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Balancing Act: How Frog Song Organics Integrates Livestock and Crops

When John Bitter and his wife Amy started Frog Song Organics on 5 acres in 2011, a vision of how to carefully scale-up the farm was long in the works. They both had several years’ experience working with farms in the area, and each knew nearby markets well enough to know they had opportunities to grow. Looking ahead, they had also spoken with the owner of neighboring land about leasing additional acreage in the future. 

Fast-forward 12 years, and Frog Song Organics is a 62-acre operation with about 30 full-time employees and 20-40 acres in production at any one time. Located less than a 2 hour’s drive from several markets, Frog Song provides organic products year-round to four farmers markets and wholesale accounts in Gainesville, Orlando, St. Augustine, and Tampa, and through an online-order, customizable-box CSA program. 

At this stage, John is happy with the size of the operation, and focused on improvements to the overall farm. “Now we’re just trying to fill in the efficiency of what we are doing. We don’t really want to get a lot bigger but we want to get more efficient and more profitable, being able to do more with less resources, essentially,” he said. 

Frog Song is a highly diversified farm producing vegetables, herbs, flowers, orchard crops, pork and poultry products, and legumes. For John, balancing the livestock and crop enterprises is key. “Something to think about is how all this scales,” he said. From his perspective, scaling “needs to match the fertility, the planting, and the marketing…and if one of those is way out of whack, the business might fail.” So while Frog Song could produce a lot more pork and eggs, keeping a system that is balanced, where the amount of livestock fits the crop systems, is John’s recommended strategy. “People are looking at one way or the other, like ‘I’m going to be a pig farmer or a chicken farmer’, well, that’s 1/8th of what you do, or 1/12th of what you do, and you base the rest on what grows really well in your area and what resources you already have available rather than trying to bring in too much of the resources that will end up driving you out of business. If you depend too much on other resources, eventually, when the prices of those resources change, your business model will have to change, very rapidly, or else you won’t stay in business.” 

Why integrate livestock with crop production?

Speaking about why John and Amy decided to include animals from the onset, John says, “The primary reason we integrate livestock is to turn a liability into a resource.” For Frog Song, that means pigs are brought into sweet potato fields following harvests to help clean up 

‘seconds’ and bits left behind that can otherwise harbor pests. In the warmth of the southeastern region where Frog Song is located, a sweet potato weevil thrives. The highly mobile bug can ruin inventories and crops in fields. Non-organic controls include herbicide applications to sweet potato fields following harvests, or soil fumigants. As an organic farm, Frog Song had to find other methods. “We decided pigs were the best way to plow over the land without using a lot of diesel. So the pigs will take sweet potato scraps and turn it into something that’s a very high-value product: organic bacon. Better than organic, it’s actually pasture-raised and on organic pasture!”

Another liability-turned-to-resource can be seen in the orchards. Chickens are ranged under established (2 years old or more) stone fruit trees after fruiting. As they scratch and peck around the trees, they effectively reduce plum curculio, millipedes, cutworms and other lepidoptera pests. To make the most of the benefits of the chickens’ manure, feed is concentrated around the base of fruit trees to maximize the time they spend scratching weeds and leaving behind manure. 

Cover crops and livestock integration

On farms with integrated systems of crops and livestock, cover crops can provide valuable forages. At Frog Song, cover crops are planted year-round, and almost always include a multi-species mix. From November to February, winter rye, coker oats, and wheat are planted. Buckwheat, 4 types of millet, and sorghum-Sudan grass go in from March to October. And from April through August, John plants Sunn Hemp as a stand-alone. All of these crops, in addition to certain cash crops like the sweet potatoes, are eventually grazed by animals. 

Sunn Hemp is planted as a stand-alone cover crop in a pear orchard. “This would be a good time to graze it down by pigs, if you needed to. Sunn Hemp is kind of our backup plan for pig grazing. We try to have enough millet and sorghum and buckwheat after the sweet potato crop, and if we fail at any time, then we have acres and acres of the Sunn Hemp that would be a decent forage for them.” John recommends grazing sunn hemp only until about 20 inches tall. At about waist-high, it becomes too tough, high in a particular acid, and the pigs “just won’t eat it,” he says.  Also of note: for grazing pigs in this area, the fence would be placed to exclude the pigs from the pear trees. 

