The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e102: Weed Management in the Pasture

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

This episode my guest is Mark Renz, an extension weed specialist at the University of Wisconsin. He joins me to talk about weed management in the pasture.

People just don't even think about their pastures, and so just trying to get them to think on what's a weed in our pastures and how can we manage them and what are our options. It's The Ruminant, a podcast about food politics and food security and the cultural and practical aspects of farming. You can find out more at theruminant.ca or email me, editor, at theruminant.ca. I'm on Twitter, at Ruminant Blog, and you can find me on Facebook. All right, let's do a show. Hey folks, it's Jordan.

All right, so today you're going to hear from this guy. Hi, my name is Mark Renz. I'm an associate professor and extension weed specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research and extension program covers a wide range from invasive plants in natural areas to managing weeds in perennial agronomic cropping systems. And today I'm going to be focusing on a lot of our efforts with weed management in pastures. All right, so you have that to look forward to in just a couple minutes. But first, as always, I just want to take care of some housekeeping. It's been a while since the last episode. You've come to expect that. It's

the summer. I make no apologies. I managed a five-acre intensive market garden this year. It was no easy feat. It's the first time I did that much land. It was pretty crazy. It was a successful year. I think I might talk about that in another episode. So I'm going to shut up about it now. But I really quickly, before we get on to the main episode, want to just acknowledge a recent contribution. Julian Williamson recently made a contribution to the ruminant podcast at the ruminant.ca and that was swell and it's contributions like his that keep the podcast and the website going and if you are enjoying the podcast and or the website and you want to make a contribution yourself that would be swell as well and you can check out the ruminant.ca slash gift registry. All right. So I, I don't need to yammer on any more than I already have. And so here is my conversation with Mark Renz about managing your pastures a little better than maybe you currently are.

your pasture's a little better than maybe you currently are. And that is not a metaphor. If you don't have a pasture, like a physical pasture for grazing and such, you may not find this conversation very interesting. For spiritual conversations about better management of your pastures, your spiritual pastures, your figurative psychological pastures, I recommend you search elsewhere. Again, you will not find this conversation with weed expert Mark Renz very fulfilling. Okay. Mark Renz, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. It's my pleasure.

It's always great to talk about weeds and some of their impacts. Mark, I think I'll start by asking you, because I know as an extension specialist, you end up face-to-face with lots of farmers. you know, when we're talking about weeds in our pastures, when you encounter farmers, like what's the typical level of understanding or thoughtfulness that farmers have put into this topic? Well, you know, like any answer, it depends. I think that there's a wide range of livestock enterprises. And because of the wide range of how we implement livestock on the landscape, their understanding of what a weed is and what the impacts of those weeds can vary really dramatically. And so usually my first question, to be honest, is what type of production system do you have? Because that often gives me some insights on what the potential weed species might be

and what some of the impacts might be. Okay, and so I'm going to start with a really, since we're not going to talk specifically about one system or the other, I'm just going to start with a really kind of basic entry-level question that I have to imagine, you know, some farmers would be wondering, I guess. you know, some farmers would be wondering, I guess. I'm wondering if pasture weeds should necessarily be seen as a bad thing in the average production system. Yeah, I mean, I think that what has happened is many of the species that we call weeds are weeds in a range of areas, from your back garden, from your agronomic field, your vegetable field, and we place that bias on those weed species in many of our pastures.

And when we really step back and look at the data, our goals of pastures is really to provide a forage that the animals will eat and be healthy, have some type of gain in performance, whether it's body weight gain for meat, dairy production, wool, et cetera. And what we find is that many of these species that we typically call a weed, and a great example is dandelions, are actually pretty darn good forage that can be eaten and animals can improve their performance based on it. Do you think that one of the problems for at least some farmers

absorbing that is that some farmers tend to be, understandably, really kind of meticulous or obsessive-compulsive about that perfect looking pasture? Well, absolutely. That's a part of it. We have ingrained in our brains, you know, that we want some desired result of that pasture. And if we see this species there that we have subjectively called a weed from some of our other experiences, we tend to say we need to get rid of that at any cost because that's what our training from some of our other production systems have been. And I would argue that we have a lot of good data that shows that we should remove them from some of our other production systems. And the key point I want to make is it's a nuanced story in pastures.

Some of those weeds really are an indicator of other issues that those pastures may have and may not really be the problem. Others are a big problem and we really need to watch out for them. And so we really need to look at each species independently and evaluate them. Mark, I get the sense from some reading I've done that some farmers at least worry that pasture weeds are going to reduce available forage. And I'm wondering if you can comment on that. Yeah, and so we've done actually quite a bit of work on that, trying to evaluate that. The weeds there, and therefore my animal doesn't have enough forage to feed on. And what we find is that rarely is that the case.

