angus cows. He put has 7 frost-free Merafont watering systems that use the temperature of the soil to keep themselves ice free even when it is below freezing. He says, “ I try to limit the grazing along my farm banks. I didn't want my cattle in the streams.”

When straw prices are high Jim sells straw but otherwise leaves in on the ground as he rotates to the next crop. Because of the crash in housing prices there is not much demand for straw now as few builders are seeding new lots.

“Hay” is forage which is cut wet, allowed to dry, then baled. “Straw” is wheat which is allowed to dry then cut after the combine has taken away the grain. Jim farms and sells orchard grass to area horse and cattlemens. They prefer that over alfalfa he says, “There's not many people who buy alfalfa. They don't want something which such high protein. Because most of these horses are not working. They get fat if you feed them alfalfa. Most horse people in this area like the 2^ndcutting orchard grass which is a lot shorter and finer cut.”

Of the costs and revenue he says, “It probably cost me $70 year fertilizer on my orchard grass and I normally make 2 – 2.5 tons per acre of hay. Selling it for $45 per bale I am grossing $200 per acre and $45 for 800 an pound bale. I do some small bales too”.

Most of what Jim grows is corn and soybeans which is pretty much what most row crop farmers do and they collect a subsidy for that but Jim does not as this farm is foreign owned. Jim markets his grain to the chicken industry. I have written about two row crop farmers on this blog to date and both of them sell to Perdue. These chicken operations obviously buy a lot of area grain.

Jim says, “Everything you see here thats green here like that is wheat. Most of my wheat I sell to Perdue farms and it used for export out of Norfolk. I grow wheat corn soybeans rotation. I sell it by the bushel. 60 pounds to a bushel. I sell spot market and futures contract..”

Because of all the chicken farms in Harrisonburg and elsewhere there is a surplus of manure available for fertilizer. Jim says, “Right now chicken litter is $30 per ton just dumped on your farm. Contact Mount Pony Farm. They are brokers. Talk to Billy.”

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What Happened to All the Silos?

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Cliff Miller's Mount Vernon Farm

As county administrator he had responsibility for the maintenance of the roads.  As a poet he was less inclined to do so.----paraphrased from Julian Barnes

 

Scene:  A young suburban couple shopping at a grocery store

 

Shopper A:  Look.  This tea is on sale. 

Shopper B:  Let’s buy it. It’s organic.

Shopper A:  Yes, it must be better than that one.

Shopper B:  That’s right, because it’s organic.

  

For Cliff Miller “grass” is a metaphor for all that is good about ranching.  While farmers around him break even or lose money selling cattle to grain-finishing feedlots, Cliff’s revenues are up over 20% from last year from the sale of grass-finished beef and lamb and pastured pork that he sells directly to retail customers from his Mount Vernon Farm in Sperryville, Virginia.  His secret lies beneath his feet saying, “This is a grass farm.  What we are really about is growing grass.”

 

What is wrong with feeding cows grain (corn, oats) instead of grass?  Michael Pollen in “Omnivores Delight” put into print what followers of Alan Nation, editor of “The Stockman Grass Farmer”, and other grass-farming profits like Jo Robinson, author of “Pasture Perfect” have known for years.  Cows, lamb, goats are ruminants designed to eat grass and not corn.  Ruminants have a special 4-chambered stomach which is designed to break down the cellulose fiber found in grass and leaves.  They can consume and in fact thrive from vegetation that other animals would hardly find palatable.  Having digested a meal for the first time ruminants regurgitate it, chew it some more, and then digests it again.  This is where they old expression “chewing the cud” comes from. 

But man, or rather corporations, in their quest for quick profits are impatient with nature.  As the documentary film “The Corporation” makes clear their only interest is “the bottom line” so the morals of what they are doing are not a factor in their design.  So rather than wait two years as Cliff does to grow cattle to slaughter weight—that is, to “finish them off”—90% of farmers pack them off to the misery of the confined feed lot where they are fed grain, a diet which will kill them as it lowers the pH in their stomach and eventually causes their liver to fail.   The feedlot is a downward spiral of discomfort from which they are given antibiotic shots just to keep them alive. 