The choice of which cover crops to plant for grazing centers around three questions for John. One, will the animals eat it, and at what stage is best to start grazing? Two, how much does it cost to establish, in both time and expenses, especially given that the cost of cover crop seeds can vary from year to year? And three, how does the crop fit in with the rotation? The answer to that third question, for Frog Song, has special implications for legume cover crops. Since one of Frog Song’s cash crops is legumes, they need at least 3 years in the rotations without legumes in order to avoid building up diseases like white rot. Sunn Hemp seems to be a distant enough relative that it remains in the cover-crop mix at Frog Song, and does not contribute to buildup of diseases affecting legume cash crops

The switch to on-farm breeding

For years at Frog Song, piglets were purchased off-farm, but after some time, John decided it was best to breed their own pigs on-farm. “After being in business for some years,” he explains, “sometimes the piglets aren’t there when you need them to be there, in your cycle.” Since beginning on-farm breeding with Red Wattle Hogs, the animals are bred and available at times that suit the farm, and the animals “stayed in good health and stayed productive.” 

To maintain healthy genetics, a few sires from different lines are brought in to live on site. A few sows cycle through the “Honeymoon Suite” to breed with them, and then are introduced to farrowing pens, which are “good spots on the farm…basically giving the sow the best of what there is in that moment of the year,” with plenty of shade and quality forage. Within 7-14 days, the piglets have begun to graze the forage and are learning the cycles and systems of Frog Song. 

“Certain animals can be pretty much addicted to grain,” John explained. “They won’t go forage for themselves, they’ll just wait for when the grain comes, then they get really nasty to have to battle out their siblings or bunkmates for that grain. In our system, we’re looking for the pigs who just want to go plow up any part of their block, go find their own sweet potatoes, and there’s really no way that a bully pig can dominate that system: they’ve all got plenty to eat, they’re stress-free, and by the time they get to the end of the block, there’s a new block waiting for them.”

Adaptations in infrastructure for livestock

Two of the most important pieces of infrastructure for livestock at Frog Song are electric fencing and animal housing. Training workers so that each understands how electricity flows through an entire fencing system has been key to being able to troubleshoot problems in the field quickly without slowing other parts of the operation down. And to keep a careful eye on the electric systems, John recommends having one person who is responsible for checking systems at least once a day. At Frog Song, handlers check the systems twice a day. Electric fencing is key to the paddock systems at the farm, typically set up as block-paddocks that are fractions of a longer, rectangle-shaped field. The animals move across the field into a new paddock every 5-7 days. 

For livestock housing, one important adaptation has to do with the clay soils at the farm: John has moved away from anything with wheels, such as chicken houses on trailers, because clay gets into tire seals, ruins them, and the seals need to be replaced often. New housing structures are custom-built using 2-inch metal tubing, in a design that can be picked up with a front-end loader and easily moved with a tractor.  

Risks of raising animals and crops together

Understanding the risks of raising livestock is simple, but it is of the utmost importance. John explains, “How do you grow vegetables and raise animals at the same time? This is a really important part to talk about. This is where the farm can go really wrong if you don’t acknowledge your risks. But the risks are simple: you don’t want to get manure in the product in any way possible!”

The plans for dealing with this simple risk are taken seriously. In order to know where the risks lie, the farm identifies where manure is traveling, from paddocks to packing shed or plantings. These “Critical Control Points” (CCP’s) are part of the farm’s HACCP plan (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Systems plan), which means they are “identified, verified, and validated” so they all get met. With animals moving around the farm often, John starts thinking about where the manure will go the moment he starts designing the layout of fields. 

That means thinking about the flow of water. “I’d say, start there, as a farmer,” he suggests, “you need to look at ‘Which way does every drop flow?’ As it comes out of the sky and hits your farm. Then you need to know where your paddocks are, where you’re going to raise your crops, and what kind of crops you are going to raise (low or high risk).” Having staff trained in safe handling and protocols for visiting anywhere on the farm with manure or entering packing areas is also a necessary part of managing the CCP’s and risks of manure. 

Benefits you can see: soil fertility

Despite the risks, workload, and infrastructure needs, having pigs and chickens is an integral part of what makes Frog Song successful. When asked about the benefits of the 12+ years of crop-livestock integration at the farm, John spoke about one key indicator of soil health: the health of the cover crops. In the first few years, some fields barely sustained a cover crop. Other fields with more clay had large incongruencies in growth over the area and in how water moved through them (areas with poor drainage and large puddles). Now these same fields produce uniform, lush patches of cover crops, and as John reflects on a decade-plus of integration, he says, matter-of-factly, “every year certain blocks are getting better.”

