00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx. Today in the show, we are continuing with our focus on land improvement and conservation, which we also tackled last week in our Back forty conversation. And it's on that note that I want to start because last spring, when I first started preparing for this whole Back forty project of sorts, this huge undertaking, you know, I set out to expand the boundaries of kind of what I know about land improvement and management for wild life, because you know, up to that point, I had a pretty solid understanding of projects that could help me get more dear to use a property, and a pretty good understanding of how to set things up to improve my hunting. But when it came to the bigger picture, when it came to the larger vironment, you know, the soil, the air, of the water, the plants, that whole ecosystem within which I was operating in the deer too, that stuff I wasn't so sure about. And we like to talk a lot as hunters that hunting is conservation, and you've heard me talk about this before. I love that idea, but it's easy for that to become just an idea and no action if we depend on hunting being conservation just by default. I worried that we're missing the boat. So I got to thinking, you know, is there more that I could be doing with the land than just killing deer off it and just trying to tweak a property to help me kill even more dear That was That was this question that I have been asking myself more and more and more, and it led to a whole bunch of reading and research, and that eventually led me down this rabbit hole which led to the topic of regenerative agriculture. It's this new way of approaching how we managed land and plant crops that could result in not just high quality dear habitat, but also healthier plants and soil and wildlife and cleaner air and water. And this this seemed like the natural next step and in a perfect new world to dive into. I guess as I was begetting this whole learning process around the back forty property. So that's what I did. And it's been about a year since those original explorations. If you've watched the back forty series over on the YouTube channel for Mediator, or if you've listened to any of the podcasts this fall, you know that I've kind of started this process. I've tried implementing some of these new regenerative AGG principles on that property and another farm that I can manage a little bit. And as you might have heard, things didn't go the way I hoped they might in a lot of ways. Um, it was tough. I had a lot of challenges, I had some failures, but I did learn a lot. And and that's why this podcast today has me so excited, because I feel like I'm ready to learn more. I'm ready to take that next step. It's year two, and helping me to do that today is another dear guy who's been captivated by the opportunity presented by regenitative AGG and its applications to wildlife management, and that's Jason Snavely. Jason is a wildlife biologist and consultant. He is the host of the drop Time podcast. He's a calumnist for Peterson's Bow Owning and just an all around fascinating guy. He's someone that had followed from Afar for a number of years and recently, I don't know how long has been, maybe the last five years or so. He's dove full bore into this same thing that I'm now just starting to explore, this idea of regenerative agriculture. It's applications for deer hunters and managers, and he's gone to a whole new level and start developing a number of resources and seed blends and best practices for those who are looking to implement these types of practices on their own place, trying to improve the soil and the environment and the wildlife health and hunting. So that's what today's episode is all about. I'm excited about it. I'm thrilled that you're here tuning in to hear all about it. So without further do, let's take a quick break and then get right to my chat with Jason snave Lee. But before we do that, two quick things. Number One, I mentioned this whole back forty project that we were doing over the last year. If somehow you've been under a rock and you miss that, you gotta check it out. We have an eight part series over on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. The documents everything we've done this property so far. The original impetus for the idea, the idea of how can we have a great deer hunting property and a property managed for the whole suite of wildlife, for biodiversity, for healthier environment, all those things, bees, birds, bucks, everything in between. That series is on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. You gotta check it out. It's the most recent episode, came out at the end of the year. It's got a whole bunch of hunts, It's got a whole bunch of different things that go on that let up to the hunt. And am proud of it, so I hope you'll give it a watch. All right. I am excited to have today's guest with me because as Jason sna eavily and I think we've got a lot to talk about. So welcome to the show. Jason, Hey, Mark, thanks a lot. I appreciate you inviting me. I'm super excited. I hope you have a long time. Any time we talk about dirt man, that's that's my passion. I'm ready. Good. Well, this has been something that over the last year so I've been getting increasingly interested in so I'm this this is the time of year that I'm starting to rethink everything that I tried last year and all the things I want to try in different ways this year. So this conversation is perfectly timed. Um. But before we get into the ten thousand different topics, I want to pick your brain about and and and just I told you this will be about an hour. I'm actually planning on about six hours, so I hope you don't have anything planned today before we do that. Though, for those that aren't aware of who you are what you do, can you give us the quick rundown of kind of your story, how you got to this point, what it is you do in this hunting world. Yeah, absolutely so. I like you said the names Jason Snavely, I am a certified wildife biologist, and I grew up in Pennsylvania, probably like all the listeners and yourself hunting fishing, just you know, phrasing the outdoors and we're a lot of my high school classmates struggled with, you know, what in the world did they do with the rest of their lives. He was always just percent clear that you know, I belong in nature and the science and the management part of it, um, not just the killing. When I was in high school, but the science and the management part of it really intreated me. So I needed to say. I went to Mississippi State University, which at the time and still is, uh, just absolutely impressive as a university with the research. The professors were, you know, the best of the best, all star professors, and in all of the species that I was interested in, primarily game species, white tailed deer, wild turkeys, quail. And I've worked on a lot of projects with these animals down there, and uh, really just always kept coming back to what is factually the most important and this is this is true, and this is not just my opinion, but the most important game animal um economically in the United States is the white tailed deer. So, you know, white tail management, ecology, biology, it just has always intrigued me. Always studied, even in high school, the peer reviewed thick, thick literature on white tails, just trying to understand why of all this stuff. And you know, as soon as I graduated, I had done an internship in in South Texas and done some other work, and as soon as I graduated again it was clear that, you know, I've got this entrepreneurial drive to do this privately, which is really less intense. Percent of my peers, most of them are you know, working for Ducts Unlimited or continuing on in post post grade work. And I just I knew I wanted to work with private landowners. Love educating people on this topic, and uh, you know, I've been doing that since my nineteenth year. I just so it's just so so lucky and fortunate. I just booked up fully for the twenty year and started booking twenty one, which I'm pleased because in the early stages my banker looked at me and laughed and I said, kid, you you can't get people to pay you to do this. So very very fortunate, um, when it comes to that. But yeah, so you know, as far as the regenerative part, so I don't get going here on a tangent. I can if you want to jump in there and interrupt me, that's fine. If not, I can kind of tell you how. After about fifteen sixteen years, I realized one day it's it's not it sounds cliche, this isn't a story, It's true. Uh. Something just clicked that that the biologists has missed the by analogy. Yeah, and that's that this this topic is exactly why I'm particularly excited to chat with you, because because I too stumbled on this idea of regenerative agriculture UM when I took on the Back forty project last year, which which I know you're a little bit familiar with. And so so I've been diving into this. I've been reading books, I've been listening to folks, some of the same people I think that you've been working with, like Gabe Brown. Um. But but yeah, tell me the story of how you stumbled on this and why this idea of regenerative wildlife agriculture, which I know you're talking about a lot these days, why that's so exciting to you. Yeah, r W A generator wilife agriculture. You know of my consulting visits this year for regenerative while at A an ecosystem restoration is really one of the primary goals, and that just excites to get beyond belief. But before I get too far into the story, so I just want to acknowledge you and and thank you, and see Eve and the whole Mediator crew, and of course your podcast. Congratulations. First of all, what an awesome podcast. I record podcasts, as you know, and I know what's involved. So to crank out as much content in as many episodes as you have is just just to me, it's just purely awesomeness, um, And you know, to give I appreciate you giving me the platform. You know, this is my nineteenth season as a consultant, and I have committed one percent. After traveling the country and and really the you know, focusing on the globe. What's going on with this? Initially I thought it would not work. It's it's just craziness. Um. But so so thank you for the platform to really push this and promote this. But you know, just like everybody as as a deer hunter, dear biologists, UM, I didn't grow up a farmer. In fact, you know, we we were lucky to have a sort of a family farm through marriage to hunt about four or five acres growing up. Um, But you know, we weren't farmers. My dad wasn't a farmer. So I learned how to farm. After a couple of years of consulting, I was able to buy some of my own property a hundred acres in Pennsylvania, and I learned how to farm from conventional farmers. Now, you know, as we talk about conventional farming, modern farming by no means in my you know, slimmy mud Adam, I've been there. I'm I'm just as guilty, probably more guilty um at ecosystem destroying management practices, as as most of the farmers are. But I was said that, you know, from from buying the tractor, to the tillas equipment, to the spraying equipment, to the fertility programs and everything, I learned from the largest farmer in my county who is as my neighbor. So you know, for twelve fifteen years we were heavy, heavy tillage um you know, spraying everything could imagine. I was a sucker. I teach people now about the bug and a jug everybody's looking for, you know, the the energy shot for the soil and the quick fix. I was a sucker for that stuff. In fact, my seed company sells um one of those products, and I encourage people not to buy it. It's just as we get into this a little bit later, you'll find out how we truly fixed soil. So you know, there was one day. I know this sounds cliche, you and I were talking about this earlier, but there was one day, and I can remember it vividly you know, there was about this time of year. It's you know, probably missed February, I guess early February. I rolled out into my one of my fields, and of course it had been completely the vegetated by the deer, and it was probably a primarily a brashica type, you know, with some cereals, maybe some of the gums, but there was so much naked soil and these rock boulders that were the size of my head mark a kids. You just you know, people ask me what kind of soils I have, and I'd say it's rock. I don't know. Occasionally I have dirt between the rocks. And I sat there and I looked at this dirt I had. I had a college problem and soils. Who would he would deduct you a significant amount if you use the word dirt, but it is dirt. I hate to break it to him. And there was no life in this dirt. And I hadn't heard at this point about this regenerative egg movement and about soil restoration. But I sat there and I just looked at it, and I remember thinking I'm failing. There's something, you know, something's not right. And I went back to my office and you know, one of the things you learned as a field biologists is you learn how to observe. And then you mentioned Gabe Brown. I think Cave when agree with this a hundred ten percent, and he he actually took me to the Thanks to Cave, I am now I believe at the PhD level of just pure observation between Gave and Dr Fred prevents them. But when you go out and you just observe nature, you use your eyes, you use your ears, you know, touch things, you smell things. It's funny. I was watching your backboard and you guys were reverting and um, you know, if if you go out on one of my client properties, who has been under our our wut A for three years, your ears can just they hear things you've never heard, and you could you could have grown up in that habitat and you notice things that just look different. So I'm gonna try to cut back on this part. But this is really what This was the catalyst that launched me into this, this questioning of you know what, what what are we doing wrong? Why why