165. Silvopasture: Getting Trees Started Right with Austin Unruh

On today's episode, we are talking silvopasture. Mainly focusing on getting your tree started and off to a good start. So we'll get started with the fast five.

what's your name?

My name is Austin Unru.

And Austin, what's your business's name?

The name of the business is Trees for Graziers.

Well, that is really good because most of us here would say we're graziers.

Perfect.

And where are you located

I'm in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, so if anyone's familiar, Lancaster County, a lot of Amish and conservative Mennonites in our area. We're in southeastern Pennsylvania, so about an hour from Philadelphia.

now, is that the county where the raw milk fight was going on?

indeed. the the Amos Miller, his son helped me out on some tree plantings a couple times.

Oh yes.

So we have a couple of connections there.

Yeah. Very good. And when did you get interested in silvopasture?

So I got started in the broader scheme of agroforestry first. So planting trees in an agricultural context. I started planting trees along streams as a water quality practice back in

Oh yeah.

And a couple of our first clients were were grass fed operators, so doing grass fed dairy in particular. And they were interested in getting trees established in their pastures. I said, well, there's not many people doing this, and I don't have great means of getting these trees established in an actively grazed pasture. But let's try out a couple things. So it was around 2019 and 2020 that we started to experiment with means of getting trees established in pastures.

Oh, very good.

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For 10 seconds about the farm and the podcast, we're gonna talk about today's episode with Austin from Trees for Grazers. As you'll find out as you listen to this episode, the information he's giving me for my context, I'm a little bit late. For some of you, it's going to be timely, but if you're south of me, it's going to be too late. So Austin and I, the grazing grass and trees for grazers are from partnership. Grazing grass and trees for grazers.

So you're, you're starting to get to the point, you've got a fair number of years to see how that starting of trees and pastures are going. But before we talk about that why did you go into Agroforestry? I.

Why did I go into agroforestry? I wanted to do something outside. I wanted to do something with my hands. I wanted to do something where I could leave a beneficial legacy and leave and to know that I'm doing something valuable for, for others, for the planet, for all those things, for wildlife. So that's what brought me into Agroforestry. I think Agroforestry is a really neat combination and integration of both conservation agricultural production, right? So of those in the same package.

And when, to be honest, I'm not familiar with Agroforestry, but when you think about that, is that growing wood or growing forest for harvest for like pine wood or other things along that line?

So Agroforestry is a suite of practices. So it encompasses forest farming, which is like growing mushrooms and ramps and that kind of stuff in the woods.

okay.

it also includes alley cropping, so growing tree and tree crops in amongst your, your row crops like wheat or corn. Sy pasture, which is what we focus on at Trees for Graziers. Riparian buffers and windbreaks. So that's the suite

Oh, okay.

that fall under the category of agroforestry. And I initially got started in riparian buffers, so stream streamside forests is what I got started in. There's a lot of pollution here coming out of Lancaster County, going out down into the Chesapeake Bay. So there's a lot of effort to plant trees along streams. And then we, from there, we migrated over to Silva Pasture as well, although we still do a lot of stream buffers in addition to that.

So when, when we think about just on that riparian area, is that, how far from your waterways are you going with trees to provide that buffer?

It depends on the farm and it also depends on the program that is funding it. Some programs will say we are gonna do a minimum of 35 feet. From the

Oh yeah.

Other programs will say, Hey, we'll go out to 180 feet or 300 feet.

Oh,

you know, it's a little bit gray how wide the riparian area actually is. In reality, it's the more, the better for water quality.

right.

you can add, the more leaf matter you can add, the more shade you can have for the stream in our context, the better it is. But you have to balance that out with the needs of the farm as well. in the area where, where land goes for 30 to $50,000 an acre, you can't be taking out 300 feet along side the

right. Yes. S So how did you make the leap or, or start being more aware of graziers, obviously through the land value is one reason. I'm sure you had pushback from farmers not wanting to go very far out there.

yes. Yep. a very interesting way to combine the, the, the conservation benefits of on the landscape in an area where land is at a premium, like literally at a premium. So that you can get both the conservation value of it and also continue to be using that land productively. So it was about like I said, it was about 20 18, 20 19 that some of our clients started to, to want us to figure out how to integrate trees into their pastures. So it was just, I think, two farmers to start out

Oh yeah.

