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On this edition of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Environmental Tillage Systems, first-generation strip-tiller James Hepp takes us inside his operation in Rockwell City, Iowa.
Hepp shares his conservation ag origin story and explains how cover crops and strip-till are proving to be a winning combination on his farm.
Plus, Hepp shares his cover crop strategies, including overseeding rye in standing corn with a high-boy, and reveals some of his top strip-till and cover crop lessons learned from his first few years on the job.
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The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Environmental Tillage Systems.
SoilWarrior® systems help you defend your land and improve soil quality. With a choice of durable models, features and accessories, your SoilWarrior helps you minimize erosion while creating precise, nutrient-rich zones.
Let us help you defend your land and improve soil quality. Check out SoilWarrior systems online or request a demo today at www.soilwarrior.com.
Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Hey. Great to have you with us for another edition of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Environmental Tillage Systems. I'm your host, Noah Newman.
Today, we're catching up with first-generation strip-tiller, James Hepp, as he takes us inside his operation in Rockwell City, Iowa. James explains how he got started with strip-till and shares his cover crop strategies including over-seeding rye in standing corn with a highboy, and he reveals some of his top strip-till and cover crop lessons learned from his first few years on the job. Here's James.
James Hepp:
Hi. My name's James Hepp from Rockwell City, Iowa located in Townsville County, North Central Iowa. I farm row crop corn, soybeans, 1400 acres and I've been incorporating cover crop more and more each year. I also do a lot of strip-till with it. The last few years, I've been doing a lot of rye.
Noah Newman:
Well, we'll get into the details of your cover crop system there, James, but I wanted to start with a little bit more about your background. Just give us your origin story. Do you come from a farming background or are you first-generation? Tell us about that.
James Hepp:
Yeah, actually I'm a first-generation farmer and I just had an article in a magazine here recently by Darcy Maulsby and it kind of tells my story. Grew up Rockwell City, my dad's a mechanic, had a repair shop. I was always around farming. My grandpa farmed, but just never had the chance to farm. So I went to, did a lot of FFA stuff in high school and that really intrigued me and led me down my ag business career path through Iowa Central and Northwest Missouri State. Then when I came home, I was a crop insurance adjuster for several years and that kind of got my foot in the door with a few people and then it ended up one of my high school friends, his dad was going to retire, so he wanted me to help him.
So I began helping him and a couple years later things went so well, he decided to turn the reins over to me. So I'm on my about third year of farming with him and basically, I've taken over majority of the acres now. He still helps me whenever he feels like or whenever he can, which is very helpful and I'm still learning a lot from him, but I've been doing that. I got married here two years ago now, so my wife's been helping me and we have an eight-month-old son, Carson, so hopefully he'll be helping me one of these days also.
Noah Newman:
Oh, I'm sure he will. That's pretty exciting stuff. We don't get to talk to many first-generation farmers. So how's it been just your first, you said, three years now you've been doing it? So a lot of learning experiences I'd assume.
James Hepp:
Yeah, with my crop insurance job, I had a lot of downtime in between stuff, so I was able to help a local farmer for several years and he taught me everything I needed to know. It would be a lot harder transition if I wouldn't have worked for him, but equipment operations, maintenance, all that stuff, I learned all that from that guy, so I give him props for that. So it hasn't been near as bad. You go from just farming a little bit more for fun to making decisions, paying bills, that gets kind of scary when you see all the zeros behind the money that you borrow for stuff. But otherwise, it's been a really good transition.
Keith, the guy I farm with, I don't think you could find a better person, more understanding, more patient. He's been very helpful. I think we've worked together really well. He's taught me a lot. We bounce a lot of ideas off each other. There's not a lot of first-generation farmers, but I think there could be in the future. Since my article has come out in the Progressive Farmer, I've had several people reach out and ask more in-depth how I did it. And since then, there's been some people that say, "Hey, I've started working with another guy that's going to be retiring in the near future, and I think we're going to try and do something similar," which is kind of the goal.