OFRF is honored to share a recording of a conversation with John Bitter about Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems at his farm. You can listen now by pressing the “play” button below.  Or click this link to download John’s story to listen later.

Balancing Act: How Frog Song Organics Integrates Livestock and Crops

When John Bitter and his wife Amy started Frog Song Organics on 5 acres in 2011, a vision of how to carefully scale-up the farm was long in the works. They both had several years’ experience working with farms in the area, and each knew nearby markets well enough to know they had opportunities to grow. Looking ahead, they had also spoken with the owner of neighboring land about leasing additional acreage in the future. 

Fast-forward 12 years, and Frog Song Organics is a 62-acre operation with about 30 full-time employees and 20-40 acres in production at any one time. Located less than a 2 hour’s drive from several markets, Frog Song provides organic products year-round to four farmers markets and wholesale accounts in Gainesville, Orlando, St. Augustine, and Tampa, and through an online-order, customizable-box CSA program. 

At this stage, John is happy with the size of the operation, and focused on improvements to the overall farm. “Now we’re just trying to fill in the efficiency of what we are doing. We don’t really want to get a lot bigger but we want to get more efficient and more profitable, being able to do more with less resources, essentially,” he said.

Frog Song is a highly diversified farm producing vegetables, herbs, flowers, orchard crops, pork and poultry products, and legumes. For John, balancing the livestock and crop enterprises is key. “Something to think about is how all this scales,” he said. From his perspective, scaling “needs to match the fertility, the planting, and the marketing…and if one of those is way out of whack, the business might fail.” So while Frog Song could produce a lot more pork and eggs, keeping a system that is balanced, where the amount of livestock fits the crop systems, is John’s recommended strategy. “People are looking at one way or the other, like ‘I’m going to be a pig farmer or a chicken farmer’, well, that’s 1/8th of what you do, or 1/12th of what you do, and you base the rest on what grows really well in your area and what resources you already have available rather than trying to bring in too much of the resources that will end up driving you out of business. If you depend too much on other resources, eventually, when the prices of those resources change, your business model will have to change, very rapidly, or else you won’t stay in business.”

Why integrate livestock with crop production?

Speaking about why John and Amy decided to include animals from the onset, John says, “The primary reason we integrate livestock is to turn a liability into a resource.” For Frog Song, that means pigs are brought into sweet potato fields following harvests to help clean up ‘seconds’ and bits left behind that can otherwise harbor pests. In the warmth of the southeastern region where Frog Song is located, a sweet potato weevil thrives. The highly mobile bug can ruin inventories and crops in fields. Non-organic controls include herbicide applications to sweet potato fields following harvests, or soil fumigants. As an organic farm, Frog Song had to find other methods. “We decided pigs were the best way to plow over the land without using a lot of diesel. So the pigs will take sweet potato scraps and turn it into something that’s a very high-value product: organic bacon. Better than organic, it’s actually pasture-raised and on organic pasture!”

Another liability-turned-to-resource can be seen in the orchards. Chickens are ranged under established (2 years old or more) stone fruit trees after fruiting. As they scratch and peck around the trees, they effectively reduce plum curculio, millipedes, cutworms and other lepidoptera pests. To make the most of the benefits of the chickens’ manure, feed is concentrated around the base of fruit trees to maximize the time they spend scratching weeds and leaving behind manure. 

Cover crops and livestock integration

On farms with integrated systems of crops and livestock, cover crops can provide valuable forages. At Frog Song, cover crops are planted year-round, and almost always include a multi-species mix. From November to February, winter rye, coker oats, and wheat are planted. Buckwheat, 4 types of millet, and sorghum-Sudan grass go in from March to October. And from April through August, John plants Sunn Hemp as a stand-alone. All of these crops, in addition to certain cash crops like the sweet potatoes, are eventually grazed by animals. 

Sunn Hemp is planted as a stand-alone cover crop in a pear orchard. “This would be a good time to graze it down by pigs, if you needed to. Sunn Hemp is kind of our backup plan for pig grazing. We try to have enough millet and sorghum and buckwheat after the sweet potato crop, and if we fail at any time, then we have acres and acres of the Sunn Hemp that would be a decent forage for them.” John recommends grazing sunn hemp only until about 20 inches tall. At about waist-high, it becomes too tough, high in a particular acid, and the pigs “just won’t eat it,” he says.  Also of note: for grazing pigs in this area, the fence would be placed to exclude the pigs from the pear trees. 

