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IDEAS & ADVICE

NOLO & TENANT STORIES
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Retired physician Jerry Moench bought a farm for hunting and weekend getaways; he gets that and more from the plant diversity his tenant’s intensive grazing system brings to the farm.

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Both people benefit. His cows grow healthy and I’m developing healthy land that’s being enriched instead of being depleted. I just don’t know how you beat that.

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Jerry Moench and tenant Mike Blaalid don't have a common lease agreement where the tenant pays a set amount of cash rent per acre, then grazes the land as he sees fit. While that would be simple, they say there are some good reasons it’s not the best way to handle their owner-tenant relationship on grasslands.

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“If you want more than a check—if you have specific goals in mind and want to also make positive changes on your landscape to set your land up for long term productivity, you should sit down for a talk with your tenant about common goals,” Mike says. “You’ve got to put the time in up front to develop a relationship with your landowner,” he adds, “because change doesn’t happen over-night and you need to build a partnership. That's why Jerry and I will have a long-term relationship—we started off right. We knew each other well enough to really sit down and talk about the goals of both parties and those goals essentially frame everything that we do on the land, that really drive us to make our decisions from day to day.”

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"If your goal is similar you can talk and make your plans together, to try to both profit and to benefit the land."

Mike had been a consultant to Jerry for several years, conducting burns on the retired physician’s grasslands to encourage more native plants that would be beneficial to pheasants and other wildlife on Jerry’s farm near Alexandria. There was a positive response to the burns, but the logistics of finding help to burn at the right time and working around the weather made the burns difficult to pull off consistently.

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Jerry got interested in soil health three or four years ago when he visited a farm that was involved in building soil with cover crops, then started reading avidly and decided to try to institute some of those principles on his land.

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“I think we both had an aha moment when we read North Dakota rancher Gabe Brown's book where he talked about degraded land and trying to put it back into grass,” Mike says. “That started the conversation to get cows out here and utilize his grass resource with cattle.”

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Mike first grazed cows on Jerry’s land in 2018, operating through a flexible lease agreement. Instead of a lease for grazing based on acres per year, it’s a custom grazing lease with payment on the basis of how many head of cattle graze per day.

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“We've created paddocks of two and three acres and this year Mike had 68 cows out on that land,” Jerry says. “We would let them graze a day or two and then move them every few days. When the buffalo herds came across the prairie they would graze the heck out of it, right down to the ground and their hooves stimulated the plants. Then the herd moved on quickly, within two or three days. That's what we're trying to replicate here, and the difference in our grasslands has been remarkable. We've got forbs which are leafy plants and multiple different grasses. That in turn allows insects for pheasants and other wildlife. It gives more forage for deer and improves the entire wildlife situation, which of course is what we bought the place for.”

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"Having a tenant who's open-minded and willing to do things a little bit differently and learn together is a big part of why this works for me."

“Cattle were just the best option for us,” Mike says. “We could achieve two things—help his grass stand and create better wildlife habitat at the same time. He likes to pheasant hunt. We care about wildlife and giving them a place—that’s one of our goals we talk about regularly. Another of our goals is to rest the grass, and regrowth from that is the advantage of moving cattle regularly. Through better management on Jerry's farm we're growing more grass than we did even two years ago, increasing production by 50 percent pretty easily in some areas.”

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“There's a richness in diversity here that wasn't here before, and we're very pleased with what we're seeing,” Jerry says. “Both people benefit. His cows grow healthy and I’m developing healthy land that’s being enriched instead of being depleted. I just don’t know how you beat that. Mike and I have a great relationship. It's been fun to work with him. We’re like-minded and I’m learning something all the time.”

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It’s the partnership with his landowner that stands out to Mike. “It’s not always the case that you are like-minded and can make it a real partnership. But when landowners are involved, it seems like they get more excited. They see the results and they really want to make the changes and take the risks, which is what it's all about.”

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"There's a richness and a diversity here that wasn't here before. We're very pleased with what we're seeing."

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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