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At Farmers Fair, farmers share conservation know-how

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Written by Jonathan Eisenthal

The Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) teams up with Sauk River Watershed District each spring to organize the Stearns County Farmers Fair, where they bring farmers the latest information about conservation.

What has made the fair successful in its first two years is the farmers themselves give the presentations about the conservation practices they have implemented, the methods they use—what works and what hasn’t worked.

“The number one thing I heard about my talk at the Farmers Fair was that people liked it because it was happening on a real farm, it wasn’t some guy up there trying to sell you something,” said farmer Matt Thralow. “It’s real life, what you actually do. What really works.”

Thralow, who farms near St. Joseph, discussed his move over to strip-tilling his corn and no-tilling his soybeans. Both were made to deal with an increasing erosion problem on his farm.

“I ended up buying a no-till air seeder—I did that and it made a huge difference,” says Thralow.

Dave Gamradt farms near Sauk Centre and raises corn for silage for their dairy operation, as well as cash corn and soybeans for a seed company. He spoke to the crowd of farmers about an engineered solution to erosion.

Gamradt said his farm has a flat area coming down off hills where he was getting a lot of erosion and washouts. To deal with the erosion, he installed berms that are tiled to a shelter area, and also added a vegetative shelter belt and wind breaks.

“The water flows over to the shelter belt and pours out of wide spillways in two spots. That means we don’t dump too much in any one spot at one time. It cheats across the field and that way we don’t get ruts,” Gamradt said.

Gamradt also credited the cost share from the federal EQIP program, which made the installation of the practices possible. Gamradt put in berms and earthworks using a tractor and scraper, following plans staked out in the ground by technicians. This allowed them to accomplish the project without a cash outlay of their own. Just sweat equity.

“It’s a good project. It’s going to fix that erosion problem,” said Gamradt. “Another thing I like about it is that the basins themselves will be a habitat for wild life, and there’s even a little bit of habitat for bees in there.”

Katie Breth, a source water protection specialist at Stearns County SWCD, helps to organize the Farmers Fair.

“One of the things we begin to find out about by having farmer-led presentations is, what are the barriers that stand in the way of producers adopting these practices,” said Breth. “When a farmer who has already been successfully engaging in these practices talks about it, the audience can ask the questions that really matter to them, like, what did you do to get past this part of it? How long did it take you? When did you see results? Technical research is helpful but hearing things first hand from someone who is in the same shoes is more reassuring.”

If interested in attending in 2019, farmers should follow the Stearns County SWCD website for updates later this year.

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