The choice of which cover crops to plant for grazing centers around three questions for John. One, will the animals eat it, and at what stage is best to start grazing? Two, how much does it cost to establish, in both time and expenses, especially given that the cost of cover crop seeds can vary from year to year? And three, how does the crop fit in with the rotation? The answer to that third question, for Frog Song, has special implications for legume cover crops. Since one of Frog Song’s cash crops is legumes, they need at least 3 years in the rotations without legumes in order to avoid building up diseases like white rot. Sunn Hemp seems to be a distant enough relative that it remains in the cover-crop mix at Frog Song, and does not contribute to buildup of diseases affecting legume cash crops

The switch to on-farm breeding

For years at Frog Song, piglets were purchased off-farm, but after some time, John decided it was best to breed their own pigs on-farm. “After being in business for some years,” he explains, “sometimes the piglets aren’t there when you need them to be there, in your cycle.” Since beginning on-farm breeding with Red Wattle Hogs, the animals are bred and available at times that suit the farm, and the animals “stayed in good health and stayed productive.” 

To maintain healthy genetics, a few sires from different lines are brought in to live on site. A few sows cycle through the “Honeymoon Suite” to breed with them, and then are introduced to farrowing pens, which are “good spots on the farm…basically giving the sow the best of what there is in that moment of the year,” with plenty of shade and quality forage. Within 7-14 days, the piglets have begun to graze the forage and are learning the cycles and systems of Frog Song. 

“Certain animals can be pretty much addicted to grain,” John explained. “They won’t go forage for themselves, they’ll just wait for when the grain comes, then they get really nasty to have to battle out their siblings or bunkmates for that grain. In our system, we’re looking for the pigs who just want to go plow up any part of their block, go find their own sweet potatoes, and there’s really no way that a bully pig can dominate that system: they’ve all got plenty to eat, they’re stress-free, and by the time they get to the end of the block, there’s a new block waiting for them.”

Adaptations in infrastructure for livestock

Two of the most important pieces of infrastructure for livestock at Frog Song are electric fencing and animal housing. Training workers so that each understands how electricity flows through an entire fencing system has been key to being able to troubleshoot problems in the field quickly without slowing other parts of the operation down. And to keep a careful eye on the electric systems, John recommends having one person who is responsible for checking systems at least once a day. At Frog Song, handlers check the systems twice a day. Electric fencing is key to the paddock systems at the farm, typically set up as block-paddocks that are fractions of a longer, rectangle-shaped field. The animals move across the field into a new paddock every 5-7 days. 

For livestock housing, one important adaptation has to do with the clay soils at the farm: John has moved away from anything with wheels, such as chicken houses on trailers, because clay gets into tire seals, ruins them, and the seals need to be replaced often. New housing structures are custom-built using 2-inch metal tubing, in a design that can be picked up with a front-end loader and easily moved with a tractor.  

Risks of raising animals and crops together

Understanding the risks of raising livestock is simple, but it is of the utmost importance. John explains, “How do you grow vegetables and raise animals at the same time? This is a really important part to talk about. This is where the farm can go really wrong if you don’t acknowledge your risks. But the risks are simple: you don’t want to get manure in the product in any way possible!”

The plans for dealing with this simple risk are taken seriously. In order to know where the risks lie, the farm identifies where manure is traveling, from paddocks to packing shed or plantings. These “Critical Control Points” (CCP’s) are part of the farm’s HACCP plan (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Systems plan), which means they are “identified, verified, and validated” so they all get met. With animals moving around the farm often, John starts thinking about where the manure will go the moment he starts designing the layout of fields. 

That means thinking about the flow of water. “I’d say, start there, as a farmer,” he suggests, “you need to look at ‘Which way does every drop flow?’ As it comes out of the sky and hits your farm. Then you need to know where your paddocks are, where you’re going to raise your crops, and what kind of crops you are going to raise (low or high risk).” Having staff trained in safe handling and protocols for visiting anywhere on the farm with manure or entering packing areas is also a necessary part of managing the CCP’s and risks of manure. 

Benefits you can see: soil fertility

Despite the risks, workload, and infrastructure needs, having pigs and chickens is an integral part of what makes Frog Song successful. When asked about the benefits of the 12+ years of crop-livestock integration at the farm, John spoke about one key indicator of soil health: the health of the cover crops. In the first few years, some fields barely sustained a cover crop. Other fields with more clay had large incongruencies in growth over the area and in how water moved through them (areas with poor drainage and large puddles). Now these same fields produce uniform, lush patches of cover crops, and as John reflects on a decade-plus of integration, he says, matter-of-factly, “every year certain blocks are getting better.”