And I, but I realized pretty quickly that if we could figure out how to successfully. trees into a pasture without a whole bunch of additional work for the landowner, if we could figure that out. The scale of applicability is huge, right? Because there's and millions of acres out there that are in pasture where folks could use additional trees spread out.

Yeah. I've been talking to my dad. Just, we've had some wind of late, little bit more than usual. We, we have. A lot of wind anyway. But we noticed in one of the lots up here by the barn, another tree's blown down. I'm like, we've, we've gotta plant some trees. And he told me a while back, we were talking, he says, I think we should build some shade structure structures out in the pastures with this shade crawl cloth.

the upside of the shade cloth is you can get shade right away. Once you're done with that chore and you created that shading structure, you're,

true. It's an immediate thing. Yeah.

But in the long term, the trees, the trees will provide a one of a better shade. Livestock tend to prefer to go under trees because not only are they getting shade, but they're also getting cooling because the, the trees, like through evapotranspiration, they're actually cooling the air underneath. So it's a better shade and you get all kinds of additional benefits right? It's just that it takes a while and that's, that's gonna be throughout syllable pasture is there's a lot of value to it.

Oh yes. You know, isn't it that Chinese proverb that says The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time today.

today. S indeed.

Yeah.

Yep.

Was it with those early farmers, was it that they wanted trees out into their grazing areas or their pastures, or was it kind of a compromise when you're trying to get this riparian buffer in and they're trying to get the maximum amount of grazing.

Yeah, so the, the conversation that I had with farmers is very different if we're trying to do a riparian buffer. Versus a s silver pasture with a buffer. And usually we're, we're partnering with a, a nonprofit group. Like a nonprofit the ones having a conversation with the farmer. They're the ones

Oh, okay.

here's a funding pot that we have access to that we can use to pay for this buffer. But the, the thing for the farmer is that they're, they're losing production because they can't let their animals in there. So they're ground, they're losing crop and ground, whatever it is. And typically in our area, there's there's the CREP program that will pay the farmer a certain amount, a land rental rate to take that land out of production and put it

Oh, okay.

instead. So that's, that's the trade off for the farmer is you lose productivity, but you a, a rental check or something else that you're gonna get out of this. In a silver pasture context, looking at working with a farmer and saying. We're going to increase your productivity on your land because of less heat stress, because of being able to drop pods or fruits or whatever it is.

Oh yeah.

or whoever it is that's willing to bring money to reduce the cost of investing in those trees for the farmer. So it's a very different conversation. I, I also don't try to, I don't twist people's arms to do solo pasture. There is enough interest in this that I don't have to try to go out there and convince people. found that even though there's really not a whole lot of Silva Pasture being done in the United States, like hardly any projects annually.

we're

like that to-do list is pretty like keeps you hopping without having to put the time and the energy and the money into investing in trees that aren't going to give you any yield for let's say five years. So that's where if we can come in and we can do it for them, it, it makes it easy. And there's a whole bunch of people, like the people listening here that are already. This on this path of going for grass fed regenerative, and they get it, it makes sense to them.

Oh, right.

there, there are too, there are too many steps away from from this making sense for them. So really, I'm just talking to folks who, who are right there, who, and who get it, and where this would make sense on their farm. So it's typically not hard to convince people to look into Silver Pasture.

Yeah. I, I would suspect it not, because as I mentioned earlier to you, civil pastor has brought up a lot in conversations that I hear. For, for us, we. We attempted, I guess, about 10 years ago to plant, I don't know, a hundred pecan trees. and then we did a very poor job of protecting them and getting them started,

You're not one. That's probably the rule rather

oh yeah,

for,

zero out of that. We got some pictures of us actually doing it, but, and, and we've talked since then. Oh, we're gonna do that again and we're gonna do a better job. we are. I, I actually think we did that in 17. So here we are eight years later and we haven't done anything. We had, we did graph some trees, but, if we would've got those, we'd been so far ahead, we need to go ahead and do something again. Try to get on some kind of path.

Yep. I, I would say that your experience is the rule rather than the exception. We've worked with quite a few farmers who have done some small plantings and typically they don't work out so well. Planting trees even in a stream buffer.

Oh yes. With, with that you mentioned a whole host of things that's working against you. In our context, we added she and goats to the enterprise to, to the equation too, which caused us some issues. In fact, year we went to graph pecan trees, thinking we would just go, we've got some native groves that just where they've grown and what we're thinking, we need to manage 'em better. So we go out to graph trees or we go out to see what trees we have to graph.