In most situations, if they're feeding on that actual weed, which depending on their grazing practices they very well could be, there actually is equal amounts of forage that are available. There are some exceptions in drier climates, particularly in continually grazed areas where we don't rotate the animals on and off. We tend to have those weeds not being utilized, and they're much more of an issue. But in areas like the upper Midwest here in Wisconsin, where we do a lot of rotational grazing, it really isn't an issue. And so the weeds aren't reducing the forage quality the quantity but they

may be having some other type of impact well could you you you you you wanted to say quality quantity you said quality what about quality i mean do we see can can can can too many weeds start to outcompete or reduce um the nutrient uptake of of the target forage? Yeah, and so we do have some relationships that are clearly present that we can get reductions in the quality of the forage. Where this really becomes a really important driver is really in milk production because we really need that high-quality forage to maximize our milk productivity. So in Wisconsin, that's really important. Much less important in some, that's really important.

Much less important in some of our meat production areas if we can get them to eat the wheat species. So in general, weeds have forage value. They can have high quality depending upon the weed species. But some of them do reduce their forage quality over time and so as a rule of thumb as that plant starts to flower and mature that weed will reduce its forage quality but some of the weed species that are very common in north america like canada thistle dandelions some of our plantain species these are thought to be really weedy and have low forage quality, and the analysis that's been done has shown that they're very high in forage quality, equal to alfalfa, which is a highly desirable legume. So if we can get the animals to eat it, they're going to really benefit in performance.

Well, okay, I was going to cover that at the end of this conversation, but why don't we touch on that? If we can get the animals to eat it, you know, how, is it very easy to train? Let's focus on ruminants. Is it very easy to train ruminants to, or is it very difficult to get ruminants to eat these weeds that you've mentioned that are actually beneficial? Yeah, and I think there's two sides to that. So there's training them to eat it and getting them to eat it. So there have been many others that have developed processes to train these animals, change their behavior so they will selectively go after and eat those particular weed species. And that has been documented in the literature and to be successful since they are behavior animals.

You can do that. It takes time and energy and resources to do that, however, though, and so many people don't have those. What we've done, and we've done quite a bit of work on, is not actively training them, but changing the conditions and how they graze to get them to actually graze on some of those species. So if I can give an analogy, and I'm going to do a test here and see if you fall for my trick, okay? Okay.

So I'm going to use you as the ruminant animal. Let's say we put you in a buffet line, and there's 10 different things to eat, from cheese to lettuce to cookies, and you can pick what you want to eat. And there's an unlimited supply. You're going to just pick what? Personally, I'm just going to pick the things I really like to taste, I guess. So you mentioned cheese and cookies. That sounds good to me.

Right, exactly. Now I'm going to change that scenario. And I'm going to put 100 people in that room. But you're first in the line, but everyone else is surrounding you, and you have basically only the ability to grab what's in front of you. I would guess that you're just going to get whatever food you can get before it's all gone, right? Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, and then the further back in the line I am, I think I'll be even more desperate and just grabbing, grabbing, grabbing.

Exactly. So essentially that's the same process that we've tested is putting these ultra-high stocking densities, putting these animals side by side. What we find is when we do this, and this is a popular term called mob grazing, also called ultra-high stocking density, and there's other terms, we can reduce the selectivity of those animals. And so all of a sudden, they might eat that dandelion, they might eat that plantain, they might eat that spiny Canada thistle that they previously avoided. We actually did an experiment where, and people are always amazed, that's why I use this fact, we got cows, beef cows,

to eat 1,000 pounds per acre of canna thistle, which is a pretty amazing fact if you've ever worked with that plant. Oh, I've tried to eat the plant, Mark, and I'm even more impressed. Yeah, yeah. So we can manipulate the system to do that, but the reality is when we manipulate that system, we need to change the way we're operating. And so that might mean more infrastructure, more equipment, and more times than not, more time that a lot of grazers or people who have pastures just don't have to allocate to that. So that's one of the real important issues that I like to talk to people is what's your grazing practices and do you have the ability to change those grazing practices? One thing I would emphasize is if you haven't done this type of rotational grazing and even introducing some of these higher stocking rates is there are some

negative consequences for it. So I want to make sure and point those out to your listeners. And probably the biggest negative consequence besides added time and energy and resources is poisonous plants. So one of the issues that you might run into is you introduce this new grazing approach where you're losing their ability to deal with selecting for these species, they might accidentally select for a species that is toxic to them. And that could obviously have some severe impacts too. So that's one of the things we always recommend that people do is they first off check to see if they have any toxic plants in their pasture. Okay. And are there any that, like, are there any ones that stick out for you that you feel not enough farmers appreciate is a bad plant for, you know, livestock to eat?