Visit Frog Song Organics’ webpage.

OFRF is honored to share a recording of a conversation with Arlen Beery about Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems at his farm. You can listen now by pressing the “play” button below.

Or click this link to download Arlen’s story to listen later.

• Farm name: Hidden Hollow Farm
• Farmer name: Arlen Beery
• Location: Dayton, Virginia, (traditional homelands of the Shawnee Tribes, Monacan Indian Nation, and Manahoac).
• Products: Dairy, eggs, vegetables, hay, corn, and some beef.
• ICLS practices: Grazing & terminating cover crop, breaking up pasture for crops, breaking pest cycles, clipping hay pastures, on-farm compost.
• Years certified organic: Began transitioning in 2003, certified organic since 2006.
• Acreage: Home farm is 117 acres. Rents another 200 nearby.
• Type of livestock: Large herd of dairy cows, 1000 laying hens.
• Markets: Sells organic grass-fed milk through Organic Valley, a wholesale milk cooperative. Sells eggs and produce through Shenandoah Family Farms, a local producer cooperative.
• Years in operation: Since 1993.
• Farm crew size: Self + extended family.

Harmony in Farming: The Integrated Approach at Hidden Hollow Farm

Arlen Beery has been farming the same piece of land at Hidden Hollow Farm in Dayton, Virginia, for thirty years. He was one of several farmers that OFRF spoke to in a series of interviews about Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems, the practice of raising livestock and crops on the same farm, overlapping on the same ground in ways that can benefit the animals and the plants, as well as the whole farm ecosystem. “In all my years the crops and livestock have both been here,” he said, when asked which came first. “The livestock needed forage and winter feed,” he said. “For us both came together.” His home farm is 117 acres, and he also rents another 200 nearby. Hidden Hollow Farm primarily raises dairy cattle, and sells organic grass-fed milk through Organic Valley, a wholesale milk cooperative. They also raise about 1000 laying hens, produce vegetables, hay, and corn, and occasionally sell some beef.

Although the crops and livestock have both been there from the beginning, they haven’t always been as integrated as they are now. “Years ago when we started we were not grazing,” Arlen said. “We would harvest all the crops we were growing and bale or chop the crop and store it for the cattle to eat in more of a confinement type setting, where cows went to the feed bunk [a type of feeding trough] to get their feed.” In 2003 Arlen began the transition to organic production, becoming certified in 2006. “We moved into grazing at that time,” he explained, “because it’s a national organic program ruling, it’s a requirement.”

There were several things that inspired them to make the shift to organic production. One of the key reasons was to lessen the effect of market swings in the price of fertilizer. They have also noticed a benefit in that it buffers them against the ups and downs in the grain market.

Because the organic model does not depend on synthetic fertilizers and chemicals Arlen’s annual production costs are more predictable. He feeds less grain now that he’s rotationally grazing his cows on pasture, so swings in the grain market also don’t affect his budget as much. Another motivation for going organic was the health and wellbeing of the farm, the soil biology, and the family, including young children who live on the farm. “We were wanting to get to a more natural way of farming,” Arlen said.

Since becoming certified organic and beginning to put their animals on pasture, Arlen has developed a multi-year rotation for his farm to keep his pastures and animals healthy. For seven years, the land is in pasture, and the eighth year in an annual crop (sudan or millet). Starting in the summer before the annual crops will be grown in an area, Arlen puts chickens on that pasture intensely. They then “out winter” the cattle, keeping them on that same piece of pasture through the winter. “In spring there will be a lot of manure left there from cattle and chickens,” Arlen explained. “The sod is thin from livestock being on it. Then we do some tillage, and plant sudan/millet as an annual summer crop.” After about 35 days they are able to start grazing the cattle in that area again, and can return to graze the sudan/millet every month over the summer. In September, after about three grazings, they pull the sudan/millet out and plant the area back into perennial pasture, and keep the animals off it for the first winter so it can get established. When they replant a pasture they include triticale as a “nurse crop.” Triticale grows quickly, so it’s the first thing the animals can graze when they’re put back on the pasture in the spring. They are able to start grazing there in mid March, which is earlier than other pastures that don’t have the triticale present.