Oh

everything was getting too old, so, so last year I tried to save some and then the cows went and tore up some, but I tried to keep the sheep and goats away from some so I can get 'em growing. I'm might have to do a better job about that. So that's probably a discussion we should have as well. But yeah. W when you talk to farmers and they've tried something little and it just doesn't work, what are the main things that caused it not to work?

I think the, the, probably the biggest challenge for folks is protecting the trees from cattle

Oh yeah.

and then the, the, the protection methods that people use can often lead towards other problems, like, trees being choked out by competing vegetation or rodents. And I'll explain. So.

Okay.

The, the standard method I would say for keeping cattle off of trees is to fence out a big area. So a row of trees and you have a fence, four or five feet on either side of that row of trees, protecting those trees from the cattle getting in and, and browsing on those trees. So what you're doing is you're keeping the cattle out, but you are also creating a large area where grass has grown and grow up.

Mm-hmm.

so you're losing productivity and you're gaining a chore of weed whacking or brush hogging. But normally it's weed whacking because you can't get in there with a brush hog if you have, if it's a permanent or semi-permanent wire that you have up there.

Actually, Austin, I wanna stop you right there. Are you spying on me because I thought you were in Pennsylvania, but this sounds very familiar to what we've done before.

It's not the first time it's happened. So the grass grows up and you gotta weed whack it. Well, who's gonna weed whack that in the middle of the summer? Ain't nobody gonna do it. You start out, when you plant it and say, I'm gonna weed whack that when the time comes and no one does. And, and you have these trees and usually they're, they're smaller trees

Right,

there's not a whole lot of money on a farm. So you put the small trees in and, and in March when you plant them and the grass is dormant, it looks great. 'cause those trees are sticking up, they're two

right. You could see em.

the grass is six inches tall. And you're like, I'm, there's no way I'm gonna lose these trees. And then come August, when the grass is five feet tall, you've lost your trees completely. So the trees are getting outcompeted by these forages. And that alone might kill them. not enough you're creating a great habitat for rodents. And in our area, voles kill more trees than cattle do. So if your area has voles. They're like a small mouse that lives in, lives in the grasses.

and, and we are within the range of bowls. I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with them, so that's where I need to be more observant. But it looks like it, it heads east to you west a little ways the range west into Colorado, Wyoming, north, into the edge of Canada. It also looks like if you go very much south of me, it's not a problem

Okay.

based upon on this one result from Google.

Okay.

So I could be completely wrong about this as well.

who say like, they don't have vols but a large portion of the country is gonna have 'em, and they're gonna be a, a, a very significant factor that you don't even think about it. 'cause normally you don't see them.

Oh yeah.

So the, I would say that's probably the, the biggest contributor to to failure of tree plantings. So it, I've seen people plant trees outside of their fences, like alongside the, alongside the fence around the house, around the farm or whatever it is. And generally people have good success there because they can mow up along it. They don't have they don't have cattle to project it from.

Oh yeah.

for cages as well. So if people use cages to individually protect trees, you're kinda gr getting the same conditions where a lot of forages are gonna grow up inside of that cage and are gonna create a great habitat for rodents.

Okay. And that's what I was thinking with these trees that I'm trying to protect my, my first thought. The first thing I did last spring after I figured out we didn't have any young pecan trees was I identified two pastures where I had pecan trees sprouted, and I didn't let the sheep and goats in those areas. The cattle still had access and caused me enough damage. They caused me more damage than I thought.

So here's what I would do with cages.

Okay.

Is I think cages in and of themselves, have that issue of, of forages growing up inside of 'em. But if you were to mulch the tree really, really heavily let's say three, four inches of mulch, the more the merrier. And then you around that such that the, the area inside the cage is all mulched. actually gonna be great for the tree, I think.

Oh, okay.

it's gonna, the mulch is gonna conserve moisture, so it's gonna be a benefit to the tree. It's, you're not gonna get vegetation coming up and competing with the tree in that area. So that's how I would do it. Is, like you said, a, a goat panel, a cattle panel, whatever it is, whatever makes sense for the livestock that you're running. And but you need the mulch as, as part of that, or I just, or you're just gonna get too much competing vegetation going on there with the tree.