Nothing against big farmers, but it's nice to see young blood and just have a family on the farm and it's a good lifestyle. If you do it right, it's good for everybody. So that's kind of why I want to try and help people and if they have a side job, you don't need a ton of acres to make a living. So we've had a lot of good feedbacks on it.
Noah Newman:
Absolutely. You have a great story. I'm not shocked that you're getting a lot of interest from it and hearing from a lot of people. That's great to hear. Let's talk about how you're using cover crops. So what was your big motivation for implementing cover crops into your system?
James Hepp:
Well, the guy I farmed with, he was doing some rye for several years, trying it, and it just looked like there was lot of benefits to it, so I kind of jumped in headfirst a little bit. A couple of years ago, I did 80 acres and I felt like I did about everything wrong that you could do wrong, but it turned out really good. The beans were in the mid-sixties and the beans that were not in cover crop yielded the same. So I knew I didn't have a penalty there, but I really liked the ground cover. We're pretty flat up here, so erosion is not really a huge, huge issue for me. More of just weed suppression is my biggest goal and along with just overall soil health.
The rye, to me, almost seems like a tillage path almost 'cause the root systems are so huge, so when I strip-till, for my corn I strip-till my soybean stubble, I noticed the last couple years when I did it, I'd be going all day long, like five, five and a half mile an hour. When I get into that ground that had that rye in it that previous year, I would speed up at least half a mile an hour to three-fourths of a mile an hour. So to most people, that's not much, but to a farmer, if you cannot change anything and speed up, you know you got good soil tilth or whatever you want to call it. So I just think there's a lot of benefits to it.
This spring, I noticed all my neighbors had standing water in their fields and I went to my field, which was lower field and there wasn't standing water. So I feel like the percolation for the water was much better. I don't have that hard compaction layer from light field cultivators. And I also enjoy not having to use as much diesel fuel or have a huge tractor. My main tractor is only 260 horse that I strip-till with and plant with, so that's kind of nice, not needing a 500-horse tractor to go along the pavements and the diesel fuel.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. You mentioned weed suppression is one of your top motivators. What kind of impact have you seen from cover crops? Have those helped a lot with cutting down on weeds?
James Hepp:
Yeah, the last couple of years we did a lot of non-GMO beans and our market's kind of gone away, so we switched to E3s this year, but last year I think with everybody, we had a lot of waterhemp issues and there's just nothing you could do with it between the dry weather. But my 80 acres, it was a half section, I did 80 acres of rye and those, the 80 acres was spotless. I don't think you could have found a waterhemp out there. And the rest of the field was typical of everybody else or worse, and it was noticeable enough. I had people calling by or driving by and they'd call and say, "Hey, what's going on? How come that one side's so clean?" So I was really impressed with it. So that weed suppression was really good and I learned a lot. We did some, the big thing was to keep it tall, let it grow out, so you get that nice map for weed suppression. But especially with chemical costs taking off this year, that just really intrigued me even more to try and push the cover crop a little harder.
And if I could skip a second post pass and/or skip a post pass in general, that adds up pretty, depending on what products you use, you can beat up $20, $30 an acre really fast on a post pass seems like. So if you can avoid that, that's a lot of money in the bank. And then like I said, with all the benefits underground that you can't see and you can't really put a dollar amount to, I think it's kind of a win-win all the way around. It just takes more management and it's different and it's kind of uncomfortable if you don't know what you're doing. I felt pretty uncomfortable 'cause it's a lot easier just to do it the way you've always done it. But like I said, it's kind of fun, but kind of uncomfortable too to try stuff new 'cause you don't want people laughing at you. But I think I'm gaining though in the right direction.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, it sounds like you're having some success with it. Someone once told me that when you get out of your comfort zone, that's when great things happen. So it sounds like that's happening for you with cover crop.
James Hepp:
Yeah.
Noah Newman:
So let me ask you this, what are some of the biggest lessons you learned from your first few years using them? `
James Hepp:
Well, like I said, for height, we've done some stuff where we didn't let it get tall enough and we terminated it too quick because we're in non-GMO beans and any hint of Roundup is not very good on those. So we only let it get to about a foot column and terminated it. I feel like we got probably half the weed suppression I would've wanted, but when I let it get over a knee-high mid-thigh, I felt like our weed suppression was way, way better. And it's really scary because it looks terrible out there. It's hard to see your beans and you're literally just doing it by faith, but it does work out. But that was kind of my biggest thing was getting it taller.