Arlen has his farm divided into paddocks about 5 acres in size. They are typically moving about 90 cattle, and rotate them roughly every two days. “The way I farm today, the most important thing is having a perimeter fence around the whole farm that is secure,” Arlen said. “It’s a lot cheaper to let the cows in than to run hay equipment over that ground. That’s something I would recommend to anyone pursuing these ways of farming, to have a strong secure perimeter fence so you can flash graze when needed.” At Hidden Hollow the secure perimeter fence allows them to let cows into an area whenever they need to, so they can have cows clip a pasture, or terminate a cover crop.

While Arlen says that the yields on his crops have not changed much since integrating, there are some other benefits that he has observed. “The health of cattle and chickens is a lot improved,” he said. “Especially for the dairy cows, they are not pushed as hard… so they’re not trying to produce more milk than they were naturally designed to.” Arlen has observed that his cows now have a longer lifespan and better overall health because they’re not on a high energy diet of grains that ruminant animals haven’t evolved to eat. Chickens follow cattle around in the rotation on Arlen’s pastures and are effective in helping to control the parasite load and fly larvae that follow the cattle. Chickens naturally scratch around and help to distribute the cow manure across the fields, which provides health benefits for the chickens as well. “Getting the clover and alfalfa in the fields, as well as crickets and worms, it’s beneficial to them,” Arlen explained, pointing out that it also makes a healthier egg for the consumer.

Hidden Hollow Farm has also seen improvements in soil health since integrating the livestock onto the cropping ground.  “Soil organic matter has increased faster than any other model of farming that I know of,” Arlen said. “The soil health really hums.” As the cows leave patties on the fields, dung beetles burrow into the ground and distribute that manure, transporting nutrients down into the soil. Earthworm activity also increases the soil biology, and the pathways left behind by the dung beetles and the earthworms aid in water infiltration and retention.

“The grazing of cattle is an interesting learning curve,” Arlen said. “Cattle need to learn how to graze, and farmers need to learn how to manage grazing animals. Learning your cattle, learning your farm, learning your environment, your dry times, rainfall, winter, how wet weather affects how you can graze, how much damage you do… Takes time to understand that.” From Arlen’s experience, that process takes three years, and sometimes longer. He pointed out that it’s not just the farmers who have to adjust to the process of rotational grazing. Cows also need to learn to graze, if they have not been raised that way. From Arlen’s observations it takes a cow growing up as a calf on a grazing model before they learn to be good grazers and are able to keep good body condition. “There’s no way that you can start out as a new inexperienced grazing farmer and be able to do [it] just right in the beginning. There’s no way to go into a farm and do it by the textbook.”

Fortunately there are farmers like Arlen who are willing to share their experiences of the challenges and the advantages of integrating their crop and livestock production to help educate and inspire other farmers to make the leap. Surveys of organic farmers have shown that farmer-to-farmer learning is one of the most preferred methods to receive information, so the willingness of farmers like Arlen to share their experience is paramount. Although it takes time to learn the nuances of how land, livestock, and crops work together, and to develop the integrated systems, Hidden Hollow Farm is a great example of the long term benefits that crop-livestock integration can have on animal, crop, and soil health.

OFRF is honored to share a recording of a conversation with Mike Bronkema about Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems at his farm. You can listen now by pressing the “play” button below.  Or click this link to download it and listen later.

• Farm name: Shady Side Farm
• Farmer name: Mike and Lona Bronkema
• Location: Holland, Western Michigan (traditional homelands of the Peoria Tribe, Odawa/Ottowa Indians & Tribes, and Potawatomi).
• Products: Heirloom dry beans, open pollinated corn, small grains, hay.
• ICLS practices: Grazing & terminating cover crop, breaking up pasture for crops.
• Years certified organic: Since 2010.
• Acreage: Own 150 acres, rent 20 acres nearby.
• Type of livestock: Belted Galloway cows, sheep.
• Markets: Farm store, farmers markets.
• Years in operation: Since 1992.
• Farm crew size: Self, some help from wife and parents.

Uniting Soil Health, Livestock, and Heirloom Crops: Mike Bronkema and Shady Side Farm

Mike Bronkema gets excited talking about the changes he’s noticed on his farm since they began integrating crop and livestock operations. Soil health, bacteria and fungi, using hay to harvest excess phosphorus out of the soil… these might not seem like a big deal to the average person, but to a farmer intimately connected to his livestock, the land, and the heirloom crops he’s raising, these things make a huge difference to Mike.