 

Jo Robinson in her book writes, “Most of our animals today, including cattle, are being ‘finished’ in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, of CAFOs—corporate owned, highly mechanized, fuel-intensive factory farms where large numbers of animals are confined in a small amount of space.”   Gauchos in the pampas of Argentina--whose vast corn, soybean, and of course cattle production rivals that of the United States—believe the white colored fat of an American grain-fed cow indicates an unhealthy animal preferring their own leaner grass-finished animals.   All of these concerns have been shunted aside in the decades head-long rush toward profits that is the corporate farming model.

 

Here in rolling bucolic Rappahannock County the mountains of Cliff Miller’s 850 acre Mount Vernon loom above the village of Sperryville surrounding it on three sides.  In addition to owning a forested mountain Cliff is in the enviable position of having over a hundreds acres of flat river bottom land through with the Thornton River glides having tumbled from the rapids of the Shenandoah National Park which lies just beyond the town.  Cliff and his family have been farming this same land for 181 years.   For generations they disked the soil, spread fertilizers, and raised orchards, livestock, and row crops.  But in the 1970s this once profitable local farm, like so many across the nation, began to lose money as the model of local sustainable agriculture was cast aside in favor of much larger farms where profits could be managed only by planting thousands of acres of corn and soybeans instead of hundreds and where one needs thousands of cattle instead of dozens in order to turn a profit.  So Cliff began to look around for a way to make his farm profitable so that his heirs would not have to sell it off to others would could potentially carve it up into smaller lots.

 

Cliff’s full-time live stock manager, Darren Busét, is a pig farmer from Warren County with years of experience.  With a heavy canvas jacket, range hat, and a pony tail mane, Darren is an experienced veteran rancher to whom Cliff has turned mainly for his knowledge of raising hogs.  Darren’s dawn to dusk job is to maintain the electric fences, keep the water lines drained at night, and most importantly move the herd.  Cliff says, “Darren is a great addition to the farm.  He is the point man as far as the animals are concerned on the farm.”

 

Mount Vernon Farm practices what is called “management intensive grazing".  This basically means Darren sets up and tears down portable electric fencing to move the cattle from one paddock to another every couple of days or more frequently.  For example in one 40 acre field, 50 cattle are herded together in one small 1/3 acre moveable paddock.  When Darren tears down the paddock the cattle go willingly into the next 1/3 acre enclosure which Darren puts together in about 30 minutes.  What they leave behind is a sheen of cattle manure that fertilizes the field.  Darren will march the animals across the pasture in this fashion all winter.

 

Most cattle farmers simply turn their cattle loose into large fields and then feed them hay all winter.  Such a wide dispersal of animals does little to fertilize the pasture as their manure is placed haphazardly as they cherry pick the most succulent forage leaving thistles, Johnson grass, and other undesirable weeds in their wake.  If you herd the animals together tightly it not only controls the weeds it also lays down manure fertilizer in proper amounts.  This improves the pasture and lowers the farmers cost of production as well.  Cliff says, “For years this was a traditional farm and we put down whatever [fertilizer] we were told to put down.  And we have not put down chemical fertilizer for 8 years.”  He doesn’t bale hay either saving the cost of diesel fuel and avoiding a practice which he says takes nutrients away from the soil.  He says, “We’re not having to make the hay. We’re not having to feed the hay.  We’re not having to spread the manure.  That is being done by the cows.”   Asked how all this dormant tall fescue grass compares with baled hay he says, “It [the dormant grass] is full of sugar.  It tests better even than the best hay, even in February.”    

 

Cliff does not give his animals growth hormones, vaccinations, or dewormers either.  He says, “Everything fits together here”.  The sheep are rotated behind the cattle.  They also naturally kill each other’s worms.  We never deworm our cows. And for the last 8 years haven’t vaccinated any animals.”   As for the pasture Cliff explains, “The sheep and the cows only compete for about 30% of the grasses. “ In other words, “They don’t eat the same thing.”

 

Cliff says when you rotate the heard the grass is eaten in what he calls its “adolescent” stage where it is neither too young—so that grazing it would damager the plant--nor too old—in which case it could damage the cow especially if it is so-called endophyte infected fescue which is what dominates the landscape here in Virginia.  The result is twofold:  the cattle graze the highest quality forage and the field is fertilized with a large dose of manure which causes a flush of growth in the spring.  The cattle are then moved on the next spot and the cycle repeats itself. 