do my soils look so dead? Why are they like a drug addict so addicted to me constantly dumping synthetic commercial fertilizers into them. So that's really what started me on this path. And then of course me being the research type i'm, I was talking to people from Australia and South Africa and of course you know Kate and Ray Archilta, Alan Williams, m Rick Haney, the whole, the whole crew. So so tell me this then, because here's like I came to this with a bigger picture goal. Because I was taking on this project, I knew we wanted to try to approach our habitat management and our deer management in a different way than usual that would be more beneficial to the whole ecosystem. And so I was kind of proactively seeking out these different ideas. But your average deer hunter out there, you're average guy or girl that's got a little spot they hunt, and they're they're kind of, at least at the outset, they're wanting better deer hunting. And then maybe they want bigger, dear, older deer, healthier dear and maybe if we get really lucky they do that long enough, then they realize, you know, wow, As I gotten involved in some of this management, I've learned that i'm I can help improve and and and benefits so many other aspects of this property in the ecosystem. So so you might get to that bigger picture view of things, which which I feel like the longer you do this, the more you start to get drawn down that path. And that's that's it's a fun thing. It's a fulfilling thing. But I know there's people listening right now that are thinking, why should I care about dirt or soil that much? I'm listening to this podcast because I just wanted to, you know, make my my property better for shooting deer, whatever it might be. So, so what let's start the ground level as far as why does this conversation matter? Uh, two people that are approaching us from a deer hunting perspective, and then I want to dive into all the house and wise and and the deeper aspects too. But but let's just lay a quick groundwork. How how can this conversation help that hunter? Man? You're you're sharp. I was saving the good stuff for the end. But to make a good point. Um, you know a lot of people think that I worked only with professional athletes and entrepreneurs and people who have thousands of acres, and that's just not true. You can improve you know, your forty your forty or sixty three acres, whatever it is in southeastern Michigan. That that's a that's a fairly large chunk of property. Um, you can improve a very very small acre or less case of property and kill more white tails than most guys who are just you know, recklessly quote unquote managing acres. So that's a great question. And and and it's the question that I asked. You know, my initial path down or generative A or restoring the ecosystem really wasn't meant for my clients. I'll be selfish here. It was. I was looking at my own dirt. And you know, as I got down this path, I can remember thinking to myself, how the average guy who really just wants a U target face environment right, um, and to see a lot of white tails and preferably mature white tails from the stand or on the stock, how is he gonna care about all this? So for the first year or two, everyone's really trying to hush about it. Traveled with some soil conferences and you know, of course talked to Give and a lot of these guys, and as I started to hear how their properties progressed ecologically. I got excited because I realized that this is the next step in managing a property. So let me give you an example. When I started to mention my banker laughing at me, tell me I'd never pay the bills, um, you know. And as a wilife consultant, I knew immediately that I would have to constantly strive to find as many tools and techniques as we call them as in the wildlife world to help my clients become the island right this this sort of um unique out fire in their neighborhood, and it could be anything. Maintaining an open mind just constantly strived to make it better, whether it was you know, managing with with bullets and arrows, or managing the habitat, crushing the brush, human behavior, hunter behavior, those sorts of things. The more I got into regenerating my own eco system, my own farm, the more I realized this is for everyone. And let me give you an example. We we love turkey hunt, we love growing deer, and don't get me wrong, we love to shoot here. But turkey hunting for myself and my son anyways, is our sturdy He completed the turkey slam at eight. He's just ate up with with calling and shooting turkeys. In two thousands ten, when my daughter was born, I have the last trail cam clips, video clips of turkey polts on my property. Now, we would get long bears every year, you know, coming and go on. So we would he would kill you know, a long thead or two a year, and everything was good, um, but we weren't seeing any poults. And this concerned me, obviously as a biologist, and it just it puzzled me, you know. So I looked into all of these. You know, isn't the the poultry manure, the poultry litters, that the pest aside, it's the herbison. What is it? After the third year of my regeneratives egg adventure, I realized that my last step I've gone though till like getting rid of synthetic fertilizers is so so very easy. It's crazy. But I was. I was still you mentioned the word we, which I had tryed not to use that word, and more looking into that more at a plant, I was I was relying on using selective herbicides to maintain these beautiful plots because of the fresh yer. Primarily that clients come visit me. And if a guy come to the contractor's house, he doesn't want to see bull board of missing. He doesn't want to see trim, you know, crooked or nails halfway out. I always felt this pressure to maintain this hyper manicured property. And then I realized from from Gabe and some others that wow, these these herbicides are registered as bio sides, as antibiotics. I cut them out. I filled my spray with the pink RV r V juice and he just committed. And that pinks. You still sitting there today after I'm not kidding you, one full season of doing this. A friend of mine and I were riding around on the ranger and we flushed three turkey hands with I believe it was six or seven polls. And let me say so, I realized most of your listeners to see that on a regular basis. But we're in a heavily intensive a area. Um spraying these cultivate is just typical conventional ag We hadn't seen polton years, nine years, ten years, and so when I flushed these birds, I thought to myself, I wonder if there is something going on here that's the wildlife, and kid told me they one when I said, I can't sell this to a guy gave who's paying me to come produce a target rich environment. It's not gonna work. And he said, explained to me while this is why the state agency has called me asking me why deer radio colored deer are traveling over fifty miles todious of my nangi and mocorn when and these are mature books, when it doesn't make any sense as a prey species to travel that far to consume a crane that covers the landscape in that that's part of the country. So you know that you can answer your question. I was the very first skeptic when I thought about selling this to my clients. I thought, man, you're gonna sell yourself out of a job. And you know, the neat thing is I have found that that clients, people who buy property have a vested interests, as you now know with your back forty project. We want to know, we want to do good. We just we want to do good for everything. And I've been absolutely astonished by the number of clients and the new clients who call tax email constantly and they're trying to understand things like our buscular microrizal fungi and how you know, soil, microbes, media p h. I mean, these are guys who own businesses, you know, they're they're they're lineman with the local power company. This isn't their work, right, it's crazy science e stuff is not their world. And you know, so people are just eight up with it, so absolutely optimistic that this can work on even those managing the gardens. Definitely. It is soil is the it's it's the building block of everything, right, That's where all of this starts. The soil is the foundation of the house. And then you're putting up walls, which are various plants that are growing on top of that soil, within that soil, and then the deer and the turkeys are feeding on on the plant life or the bug life that's living within that ecosystem, and then we're feeding on the deer and it's it is all connected. But it has to start there in many cases, with the soil. And you talked about how it's not well, there's this difference wheen, dirt and soil um and I've talked about this a little bit, but I'd love to kind of hear your take on it. Can you just talk about what healthy soil looks like. I mean, I'll have one more thing I'll add is that I know one of the interesting visual representations you can take a look at if you just care about deer. If you take a look at the map of the United States and you map out where the highest boon and Crockett, you know density of bucks has taken, you're gonna see a pretty close match to where the highest quality quality soils are in the United States. Right, you've probably seen that map that the QT you may put out some number of years ago. I don't think it's a accident that bigger deer tend to be where better soil is. Now, that's not the only reason why we're doing this, but I just wanted to lay that was one thing, as like a little carrot. If you are excited about seeing bigger deer or older deer, good soil is good for that. Good soil is important for so many other things too, And I want to understand what that looks like and how we achieve that. Jason, tell me a little bit more about you know. That's a great that's a great point. I'm glad you hit that two things come to mind real quick. Uh. Number one, I had synthetic fertilizer salesman telling me, as you know, we had clients canceling seven ten thousand dollar orders. Um, you know, just left and right. My fertilizer salesman was just off the hook, crazy calling me and you threatening my clients. And I was going to destroy the deer. Heard he built, right, he built the deer herb. But since that he fertilized. But you know, after three or four years of going down the regenerative path on my small you know, back for you if you will, which is only uh, I'm here to tell you we we we kill what we call. You've heard investors talked about op M other people's money. There's nothing better to invest in other people's money, right, A lot of pressure, you know, it really is a lot of pressure. But still we we like to kill, as me and my kids laugh, we'd like to kill O. P. D. Other people's buck. I don't want to watch the buck all summer eat my groceries and then have him wander up the road and get shot. I'll be honest with you, that's just that that my livelihoods depends on me fighting that. So we have seen after creating this what I'll get into this here in a minute, but after creating and regenerating the ecosystem on my farm, and that's everything from the insects of these that you know, just focusing on the biology of the soil, just the entire yo system, we have seen more dear that we also call welfare dear. These are dear that I could kill fifty does a year, right, but I was trained as a biologist, would have to kill those, kill those. Maintain a balanced sex ratio. That's all great and a textbook, and on a property that's completely dysfunctional and de created. But when you're in island, you've developed something special. You get dear box those fonds coming from miles and miles. And my son shot a five and a half year old ten points this year, which I'm not joking when I say this. My thirteen year old son of my nine year old daughter said to me Dad this year, they said that this is getting too easy. Now. The reason I tell you that it's not to suit my own horn or stroke myself, but it's because when I started with this region thing, I would sit out there in the field and just struggle four heads of palms, saying, and you know, my kids have killed bucks every year. We're proud of that. Mature bucks three and a half, four and a half pluses with some five and six year old acres. And have we attacted, you know, heavily hunted state with neighbors that yes, they believe it's you know this brown is down. There's no special thing going on here in Columbia County, Pennsylvania. They're all the same. I thought this is gonna end it, and I am I really primarily focused on sol health so much that I'm going to give up this incredible hunting on this property. But I decided to go for it. Goal in and my kids staffed this year just shaking their heads. And I've worn them before the seasons. The guys, the things they're gonna look different. You may not even see a dear just maybe the year. It just wants you to understand that. And they were they were okay with that, as we said, for the first thing they said, and they climbed up, they like came they said that, what am I looking at it? It looks like a jungle. What have you done with this? Once for soybean field so you know, I'm going down that path before clients, just to make sure. But I'm here to tell you that the dear know it um. If you ever studied Dr Fred prevents his work. It's just an amazing human being. And this nutritional wisdom which i'd like to get into a bad time. I believe firmly in the nutrient density of plants. Change draws here from from miles away. So just wanted to inject that real quick. But I'll get talking into what soiled is that if everybody hasn't fallen asleep yet and do you want to wake come up real quick, jump into it. And they're listening. They're listening because because this stuff it's tactical and and it's also philosophical in a way to I think that you can approach this conversation. We're having a tactical standpoint, like how this is going to help you a better hunting, And I think there's also myself and some people that