So there are. There are a range of examples. Again, it's very regionally specific, and so you're really going to need to make some of those local contacts and find out. You know, we're concerned about a few species in Wisconsin. Poison hemlock is one of them. Water hemlock is another one where an animal, if an animal eats less than a pound of this material, it could mean that that animal dies. So clearly having a very severe impact. The good news is animals avoid it. But if we're changing our grazing practices,

we might change it so that they would be less likely to avoid it and increase our risk of a toxic exposure. So going back to our analogy, I'm at the buffet. There's 100 people all around me grabbing stuff. I just grab that bleach smoothie, and now I'm in trouble because I haven't really thought about what I'm eating. Exactly, exactly. And so that's one of the downsides.

In the upper Midwest, we're pretty fortunate that we don't have a lot of poisonous plants. You know, it's down to about maybe 15 or 20 that we really worry about. I know in the western part of North America, particularly in the drier areas, they do have some problems with a few additional species that are pretty problematic. So I'd say, you know, if you're going to prioritize what you're going to do, you want to identify those poisonous plants and get rid of them first, just so you don't have to worry about that issue. Right. Okay. Well, this is more of a general question, but we've kind of touched on poisons and poisonous and toxic plants, but are there

other, what are some other indicators or reasons that a farmer should start to get concerned about weeds in their pasture that are otherwise not, you know, might be beneficial or certainly not harmful? But what are some instances where they would still have to be concerned and take action? Yeah, and so I can think of two other instances. I'll talk about an easier one and then a more challenging one to really assess. Another example might be it's a species that maybe isn't posing any problems to your pasture, so maybe you're not concerned about it reducing the productivity. It seems like the animals are eating it and aren't being impacted. But maybe this is a plant that you're concerned about on

other parts of the land nearby. Maybe this is a plant that has're concerned about on other parts of the land nearby. Maybe this is a plant that has, the animals can eat it and be perfectly fine, but might pose some health hazard to humans. A great example would be common or giant ragweed, which many people are allergic to the pollen. Well, the animals seem to eat it, so it's not a problem in my pasture, but I'm really allergic to it. Well, maybe you should prioritize getting rid of it for your own health or your neighbor's health or your community's health. That's just one example. Another example might be we have a weed that comes in that's a real big problematic weed in some of our agronomic or vegetable crops. Not that big of a deal in our pastures, but we're concerned about spreading it into some of our agronomic or vegetable crops. Not that big of a deal in our pastures,

but we're concerned about spreading it into some of those other areas, so we want to get rid of it. I think that's a real easy example that many people can relate to. So if you're concerned about a weed for other areas or for other reasons, it's a good reason to just not let it get a foothold and get rid of it, number one. Okay. And another factor I thought of that I'll ask you to comment on is just like the point at which, let's talk about dandelion because everyone can relate to this, the point at which it just seems like it's getting out of control, that it's expanding, right? So you've pointed out that dandelion is actually a pretty innocuous weed for your livestock and for your pasture. But is there, you know, there's got to be certain weeds that fit that billing that at some point are just expanding to an extent that you really need to deal with it.

Yeah, and so a lot of times when I go and do field or farmer visits and I talk to them about their grazing practices, rarely are they actually able to change those grazing practices just because of logistics. And so they say, so I have these weeds and dandelions or canna thistle, some of our biennial thistles are other good examples. And they say, I just hate these thistles. I want to get rid of them.

And I say, okay, so you're going to spend some resources to manage these. What are the, you know, what do you expect to get out of managing it? And I ask them some of those questions, and they usually say, well, I will expect to get more forage out of it or more utilization of that forage, which we've already talked about, and they may or may not get that. A lot of times they're just saying, I just want them out of there. I don't like dealing with them. I don't want to see them there. And I say, that's fine. But then when you talk to them further, you realize they have maybe six or seven of these different species on their fields or pastures that they want to get rid of. And so I try to get them to prioritize, which ones are you going to target first?