 

One problem with all the boutique farms that dot the Virginia landscape is they don’t always have enough inventory on hand.  This is why the big grocery stores prefer to deal with Cisco and other mega distributors who buy their meat from Midwestern cattle producers and produce from California growers.  This is the biggest problem for the local food movement and proponents of local sustainable agriculture.  Cliff wants to avoid these inventory problems so he is expanding into poultry and has tasked Darren with growing the herd of swine.  Cliff says, “It also helps with our sales to have three different meats”.

 

In prior years Cliff bought 65 pound piglets from a breeder in Gordonsville and finished them off here.  He raised them for about 5 months and then butchered them at 180 pounds.  Now he and Darren plan to breed pigs themselves and raise them year round.  Pigs are profitable.  Darren says old time farmers called pigs “mortgage lifters”.  (Note from author: My father raised everything from cattle to tobacco to catfish and eels making money only on hogs he said.)  Breeding as prolific as rabbits, pigs can have three litters per year but Darren plans to breed them twice saying it takes “3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days” for a sow to produce a litter.

 

Darren explains that the Tamworth hogs farmed here are a heritage breed that are known for their ability to thrive on grass pastures.  Pigs are not ruminants like cattle or sheep so Darren says, “You need to supplement with grain.”  He says they get, “Cracked corn and soy meal.  My grandfather added a little bit of wood ash for the potassium”.  Cliff says they also feed them vegetables and fruit from neighboring Roy’s Orchard.  “We get a lot of his stuff that he would normally send to the dump.”

 

The pigs here are working animals.  Darren explains that, “Every animal on the farm has a job”.  The pig’s job is to reclaim the 4 acres of vines and weeds where they are currently living and turn it into pasture. With their firm snout and keen sense of smell pigs root in the dirt turning it over as they look for grubs.  Cliff says, “They not only eat grass, like a goat they will east honey suckle, poison ivy, and everything else, which is what we have them doing which is denude the soil.”  When they finish cleaning out this area Darren will move them to another and turn their pen into pasture.

 

As we talk a dozen or so eager reddish brown piglets are munching on grass at our feet and one light colored fellow reaches out so Cliff can pat him on the  head.  The little pigs are supposed to stay inside the electric fence that contains the boar who is their father and one of the three sows who suckles 10 of them at a time with her two rows of teats.  One little fellow is not paying attention and he backs up to the fence with his hind end.  The electric fence cracks audibly and the piglet squeals having learned the lesson to respect the hot wire.  (The fence is not dangerous.  On my farm I am constantly being shocked by the same.)

 

One reason Cliff’s farm is more profitable while so many area farms are less so is he sells everything retail.  He says, “Primarily we sell by the cut.  We have buyers clubs at 8 different cities.  On the web site in an order form. This past year we did 18 hogs and planning on 30 next year.  We did 163 [lamb] last year and probably [will do] 200 for the coming year.  For the beef we could have sold twice and we did 18 [will grow to 30].”  Asked whether grass-fed beef is tougher than their grain-fed counter parts he says, “ If our meat was tough we wouldn’t sell our filet for $25 per pound.  If our lamb was tough we wouldn’t sell 200 of them per year to 500 to 600 people.”

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Cliff Miller's Mount Vernon Farm

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Chris Teutsch on Tall Fescue and Summer Annual Grasses

I recently interviewed Dr. Chris Teutsch of Virginia Tech at the Billy Bain Farm in Dinwiddie, Virginia during Virginia AG Day. (“Bill Bain Farm in Dinwiddie, Virginia”. That sounds like the opening line of a novel by Faulkner.) Virginia AG Day is the biggest annual farm show in Virginia. It's for conventional chemical farmers although an occasional organic vendor will have an exhibition booth.

I snapped on my tape recorded and asked Dr. Teutsch what he thought about endophyte infected tall fescue. Here are his comments and below that is the presentation he made to the crowd that has assembled.


“I guess we’re talking about rotavators. It think they certainly have a place. For transferring fall fescue pastures into something else the rotavator can work quite well. You can do it without chemicals.”