are listening to this from like a philosophical standpoint, which is how do you do right by the land? And I think what's cool about this conversation is you can achieve both those things. So that's why I'm awake at least, that's right, that's right, and I'm thinking to drink of water. And I just wanted to know if sitting on the edge of my chair, I'm so excited a whot to talk about this stuff. So so soil, this is where the transition changes. It's a paradigm shift, it's a mental change. And what dirt is, Okay, let's focus on what soil is. Soil is this living, breathing, fully functioning ecosystem. Okay, it's not just this uh plant growing medium where you dump fertilizer in like like I once thought, right, where you just dump fertilize your and you put a little bit of water in there and you make sure the sun shining on it. That that's how you do it. No, and you know. Most of what we currently know in practice right now regarding growing plants centers around how plants respond to synthetic inputs applied to dysfunctional soil. So when someone tells me, hey, j you're wrong this bug and the drug works, I say, that's great, and your com it be degraded soils, but it won't work in my fully functioning, biologically active soils. So once we start to look at soils as a biological system, things change and this is what changed for me and obviously on the wilife biologist. So this is why I think. Um, so many clients asked me at dinner, Shay, why have you get Why have you crabbed onto this? So if you're crazy about this stuff, you've forgotten about and their point restrictions and managing sex ratios and a structure and estimating a lot of white tails deer on the hooks and chronic wasting disease and all this very important stuff and I have not. But there's nothing that has impacted in nineteen years their property. And we're only four three or four years into this. The properties that I managed small and large and regenerative wilife agriculture. So when we start to look at the soils this way, we understand. You know, there's this big term bio mimicry. I don't know if you've heard this yet in your your research from region I, but biomimicry. And I think that my good friends in Texas, Dr Rick Haney. I'll be with Rick next week, UM and at Soil Health you in Salanta, Kansas. But you know, bio mimicry is really what we're doing. We're farming in nature's image. So instead of imposing our will in nature and working against nature, i e. Pesticide, chemicals, herb besides pillage, all the stuff that we'll talk about here soon, we look at nature and observed. There's that observed again, and we utilize we kind of work with nature. So you know, one of the things that gave told me up front. You've probably heard Peach say this, and I had a huge impact on me. He said, Jason, your farm is a direct reflection of you. And I thought to myself, that's that's not good. You know, I'm looking at completely naked, soiled, dead They're not there's no light in them. Wow. And and you know, I went through a series of some health issues. So because I work a lot, immune system has deteriorated, and you know, of course I get fit by ticks all over North America. So you know that we blame it online disease and associated take pourn illness, but I think it's probably the diet when you're in an airport, in the whole nine yards. But it's starting to click to me that anyway, ante I learned about all this stuff with the dump biology making me healthy and fit just makes sense. So let let me throw something out there. You know, everybody likes statistics, right um, you know over nine When I tell clients is there, they don't believe me. But over ninety of land life on land resize beneath our boots in the soil. And if you ever follow Dr Christine Jones, you should. She've once said, I love this quote from her. She said, well, I'm kind of doing off the top of my head, so but she said something about we're standing on the rooftop of another world, and all of that stuff kind of came back to me and and you know, from different avenues, and I thought, wow, if there's this much biology in the soil, why are we spending all of our time managing the biology above the soil, worrying about these things sex ratio, the whole nine yards recruitment race. But we're killing the life in the soil. And that's when the six Principles of soil health. Many of you may know him at the five I think everybody has succepted. The sixth one is as context when we can talk about that here in a little bit. But that's when these principles of soil health and regenerative a kind of came in. So again, when you look at soils as this living, breathing, fully functioning ecosystem, it will be easy for you to give up the synthetic fertilizers. It will be much easier for you to give up the caustic chemicals, the pest society and secticide, the herbicide. Let's talk about those principles of soil health because if we're if we're accepting the premise that having healthy soil is going to help our wildlife, our dear and then subsequently are hunting. Uh, tell me what the principles of soil health are that we are shooting for. Yeah, and I think, you know, maybe I'll fly over these, but I think everybody has probably heard these by now. But for those who haven't, you know that you'll hear it ofttimes. It's the five principles of regenerating the soil ecosystem or restoring the soil ecosystem. And number one really just hits this disturbance thing, is limiting disturbance, and that could be chemical or physical. So you know, most of us think and talk about a pillage. You know, running a plow through soil. That's a major, major destructive disturbance, I think chemical disturbance. You know anything obviously we put into our sprayer. Not teasing you, but I kind of am. I'm just watching the back for it this morning, and I saw that sprayer something. And I also heard Steve mentioned pull how it up? Which man that was at one time too um. And by the way, for those of you who say that you'd like to plow the dirt because you like to smell it, if you've ever smelled a good soil, I mean a David Brant from Ohio, no tiller since the seventies, Gay Brown. When you smell a really good soil, you'll change your mind real quick. So anyway, limit the servant. The second one I think I have found to be so positively impactable, which is armor the soil. So when you build soil armor, you do so many things. Number one, you cover it with plant residue, which obviously recycles those in those organic infield future and trick back into your system. But you smother and her weed seems essentially hating your reliance. Extremely important obviously, you you know, minimize or eliminate soil erosion. Um, you provide habits at when you cover your soil with with a grass, let's say a sorghum stud in grass or or a serial rye, you provide a massive amount of habitat for the bugs, the biology, both macro and micro biology and your soils. Then moving on diversity, and this one here caused the you know, I'm deeply rooted in the food plot industry, have been since the beginning. Uh. It changed the way I completely changed the way I look at Okay, it's the wildlife begar culture. So diversity means offering the major plant type grasses, forded lagoons, brassicas all in one ara again and that that just the way that the different plant types offer species, symbiotics, symbiotics, relationships. It's just it blows your mind. Um. And then living roots, so you know we think of um most of the times that we have this growing season and then we have this dormant season. Well that's just not true. You know, cereal rye can Germany in negative to three attempts it can. You know, it's root active all winter long. Um. You know, so we want to maintain this living root in the soil year round. You can't do that with village. You can't do that by spraying cost the herbicides. Um. You know, and and people don't realize that we talk about soil organic matter. You know, seventy percent of soil organic matter comes from the roots, not the above ground plant. Excuse me. So. So the fifth one is animal and integration. Not for the fraziers and those guys and the cattleman. This one's so simple. You know. I gave te this man, always talk the game, and I said, gave I'll never get my soils to the point that you have them, because I'm not a cowboy. I'm a dear guy. If I can't, I can't manage cattle. I travel too much. I love cattle, love bites, and I'm still not committed to not getting now. I want them in the worst way. But the management and the logistics is a bit of a hurdle right now at this stage of my life. But when you integrate animals, you know, the stopping, the trampling, the dung, the urine, the droll when they knit a plant off and they drooled, the just the stimulation of the biology and the soil is way more than we understand at this point. But you know what, it's not a bad thing that this this animal integration thing, because when you throw the sixth principle, which is context, I start to realize, say, wait a minute, I do have animals integrated into my system, and actually I think I have more animals in the form of wildlife integrated in my system. Then gave us to his his maybe huge cattle that are obvious on landscape when you see them walking around. But you know, I've got fear and you know recently that this context and animal integration says a real quick side point. As soon as the season ends. Here, of course, we don't put corn out or any grains out during the season, but as soon as the season ends or we've committed to no longer hunting, I'll go out and I'll supplement some grains, non GMO grains on different fields. And I've got it set up so that i can move either the theater or I'll use a spreader and i'll super hyper focus high identities of theory. I'm talking. You know, some of my peers will kill me when I hear this, but I've had my cameraman tell me he counted nine and lost track. Um, all consuming plants and of course supplemental grain in a one or two acre area. I can already hear the c w D guys and all the same people who have helped UM cause chronic wasting disease behind you know, research enclosures. But no, it's white tale of social animals. And I'm not I'm not concerned with that at all. But when you look at the trampling of all of these deer and the dumb and obviously yurin and the brows, that's animal integration as finest. So those are the six UM and I kind of I went over a super fast. I know it's not like I didn't. But if someone were to staple those up on their their both and board and uh, you know, really asked themselves before they go out and do something in their food plots or in their egg fields. Am I falling under one of these six now? Or am I breaking the rules? I think that's a pretty good guiding UM set of principles. Yeah and so and so, like I alluded to earlier, I discovered these ideas last year, and so decide all right, I'm gonna try this. I'm going to start to try this at least so what I did, uh, And I did this on the back forty property and then one of the property that I have the ability to do some planting on um I was able to get my hands on a no tail drill from our TP outdoors, So for the first time ever, I got to use no tell drill. For the first time ever, I planted blends of species rather than monocultures of species, and I planted things that would allow me to next year hopefully not need to use herbicides the way I would typically. So this year, at least from conversations I've had with some other folks like Grant Woods, and they say, kind of started. You might still need to kill off the initial weeds, but then you can start this rotation. So I planted things so so yeah, maybe you can tell me how to do it otherwise. But that's what I tried this past years. I I use some herbicide the first time because we're in a brand new place with a bunch of invasive Mayor's tail. Was able to get some stuff planted that that, hopefully with the blend we plan next year I'll have some cereal ride will be coming up in the spring, and and then you start this rotation when we we talked about this last year a little bit in the podcast, where you can have this cover crop essentially in place, the controls weeds the following year, so that you can then plant what you want over top of that once you terminate with a cramper or something like that. UM. Now, now all that is to say, so I use no tell drill, I reduced how much fertilizer was putting down, hopefully eventually be able to completely remove that and have a rotation hopefully in place now where I don't need to use herbside next year. And I planned the diversity. So here's what happened though. So I tried all that, what I got. What I got was my worst food plot year I think I've had yet. Now I don't want to I don't want to. I don't want to say I want to qualify that and qualify that, UM simply by fact of it was different than what I've had in past years. And I think a lot of it is simply in the execution, right, I've never done it this way before. I've never used a no til drill before. UM. I guarantee I didn't calibrate it exactly right way. I guarantee I probably got depths wrong or I got there's all these little things. I just don't know how to do quite yet because it's just different from what I've done exactly. So what I ended up with in the biggest area this this showed up was on the back forty. I tried to plant this diverse blend of species, and I got almost none of that diversity come up. I I mostly got just uh oats and some other cereal grains like that coming up. I got very little of the other species showing up at least that first you know, that first growing season, the fall um not nearly the growth I would expect. Um, didn't get the drawing power I was hoping for all these things. And on my other farm I got it was definitely better, but didn't get as much of the brassicas that typically would get when I'm planting. You, of course, monocultures of Braska's versus this thing I blend, so I didn't get the mid to late season