In the past, we rigged up an old oat seeder on our Hagie. We have a small DTS 10 Hagie and we had an oat seeder up the back, but we could get about 15 to 18 rows at a time with it spreading that right in standing corn and that worked pretty good for virtually costing nothing, but we hated running down stuff and just this last year, we seeded it after harvest. And I really think besides having that early growth, I really couldn't see a lot of difference between them. And it's a lot more work using that Hagie 'cause like I said, you worry about running over corn and now with the higher corn prices, you hate to be knocking ears off when you got $5 and $6 corn doing that and stuff.
And like I said, also, I don't really worry about the erosion as much for that early growth in the fall. So I've had really good luck where it barely grew at all in the fall, but come spring, once that snow's gone, that stuff just takes off like a rocket and it really starts growing and it looks good. This year, I got a little nervous and I put my residual down and I learned if you put your residual down, you might as well kill the rye because it pretty much stunted it 'cause there were areas where I didn't put residual down and the rye kept growing. But where I put my residual down, which worked really good, it just stunted the rye growth, the rye just quit growing.
So I did learn that, which that was really interesting and I had no clue that was going to happen 'cause I planted my beans and your rye that was about six inches tall and that planted just beautiful. And then I let it grow for a couple of weeks and I went out there and put my residual down 'cause I had a few pockets where the rye stand wasn't as thick as I'd like and I wanted to make sure I kept the weeds out, so I just sprayed the field. But that was the one thing I learned last year was my residual will just stop your growth.
Noah Newman :
All right. Let's burn a quick timeout. And here's a message about Environmental Tillage Systems' SoilWarrior. SoilWarrior systems help you defend your land and improve soil quality. With a choice of durable models, features and accessories, your SoilWarrior helps you minimize erosion while creating precise nutrient-rich zones. Let us help you defend your land and improve soil quality. Check out SoilWarrior systems online or request a demo today at soilwarrior.com, that's soilwarrior.com. Now, back to the conversation.
Yeah, so you mentioned that you use the highboy. What other equipment have you used to seed cover crops and what pieces of equipment do you like the best and which ones maybe have you had some issues with?
James Hepp:
Sure. Well, so we have the old Hagie and we rigged it up where it runs through our Raven Box, so we had to manually calibrate it on the [inaudible 00:11:39]. We were trying to get 50-60 pounds to the acre, but we rigged that up on the back of the Hagie and that worked really well. And then like I said, last year, I still used the Hagie, but I just went out there after we combined. I probably should have got out there sooner, but it was a few weeks went by and then I went out and seeded it and that worked really well. But I bought a similar seeder just like it at an auction last year. I didn't get around to using it yet, but I bought that and that's like a full style, so I'll be able to just put that behind any of our old tractors and just kind of got there and count rows and it should do about the same thing, get 16 rows at a time or so. And that works really good for a very long time.
I think when I get my cover crop more fine-tuned, I would really like to get like a Gandy or some of those. There's a lot of different styles, like an air seeder and mount it to a toolbar that's like 40-feet wide, so then you're getting the hose dropped down and doing it after harvest. I'd really like to do that, but I'm still kind of experimenting on timing. And then, of course the farming, nothing's the same year-to-year, so every year is different. But I feel like I'm onto something. But when I get it more polished though, I would like to invest in more of an air seeder style application.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, those air seeders, those sound like they're pretty popular right now. It sounds like over-seeding, you're big into over-seeding, tell us about that and the success you've had with it.
James Hepp:
Yeah, I know a lot of guys use drills and I just don't have a drill, so we just started doing that over the top. There's been years where Keith used a rotary hoe and after he seeded, he went in with a rotary hoe and we found that really didn't make a huge difference. It disturbed the soil a little bit. Vertical tills work too, but it just seems like your speed, we've been really happy with fields drive over the top and apply that cover crops. Some guys will use vertical till also and that works really good too. But in the past, we've gotten by really good with just using that over the top I guess for speed, like not having to buy extra equipment.