And how are you going to target those? And I say a good place to start is ones where you used to just have a little bit of it, but it's increasing and it seems to be spreading over time. And I think that's a really good idea because that means your management style is selecting, is giving an advantage to those weeds to establish in your system. And if you're not able to change your pasture management style, those should be the species you should target to get rid of, because those are probably likely to be problematic. All right, folks. So at this point, I feel compelled to interrupt because there is a listener and a friend and a potential future guest host of

this show called Tristan, Tristan from Lillooet. And Tristan listens to the episodes often when he's doing late night drives after long days of marketing over pretty scary mountain passes. And he told me this recently, and it has had me worried about Tristan's well-being as he navigates these passes in a state of drowsiness. And let's be honest, at the best of times, and let's be honest at the best of times my podcast conversations tend to be a pretty decent soporific so if you bear with me everyone for the well-being of one of our siblings in arms i just want to make sure tristan's staying awake tristan tristan tristan tristan tristan tristan tristan wake up

okay so great mark uh i think i'd like to kind of close out by by talking about some management practices to reduce um you know certain pasture weeds uh so you've already touched on you've mentioned rotational grazing and mob grazing a few times, but maybe I could get you to more directly compare and contrast continuous grazing with rotational grazing and how the two different grazing approaches relate to pasture weeds. Continuous grazing is you have a set herd of animals, you put them out in a pasture, and you let them choose where they're going to go to forage for the entire year. And this approach has many benefits. One of the things that happens as a result of that, though, is the animals have a choice on what they want to eat. And so they choose to eat what is really, really desirable to them and choose not to eat some of the other species. That can have a broad range of impacts, but that's the essence of that.

Now let's contrast rotational grazing where we put animals in a pasture and we leave them there for a set amount of time and then they graze to a certain level and then we remove them from that pasture, put them in another pasture, don't give them access to pasture number one, and we allow that grass to rest, recover, and regrow. And a lot of research has shown that that has a lot of benefits in terms of productivity of the pasture, but also in terms of competitiveness of that pasture against pasture weeds. Now, the devil's in the details. So how often do you move those animals is really dependent upon how many animals you have and how much pasture land you

have. But in general, if we can have, you know, management intensive rotational grazing, often called MIRG, M-I-R-G, we're doing, you know, four to five grazing events per year in the Midwest, at least, if not more. Right. And then I guess, I mean, generally speaking, a farmer has to take their management style and personality into account, right? I mean, even if you can make a strong case that rotational grazing is the way to go, if it just doesn't suit your management style, it's probably, I'm sure you've seen the odd farmer who's taken it on and failed just because it doesn't fit with how they like to farm. Absolutely. And so that's why that's the first question I ask. And I just try and be realistic. And I say, if you don't have the

ability to do it, that's fine. But we're likely going to have to be more active in managing our weeds then to maximize what our goals are because that process of doing rotational grazing, even at a smaller degree, can really help provide that competitive edge to our pastures. A colleague out of Missouri has some really good examples that he shows where he managed the weeds. He went to a pasture and he managed half the weeds in the pasture and the other half he didn't. And then he put these radial collars on the cows and followed them and allowed him to track where those cows were.

Well, no surprise they spent all their time in the area where he controlled the weeds because they didn't want to be in there because they didn't like dealing with the weed species. And that's a really good example of some of the behavioral aspects of those cows. So Mark, can you talk a little bit about how to use mowing as a management practice? Yeah, so mowing is a critical component. Most people have access to this tool as a resource too. And really it can be effective on some weed species if timed correctly. And so the key thing is to figure out what type of weed species you have. Is it an annual? Is it a biennial? Or is it a perennial? Annuals will go from seed to seed in one year.

A great example of that is giant or yellow foxtail. Biennials will be ones that will stay as rosettes, just a bunch of leaves, in the first year. In the second year, they will flower, produce seeds, and after they flower and produce seeds, they die. And then in contrast, a perennial just takes more than two years. It lives for multiple years. And so what we found, and others have found with research, is these biannuals and annuals can be really easily managed with mowing. If we can target that mowing at the right phenological stage, and it's very species-specific, I'm going to give you a rule of thumb, but everyone always knows you're making a lot of assumptions with these rules, and so I would encourage your listeners to look up the specifics on each species.

Right around when those plants start to flower, if you can mow those, you can often with one mowing prevent seed production. And if you can continually nail this timing and prevent seed production in those pastures, you can reduce and eventually eliminate them from your seed bank. Okay. So, and I would think, so first of all, determine if the weed you're after. So if you want to use mowing, determine if the weed you're after is that annual, biannual, or perennial. Then no excuses.