attraction they usually do. So all this is to say I tried things. It didn't turn out exactly the way I thought it would, but I realized there's a lot of different factors going. And so what I'm I bring all this up to ask you what are some of the common is this to be expected the first year? You're gonna have some challenges like that? What are some things that typically happen? What should I be thinking about this point? Yeah, so I'm taking notes now, um, because you just you you nailed it. You hammered it right there. So first of all, this is a process, right. Um, I've seen you in the videos. You're a pretty thick guy. And Steve's the same way. You know, he's good exercise. Uh, you know, we all like to hunt, so you have to stay in shape for that. That's a process, right. It doesn't happen overnight. So you know, Gabe, I hate to keep bringing up Gabe because this head is big enough, but Gab Gabe has the best quote. When you can YouTube, Um, you can't think of what video is, but um, geez, you can YouTube and and this his quote goes something like this, before you head down the regentative a past, you need to reach down into your drawers and find out if you have a pair. And I think it was um, jeez at Lance Plastic. I can't remember whose video was in but that. So so I'm telling you, I'm challenging you as friends in the end reginatic world did to me, and as I do to my clients. Do that reach down in and say do I really have a set? Or does all just this just sounds cool and sexy on YouTube, you know? And I think you know, obviously you've got this passion in this drive for it. So so that was my slash. Now I'll stroke you a little bit and I'll say, listen, you didn't think you did a good job, and I'm gonna disagree with you. I think you did a perfect job. You did a fine job. And and beyond at you are learning how to observe and read nature. So you know, I used to keep going back to my line disease. But I went to a line specialist and said, buddy, I've got a lot of work to do, a lot of consulting to do. I gotta make money, I gotta take for properties. Fix me now, And he said, sure, here, I'm right you. This script. That script will kill all your gut bacteria. And he did it, and he wanted me to stay on antibiotics, uh, you know, for two or three years until my symptoms went away and uh and and they some of them did. All my joints fell great. I was running half marathons killing sheep, and then I realized, oh my gosh, I can't eat anything because my gut is dead. There's no deut bacteria life. So you're going from a heroic system to Now what I do is that focus on herbs, focus on my exercus, my diet, focus on exercise. It's a much more difficult length of your process. Right, you went to heroic rout before, like I did you spray her Besides you kill everything. I used to say to people, I wanted to look like you know what, nap that will look down from space and say, what the hell is that guy doing over there? Man, he's killed everything. I thought it was cute to start planting my forward soybeans on essentially a basketball corps, so I could produce six and a half foot tall gains and looked like a hero. Right, So you did. Fine, Now what's your seeing and what you're observing? As these crashes come up? You could plan a twenty nine way blend of cereals, which your grasses, by the way, the humes, clovers, peas beans, brassicas, forbes like chickory, plantain, and your soil may only kick out three or four of those. That's not a failure, that's a success. And that that is that reads to me like a book. So what's your soil is saying? Is my carbon to nitrogen ratio? Do a little bit of research. Obviously, don't have a lot of time to discuss this, but the carbon to nitrogen ratio his way out of whack. And you know this, this sort of gets back to the food plot industry that I got heavily into. You know, since the eighties you could probably name the companies. You know, they still fight over who was the first one to grow that the most genetically improved quote unquote deer clover group, which cracks me up. But you know, we've been pumping so much nitrogen into the soil with legoons that we are providing the perfect environment for weed to invade. Now, again, none of us are perfect farmers, so we have skips and boys in our plots, and Mother Nature's you know, first defense to a scar just to throw a plant there. So you know, here we are. And I'm sure you've heard of guys fertilizing the clover plots worse, relieving fair soils, which allows for the infestation of weeds that we hate, and then we're spraying them with caustic chemicals further just throwing the biology in the system. So you're when you throw diversity, I love it. I don't know diversities relative on finding. I like, you know, fifteen sixteen seventeen different species UM in a species complementaries kind of a way. Yeah, you know there's this research now that's it's pretty thick. It's it's called core um sensusing and what they're starting to find out it's really above the seven eight nine um different species. It's almost like a meeting, right if if you have if you sit on the board UM maybe have a nonprofit and you have to have a quorum and only two guys show up when you don't get much done. And what the what these microbiologists are finding out is once there's a certain amount or a number of species, the biology is superactive and things just click. So I like what you did to see if I got all my notes and you're, um, I think you did perfectly fine. You said you didn't get the growth that you wanted. Well, I think you also said you you cut back on your fertilizer. Right, So so this is not an overnight accomplishment. So let's let's talk about if you're okay with that, this negative impact of synthetic fertilizers. I man, my, my, my fertilizers. Say, ok, guy, I don't get happy hats anymore. I don't get tickets for the baseball games. He's gonna hate it. I mean, here's this, but we have become so dependent on commercial fertilizers that our soils, including my minds, are recovering crack addic. Yours is a recovering crack addict. As you drive, I'm sure in all the country roads where you live, you will see soils that are highly dependent on synthetic fertilizers. Now here's the cool thing about this fertilizer topolic right, And I'm sorry if this gets nerdy, but I'm gonna try to make it is like I talked to appliances hunter friend, that is possible. But nature is full of these synergies, parallels and deep interconnections. It really is. And that's one of my favorite things because people look at the funny cross side when I say, then, I'll repeat it. Nature is full of synergies, parallels, and deep interconnections. So what I mean by that is, so everybody has you know, we recall from six or seven grade science the way photosynthesis works, right, and I'll spare you all the C six things swallow six bs and I'll just say, do you have these plants with this green chlorophyll, right which collects sun? Combine that with C O two carbon dioxide. You hear about CO two emissions. Well, I'm here to tell you nobody's doing more for CO two emissions than the regent a people period. And that includes the folks who have a lot of cows, a lot of cattle and then a little bit hto H two O, right, and you know that sort of mixture if you will. Uh. We always hear about this from sixth grade science on. It produces this life supporting oxygen. Right, That's all. That's all we've ever been taught that that photosynthesis produces oxygen planet treat. Well, that's cool for those of us who like to breathe. I great, But but the most important thing in my mind that results of byproduct and photosynthesis is carbon. And I'm sure you've heard of carbon in your research and D A carbon exudes, so the term exit it scares a lot of people. But basically, these leaves ah start their roots of plants leak liquid carbon which is a sugar and it's much more difficult than this, but this makes good sense. So when they leak this sugar, the biology in the soil gets super excited and eat it. So it's the symbiotic relationship that, believe it or not, went on before we got here and started lining fertilizing, killings and destroy and soils. But this super friendly um symbiotic relationship that's been parallel and works very well for you know, who knows how long, is now being disrupted, right, it's being disrupted in that we are dumping or outsourcing. I've heard it term this way, and this makes sense to me. We are outsourcing the job and the relationship of plants and biology. So for instance, if we dump a bunch of soluble soluble phosphorus fertilizer in the ground, the abuscular microize apongei is the microbes that attacht the sol roots that that sort of ha, the symbiozed relationship are no longer needed, right we we don't need am anymore, plant doesn't need them. Anymore. So they don't form this as your say, your soybean plant is germinating, it's using all of this phosphorus to grow, and it doesn't need the microbes. It's kind of shuns it. The microubs go beat carbon, which is a very bad thing, and they consume the existing carbon, and then the plant continues to grow, protuses to grow, and that we leave the field right we're out bass fishing, and the plant says, oh crap, you gave me all this nitrogen. And your fertilizer guy told you to apply right, you know, right when you planted it. But what he didn't tell you is that I need more nights later on in my life my growth cycle, right, and you know, all of this nitrogen has now either been consumed by plants or least through the system down to the Gulf and at this one, which they don't appreciate at all. Um So, so you there's no relationship now between plants and microizal fungi. So the plant says, hey, micro azal fonge i, I kind of need you right now, and here's some carbon, bring me some some phosphorus. And they don't have this relationship. It's too late. You see plants that look horrible, and what's the fertilizer guy say you to do? Put more down? Well, it's too late. So so there there's some really good data. It's only seventy years worth of data. My good friend Rick Haney loves that comment. It's only seventy years worth of data. Let people argue with all the time that has shown approximately fifty of the nitrogen fertilizer that you apply, I would I would even venture to get Any commercial synthetic fertilizer that you apply is wasted, regardless of pH regardless of form, and how you apply it, it's gone. It leaches through the system and it ends up in our in our water systems. So you know that that this whole idea that we think we can go, Oh wait a minute. If if this guy says there's biology and my soil that's gonna go get the nutrients and bring them to the plants in exchange for this liquid carbon cool I'll just stop paying the fertilizer pill. But life's gonna be tickled pink, and everything's gonna look great. And then he calls up because of a j I got a problem. My food plucks look like crap. They're stunted, and you know, I'm just not seeing the deer I was seeing. Well, it's it's not a You're looking at a completely degenerated, defunct system. So the quicker my my, the way I looked at it, you know, I'm not gonna be here for forever. I want to work as quick as I can. If I have to sacrifice a little bit for a couple of years, that's fine. The more of these principles I can follow, and the quicker I can rebuild the biology and my soils, the well, the more valuable my land will be. Obviously it's the future generations, but the healthier my soils will be. And you know it's a I'm listening to you. It's funny because I've heard that from dozens of clients. Um, but it just takes a little bit of patience, and trust me. After about the second or third year, the drawing power is to a point where your kids say this is too easy, Dad, and you start to think we have We've only killed two dos and U two thou six fourteen years here, which is completely against everything I've been taught as a as a wildlife file and just killed two doughs. But we are now after region to the point where we we're gonna have to kill some those um just because we're we're overrun with year. So so you say it takes a couple of years for things to get untracked once you pull out that synthetic fertilizer. Now I think correctly if I'm wrong, but I think that's because a few things. Number One, once you remove the kind of steroid, you then get the natural relationship that you just talked about. That natural relationship begins to strengthen, it gets better and better every year, and then you are not ripping up the soil anymore because you're gonna go a no tell approach, so you're not destroying those relations ships in that biology, and so that gets better. You're also leaving vegetation on top of the surface, and that becomes organic matter, which then feeds the soil and provides natural fertilizer. And then you have this diverse array of different plant life that you keep growing all year round, which have kind of symbiatic relationships to where one plants fixing nitrogen and other ones using nitrogen. They're doing this with all sorts of types of nutrients. Is that basically how you replace the fertilizer right, that system in place essentially creates a natural fertilizing system. Absolutely, and and where you put it this phenomenal And now I'll say that you're you're eliminating a group of things and then you're adding something that does create segway. By the way, you're adding something that is violently important. It's the most important tool in article box for regenerating soils. So we're eliminating the fillage, for eliminating all of the services, and we're doing everything you just said. But what we're adding is of most of utmost importance, and that is plants. We fixed soils with plants. Dr Rick Haney. I don't know if he was the first to say this, but he's known for his short and impactful comments and quotes. He'll stay all the time plants. And to the point that I made a T shirt sent it to him, uh with drops on on the front