Mike runs and operates Shady Side Farm in Holland, Michigan. Along with help from his wife, Lona, their adult children, and Mike’s parents he farms on 150 contiguous acres, and an additional 20 acres that they rent nearby. He was one of the farmers that OFRF spoke with about Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems, the practice of raising livestock and crops together in ways that benefit the whole farm ecosystem.

Mike has been farming since 1992, and transitioned to certified organic in 2010. He and his wife are first generation farmers. When a neighboring farmer was getting ready to retire, and wanted to see his land stay in agriculture, Mike and Lona took over. At that time the farm was primarily a chicken operation, raising pullets for egg production. They kept that up for the first couple of years and then they slowly began to diversify the operation. “In 2004 we introduced sheep and started rotationally grazing them,” Mike explained. “In 2010 we added in heirloom dry beans, and in 2011 we added in Belted Galloway cows that are certified organic,” Mike said. They eventually phased out poultry entirely, raising the last batch in 2016. They currently grow 20 different varieties of edible dry beans as well as heritage small grains, such as einkorn and spelt, and open-pollinated corn

While they became a certified organic operation in 2010 their path into organic farming began several years before that when they started exploring options for composting the chicken manure. “We had all those chickens,” Mike said. “55,000 chickens!” It was a lot of manure to manage. They hired a consultant to learn about organic composting, and ended up working with that person to shift from using conventional products to using OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) approved products, and eventually into the integrated methods they are using today.

That’s when Mike really started to get into the nitty gritty of soil health and nutrition. The organic consultant helped him shift his thinking from N-P-K to bacteria and fungi, and how to cultivate healthy populations of bacteria and fungi on the farm. With that in mind, he introduced sheep and cattle to the farm to rebalance the soil after the long term continuous presence of chickens, who had left the soil very high in phosphorus. Growing and harvesting hay for the sheep and cattle also helped remove excess phosphorus from the soil.

Mike has found that he learns a lot from observing the animals. “We ran sheep for a number of years,” he said. “And then all of a sudden we ran into an issue with parasites in the sheep.” There was a patch of milkweed in the pasture [a host plant for monarch caterpillars], and Mike noticed that when the sheep got to that spot they were stripping the plants of their leaves. “I had to ask the question,” Mike continued, “why were they doing that? Come to find out it was a way that they were paying attention to their bodies, and their bodies needed some way to have parasite control.” Milkweed contains a toxoid that can take out or reduce the parasite load in grazers and Mike realized that was the reason the sheep were so aggressively grazing the milkweed. “So I started looking at where I could find those same things in some planting mixes I could use for the lambs to graze on,” Mike said.

That’s when Shady Side farm began to diversify their pasture mix, and shift away from just traditional grass and alfalfa. “We added in birdsfoot trefoil, which has one of those tannins in it,” Mike said. “We added in clover. So now we have four different varieties of legumes in there, which are putting nutrients back into the soil.” That nitrogen-fixing pasture mix also prepares the soil well to transition out of pasture into the corn and bean ground for subsequent plantings. “We still needed the grass in [the pasture mix],” Mike said. “So we’ve gone away from the tall fescues, to a meadow fescue, a little bit of timothy, and a perennial rye grass. That makes up the grasses. The other things we’ve added are chicory and plantain, which are two more things that have those toxoids in them for reducing parasite loads.” 

This kind of observation, trial and error, and continual adaptation is all part of the process. “I’m on a continual learning system here,” Mike said, noting that sometimes implementing new ideas is its own kind of challenge. “Sometimes you hear things or learn things at one place, and then you don’t implement it for a number of years. It takes time to settle into the brain.”

The ideas that he’s implementing now with crop-livestock integration involve rotating animals on pasture in a 12-48 hour cycle, and an annual crop rotation that allows the animals to help prepare the ground for the heirloom corn, bean, and grain crops that they grow. Describing his rotation system in early March Mike said “Currently the cows are out on pasture. They’re on one of the fields that will be rotated out of hay production this year and rotated into corn and beans.” 

Shady Side Farm raises Belted Galloway cows, a hearty breed that’s well adapted to being outside year round. “By having them out on the field at this time of year, they’re actually taking the sod that is there and making it weaker by overgrazing it,” Mike explained. “So when it comes to taking it out in the spring, that sod will be easier to take out.”

There are food safety considerations with having livestock somewhere that will get planted into food for human consumption. Regulations specify that a minimum of 120 days must pass between when manure is applied to a field and when a fresh vegetable product is harvested. This ensures that pathogens can’t pass from the manure to the fresh food. To adhere to these food safety considerations, Mike makes sure to take the cattle off of the fields with plenty of time before he expects to be harvesting any dry beans. “We move the animals off in the beginning of May,” Mike explains. “Harvest doesn’t happen until mid-September, which gets us far enough into the season where we’re beyond those 120 days.”