Asked about MaxQ fescue he says, “In this region we are in what we call a transition zone so we’re not really in the north and not in the south. Fescue is our best adapted whole season grass.”

“MaxQ has some attributes that are better than the traditional Kentucky 31. Its got the novel endophyte in it to give it vigor and hardiness and ability to withstand stresses and grazing like Kentucky 31. But it doesn’t produce the toxins that Kentucky 31 produces. So animal performance is much better.”

“Endophyte is a fungus that lives within the plant. Probably 90% of our stands in Virginia that are Kentucky endophyte are infected. It has kind of a symbiotic relationship with the plant. We don’t understand exactly how it works but tt gives it increased vigor. And in return the endophyte gets a place to live in the plant.

“Animals don’t dye from the endophyte generally speaking. Calf growth is slower on the endophyte infected pastures. A lot of people never see that because they don’t have anything to compare it to. They’ve always had Kentucky 31 and that’s you know.”

Summer Annual Grasses

Dr. Teutsch showed visitors 7 plots of warm season annual grasses. These include sample plots of 4 varieties of sorghum x sudangrass, pearl millet, and sudangrass. For a description of each you can download publication 418-004 from the Virginia Tech web site. Here is Dr. Teutsch in his own words:


“Some of the sorghum, sorghum-sudan have a trait call the brown midrib trait in it. The midrib will have a brown color to it. And that is associated with increased digestibility. So animals will tend to grow better off the brown midrib varieties. That is something important if you have calves or dairy annuals.

“Summer annuals as the name denotes have to be planted every late spring or early summer. So they don’t come back like a perennial crop would.

“The newest one we have here is teff. It originates in Ethiopia. It is fairly drought tolerant. It doesn’t grow without water. Everything needs some water to grow. We think where it has a place is going to be in the horse hay market. It could make a very good horse hay. Work with teff horse hay has shown it’s totally acceptable to horses. You don’t want to cut it too close to the ground. No closer than 3 inches. You can cut it multiple times in the year.

“Everything needs some water to grow. The one advantage that these warm seasons grasses have is they have a little bit different photosynthetic pathway than our cool seasons grasses. Its call the “C4 pathway” and that pathway allows those grasses to grow at higher temperatures. If you do get some water and it is 90 or 100 degrees those grasses are going to grow really fast. If we get some water on sorghum and it has a little bit of nitrogen on it is really growing to grow well. And it is going to grow fast and it can get away from you really quickly if your trying to make it into hay.

“These are real good for grazing with the exception of teff. One of the issues with teff is it has a shallow root system. The way the animals graze is they grab the forage and kind of yank it off and they can pull the plant up. So I think it has a better fit as hay than for grazing."





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Chris Teutsch on Tall Fescue and Summer Annual Grasses

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Karl Dallefeld on the Monoculture of Tall Fescue

“Its my base philosophy and belief that it starts in the soil.”—Karl Dallefeld

Organic vegetable production has taken off in Virginia with so much interest in the buy local food movement. But as I drive around the Virginia Piedmont looking at pastures it is obvious someone needs to put forth the point that diversity in agriculture includes diversity in grass-based farming. After all here in Rappahannock County and elsewhere there are far more acreage devoted to horses, sheep, cattle, and goats than there are vegetables and even vineyards. Yet too many of these pastures are overgrazed deserts of barely palatable fescue grass which is an invasive weed that has become a monoculture. So let’s take a second look and consider that there must be a better way. To do this we turn to Karl Dallefeld an expert from the Midwest on forages. Here he explains how you can rip out all that endophyte-infected fescue and plant something more palatable to your livestock.

Karl Dallefeld runs the forage and seed division of Midwest BioAg, the soil consulting firm founded by Gary Zimmer, author of “The Biological Farmer”. Prior to that he was territory manager in charge of sales and education for Barenburg Seed. He and his son Kyle grass finish beef on their farm.

Is endophyte infected tall fescue bad for horses?

Yes. It is. What happens sometime you can get thickened placenta and basically the foal will suffocate in the afterbirth. They won’t be able to break through. Endophyte is blamed for mares drying up for milk. Their milk dries up. It basically stops their lactation or milk production. For cattle what it does it elevates their interval body temperature and cuts off their circulation to their extremities. So it may be 70 degrees out and you will see cattle trying to cool themselves in a pond. In extreme cases their hooves will come off because of a lack of circulation. The most visible sign is rough hair coats.