So, so that's a pretty simple way to make a cage more effective. Adding that mulch is that mulch something you need to go back and reapply six months or yearly or more often. Oh, okay.

typically don't. On our plantings, our protocol when we do our plantings is we put 10 gallons, so two five gallon buckets of wood chip mulch. And this is just straight up wood chips. Don't, don't buy this stuff from the garden center, just whatever wood chips that you have access to. typically

You find them chipping trees down your road. Go. Go grab some.

Exactly, exactly. So 10 gallons of wood chips around the base of every tree is what we do. We do it once. It would be better for the tree if we came back and reapplied it. But that one time is the most critical because it's when you first transplant the trees that they're most. Susceptible to, to to drought drought in particular, and also from other forages. So we found that in our area, the mulch breaks down to where you have other grasses and stuff.

Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Good to know. Yeah. So just continuing on that path a little bit what would be a better step than a cage and mulch?

Yep. So here is our protocol that we've developed is it starts a six foot tall plantar tree shelter. That's the, that's what we kind of figured out works for us, it's worked for everyone that we've worked with too. So, so let's break that down. The plantar tree shelter, it's a six foot tall tube and a seven foot tall stake. You drive it in a foot and there you go. The, the stake is a fiberglass steak, it's an electrical insulator and it has some good flexibility.

Oh, okay.

the tree tube itself, the exterior of the tree tube is electrified. So if cattle rub up on it, they'll quickly figure out that they shouldn't anymore.

So that leaves you a, a more permanent situation than if you're making a paddock and, and running it and your tree. It allows you to go perpendicular to your trees and multiple day moves. They're still good. But because you got that semi-permanent or top wire with the aluminum wire.

It gives the operators much more flexibility of run their operation, how they make their paddocks, how big they make their paddocks. So that's why we're doing a lot more of that anymore. I should also say about the height of the tree, of the tree shelters. So six foot is what we recommend for cattle. If you've only got sheep, five foot should do.

Oh, okay.

would go with six foot just because they're ory.

Yes, they are. Yeah. Yeah. Since we're going down this path of getting them started, how long, how long do they stay in that tree shelter? What are you looking at there?

Let's circle back around to that.

Oh, okay.

to finish our protocols first. So,

Oh, okay.

so once we have the tree shelter on, we'll want to put a volgar around the base of the tree. So the tree shelter itself is around four inches in diameter, which the tree to grow somewhat inside of that tree tube. The downside is it's a really nice place for a vol to hang out, a vol or some like a mouse to hang out inside of there. And so what we do is we put. A vol guard around the base of the tree.

Oh, okay.

We've used a vinyl spiral guard that they often sell for Buck Rub. That's one product that we've used. Right now we're shifting over to using a, a mesh plastic mesh wrap that planter makes, and we're just cutting 'em down to about eight inches long. So that's what we do around the tree to prevent vol damage.

Is that into the ground or is that just at surface? At level.

into the ground a little bit, that's great. Oftentimes they don't really go into the ground very well.

Oh, yeah.

I. What we do about below ground vol activity is when we do maintenance, we will put vol repellent in there. And usually, so we, we have a blend of castor oil and blood meal that we put in there. I can't say that we've scientifically tested this.

Oh, okay.

So we're, we're banking on the, the volgar protecting from above ground. Girdling and then the castor oil and blood meal combination deterring from below ground girdling. So, as you can see, voles are a real thing. We've had to we've had to come up with creative means of keeping them away, but thankfully both of 'em are really cheap. And then what we do is we will mulch like I said, 10 gallons worth of wood chip mulch and the more the merrier.

Oh yeah.

If you're a farmer and you have access to a whole bunch of mulch, just layer it on there. The trees will appreciate it around, so we'll do that around the base of the tree because there's a tube there. So, some folks know to be about putting a volcano of mulch up against the tree. 'cause we to we don't want a whole bunch of moisture in contact with the, the bark, the trunk of the tree. But because there is a tree tube around the tree, you can put a whole big volcano right up against the base.

Oh yes.

it, you know, there's more mulch right there around the closest to the tree where it matters the most. So that's how we do the mulch, and that's that in the basis of our protocols that we use on just about all of our planting. So it protects, you're protecting from cattle, you're protecting from deer, you're protecting from voles and you're protecting from drought and and weed competition as well. So all of your bases are covered. You are, you're definitely investing more per tree.

Right.

and I provide it everything that it needs, it's gonna survive.

