Jon Stevens

I am 5th generation. First generation to not have a dairy. Sold my dairy cows in 2003

We got the beef cows in 2018 with the intention from day one that they’re going to be part of a complete system and not a separate entity from the row. Crop acres. The cows and the grass heal and fertilize the land. The row crop gets rotated in to take advantage of that..

I have a couple fields that are dedicated no till otherwise the rest of our acres are kind of a what’s best this year plan. We’re having a great spring. This field is fit for no-till then this field gets no till if we’re having a challenging spring or the field is not just ready for no till this year then we will strip till it.

Kind of a very flexible, highly managed system instead of just dedicating to wear a hat.

Cover crops have been dabbling with them with the cattle. It makes it easier to rotate a field to an annual cover crop to make hay or the graze the end result back to building fertility in the soil to then have a low input row crop.

I’ve really enjoyed the program I’ve built to go into young corn

I’ve enjoyed being a student of the soil. I live on what you would call geological chaos. There’s very few spots in the nation that have the geological diversity or challenge that I have and then on top of that I’ve got the microclimate of Southern pine county.