Noah Newman:
Gotcha, gotcha. And then so what species have you experimented with? You mentioned rye, obviously. Any other ones come to mind?
James Hepp:
Yeah, mainly rye. We tried some oats here a couple years ago, but I think it was so dry, no residual chemistry in the soil. The oats are really, really picky. Rye will almost grow on anything, but the oats, they just did not grow at all. So I was kind of bent out. I'm hoping to try that more since I didn't put residual down in my post-pass. I'd like to do oats with my corn, so that's my plan for next year is to try and get oats put out here next spring and let that grow a little bit and then terminate and then corn. That's kind of my plan, that's what I'd like to do and maybe add different things to my rye. I'm not sure yet. I try and keep it simple and I don't want to change too many things from year-to-year, so I kind of know what's working, what's not, but I would like to add species.
I know lot of guys have had more success with different species, but I'm working on that real soon. I'm not really sure what else to try yet, but kind of scouting field. I'm want to do some pan testing on some soil and get a pie pan, put dirt in it, the topsoil, and then seed some oats in it and then water it and see if it grows, so instead of learning my hard lesson I learned here a couple years ago when the oats didn't grow. So I'm going to do that and hopefully if that's a green light, then I'll start looking for soils for oats. That's kind of my plan. And I'm probably going to just start checking fields, see where I want to do stuff at.
I'd like to do lots in plots where I'll do half the field with cover crop and half without. So I need to do a little better job of laying out what my test is going to be instead of just going by the seat of the pants. I want to try and map out what fields I want to do what in and start looking for some seed source. I've talked to a few guys on rye. Two years ago, we grew rye. The guy we found, he grew 80 acres of rye for actual seed production and that was really interesting. We didn't do it this year, but we might look into doing it again in the future. It yielded quite well and it was kind of interesting to see something out there besides corn beans.
But otherwise, I'm just kind of getting ready for harvest, trying to plan stuff. You can't plan enough it seems like, but kind of just same old, same, just trying to learn and grow and all my tests, I try to do something where I learn something. It's pretty easy to get out there and just change stuff constantly, but I really want to try and learn and see what works and what didn't work and find out why it didn't work. So I try not to do the same things over and over again. I try to, anyways, but it always happens.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're getting ready to make a lot of changes. You talked about wanting to maybe looking to an air seeder and experimenting with different species. What about planting green? What's your experience been like in that department?
James Hepp:
Yeah, I've had a really good look. Like I said, it's kind of one of them scary things 'cause a couple of years ago when I first started that rye, we planted it in the standing corn and by the time, the time became fit to plant our beans, that rye was mid-thigh high. It was tall and it was scary. I went out there and tilled. I couldn't see the ground, but I planted it and had real good luck with it. Made sure the closing, the biggest thing was the closing wheels. We have the spiked closing wheels on our planter and you need to tweak those a little bit and also have downforce. I think if you're going to plant green and it's going to be very tall, I think you're going to want some sort of downforce, for sure. But that's kind of what, planting greens is great though. It's a bit scary, very scary. You wonder what in the world am I doing out here? The grass is taller than your hood almost on a tractor.
But the biggest thing I can tell anybody is don't judge it by looks 'cause last year we were out in fields and I honestly thought, "Man, I wonder if I should [inaudible 00:17:29] these beans down." And those are the beans that did 65 bushel. So they looked very sketchy, but they yielded really well. The combine doesn't lie. They yielded well and my ROI was very, very, very flexed. I didn't have any of the chemicals and like I said, I believe that rye, there's so many benefits to that rye that you can't really put a dollar amount to.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, especially with the nutrient scavenging, you mentioned input reduction, that's huge. That seems like a big motivator for everyone right now.