I think probably we leaned towards that. We were putting out a whole bunch of trees and thought, well, we hope they'll survive. I much would've rather, we did a little bit more proactive then, so we did have them survive. That'd been really good on, on the trees. This tube, you're putting six foot tall.

Yes.

Is, are you planting saplings or trees that's already that tall or does that still work if you, you plant smaller ones because I think the pecan trees we got were like 18 inches, two foot.

Yep. The standard is to use small trees like, like you were saying, 18 inches. They're used all the time in conservation plantings where people are putting 12 inch trees inside of those tubes, and fine. There is, I will say that trees do not grow as well inside of tubes as they do out in the open. they're constrained, they're constricted to that four inches of diameter or whatever it is.

I struggled with the same thing,

Yep. Yep. So all things, because all things are being equal, I would rather my trees grow outside of a tube. because we're getting these trees established in challenging environments with deer, with cattle, all those things,

right?

the tubes come in so handy. I will say that we are, as a company, moving towards planting taller and taller trees inside of our tree shelters

Oh, yes.

different reasons. What it comes down to mostly is we can take much better care of a tree in a nursery. And more economically too than you can in a pasture setting. So in a nursery, got 20,000 trees in one, one small field. Right? And we can take very good care of those trees. We can take, we can keep all the animals, all the wildlife away from them. We can grow them in such a way that they, they, they're growing out in the open.

Oh, we got.

to experiment with this of how exactly we would do it. And it's gonna depend on the, the producer or their context, but there'd be many times where if you put out a six foot tall tree or an eight foot tall tree, you can probably save money on the tree shelter. And so you're even on that additional investment in the tree.

Oh, yes. Yeah, and and I know anytime you talk to farmers, I know with our case we're trying to do it cheaply and get a lot in. Of course, hindsight's 2020. If we'd gone in with that same amount of money and did a few trees, whether that was even one and we had one survive, that'd be one more than what we got out of all that work.

Yep. you take that money that you would've put into a hundred trees and you put into 10 trees or 20 trees and you, you save a lot of time. A lot of a lot of money on all of that. And you, you just know that you're gonna succeed. I, I think most people would, would much rather have a, quite a guarantee, but a really, really, really high chance that what they're doing is

yeah.

and know that that's gonna work rather than rolling the dice.

Yeah. I, I agree. When, when we think about, did you get everything covered on y'all's method and what you do there.

we you were asking about how long to keep those tree shelters

Right.

So, it's ended up being longer than what we had anticipated. So initially we thought it was gonna be, say, two or three years for the steak and then soon after, for the, for the tree tube, what we've now figured is the, the tree tube we're, we're using as a single use product or we're figuring it's use product. It's probably gonna be on for five years or so. It all depends on of growth of the tree. So our oldest project now is going into, its fifth, no, sorry, sixth year.

Oh yes.

through it during the winter and I took off. All of the fiberglass stakes from the trees that I thought were big enough to remove those stakes. then when the spring came and the trees leafed out those, those leaves were all, there were additional weights high up on the tree, and they were also little tiny sails where when the winds caught them, they pushed them all and they're all moving in the, they all leaned in the same direction. So I had to come back and replace hundreds of these stakes,

Oh

set these trees back up. And so I've tried not to make that mistake since then and waited until the tree is definitely large enough. There is a, it's a very narrow window between when the tree is large enough to stand up on its own without the stake and when it's big enough to swallow the stake and just, and circle it with its roots.

Oh, yes.

that is a challenging thing. We've messed around with a couple different methods of. Getting the leverage that you need to yank that, that stake up from an encircled roots. We'll have to do a video on that one.

Yes. Yeah.

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when you think about a tree that's big enough to survive without the, the tree shelter and stake, are you looking at, you want a certain diameter to, to determine that.

Yes. Yeah. So this on the stake, really what we want is we just want the tree to stand up on its own. Because

Oh, okay.

when they come out of that tube, like we were saying earlier, they're very lanky and they're top heavy, so they're liable to lean over really hard. on the tube. We want to protect that tree from browse. want to protect it

Oh yeah.

we want to it from stripping. So cattle coming through and stripping off the bark can be very dangerous to young trees that we just spent three years getting them established. I don't wanna take the tube off too early and have young stock come through and strip the bark off. I've, I've happen more than I would like to. so what we do now is we open up that tree tube. So we slice it down the middle and we open it up so that the tree can breathe.

I. Oh yes.

that we get the, the highest level of success for our clients.