and plants fixed stirt on the back. And you know, every time, as I was learning about this process, I'd call him up, say Rick, what about Bioshar? And you know, what about this particular bug in a chug? You know, what what if I did this? Can I spray these micros and get there quicker? He would just laugh and he in his okey hybrid texas draw say plants fixed, stirt, dummy, stop thinking so much and just plants plants. So this led to so, so I want to I want to make sure I drive that home is a live plant is the most potent tool with which we can build healthy soils. So photosynthesis, without that bright thing in the sky, that's son, none of this would be possible. So photosynthesis drives it right, kicks off this carbon liquid carbon, sugar off the roots, and that carbon is the currency, if you will, of the soil economic system, so that carbon is traded for everything a plant needs. So yes, you're absolutely dead on. But I want people to understand when they see all of the marketing and the advertising, and then that includes me. I think I threw myself unto the bus m with our nitro, you know, and of some things in the past. Seaweeds offer incredible health both humans and while if but plants fixed or so, you know, when the energy flows from the sun through the soil, you really can't have healthy soil um without plants. And that's what uh sort of led me down this path of what I call relay inter cropping or pasture cropping. And I didn't make about either of those terms. They're just not really used in North American agriculture. UM. But this while they're starting to get here, relay intercropping and pasture cropping I think are just the coolest thing for for wildlife managers. All right, So so what does that mean? How does that apply to what we're trying to do with wildlife management and in habitat. Yeah, so, so I was first introduced to this pasture cropping, UM gentlemen, and looking up column stas in UM Australia. He would take these perennial pastures and he would say, Okay, if these pastures are going dormant during the UH box season and non growing season, what if I planned cereal grain for instance? We but like you mentioned planting your serial rye and I harvest. I actually harvest a crop out of this pasture in the spring. And that that got me thinking, that was mentioned in context, how can that apply to while life? Well, where that fit with my programs is we were looking to no longer use the plow and a disk and whatever. My clients have manufactured blows my mind the stuff they make on their own to destroy the dirt. So here's how this changed, and I ultimately called my program the Reload Series. UM. And you don't need me to do it, um. It can be done by anybody's source seeds. But essentially the way that I've worked the Reload series is I'm what I'm looking to do. First of all, my goal is I'm really looking to a cool solar energy during the growing season to boost my fault hunting plots. Now, let that sink in for a minute. I had to take it. I had to use context. I had to adapt it for the deer world and say, Okay, we're not harvesting grain to run over the scale and cell, but our cash crop is a big old fat slaughter and rotten mature boxing. So how can I produce more of those jokers while following these principles. So I'm saving up essentially all my nutrients. I'm repriming the soil. I think Gabe was the first one to call it biological primer. It doesn't get any better than that term right there. That is that's such a cool term, um or priming the soil priming, the biology introducing what a diversity or plethora of micro uh microbiology and macro the worms as well need. So hey, here's that work. When you look at a plant, it's either an annual, biennial, perennial um it it prefers to see, might prefer certain temperature to germanate and grow. So I looked at the systems and in my area, I look at the soil temperatures. You know, you see that. I've worked with some of the larger seed companies and help them make the pretty map colored map you see on the back of the bag that has planting dates from north to south, and you can't nature doesn't work that way on the map. It's different every year. So I thought to myself, Okay, what if we hit the soils as soon as I can. In my part of the country, it's March April when the soil temps are hit fifty five, you know, fifty fifty five degrees, and I put some of those cool seasoned plants in the ground. For me, it was like a you know, I called it a spring reload. So this is the beginning of the system. For me. It was spring trap spring barley. Obviously, all the legions, the rasticas you're gonna love that, um you know. So we hit the major functional groups, all of them again not necessarily looking to produce a fear food plot, but looking to prime the pump so to speed. And then as you know, the sole attempts war muky hit what sixty five sixty eight? You know it's it's pretty close. Soybean plant in time, guys, you know, farmers cracking me up. They've already gotten all the corn and horns and warm season grass doesn't want to be planted in the March April and the Yankee country, but they do it anyway because they feel the pressure. So if these guys are the corns in and now you're you know, you're seeing soybeans popped to start to get planted, that's when the summer redo goes in. And my summer reload idea was to past your crop or steal them from some of these guys, relay, intercrop tasted, no till drill. My choice, um, you know is the land Prize for great planes. Just what I've always used to enjoy them. Fill the hopper with um the green, then with summer, warm season annuals. Right, So you. You're gonna see soybeans, You're gonna see calpees, You're gonna see uh sorghum. You're gonna see sorgums to dan um. You know, if I said soybeans, you're gonna see foraged corn. You're gonna see hubands sweet clover, which is absolutely incredible for your bees. By the way, it's like one big giant bluzz facet. It's pretty cool. And I'm drilling right into the pasture. So in other words, and then here here's the cool thing. I don't have cattle. I'm running my roller cramper ahead of my my rig. So I've got the roller cramper on the front, the drill on the back, and I'm drilling these plants. Now I get it. I understand that in order to kill the vascular system of a plant or the roller cramper, I eat, cramp terminate. It has to be like a straw. Right, So we think buck, we think cereal, rye oh sol those hate me when I when I try to cramp from they absolutely I have this battle going on with oats. So my philosophy is, hey, I may not cramp terminate, and of that spring planting, I don't care because I feel like I'm crimp terminating some immediately cycling those nutrients back to the soil. I feel like my roller crimper nature. When you when you study nature, nature really likes um uh, disturbance, destruction, It thrives, and that it's the nature is very resilient. So when I run that roller crimper, it doesn't. You know, it's not exactly like a bison. But by the way, they're running a buffalo here in North America or in the in the States, they were bison. Um So this whole buffalo system thing we in my biology background goes crazy when I hear buffalo. They're in Africa. Um So, I feel like it's it's disturbing and manipulating the soil, almost like the hoots of cattle or bison. If I could get into poop, I'd be thrilled. But I haven't figured that one out yet. Um Obviously, you can spread manure and you know, do the whole see that whole deal. But so so you can see where the systems going. That the system, the reload system of relay inter cropping or pasture cropping and looked ugly to my kids and they when they went out the hunt. But what they didn't know is there was so much going on in that biological pump that the deer knew it. There's a lot of research now on nutrient density, on how much you follow human nutrition, but we're starting to find that just because you eat your veggies doesn't mean you're getting the nutrient density we've once got. And that's not a surprise to those of us who understand that most of our all of our soils are degraded and will never be returned back to what they wants were. So you're spending the whole drone seasons for summer sort of prime in the pump, cycling that harnessing the power that solar energy, and in the fall when you put fall reload in again, which is a multi species cover prop. If you will um biological primer food plot, do you see much more growth and you see much more attraction from deer and and it's to me, it's one way to exponentially achieve what we're trying to achieve without having clients drop off the radar and just give up on the program. So you know, when you think about these multispecies biological primers, if you will you know, one of my blends has seventeen different species and varieties, and it's you know, it's it's forward with We're not just throwing this stuff together, right, it's you know, we think about how every plant can complement another plant, but we're also thinking about how that an individual plant can contribute to the our resource concerned with that specific field. So I'm not I can't tell you how excited I am with this series. Now you may you may have noticed. You didn't hear anything about pillage. You didn't hear anything about synthetic fertilizer, and you didn't even hear me terminate with chemicals. Now, some of my clients I can't tell you who, but one of my clients said, Jay, I love your dirty plots. And I laughed and I said, dirty plots. I like it. So now we call them dirty plots there dirty to us. And this goes back to when you mentioned you said it was your worst looking food plot ever. Um to nature, to the wildlife, to the bees that you're trying to attract, and birds, obviously the insects. It looks like somebody had come in there and remodeled. Yeah, it's it's trying to understand that my appreciation of, let's say art, in my appreciation of a certain type of art is very different than what a white tailed deer's appreciation of what this landscape or this art should look like. So I'm trying to reset what the expectation should be. That's a great point. Um, here's here's it. Here's one of the things that I've been trying to wrap my head around when it comes to building out these blends that you're planting at different parts of the year. Um. I understand the desire to have diversity, and I understand what that gets you. Where I worry or what what I just need about better understand is is how to get the different And maybe this doesn't matter what I'm trying. I don't know how to phrase this question. What I Here's the thing. What I understood about food plotting and planting when I was just learning about this in the early days, was there's certain times a year certain things should be planted, and there's certain soil depths that certain things should be planted. So I knew, all right, I want to plant brassicas I need to have it on a firm seedbed. I needed to not get much more than a quarter inch in this soil, and you know, I want to plant it in early August. Maybe that'll be ideal. So I would do a strip of brass because and I plant that that way. And then I wanted some oats out there, some cereal grains or something like that, and I knew it was better plant that later in the summer. And I knew that wanted to be deeper in the soil, maybe a half inch or an inch deep in the soil. So I'd come in and I would in late August or early September. I would plant that at a different time, in a different way, and that would get me the best possible growth of each um. So that's how you used to do it. Now I'm trying to figure out. Okay, Now I'm trying to plant a blend. And in my blend, I see oats. In that blend, I see brassicas in that blend, I see a whole bunch of other things. And now I'm planting it the exact same time, in the exact same way. And I'm worrying, is that why I didn't see some things come up? Or should I be planting these in different ways? Or should I be like, how do we how do you does that matter anymore? When I'm doing the diverse thing? Doesn't that matter? How do we account for it? Help me understand that whole thing. I can tell you what matters if if you have plants growing in the soil and you do not have bar naked, hungry, thirsty soil, I'm happy, dear, happy you're pumping carbon into the soil. And trust me, I've seen deer eat an awful lot of quote unquote weeds and we really haven't dove in on this word weeds yet, but um, dear will consume weeds for different medicinal purposes, and believe it or not, some of them are so supernutrient dense. Um. I know, I've studied you know, herbal medicine as you know someone who struggles with gut dysfunction and take bites um and the stuff is amazing. And deer there have this nutritional wisdom period and we'll talk more about that too, But no, you know so so that one of the first things you know, I've heard since the early days and this company, even from the food plot marketing companies, they would say, j you can't plant, you can't drill out of out of a no till drill, multiple species, of multi sees, of multiple sizes, varying sizes at depth and as hogwatch that I'm here to tell you nature certainly doesn't doesn't that way, um, and that to me suggest you sit behind the desk and never get out in the field and really play with what this equipment that no kill drill. You mentioned that this stuff is amazing, that the things that it can do. So you know, for example, I've got um some of these seventeen and twenty and twenty nine way blends, and I will stay to be common and I don't even like putting them on social media because I never intended to get into the seed business. I've consulted for seed companies, have worked with them. Many of them are my friends. UM. I never wanted to gain U the seaed in to share my consultant. I sell my knowledge and sell my experience. But it pains me to see the nonsense that they're selling. Not just the products, and some of the products you're great, they're just not