TRANSCRIPT
JAY: Hello.
MOLLY: Hey, Jay.
JAY: Hi.
MOLLY: How’s it going?
JAY: It is going well. So this week I guess what’s on my mind is I’m coming to you from my home office today not actually out on the farm.
MOLLY: We won’t make you flip the camera around to show the fields.
JAY: No, you’ll just see a mess. But yeah, this week it, on Sunday it got really hot. It hit 97 and I think what comes to probably every farmer’s mind is, “Oh, man,” you know and “When’s it gonna rain?” And in our area, where we have access to irrigation, what comes to mind is irrigation and, “Okay, what do I have to do to be ready?” You know, if I’m not ready at this point already, what are the steps between now and getting water on the fields?
And we’re in pretty good shape right now. Soil moisture’s pretty good. We’ve had a lot of rain for the last about month. But that is, as soon as the calendar flips to July—a lot of times you’re irrigating in June already—but for sure when July hits, it is top priority in our area to be thinking that direction.
And on—I’ll be referencing a little bit my own experience on my own farm—but I irrigated with center pivots mostly. And out on the Grain Place, most of the irrigation is done with either gravity pipe or with subsurface drip. And so there’s a few little differences that go on because of those things. But in order to get the pipe—the water to actually run down the field—you have to have a furrow. So you have to have all your cultivating done, and then you put your pipe out, and then you’re ready to irrigate. And once you put your pipe out, your cultivation season has ended, unless you really wanna go out and pick up pipe to go cultivate one more time, which usually doesn’t... that probably has happened in the past, but that’s not a fun practice.
MOLLY: A lot more work.
JAY: Yeah not a fun thing to do more than once.
But so that’s kind of what we’re working towards right now is getting those final cultivations done. That last pass is usually called hilling or ridging, and that’s where you really throw dirt up so you kind of make a furrow for that water to run down and can get down to the end of the field, get your whole field irrigated, through the gravity system.
Obviously, irrigation is a huge blessing, because it ensures our ability to raise a crop every year without, you know, with the exception of, like, hailstorms or a really bad disease pressure or something. But it’s not without work. It is a lot... Irrigation for me was always one of the hardest times of year because it is... so much work, and it’s not... You can’t really predict it.
So that is a really real and stressful thing that I think people who haven’t irrigated don’t understand. Now that- A lot of people would probably say, “Wahhhh.”
MOLLY: Well, it’s like a different stress you’re beholden to the rain coming.
JAY: Yeah.
MOLLY: And then when it is under your control, it’s a different stress because you could be doing something.
JAY: Yes, exactly—well, and because you think you can control it and then you have to. And so it’s this micromanagement side of life...
MOLLY: Right. And then it becomes your fault if it doesn’t work…
JAY: It’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Because it moves the pressure away from just waiting on Mother Nature or God to provide rain…
MOLLY: Right…
JAY: …to “I should be able to do this myself.” So if something breaks down, that’s now on me and all my pressure. And the other reality is that when you have irrigation, your context is different. You’re spending more money on everything because you are guaranteed a crop. So you are putting a lot more money out up front assuming that you’re gonna raise 220 or 30 or 50 or more bushel corn. So you’re willing to invest that extra money because you should be guaranteed that crop. So that’s another payoff. It’s just a part of the context, and it’s not better or worse, it’s just a different way of looking at it and a different amount of—a different place to focus your work.
I would never complain about irrigation, but it’s not as simple as pushing a button and walking away.
MOLLY: Right?
JAY: That’s not what it is. Wouldn’t that be cool? But no. And it’s a stewardship issue too. I think that people—and I think most farmers believe this too—but it is a... It is not an inexhaustible resource. And even though we sit on probably some of the best water in our area that exists in the country—being over the Ogallala Aquifer—it is still not something that we take lightly as farmers, and especially at Grain Place and other people who are regenerative or organic or like-minded. We try to do the best job we can stewarding that water, too, so we’re not way over-applying so we’re just giving, giving what we need to and monitoring the soil moisture, looking at the weather forecast, trying to play that game of always “if we get that next rain, I don’t have to irrigate. But if I don’t irrigate now and it doesn’t rain in three days, then all of a sudden now I’m really far behind, or I’m right on the edge, of being behind.” So there’s always a balance during the irrigation season that makes you switch gears.
MOLLY:Right ...
JAY: But I know out on the farm this time of year too there’s, be moving cows a lot, trying to keep, again, managing water. While we’re not gonna be irrigating any of the pastures we do wanna manage the rainwater that we get so that we can not overgraze a pasture and then end up being stuck with no rain, and then the pasture’s not able to recover.
So we, we try to keep the animals moving fairly quickly, every day or two to three days maybe, depending on how much growth is in the specific paddock that we’re in. And that way there’s... we’re leaving plenty of growth or plenty of plant material so that it can regrow and we can use those pastures multiple times through the year.
MOLLY: Can we talk a little bit about your sort of transition in your job?
JAY: Yeah.
MOLLY: When you came to Grain Place, your primary work was really as, like, a community builder, liaison to other…
JAY: Yep ...
MOLLY: …folks interested in transitioning to organic.
JAY: Yeah
MOLLY: ...the last weeks, months, you’ve really been out in the field working…
JAY: Yeah, correct.
MOLLY: …filling in some
JAY: So the seasons of farming the workload changes with every season. And I always felt like, when cultivating season got over, you shifted gears in your head to almost... It was usually almost right to irrigation season. And then when that one got over, you shifted to harvest season, getting all the harvest stuff ready. And so we just came out of planting season, and that was actually a little ways ago. But we had one farmer retire in December, While we were looking for a second farmer because it, the Grain Place is such a complex farm, it really can’t be done with one person. It really needs two people, two full-time farmers. And I was filling in a lot of time for the last few months out there, especially during the planting season, getting fields prepped for planting.
‘cause when you’re organic, everything takes a little bit longer and so I had stepped in, was filling in a lot of that requirement alongside Adam so that we could just keep things going and get things in the ground. And then we recently hired somebody, so we got a... We have a new farmer on —Rusty. And so now I’m transitioning back into more outreach and education. So my main goal when I was hired on was to reach out to interested farmers, guys who are... girls, guys, everybody, who is interested in farming in a different way.
MOLLY: Well, thanks for taking time out from your time indoors to check in today.
JAY: Yeah ...Yep. Thank you.
MOLLY: Take care, Jay.
JAY: Yep. Yeah, have a good day. Thank you. Bye.