Oh, very good. Very interesting, very valuable to know this information. If you're starting your trees, if you've got some trees, you're getting ready to start. When should you be planning them? I guess that's the end of the question. I actually was going on with it, but that's actually all I need to ask right there. When should you be planning them?

them? So. The best time to plant a tree when the trees are dormant ground is not frozen. typically will go dormant around November, December, depends on where in the country you are. for us, the ground rarely freezes during the winter. This winter was an exception. We had like two solid months of ground being frozen,

Oh yeah,

for us. But typically we can plant pretty much through the winter. So it, it depends on where you're at in the country. Some nurseries, like there's one nursery that we're buying from that they just started to, to dig. And we're at the end of March right now as we're recording this, whereas other nurseries down in Georgia, they've been, they, they had their stuff dug a long time ago. So a lot of it depends on where you're sourcing your stuff from.

if you're not able to do it during that optimal time, is there, is there much drawback to doing it a different time?

Don't do it during this, during the summer. No. You, you deal with more drought, more hot weather. A a tree doesn't want to come from being refrigerated, which, if you're going to get a, a bare root tree a little bit late, it's gonna be in refrigeration probably from the company that you get it from, and then it's gonna go into, if you don't want it to go into 90 degrees and sunny for, for weeks on end. Right. You don't stress like that. So typically we just say stick for bare root trees.

Just on that do Bodark or OSCE joins Head app Hedge Apple, will they do that or are you familiar with them?

I don't believe that they will. I am, I am familiar with them. think primarily you're gonna be establishing those from seed. We have a grafted variety that we're just messing around with. We don't have it for sale yet. It's called a white shield and that's one that I would be interested in clonally propagating more. It's a it's a thornless hedge apple Osage. And so you kinda get the best of really, really hard rot resistant wood, and you don't have to deal with the thorns.

Oh, yes. The, for me reason I bring 'em up, I find those trees very fascinating and I always think I'm gonna try and cut some of the, the younger branches off because they just shoot up so many and see if they could root. But I, I just never have yet.

mean, try it now is probably the right time to try it. But I wouldn't hold my breath on on

Okay. Yeah. With getting your trees into the ground, I know in ity we're moving away from chemicals, we're moving away from bringing fertilizer in. Are you doing any chemicals or fertilizers with the trees to help them establish themselves?

We are not, most of our clients are organic. Whether they are certified organic or they're just using organic practices, we don't really, other than for, for sites that are not organic, not certified sometimes we'll use a, a root dip. Which has a

Oh, okay.

That it just helps put more moisture right around the right around the roots for when the tree is first getting established. Other than that, no, it's very, very simple. We don't recommend fertilizing trees initially. Just get, just let 'em get established, make sure that they have plenty of moisture. Make sure in the, the wood chips are establishing more of that michal fungal soil biology right around there. So that helps the trees establish as well.

Oh, very good. The other thing that seems to be, or, or big thing, I blame the trees I plant in my yard on why they're not su successful, and that is water. We get dry. So on these young trees, how much water should they be getting and at what point do we step in and provide water to 'em?

Yeah, I mean, it's gonna depend so much on species and context. So gonna want a whole lot more water than a honey locust or in mesquite. In our context here in southeastern Pennsylvania, we're, we're fortunate enough that we don't have a lot of drought. I say that even though we've had drought the last couple years during kind of critical times during the spring and during the summer and, and the fall, we've had some really long stretches for us of drought.

The best way to solve that. Yeah.

that you can do is mulching. The, the challenge there is if you plant when the ground is dry and it stays dry, your mulch isn't gonna do anything for you then because there's no moisture for it to conserve in the soil. So that's, I think, the main context where I would, would water those trees after I plant them and then mulch it really good so that you can conserve that moisture as much as possible. And then do a rain dance.

Oh, yes. Now one thing I know going to Tulsa, we, we crossed the Vergus River and there's lots of pecan trees around the Fergus River and when they plan them, or this one orchard, I see a whole bunch. They have buckets out there at the base of each tree. is that for us who experience drought a little bit more? Is that something we should be looking at, or do you think it's going to be the mulching and we just monitor that We can get by with just a little supplement?

you can probably still get by with just a little bit of a supplement, but you can provide the merrier, so if, if it makes economic sense for you as a, and you have the right setup to do a bucket with a little hole in the bottom, I think that's a great option. In our, in our context, we've been able to get by with not a whole lot.