presented properly with with the right teammates, if you will. But this this idea that you have to plant, you know, clover at a different depth than soybeans, different depth than I know. Yes, I agree, if you're planning a mono culture, you may have better stand density if you're precise, like a grain farmer. But there's nothing in nature precise. So guys used to say to me, all right, if I put this multiple species plan, my gosh, You've got graphicas in here, which, as you know, are tiny. Some of the clovers are even smaller. You've got bats, which kind of have their own shape. You have calpees, you have soybeans, you have some time. You have all the stuff in here that's just you know, point that's got the cubious seed in the world. These things are not going to grow. And that's it just had not. It's never been the case for me. And I think, and I've studied this and tried to figure out why, and I think what happens. Some of those larger seeded UH seeds, the larger seeds will germinate with all this power, and they'll blow a rivet or a dvot or a furrow in the soil. Tiny will be, but they'll they'll blow that furrow in the soil. They'll open it up the sunlight and those tiny seeds, but clover also German eate and come up with them. Now it's for me anymore. It's not even so much as growing a twenty four in tall plant that looks great for photos. It's just putting the seeds in the ground because the soil will give you what the soil needs. In other words, I client did that. They say to me, this this new field that I want you to look at. I'm going to Alabama here soon to look at it. It's just full of the whole host of weeds. I'm gonna kill him right before you come. And I said, that's like giving me a book with blank pages. I won't know what to do. Please don't do that. And you know if once you learn and trust me, I was the weed. And I've got clients and friends and my family members will tell you. We've got a long driveway up to our house. And I used to make all the plots look per perfect and phenomenal for those who come and go. And I would stop the vehicle and the way to dinner, run out in the middle and pull a weed out of my employbean plot because it embarrassed me. Right, And there's a lot of guys who do this Now, I look at this differently, that we are telling me something. And and you know a lot of these Regen Ray, Archilbletta and Cabe and and Dr Allen Williams, who was phenomenal when he speaks about weeds, have taught me no, no, no, no no, read the weeds. And when you go back to the ancient literature, I mean, I've got to book here written in the forties or fifties, I believe it is. It teaches farmers how to read the weed. I felt the Golden Rod that you guys were you were with uh an apiary gentleman in one of your back forty and you know, the Golden Rod is like a book. I mean, it tells us so much about what's going on in that soil. So I didn't mean to get off, way off in the weeds. But no, literally, that's it's good stuff. I want to I want to get one more tactical question in on that whole diversity and planting. So so if it's okay we're planning all these different things, you're saying, you're making me feel better that I shouldn't feel bad about the fact that it all didn't come in perfectly the way it should That's kind of to be expected. But when I'm actually out there using the drill, right, it's the first time I ever used a drill, and I'm trying to just I'm trying to figure out, Okay, I've got to adjust for seed size. I can adjust the depth, and then I can calibrate based off how much seed breaker. Um, do I err on the too deep and too much or do I err on the too little into shallow? And if I'm planning all these different sizes of seeds, um, how do you determine how deep you should set it? All that kind of stuff when you know that something is not going to be a deal at that depth, Like what's the safest route? M that's a that's a great question. And here's where the art kind of comes in, right. So you know, for those of us, when I got into no killing, I was working on a second or third generation farm, not my family, but the previous that had been plowed for years. So it looked like Kansas. The dust bowl had nothing on us. It was crossed over, it was hard. You really could bounce basketball on it. So the learning curve and the art of using the no kill drill it's such that it causes a lot of people to get discouraged and give up and quit. And I mean, these are bigg farmers, not just good plotters. So initially you've got to work. You know, when I bought my first drill, I couldn't get the seeds. I couldn't plan a soil being for the life of me. I couldn't get my cutting cultures deep enough in my encrusted soils. And when I called the folks a great playing plan pride out in Kansas, they laughed and they said, your soils look like ours. You're you guys are supposed to have good soils. Your soils are crusted, they're hard. And I think the warranty max was like two or three hundred pounds of added suitcase wade or any weight on either side. And the gentleman there said, listen, we will honor based on what we see. We will honor to your warranty. I want you to put four d pounds on each side. And I thought to myself, could got four hundred pounds. That's that's gonna be a heavy sucker. So I went and I did it. Um. I added some suitcase wite and I got to the depth that I need so and I've seen, honestly n of my clients who picked up the no till drill and start fresh. That's one of the biggest issues they face is initially your soils are dead and crusted. There's no life in them, there's no aggregation, there's no infiltration, there's no biology, there's no armor, and you practically need swords cutting through it. Right. So, Kate, Kate, I'm talking about, Kate, soils are ship When you think your shovel, I haven't seen you guys think of shovel. Maybe you have, but I didn't watch all your episodes. I want to see somebody think a spade or shovel onto the back forty drive it down in there and smell it, feel it, look at it, and and look for aggregates. Soil aggregates. Biology creates a sticky glue schlomlin that finds soil particles together. So your soils should look and feel like chocolate, Kate. That's why I was thinking cake when when you when you being down in there, it should be. When I walked on David brand David Brandt was um, you know he's a note killer from the seventies. Um, and I've walked on his soil. You almost feel like you're on not a trampoline, but maybe one of those um those those pads launch pads or something that's a jim that's huge. You know, it's just like wow, you feel it under your boots. And after being on so many properties, I can walk out on the field and I probably don't even need to sink my spade into the soil. But um, yeah, I don't know if I answered your question or not, but it seems like it takes them figuring out and that I that I guess I shouldn't feel bad that I didn't have it right the first time. Absolutely, And here's the thing within those field drill right, every time you get a different blend, you really need to look at it and say, Okay, this is what I'm dealing with. You know, look at the soil situation. And you know, I find with most of my blends this reload series spring, summerfall, if we get about a half inch even three quarters of an inch deep, we're gonna have a fantastic looking field. So you know, I know everybody hates the word calibration. I have clients who will say to me, what drill did you own? I want to buy it because I know you have notebooks full of calibrations for all of the sea and that cracks me up. And I used to be that way too. Now I'll take the blend and I'll calibrate it because things changed, soil conditions change the drill. Even my three P six or six ant unit will change from the dozens that my clients are buying. So take it out there, and you know, if you don't know how to calibrate it, look, you know, look that up. There's an act actually that not a col I've never used it, but they say it's pretty good. But just calibrate that blend way what you get out of your drill. And that's the only way to know. You know, how how accurate you are when it comes to cranking out the right amount of seas. Now on depth again, I don't care if you have. You know, from the very smallest of small right on up to the large seas, I find that if you plant at a half binch too close, closing in on three quarters of an inch, you'll be just fine. And you know the other funny thing is I get guys call me all the time to say, hey, send me a picture of what this summer relos looks like. And and you know, early on I said, I can't because I'd be lying to you that you know, you're gonna assume that your plot is also gonna look like that plot. But that's not the case. Your soils are gonna be completely different than my soils. They're gonna favor of different species and varieties in that blend and mind, and it's gonna physically look different than mine. I've gotten the point now, right, just done. Here you go, here's one of mine. Um you know, and nobody's really said, hey, Mike, don't look like yours. Um, so, so that's you know, kind of what we're seeing when fork I like me the food plot results you got from your zero synthetic no TILL high h D high diversity plot. Man, I'm just like, I'm down on my knees and the dirt looking okay. Your soils pumping a lot of carbon or maybe deplated of carbon. And that's why it's you know, really favoring these boats and these grasses. Yeah, yeah, I can tell you that, um the soil on the back forty is definitely not like chocolate cake. It is. It is hard and rocky and and so tough to work with. I I've typically put in like fake scrape trees price you know, people do that all time, right. I would cut down a small tree or something and sink a hole in with post hole diggers, And I physically cannot use post hole diggers to get more than a couple inches deep. Um, So we had to drive two paste in the like five years to be able to take one arm just and a tea post in the ground. Yeah, that'd be That'd be amazing. So I think that's a great illustration of what we're working with. UM. You talked about your reload series, and and you've got a spring planting and then a summer planting and then a fall planting. That's different than most of the other rotations I've heard about UM from folks, whether that I'm trying it in the hunting world or like a gay brown type that I've read about. Is usually there's got like a late spring, early summer planting and then a fall planting. So why have you added a third into the mix? What's that do for you? Well, there's there's a lot of reasons. Number one. Like I said, I'm trying to prime the pump as quick as I can to to get to where you know, I need to get. And obviously for my clients, what it all boils down to is as my friend Peterson's bow hunting, my editor on my White Sales column, Christian Burg always tells me, come on, man, these guys want uh target rich environments. That's if your article doesn't get me more target rich environments, I'm kicking it back. So I'm trying to figure out a way to, you know, make them happier as quick as I can. Number one. Number two, guys like Gave aren't they're Their cash crop is not wildlife. It's not turkey, it's not here, it's not quail, it's not pheasants. Their cash crop is a grain or an animal, you know, pastured protein if you will. So what I'm what I'm doing is is just continually I tried to again at same context, I tried to adapt those those six SOL principles into what I'm doing, but yet have the biggest impact on my client's ball hunts. So while there's other things going on in that um, you know, I'm not planting the grain that I'm gonna harvest. Honestly, if if my fields are full of every serial brand you can imagine, sporadically and sparsely scattered with legions of different types and and species, I mean to me that diversity is what wildlife craves. And when I look at a mono culture, and again I'm not paying like if I say a mono culture soybean plot by no means that I picking on the soybean threader or grower. Soybean is an incredible plant. Um the same can be said for clover. But unfortunately, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. So let me just I know you you're driving home on some some really good takeeaway points and something that a guy can go out there and actually do. I'd love to talk about the Reload series all day long, and and nobody needs me at my Raiload series and my goals to educate people, so they don't need me to blend problems for them. They can go do it themselves. But um, where are they're going with that? When when you look at I can't remember I was going with that anyway? Well, I was asking that, I was asking why you added that spring planting while usually I see people planning something this summer and then it grows for three months and then they drill over top of that for the fall, and then the fall blend continues on until the spring and it green's up, and then they crimped that and plant their summer. So I was trying to understand why you added that third that early early spring planting to it, and you were kind of staying that so so the spring um. You know, the farmers and the egg guys. When I started down this path and said, well this is easy, Jay, you're starting to fall, they tend to think of starting in the fall because they've part of their crops and now they're they're planning for next year. Well are we don't really do that. Our cash crop um you know, occurs late fall November, you know, even over over winter. So my goal was to just keep keep pumping all those different plant types in the soil and really let the soil reveal what the soil wants. Now you know, we we do plant um harry vetch was a plant I never ever used. Everybody told me it's invasive. I've yet to see that. Um Cereal rock is another plant as as a food plotter. I should said never, I rarely ever used it. Now I fall plant in October an awful lot of serial Rye and Harry Vetch, And I don't know if you've seen you