Does it affect their weight gain too?

Absolutely.

How do you get rid of tall fescue and establish a better pasture?

[It takes] either one or two years. During the summer we have annual grasses, it might be sorghum sudan or hybrid sudan grass or Italian rye grass. Those are examples of what can be done. An example might be take your first grazing off in the spring and put in sorghum sudan or sudan when it is the appropriate time. Graze that and then till it under. Come in with winter rye or triticale [a hybrid of wheat and rye]. You can get a grazing on that in the fall. In the spring take another grazing or two and do your spring seeding and come back in with another summer crop. Then do a fall seeding of your extended pasture again. So you have two summers of a break crop flushing out the seed bank the Kentucky 31 or the tall fescue. Then you are going to have a clean pasture. You probably will not totally get rid of the 31 but you will suppress any of it with endophyte. Then you will have 7 years of dairy quality, grass-finish-beef high quality pasture.

In our pastures I believe diversity is a part of forage quality. Here [on his farm] I use a soft leaf tall fescue, meadow fescue, perennial rye grass, timothy, orchard grass. I like ladino clover, trefoil, red clover. On top of that I want to plant some forbs whether that be chicory or plantain. A common name [for plantain] might be “buckhorn”.

If you have millet that would be a great break crop to get rid of Kentucky 31, One thing to remember: this is a long process because no one should tear up all their ground in one year. Do 10-20% per year so that you don’t tear up all your forage.

What do you think of MaxQ fescue, an endophyte free fescue advertised in many magazines?

It has its place the further south we go the more relevant it comes. It is just as course and rough as Kentucky 31. We are losing forage quality. If all you have are a beef cow herd it might not be so bad. [He means cattle that will be shipped off elsewhere to gain slaughter weight.] For grass finished beef or dairy we need the highest quality forage.

How difficult is it to maintain a stand of alfalfa? [Alfalfa is a legume which is notoriously difficult to grow due to pressure from weeds and insects. It is high in protein and since it is a legume it adds nitrogen to the soil.]

If you can do it I think alfalfa is one of the better forages for winter feed and also for drought tolerance . [The] Ph needs to be at least 6.8. Calcium, phosphorous, magnesium [need to be at the correct levels]. Use a leaf hopper resistant alfalfa. Get [the soil mineral levels] up where your plants are producing more sugars so the insects are producing less damage.

What do you think of the practice of grazing tall fescue in the dead of winter? [Some people do this rather than bale it as a way to reduce costs and have a winter pasture. ]

That is one of the advantages of it because it will maintain its quality longer into the winter. Anytime you are not pulling a round bale or you are not supplemental feeding it is a dollar saved. I would prefer it be mixed with clovers and other grasses and have a higher forage quality to it. But that’s a good way to reduce winter feed cost for livestock.

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Karl Dallefeld on the Monoculture of Tall Fescue

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Let's Kill all the Fescue Grass

Take a look at the tired and worn pastures of Rappahannock, Fauquier, and Loudoun Counties with their compacted acidic soils whose green grasses belie an otherwise unhealthy condition that is bad for man and beast alike. Read the essay below on one man’s vision for healthier pastures then note at the bottom how Rosewood Hill Farm can assist you with your horse or cattle farm.


Gary Zimmer is a soil consultant, founder, and owner of Midwest BioAg. If he is not the best soil consultant in the USA he is certainly the most animated. At speeches he gave at the Acres USA annual conference last year he almost fell off the stage waving his arms and railing against what he calls enemy number 1: Kentucky 31 tall fescue grass.

Tall fescue grass is what covers most of the pastures here in Northern Virginia especially in what I like to call “fence and forget farms”. Kentucky 31 is a strain of tall fescue that was found growing in Kentucky. It was released by the cooperative extension office there in 1931. Farmers had noticed it and singled it out for during drought all the other grass had gone dormant but this grass was still bright green. It spread beyond Kentucky and is now considered an invasive weed that crowds out native species and contributes to the monoculture that organic farmers and environmentalists rail against.