Oh, yeah.

yours, I would say, you're gonna be drier. You're gonna on the whole need to provide a little bit more care for those trees, particularly in the moisture category. So I'd be. thoughtful about when I plant what I'm doing to conserve moisture. So you might want to do gallons of wood chips just as an extra precaution. And you might say, I'm gonna plant my trees in December. I'm assuming that you don't really have a whole lot of ground freezing.

We, we do not, if it occurs, we're all hibernating. We usually don't get too much of that.

So if you can get trees from a nursery in December and plant them during the winter time when they have plenty of time to get themselves settled in, right, nicely they don't need, they don't need any moisture during the winter, right? Because they're not, they're not transpiring during the winter. You've got plenty of time to get your mulch settled in, right? Capture all of that moisture that's gonna follow, that's gonna fall. Anything that's gonna fall during the winter you're capturing.

Oh yeah.

If you provide the water, but providing water is, is a real chore.

So Austin, what I'm hearing is, like I told you earlier, I think about getting you on the podcast too late. I should have had you on back November and had this, and then I'd been gung-ho got some trees in the ground. Yeah.

It is getting pretty late right now for you

Yes.

planting yet this year. Yep.

The, the other thing on that moisture and needs is that something, if we get into a drought to worry about the first year, is the second year the tree gonna be okay without us being really concerned about it? Or do we still need to be pretty concerned?

second year the tree is gonna be much better established especially and in your context where you are drier. The upside of that is your mulch is probably gonna be, is probably gonna stay in good condition longer,

I Oh yeah.

as much moisture to break it down. So your mulch is probably gonna continue to provide that additional moisture right around the base of the tree where it needs it the most into that second year, potentially even into the third year in your context.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Very good.

But it really is those first, that first growing season that's the most critical.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, Austin, I'm trying to think as I'm run through planting trees in my mind, trying to think is there anything I missed? And I'm sure there is, but in my mind, I'm not thinking of anything right now. Can you think of something I should have asked that I didn't?

I think we definitely hit the most, the key things. So the, the protection from livestock, the protection from, from drought and, and loss of moisture from voles, the timeframe to take the tree shelters off. And that really is something that we're still, we're still messing around with. We, we also talked about kind of alternatives where I think cages would be a solid option if you provide a lot of mulch. With, with that caveat.

Oh yeah, it would,

probably gonna run you 50 bucks. Whereas in the tree shelters, even though they might run 10 bucks, they start to look really really affordable when you start to compare them to cattle panels. Although the nice thing about cattle panels is you can reuse them indefinitely. It's a very, very simple thing to do.

Yeah. And to be honest, I plan on going out there and identifying a few saplings that are coming up and doing the cattle panels. So I'm glad with the, or goat panels with the mulch. I'll have to add that factor, but it's because I have the panels here. It's no cost. It's just labor for me. Yeah. But I can fully see if you're going out and buying them, maybe you should be looking at the tubes.

and the, the other thing is that the tubes work really nicely in a context where you're planting, maybe it's 20 trees, 40 trees per

Oh yeah.

If you're only gonna do a couple trees per acre, you, it's hard to span that, that long of a distance with your electric fencing, right?

Oh yeah.

that's where cattle panels make more sense, maybe some way of protecting trees individually so that you can, and if you're only doing a couple trees per acre, the cost doesn't add up near as quickly either.

True. Yep.

And that's a great way to start for folks. It's a very simple yeah, very simple. Low risk means of starting with planting trees in your pasture with that, with material that a lot of farmers have on hand already.

Yeah. And we like to reuse the stuff out of our junk pile.

There we go. It justifies having a junk pile, right?

Right? Right. Are you a truly a farmer if you don't have a junk pile? That's, that's maybe the discussion. Austin, it's time that we move on to our famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question, what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? And I know we're looking at this through the context of Sywell Pastor, and I'm guessing it has not changed from four years ago, but we'll find out.

has not, is still tree crops. So tree

It has not.

Yep, yep. The book written back in the 1920s. It is still my favorite go-to book in order to see how tree crops were used, across the country and across the world back in the, the early part of the 19 hundreds. It's still an inspirational book for me.

Very good. And you know, after we, we recorded the episode four years ago, I went out and bought that book. So I believe it's should be on my, my shelf. It may be on a different shelf. I did go through and read it. It's very interesting and I really got gung ho for a while, but I didn't get anything done. So,

Maybe time it'll be,

maybe the second time will help. I,

should reschedule another episode to go out in November.

we should

one in November so that you get all, all excited to do your tree planting then, rather than right now, when we're going into summer.

