A big move this year for the Zimmer operation is the scheduled sale of their 150-cow dairy herd. Gary Zimmer’s daughter, Sadie Zimmer, has been the farm’s herdsperson while his son, Nick Zimmer, is in charge of crops. This year they plan to manage 1,500 acres of organic crops with a rotation of one year of corn with one year of rye and clover – and doing it all with the minimal labor of one hired man.

The crops are in fields within a 40-mile circle of their home in the Wisconsin River valley consisting of some hills and some small fields. Gary Zimmer calls himself a regenerative farmer although he admits there are several definitions for the term. He sees their farming operation as optimizing inputs, he said, using a diversity of plants while sequestering carbon. The use of no-till is used to put a blanket on the ground, keeping soils covered during the few times of the year there is no cover crop.

Rye is popular as a cover crop within the Zimmer rotation because it has few weeds associated with its growth cycle. It can be sold as seed, feed, for food grade or a distiller’s grain, although currently there’s not a strong market for rye – or a consistent price. The rye is seeded with three kinds of clover – half the mix red clover, a fourth ladino clover and a fourth sweet clover.

Rye is a resilient crop, Zimmer said; it’s not difficult to have a good yield. The times it’s failed is when there are extreme winds affecting a heavy tall crop. At the end of February their fields had some green rye where there was no snow cover. He attributes that to the rye using photosynthesis even in the winter months.

There’s always something growing on their fields, with the exception of a couple of weeks in the spring when corn is starting. No-till corn is planted late in May; the Zimmers aim for a yield of 200 bushels per acre. Weed control is done with a rotary hoe and two passes with a cultivator. They don’t plant their headlands, instead letting them grow and going over them with a bat-wing mower during the summer.

Testing on the farm shows fall cover crops providing 3 tons of nutrients for the soil; spring cover crops provide 2.8 tons of nutrients. The spring crops are frost-seeded at night, starting about 2 a.m., and done with a side-by-side and a mounted seeder.

“Be careful with the testing,” Zimmer said. “Testing should give you management-decision ideas.”

Remember doubling phosphorus and potassium doesn’t double yields, he said. Phosphorous is a good guy but is perceived as bad because it’s easy to measure. It needs good soil microbiology before the plant can use it.

It’s the organisms in the soil that make complex carbons. He said good soil health is a functioning soil – one that can make maximum use of nutrients in exchange for crop performance, with the characteristics of water infiltration, nutrient cycling, minimum disturbance, no crust, plant diversity, living roots, minerals and residue decay.

“I can look at biology (in a field),” he said. “I can see biology. I can smell biology.”

He looks for earthworms, he said. They’re 72 percent protein and 11 percent nitrogen, added back to the soil at the end of their life cycle.

By giving farmers basic soil principles to work with, and sharing his experiences and knowledge, Zimmer hopes to help farmers grow better crops.

“(Still) you can lead a farmer to knowledge but you can’t make him think,” he said.

This is an original article written for Agri-View, a Lee Enterprises agricultural publication based in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit AgriView.com for more information.