know, most know that I'm in love with my roller primper. To me, a roller primper has changed, completely changed the game. And when a guy gets rid of a roller primper typically means he's quitter, he's lazy, or as in Gay Brown's case, it's just it didn't fit his model. But most food plotters can ploy a roller crimper and change the game on the weed the week suppression situation big time. So you know these same plots, you know fall reload. His weight is a little bit heavier towards the brassicas. And then I have a product that you can't get online. I don't. I don't. I sell it the clients, but I don't really sell it put full Nourishment and Full Nourishment was designed by the guys who said, Hey, I want to come in the spring, the winter, early spring with some serious ground cover. Right. So one of the reasons to answer your question about the spring reload is many of my clients who wanted to start this process made the decision now right during the off season, and and we looked their fields and we said, here's the problem. This corn field that's not interstated. It's gonna be naked and there will be no soil armor comes spring. Right, that's a disaster for soil. That is not a function in soil. So we said, okay, let's get some of these. Let's get you started. Let's prime the pump and get these early, cool seasoned plants in the ground. And listen, if you had done a good job of planning in the fall like you said, and you put in you know, a high high density of um cereal rye and Harry vetg, you probably won't need spring reload. You're probably gonna rather look to delay your planting like I do. Sometimes I plant my beings in July. Um you know, maybe in June. If I left that those biennials kicking high here in the spring, they'll get to a crimpable stage where I can lay that map down and it looks like a shaggy carpet. Just suppressing weeds and really doing a lot of things, maintaining ideal soil temperatures for germination, habitat for insects. These love it. Um, you know, it just goes on and on. What you about? The crimper a lot and I'm super intrigued with it. It makes a lot of sense. I don't have one yet. They're very expensive. What do you do? What do you do if you can't afford a crimper? Or is there is there is there any alternative? Or is it one of those things you say, you know what, don't buy a big screen TV US year say have your money and buy one. What's well, what's the solution there? That's a creat you know. I was having to state with one of my clients and he said, so, how many of these crimpers? Crimpers are guys buying? I said, no, the guys with the budget by it. Love it. I've never heard a single complaint other than I wish this thing could poop. The crimpers are expensive. And I said that to him. And this is a business owner, and he looked at me. He smiled and said, hey, you gotta do a job, man. You gotta bring the right tools to the job, right, He said, It's it's more cost effective for me to ride my bike to school or to work or the town, but it's easier to jump in the car. Get there so I can get it. There's no way around it. Um. You know, we I'm working with High and J in Pennsylvania. Here he's cranking and we're now making a black drop time roller crimper that looks super cool. It's the same retail costs as the crimpers from Jake Blanket, I n J. And then by the way, Jake is UM. You know, they were one of the they were the first ones to really take along with the Roade Institute these designs, the chevron pattern and say, hey, holy smokes, if we step on some of the um straw like stems, we can. It was the organic guys who wanted to get away from, you know, the cost of chemicals. So yeah, they're expensive. We now have we're cranking amount right now. They're getting painted. We've got three four and five ft flipover models for the A t V and the UTV, and these things are very expensive. If you've ever seen the process, They're very expensive to make UM and anything that's obviously expensive to mate is going to be quite expensive on the retail side of things. You know, some of the A t V units are twenty UM, sometimes even a little bit less depending on the size. My clients are buying you know, eight twelve ft crimpers for you know, fifty two six thousand dollars depending on you know, the particular. So while I'll agree they can be costly, man, I'm a huge fan of a lot of the gear, the Mountain gear um today and you know, the Marino will. That stuff is not cheap. But I'm here to tell you I might go to eastern Montana and I'm on the Powder River one day. It could be ninety four degrees and I could snow that night, And when I've sweated all day in my first light in marino wool, all I do is hanging next to my bed, and in the morning it's bone dry. So I don't care what that costs, to be completely honest with you, it's it's replaced all of my Yeah, yeah, I hear what you're staying there now. There's some folks that have there's kind of a little underground movement that you can read about the various online threads where people kind of are trying to adapt some of these principles to a super budget methodology, like you're throwing mo idea where they're putting stuff down and mowing the weed growth over top of it and using that to kind of get again. I'm sure it's not as good as going all the way, but they're trying to achieve similar results with less gear. Um have you seen anything about that? Have you ever tried anything there? Um? Or is that you know parking? Yeah? A good friend of mine, Tim Cooker, Um, who is you know? He's done some filming for me and he's been on the podcast. He set out to He's very mechanically inclined. He set out to make his own you know, roller cripper and test some of his own stuff. And you know he's used called the packers. Um. I just saw somebody share a video the end of day on YouTube. It was a a I think it was a Honda Civic. They were driving it through the feet old driving over all this stuff to correct it down. Now you know, I think any I love it? I love it. First of all, anything that you are doing that meets the six principles, which everything you just mentioned did. Um. Can we expect the efficiency of a broadcast and mode plot to be that of a drilled in print? No, But as long as your expectations are such going into the deal, I'm okay. With that, you know, and I've seen people in gardens take what looks like one of the blades, attach it to or make your version of that blade right. You know, you want to be blunt, not sharp, because the goal is not the cut the stem, but instead crimp the stem right um and preferably every six or seven inches. So there's multiple crimps, but one crimp usually does it. But I've seen people in gardens take two ropes, hold the ropes up off their shoulders almost like a swing and stefana, you know, a two buy that has a blunt blade on the bottom and literally, you know, step and walk, step and walk and crimp de terminates. So yeah, I think it can be done. It's just a matter of you know, how much time you have and manpower and and what your budget is. But I guess for those and I don't care where you buy a roller cramper, but for those contemplating, is it really worth four thousand dollars or six thousand dollars or you know, on what you buy percent yes, no one has given me a legitimate reason to dislike a roller cramper fair enough, I uh, hopefully I'll get my hands on one at some point, and we'll be able to test test it all because it sure sounds like a great way to go about it. Now. You've mentioned numerous times throughout a conversation about nutrient density and the selective nature of how dear feed and how kind of how maybe the the cash crop the end result that we're looking for after doing all this work to put in our our food plots in a different kind of way that's healthier for the soil, healthier food plants and the pollinators and everything that does result in a target rich environment. Um, can you talk to me a little about nutrient density, about the things you've learned, um, along those lines. Absolutely, this is this is good stuff. And this is where I've really collaborated with Fred Provenza. For anyone who's never read his book Nourishment, what a what an incredible book, because he was on my podcast last and uh, it's just the numbers or through the root of people listening. And I'm so thankful for that because he has so much knowledge to spread. But when you talk nutritional density, I think the stuff going on in human nutrition is incredible. My wife gets so kissed at me, because you know, she loves eating veggies. She's all about health, and she'll go to the store and buy spring nixt and I look at it and I laughed, and I say, do you realize you'd have to eat four of those alix have the same nutrient density they had in nineteen forty. Here's the study. It's been done. And you know it's true. There are researchers studying veggies in the grocery store and they're finding, you know, meat, it's incredibly you have to twice as much meat to get you know, the same nutrients she wants. God, so that you know, I actually hit that um industry before I came to the dear idea of this nutritional density and forages, because again I've got this weekend immune system from lyne disease, and I realized quickly that I need to focus on what I eat. So here's the deal. The current food plotting model is really easy. It's it's it's full proof. I mean, everyone can grow biomass um, but this is biomass really truly grow big, mature books with you know, nutrient dense plant scapes. I don't think so we could do tissue analysis then we have, and you know, we're all about protein while I'm here to tell you that there are we have more problems with too much protein in plants and animals than we have with two little protein. This protein craze has got to go away. We just don't need that much. Um. I get a salad frequently in a local restaurant, and the waitresses always saying, if you want to be protein for that salad, meeting fish or chicken or steak. And I finally said the other day, you realize there's enough protein. Plants have protein, to stop asking me that question. And she just kind of laughed and said, yeah, I guess you're right. But so you know, the way that we're managing these food plots and and conventional act for that matter, is so very detrimental to the soil. Um, let's let's let's convert it to a real world widlife situation. You know, with clovers here, clover, we've been breed in clover to make it dear clover for twenty years, thirty years whatever. Nebrassicas, same way, two fantastic groupings of plants, Love them, always have them, would never plan them alone. When you pumped too much nitrogen in your soil with legooms specifically clover. We'll talk about clover. You're throwing that carbon nitrogen way out of WI And I can remember, Gabe tell me one time, just go observe some of these plots. And I'm not going to tell you what to do, because that's not my job. That's your job as a biologist. Just go look at And I remember sitting there looking at one. Actually it was a client in Pennsylvania. We jumped off the ranger and I walked out of the plot. He said, Jay, I just frost seeded this. It was probably February, Marks you can't remember. Just frost seeded this. I know you see a lot of fair spots. Um this is you know, the Stolen's did very well in this clover. It's spreading, it's growing. But I had some wheat issue last year, so as a result, it has some bear spots. He frost seated us. It's perfect. That's a crazy start. Here's what I want you to do. Crank up that new drill you just bought. Talk at yourself, some spring trip, a kally, spring barley, spring oats, I don't care. Get them all. Get them in that drill full rate, and come through here and drill this quickly, and he looked at me like I was crazy, said it's not time to get the drill out yet. That said, well that would you know Mother nature would disagree with that, but just try it. And a couple of months later to tell me up and said, I see what you did, and see what do you mean? He said that plot where I put the cereal grains in instead of having I hate the term we unwanted plants grasses, I've got spring trip. I think he plans spring trip on the mistaken and the deer and the turkeys are absolutely annihilating this fresh, succulent plant, while my clover is spreading through stolen's and obviously the clover seas that he frost seeded are also supplanting the field. And what he ended up with at the end of the season was a beautiful clover plot that I would be lying if I said it didn't unwanted invasive grass weeds. But man, we certainly used our heads and what's called a cultural weed management strategy, which that's kind of important to talk about. Two uh, man, I'm just going crazy. So so we went to college, you know, we we learned about you know, here's how you control weeds. Mark, so you can mechanically control them, like when you studied this, you know the great planes, right, dragon plows constantly, constantly just struckt the soil. Chemically control weeds, or you can culturally control weeds. And I can remember saying we would cover the mechanical the chemicals. Say wait a minute, what's his cultural stuff? Never understood it when I was in my teens in twenties cultural weed management. And then I found the guy crap, this is actually using our heads a little bit of planning. So we might be putting in a suppreshing uh smother cropper or cover crop in the fall that's gonna suppress those weeds in the spring. Takes a little bit of thought, right, Um, that's where it's that when it comes to weeds. And and that's probably why I gets still excited with the roller cripper because I've seen it. Think who was it? There's a gentleman who who chugged me on Facebook from Nebraska who says, I think Jason would agree, there's no better feeling a crushing a five foot tall stand. It could be multi species, but Harry Vetch for instant clover cereal Rye oats and just watching this stuff form I'm not kidding you, a six seven inch jag