Exactly, exactly. Our second question. What's your favorite tool for the farm?

I think four years ago I probably said it plant a tree shelter. And that's still probably the, the best tool that I have. other than talking about trees themselves. And we didn't talk at all about trees or genetics or anything like that. There's a lot of there. That would be its whole own podcast series. But as far as a, a tool yeah, that six foot tall planter tree shelter with a plastic tube and the fiberglass steak. Very, very useful for getting trees established in the pasture.

Yeah. Very good. And what would you tell someone? Just getting started?

Start small and start now. So. Make your mistakes on a small scale and you, you will make mistakes out what works on your farm. It's often easier to go out and do that with 10 trees and see what works, see what doesn't work, make your mistakes in a, in an inexpensive way, rather than going out and planting or a thousand trees at once. Right. the costs tend to add up with every zero that you put in at the end of that.

Yes. Excellent advice.

go from there. And, and the sooner that you can get started, the sooner that you're gonna start to get some feedback on what works and what doesn't. And then you can you can use that and integrate that feedback into the next rounds.

Yeah, very good. Excellent advice there. I, I love that simplicity of start small. Start now.

Mm-hmm.

Need a shirt? Says start small. Start now.

Actually. We start, we should start selling that in our merch shop that we don't have yet

Yes. Yeah. There you go. Our. Fourth question, where can others find out more about you?

at our website, which is trees for graziers.com. We have articles, we have tree shelters, we have trees when those are in season, all kinds of resources of available on our website. We, we really lean hard into the education side of syllable pasture because there's just so much to be learned about it. And so little information available out there. So there's just a ton of resources.

Very good. And we have one final question that I didn't warn you about. Do you have a question for me?

Do I have a question for you? Let's see here.

I.

Huh? I'm quite, I'm curious, do you, do you see honey locusts in your area of Oklahoma?

Yes. And everyone hates 'em.

Mm-hmm. I mean, is valid. I understand why.

I, I know from our last, our first episode, we, we recorded you were talking about the, the nutritional qualities of honey locust pods and tree crops. Talk about that as well. So I got some land lease that's just a, well, it actually connects to that and the co company had reclaimed this land and put in a whole bunch of honey locusts. And I was excited for that. But when I gained access to the land, someone had sprayed them all.

Oh, really?

Now, now they only sprayed the ones that got put in. There's a whole bunch that's grown volunteering the. that they didn't dig or reclaim. And actually those need thin some, so, but I do have honey locusts

Okay. better or worse. Right.

for better or worse. Yeah. There's, there's negatives and positives there.

that's where the genetics are so important for a honey locust, and we've, that's the whole other conversation that we could get into about the work that we're doing on, on that side of things. but I'm, I'm, I'm curious how far one can push the boundaries of honey locusts because,

Oh yes.

I know of a cultivar that was discovered way up north in New York state. I know I've been sent trees or I've sent, been sent pods from up Minnesota, and in the book Tree Crops, or No, out, it was in another resource, another old resource that I read where they were seeing honey locust trees. Out, in, out in Colorado actually by the Garden of the

Oh yeah.

So very, very dry, very arid areas. So amazing area that they can cover.

I pulled up from USDA Forest Service. They show honey, honey locusts being fully within the eastern half of Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas. But Colorado is west there. And of course, you know, as we introduce things, the range grows and I'm not sure how often these maps are updated.

I know of, of, trees. Well, outside of the boundaries of maps that I've seen.

Oh yeah, I imagine so. Because they're very easy to grow here.

Yep. Yep. They grow. Well, they're, they are definitely an early succession species, a pioneering species. They can take a lot of drought. I've seen, I've seen a honey locust in very, very droughty dry areas, but then also seen them growing out of, growing out of a lake, like completely

yes.

And it was growing out of a a, of a lake.

I don't think I've, I haven't seen any growing with really wet feet. Most of it's Dr. Drier area, but I mean, that doesn't mean they don't, I just haven't seen it in in those spots that I have a little bit of water standing. Typically. I have willows that take over there.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Austin, really appreciate you coming back on the podcast. been too long since you were on here, so let's not go so long next time.

Okay. Well, I look forward to our next conversation. Thank me again. Cal.

Thank you, Austin.

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