James Hepp:
Yeah, and this year I really tried stepping up my tissue sampling. This is the first year I tissue-sampled beans. I did corn in the past, but I did some beans that had rye this spring and it was part of the field. So I did it where there was rye and then I did it where there wasn't rye like 50 feet away, so it should be pretty constant. But the tissue samples came back a fair amount higher in the areas where the rye was. So I don't know, I'm hoping to do it more next year, but I would have to, I hate to assume, but I would think the rye scavenged this and it just could come back higher 'cause it was the same variety of beans and it was about 50 feet apart. I went over to the edge where I had, but I didn't try and get a fair sample and like I said, the numbers were higher so I was impressed with that.
And I think even future years, where I had rye last year of corn now, those numbers were a touch higher and I normally fertilize pre-sale [inaudible 00:19:01] get one corn blend, like a renewable-rate corn blend. So it's not like that part of the field would've been treated differently. And my tests were fairly close, I mean within a hundred feet, it's hard to blame anything else besides I think that rye picked up some of that nutrients and held onto it and then slowly released it, like it's supposed to. And last year, I guess another thing I forgot to mention, but when we had that frost, I know like on the radio everybody was saying, "Oh, you got tall cover crops, you're in trouble." But mine did the opposite. It got cold, but it was warm earlier and I think the tall cover crop trapped the heat to the ground and I did not see any stand reduction, where our fields that didn't have cover crop, they had stand reduction in it from that frost. I believe it was last third. So that was another one of those things where man, if something happens, you got to just keep trying it 'cause it's never the same. But I really have not had any negatives in the cover crops besides, you just second-guessed yourself a lot and you're like, "Isn't that crazy?" Because in my area, we're pretty black land up here. Guys really like to rip and till to late. It's nothing wrong with that. That works for them, that's fine.
But I joke with people, I'm kind of the hippie in this area 'cause when you're going through, you'll see tall corn stalks, you'll see some rye, no [inaudible 00:20:21] and I feel like my yields are just as good as theirs, if not better. But it goes back to the ROI. If I can spend $20 on rye cover crop and save $20 on chemical, I'm all for that 'cause I personally don't enjoy spraying. It takes a lot of time and costs you a lot, but it's all the benefits you get out of it too. So it will be really interesting next couple years. I want to keep testing stuff and adding to that and just see. But I really think that rip growth underneath and the weed suppression I think will be a big deal because these weeds are getting smarter by the day and I think weeds are going to continue to be a problem. So if we can get those weeds kind of suppressed a lot better, I think we'll be sitting a lot better, I think.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, James, I know you're a busy guy, so I won't keep you much longer, but anything else you'd like to add or share with our listeners before we let you go?
James Hepp:
Well, my advice is just try it. Don't do the whole farm. Like you got an 80 or something, do 10, 20 acres and go out there and seed it. You don't need anything fancy, like dig out your grandpa's oat seeder or something like that and get it kind of fine-tuned and try that or have somebody with a drill just go out there and try stuff. And take note of it, take pictures and then check it constantly and then see what the combine tells you. The biggest thing is don't get down by looks 'cause like I said, sometimes it will look, especially if you're used to everything being black, clean and great, you'll see your cover crop and you're like, "Man, this is crazy." But like I said, the numbers talk and I just really encourage people to just try some. You're not going to be out much if you do 10, 20 acres, but I think you'll like it.
And if you even have any questions, I have my personal Facebook page, James Hepp, anybody feel free to shoot me a message or you can maybe post my contact info too on the podcast. But I'd be more than happy to encourage people or answer questions or if I don't know the question or the answer, I might know someone who does too. But biggest thing is just try stuff, get outside your comfort zone.
Noah Newman:
All right. That'll wrap things up for this edition of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast. Thanks to James for taking the time to talk with us. Also, thanks to our sponsor, Environmental Tillage Systems SoilWarrior. For more information, head to soilwarrior.com.
Thanks so much for tuning into the Strip-Till Farmer podcast. For all things strip-till, head to striptillfarmer.com and for all things strip-till conference head to striptillconference.com. We love to see you July 31st and August 1st in Iowa City for the 12th Annual National Strip Tillage Conference.
All right, thanks for tuning in. Have a great day.