Once they move the cattle off, the work to prepare for planting begins. “Come spring time we go into doing a lot of field work,” Mike said. He uses a disc to cut through the sod. “The disc is a nice cutting tool,” Mike said. “It doesn’t do real deep tillage but it will actually take out the sod.” They start preparing the fields as soon as the ground can be worked, and then plant corn and soybeans once weather conditions have warmed enough for good germination. 

Once the corn and soybeans get harvested, the crop rotation continues. The beans are harvested early enough that they can be followed with fall-planted small grains. Corn is harvested later, so they usually follow that up with a spring planted crop, like oats or barley, depending on what they need for supplying the animals. “That takes us back into the spring,” Mike said. When the small grains come off, they prepare the fields for planting back into pasture mix for the animals to graze the following year. Those areas will then stay in pasture for 4-5 years before rotating back into the crop production cycle again. 

A critical part of successful crop-livestock integration is being able to keep the animals in the areas you want them, and out of the areas you don’t. In Mike’s case the farm actually started with too many fences. “We couldn’t get equipment in to do the tillage that we needed to,” Mike explained. “We ended up taking out a bunch of fences.” Now their fencing system is a perimeter fence set up with five lines going around, with the top line at 40” and the bottom one 16” off the ground so that Mike can still weed whip underneath it easily to keep the fence line clean. 

With 20 acres in contiguous square blocks this gives Mike a perimeter fence that he can run electricity through. “We’ve got divider fences that can be hooked up with spring gates or string gates,” he said. “We can transfer power from the perimeter fence into an interior divide.” They use a variety of fencing for the cattle, sheep and lambs. The paddock systems get set up and moved on a daily basis throughout the summer, so that the animals are constantly moving around the farm.

Another thing that Mike has incorporated into their system to help keep his pastures healthy is that they transport water to animals using a trailer, rather than having fixed water lines. “With trailering water we don’t end up with mud holes or livestock areas where they’re wearing out the pasture,” Mike said. In a system with permanent watering troughs animals will return to the same place over and over again, eventually wearing out the ground around the trough. Trailering water allows Mike to put it in a different place every time to distribute the impact on the fields.

Mike has had some financial and technical support from the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) along the way. “Back in 2000 we used the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) fund to put our composting system in,” Mike said. They also got a Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) grant, which helped them add a pollinator habitat area to the farm. “We’re finding that’s a huge help with our insect populations here,” Mike explained. “It’s reducing aphids out in the bean fields, even though it’s not right next door, it’s helping. We’re seeing those predatory insects with a place to go.” NRCS programs have also helped with roadways, fencing for waterways, and other projects. “We’ve used that same funding to put in grasslands,” Mike said. “With our rotation, in the 4-5 years that they’re in pasture that’s considered a grassland to them. Even though I call it a pasture, they [the NRCS] call it grasslands.” 

Mike has observed several beneficial changes since shifting to integrated practices. Livestock health has improved, soil organic matter has increased, and the water-holding capacity of his soil has increased. He explained that in the early days of grazing sheep on the pasture, in the driest parts of summer, the only places that were still green were the drainage waterways. “Today, we go through a drought and those green areas are getting larger,” Mike said. “I can hardly tell where those waterways are on the farm anymore. It’s been a fun thing to see that.”

Another benefit that Mike is really excited about is looking into the nutrient density of the crops produced in the integrated systems. “In studies I’ve been doing looking at the nutrition of the crops,” Mike explained, “the corn is probably running about 40% more nutritious than conventionally grown corn.” With the einkorn and spelt he said they are “finding that we have about double the protein there than what you do in conventional wheat.” Those nutrients circle back into the animals and into the soil, continuing to increase the health and resilience of his farm. Although that’s not something that a lot of people are looking at yet, it’s something that Mike hopes to study more in the future.

The former poultry operation has come a long way since Mike & Lona took over. By diversifying and integrating crops and livestock in innovative and responsive ways, they have set a ball in motion. “Things are changing quicker than I can imagine anymore,” Mike said. “It is a pleasure to watch the bacteria and the fungi working in the soil.”

Visit Shady Side Farm’s webpage. 

Watch this short video with Mike Bronkema, produced by the Midwest Cover Crop Council.