Those of you in Virginia might have heard of Gary Zimmer for he was the principle speaker at last year’s Virginia Organic Grazing Workshop and Field Day held at Buck Hall and at a dairy farm in Upperville that had been rented by his son-in-law Kurt Klukus. Gary explained that on this farm the owner had sprayed Roundup on 800 acres of pasture to kill all of the fescue grass and replanted the farm with orchard grass and other more desirable species. But a few years later the fescue was back having crowded out the other varieties. (Gary Zimmer is also critical of Virginia horse farmers who mow their fescue and then truck in alfalfa, timothy, or other hay from the Midwest. It's a huge waste of money, elitist, and of course bad for the environment since it uses up much petroleum.)

People who breed horses know that you are not supposed to allow pregnant horses to graze tall fescue grass. The reason for this is the same endophyte fungus that give tall fescue its drought tolerance and resistance to cold weather can cause brood mares to abort their fetus.

Endophyte-infected tall fescue is bad for cattle too but it does not in most cases cause them to drop dead. Rather it simply slows their growth although it can cause certain health problems. Cattle farmers like to talk about how their cows are performing by measuring their daily weight gain or for dairy cows pounds of milk produced per day. A study from the University of Kentucky says that 85% of the tall fescue found in Kentucky is infected with the endophyte fungus (presumably Virginia pastures are similarly infected). Cows that graze endophyte-free tall fescue will gain an average of 2.1 pounds per day while those fed infected fungus gain an average of 1.4 pounds per day. So for ranchers that means lowered productivity.

Not all tall fescue is bad. It has good digestibility, is easy to establish, and of course is drought tolerant and not killed off by cold weather. Some farmers here in Rappahannock County have had trouble getting stands of orchard grass started, for example. For this reason an endophyte-free strain like MaxQ is preferred. Fescue and orchard grass both are cool season grasses meaning their growth for the most part comes in the fall and summer. If you want something growing in your pasture in the heat of summer you need to rotate your horses or cows onto fields of pearl millet, sorghum, and other warm season grasses. And rather than feeding your animals baled up hay for so many months of the year you could plant cold hardy forages like wheat winter and peas that will grow into December and then resume growth in early March when even fescue is still dormant.

This is the kind of variation preached by those who grow organically. On his Wisconsin farm Gary Zimmer rotates smalls grains, corn, annual and perennial rye and other grasses. He rails against conventional farmers who use too many chemicals and petroleum-based sources of nitrogen preferring instead an approach that is not quite organic, one that he calls “biological farming”. The goal is to improve the mineral content of the soil using naturally mined rock phosphate, gypsum, and other minerals and add to improve the biological content of the soil and nitrogen levels by cultivating cover crops. To do this he uses what he says is the premier shallow incorporation tool, the Howard Rotavator.

Gary produces bountiful crops of corn on his Michigan farm without adding supplemental nitrogen fertilizer which he says burns roots and kills earthworms. It is better, he says, to produce your own nitrogen by growing cover crops like annual rye grasses, clover, vetch, and then incorporating them into the soil. The best tool to do this is the Howard Rotavator. He uses it both to kill fescue grass and shallow incorporate cover crops to improve the soil.

Clyde Mortimer of Guy Machinery sells the Spanish-built Howard Rotavator from his offices in Illinois. He writes, “In 1912, A.C. Howard built the first conservation tillage tool over made. The Rotavator was designed to break virgin ground, without turning the soil over. A.C. Howard’s ‘Rotary Hoe’ was designed to undercut all unwanted weeds, grass, brush, and root structure free from the topsoil, and leave the residue on the surface so that sun and wind would kill all the vegetation.”

At Rosewood Hill Farm we have the heaviest duty Model 400 Howard Rotavator designed for “heavier tasks and specialized vineyard or orchard applications". We can rent you this rotary tiller or better yet let us design a program to improve your pastures for you. Send us your soil report and we will come over and rotavate all your endophyte-infected fescue and replant it with a combination of endophyte-free MaxQ fescue and red clover and recommend how you can improve your pastures organically without using petroleum-based fertilizers. Contact Walker Elliott Rowe at Rosewood Hill Farm for details. Email: werowe@walkerrowe.com and phone 540.250.1106.
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Let's Kill all the Fescue Grass

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