carpet wheat suppression, Matt. And then you hear the local farmer who makes a living uh selling grain, complaining about Mayor's Tale. Mayor's Tale is and that would be like my high school football team locally, who's not half bad playing one of the missie teams. Mayor's Tale is a joke. Yeah, it has beat us in the chemical team, but it's a relatively easy seed to suppress if we just think ahead. How do you do that? Because I have a whole lot of Mayor's Tale on the back forty that I want to to take a new tact with this coming spring, whether it be with food plots or trying to get native grasses out there, switch grass, different things like that. How do you deal with Mayor's Tale without chemicals so it so get culturally? You have to think ahead of it. Here's here's the thing about Mayor's I'm gonna warn you it's gonna get probably worse than it's gonna get worse fashion than it's gonna get better. And that is because most guys who go to note till Switch, especially the ad guys, because Mayor's tale really proliferates once you go. There are certain weeds we sees that do better when you plow, and there are certain we see that just crank full bore when you know till. And you'll see that we'd profile shift as you change from cultivation to no tailing. And everybody likes to point the singer at the no kill and say it just doesn't work, so you have to study. They'll be that. Okay, I love football, right, I love I love the idea of coaching football. I just don't like the parents, um and most of the other coaches. But so good. I've studied a lot of really well known coaches and they'll often talk about finding the point of weakness. Right. So, Yeah, you may have a running back that can run a four to forty. He may be extremely talented at patient reading holes. He may have you know, a hell of a line over on the right side. But if you don't have a center who can do his job, or if you don't have a pulling tackle or guard who can help block, he's used us. And that's really kind of how we If you don't understand your weakness and the opponent's weakness, you will never win the battle against weeds. So they're you know, stare if they are. Is a really good resource um for folks to look at and learn about the weed that you're facing and figure it out. Is this an annual it's just a perennial. What what soil temperatures and when does this weed germinates? So, for instance, in a weed that germanates in June July, it's it's too late. Man, I've won. If I go into spring with a heavy dance weed suppression matt thanks to my roller crimper and a little bit of forethought, that weed it doesn't have a chance in hell of competing with me. Now, don't call me and tell me that you've got a few of them. I get that's because they're right now. They're on steroids, they're they're super active. They've figured out the way out, a way to get around our chemical herbicides and become resistant. You will still have them, but what you'll find is there's a threshold with weeds. Um. God, I'm gonna get beat by some of the guys in the regenerative world for using that weeds word. But you know, you almost have to but you'll get ahead of it. It's just a matter of time. And you know, constantly planning and keeping the soiled armored, keeping the soil covered, and you know, again you'll you'll well adjust your tolerance in your threshold as well at a certain point. I mean, I know guys who say to me, hey, I'm not coming back to your farm again. They help you until you kill all that rag weeds right, because they're they're snotty and they just freeze. Usually they blame the the golden rod because you can see it. It's showy. It's not the golden rods read leaves. So yeah, culturally you have to you have to just do some research on the weeds, um, find out what it prefers. And let me give you another example on weeds. Um. I get a lot of these cockle burrs and you know, things like that that stick to my dogs, stick to our coats when you're hunting. It's a broad leaf. And one thing I did was I shoved plant pain and some other broad leaves in the ground constantly throughout the growing season where I had. I mean, you could look down from the tractor and just see these dcs millions and millions of them, and you're thinking of yourself, Oh my gosh, next year, it's going to be a disaster, right, um, But you could plant similar plants and culturally win that battle. So, so what about this scenario where you have a ute unquote we or really what about a grassy, dense field of some kind of some kind of grass and I want to plant something new there. I want to start this whole process. I want to plan a diverse blend of food plots. But I've got a great, big, nasty field of I don't know. Yeah, so you're thinking about something grass field that, Yes, that's just you know, almost an ankle breaker when you when you start out with it and you walk over it, right, Yeah. So historically you would you know, use one of those other forms of weak control to then cleared out and plant something new. But how do I is there any way to do that otherwise? Because right now I can't plant anything, and I could, you know, chemically burn it. I could burn it, burn it, but I don't. I don't want to. You know, I'm agamp you over use of chemical curticized. Now I've chosen my property not to use them simply because of the impact they have on mile um and and also on the ecosystem health. But I seem no problem if you want to use a little bit to get started. Um would I do it? Probably not the way I would work with it, And every field is different, right, I would obviously look at the field, see what I have to deal with, think about my resource concerns, and I would likely try to get ahead of that and the fall growing season with a biennial, a biennial that can compete with that. The next growing season, I'm gonna throw a bunch of diversity. I'm gonna throw a bunch of plant lives at it and drill right into it. Um. I'll probably crimp it in the fall when I drill as well. And in some situations just ran into this in Ohio we have found I've been talking to Rickenny about this as well. In text is the soul of scientists when you're when you're gunning and you're aiming for diversity, the one way to kill them is by plowing the field. So what Rick did was he took one of his research plots and he said, okay, what if I lightly did skid just to kind of you know, some of us want to level of field out that's been rutted maybe from the past, or you know, we're just starting off the square one like you're saying. And Rick Rick toldy one day on the phone, he said, Hey, you're gonna love this while deep till is you know, chisel world more plowing, Yeah, destructive, Never do get rid of it, he said. I did some light disking on the soil and then just absolutely hammered it with diversity, just to see if I could combat that light soul dis service, he said, And I got my CEO two bursts, which the two bursts is nothing more than um it tells us how much biology is breathing in in that room. He said. That's CEO two bursts, after really like one season, got back to where it was. So I always tell guys, no, it don't take everything you hear literally if you've if you've gone through all this, you can try to note till it. Maybe you're avoiding ken goals. Maybe you did a light application of glass to state or two four D or whatever you selected and it didn't work. Um, you know, I still sold my disc. But I firmly believe sometimes we may need to reintroduce a light disk again. A lot of this is kind of unconcested. When Rick told me that I was, I was surprised. Actually I had just sold my disk um. But yeah, once you get your fields to where you know they're they're plantable, right, I mean some guys are starting with stack lanes and early successional habitats. Obviously you have to get in there and you know, crushed and brush and then probably manipulate the soil a little bit. Yeah, there's um, there's always the context, and there's always different things needed for different circumstances. That that makes a lot of sense. We somehow, I've talked for almost two hours and I still have like twenty different things I was curious to talk about which we haven't read. Yeah, we probably need to wrap it up, but we might have to have a part two someday. But I guess before we before we do shut down, is there any burning thing on your mind that we haven't talked about that you'll just be that you'll be sitting at night tonight staying awake because he didn't get to mention it. Or do you feel good about where we're living things? And that's a great question, I think, um the for me, Yeah, and you may have heard deep say this what changed the game for me? Before I do anything on my property, on my farm, in my field, anywhere, and just stopped. And I've got kids, I've got multiple companies that I run, and I'm busy, I travel and I just observe for a minute, and I think to myself, does this fall within those six principles? There are cascading effects all the time and nature it's never just one thing you're manipulating and changing. So am I doing more to pump carbon and into the soil? Right? That's always my I want to pump carb but people are paying for you to sequester carbon in your soil. Think about that for a minute. Could you get paid on the back forty by some nonprofit group a per acre basis based on the amount of carbon use sequestering? That's cool to me. Yeah, yeah, another income sources and you're probably not gonna get rich, but hey, you know it's an income source. You're stacking another income So I think you know, for me, it's all about carbon. Carbon is the driver of the system, is the currency of the system. And um, you know again it's just in my my promoting the life and the soil. We we tend to walk on it and think it's just some dirty media for grown plants, not at all true. UM, and I will I'll finished with this. As might mentioned carbon the term carbonomics comes to mind. UM. I've worked with Keith Burns along with Keith Brian Burns his brother. They owned Green cover Seed. When I talked to people about some of my ideas, everybody laughed at me. Everybody told me, you know, going crazy. Keith and the guy's Green cover Seed said Hey, what you're doing is exactly what we do and we love the idea. Come join us. They helped me source everything from wild flowers for honeybees to the plants I'm talking about in the Rito series. Keith did my favorite YouTube video of all time. If you google Keith Burns b E r n s carbonomics, and I mean people who aren't even into region. UM. I took micro and macro econ economics and college and loved it. Most of the frat guys in there with me. It must have been an elective slept or to show up. UM. When he discussed with this, it almost makes you understand why our economy is thriving so much right now, because he simplifies economics into a dirt soil kind of way, and he talks about carbon So, how do you recommend you watched this video? We'll check that out. It sounds uh, sounds very interesting. All this stuff has been fascinating to me and it's been really fun to to dive into it and start trying some things, you know, hitting, hitting and missing here and there, but excited for you to to learn from it and grow from it. And this conversation is definitely gonna help. So Jason, thank you for that. And if folks want to learn more, people want to learn more from you, want to learn more about your products or services, all of that, where can they go to find? It's all over? You know, I love when people just call. I try my best answer calls. UM. You know my cell phone is just five seven zero to zero four four zero six four. Please understand when I get paid to consult, you know, they get my undivided attention all day and sometimes even in the evening, UM with tenners and such. My my emails Jason, that drop time wildlife dot com. UM, that's probably the easiest I can answer them at all times. And then I'm not a huge fan of social media because it's just it gets to be a lot after a while. But we've created a closed group called Regenerative Wildlife Agriculture on Facebook. Um. That is fun because we kind of pushed the envelope on some of this stuff. And then, of course, my my consulting company, which has been around for nineteen years is just drop Time Wildlife dot com. And my seed company, the drop Time Seed Company is drop Time Seed dot com. And I need to slow down. But the podcast, which is really my first labor of love, um, doesn't have a website. There's I am on Facebook with the drop Time podcast and um that I just realized I have waite too much going on. That's a lot, but it's it sounds like a lot of good stuff. So I'll be sure to be staying up on all of that myself, and I'm sure a lot of listeners will too. So Jason, thank you so much for your time. Yes, sir, thank you, and look forward talking to you the future. Yeah, I'm gonna keep picking your brain all right, Thanks a lot, Bye bye, and that's gonna do it for us today. Thank you all for tuning in. I know this is different than the usual. This isn't your how to Kill a Buck kind of episode, which I know is is always helpful, but sometimes we've got to think about these bigger picture issues. I think this is a really interesting way to do that if you want to learn more. We do have a couple other podcast episodes that we did last year that covers some of this. There's one with Dr Grant Woods. There's another one with the guys from Landing Legacy, go back check it out. There's one the spring, there's one this summer. Those are very interesting as well. Another resource that I recommend as a book called Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown. This is one of the best books I've seen yet on this topic. It's it's very tactical, but also uses a story to take you through how you can go about utilizing these principles. So check that stuff out and I think with that we will shut her down. So thank you for being here, thanks for listening, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.