There's got to be a billion or a lot of sources online. Go find out the specific characteristics and the specific approach with your mower, which I would think can't be that hard to get that information. Nope. And I'll give you two great examples. Our biennial thistles, like musk, plumeless, bull thistle, right when you start to see the first glimpse of a petal is the time you should be out mowing. So very, very early in the flowering process

where things like Queen Anne's lace or wild carrots, which many of us know, it's super common in North America. We can actually wait until after those petals are starting to fall off when the green fruits are forming and we can still mow it then and the research has been done those seeds will not be viable too so it's very species dependent okay good example thank you so so another thing i came across in my pre-reading for this interview is is is um using you know analyzing your pasture's fertility as a tool to help you make decisions or influence weeds so can you speak to that yeah i mean I mean, a lot of times we have to kind of step back and say, well, why is this land in pasture and not a lot of other

areas? And many times it's because of environmental conditions. The soil type is bad. The fertility is low. There's compaction or there's some other reason. So a lot of times the reason weeds are there are just because we haven't alleviated some of that, some of those negative aspects on the land. And fertility is often a really overlooked case. There's plenty of research that's shown that just by changing the fertility levels, bringing them back up into the correct levels, is really the most cost-efficient way to manage your weeds. You'll get more forage as a

result, and the forage that's there will compete better with the weeds. So how do you determine this? It's simple. You need to just get your soil tested. There's a range of private and public labs that you can send soil samples off to. If it's a good lab, they will tell you what your levels are and give you recommendations on how much fertilizer you need to bring it back into the correct levels or ranges. So can you give an example from your context in Wisconsin of like a weed that can be effectively dealt with with some corrections of your nutrients in your soil? some corrections of your nutrients in your soil? Yeah, a lot of times in our overgrazed and underfertilized areas, we actually have a lot of problems with our annual weed species, our foxtails, our lambsquarters, and our pigweeds,

which within a much better maintained pasture we just don't get. And so part of it is the grazing management aspect. A lot of these are overgrazed. But another really important aspect is just by increasing the fertility, we can get more growth of our cool season grasses, and that can, as an end result, outcompete many of those annual species. So they just never even germinate. Right, right. That makes sense.

Okay, Mark, well, I'd like to finish on a specific weed that I'm hoping you can speak both to pasture systems but also annual cropping systems, and that's field bindweed. And I'm asking with a good degree of selfishness with this question. I took on a new farm lease in the last couple of years. And after I had signed the lease, I found a few different patches through this five acre field that have relatively small patches, like each patch being around 15 square feet,

20 square feet of bindweed. And so I'm interested to know how someone in a vegetable context might deal with it when they don't have chemicals at their disposal. And then perhaps we could also talk about whether field bindweed is much of a concern in pasture systems. Yeah, I mean, so my previous position was in New Mexico, and that was probably weed number one or number two on the radar screen in New Mexico. So field bindweed is definitely a challenging weed. It can really grow in a wide range of environments. There's two reasons why it's such a problem.

Number one is when you see the above-ground growth that you see in your new land, that's probably only about 10% of the biomass that that plant produces. So 90% of all that biomass goes below ground into the root structures, and they're actually perennial creeping roots that you see. Okay, and then as I understand, the seeds are practically indestructible, and the roots can go very, very deep. Yeah, and so you guess that second problem right there is that they have these very long-lived seeds,

and so once they get into a field, it's very difficult to get them out of a field. And having those perennial root systems allows them a lot of competition so they can compete and tolerate a lot of our management. So that's why many producers rely on herbicides to control them because they can get some higher level of suppression that the other techniques can't afford it. But there are some other options,

particularly in your vegetable garden. What we usually rely on when we don't have access to chemicals or herbicides, what we're usually looking at is a combination of integrated techniques. But the real foundation of this, and we battle with this within our organic farms in Wisconsin with other perennial weeds, is getting a crop on the landscape that can compete with it and really out-compete it. And so in many instances in Wisconsin and in the Midwest, what we hang our hat on in this situation is having a good crop rotation that's exclusive of those vegetables with a competitive crop species.

In this case, since field bindweed usually is there for a considerable amount of time and has stored resources, I often recommend a perennial crop that will compete with that bindweed for multiple years and then have management in place there. And so what works really well for us in the Midwest is alfalfa because that alfalfa is a perennial itself. It's very well adapted to the Midwest. It grows well. It can compete and shade out that fine weed. And the other thing that we do to alfalfa in the Midwest here is we cut it every 30 to 40 days. So we're applying an additional stress on that.

And when we've done that in situations, we've found that we can really knock back that population when we have alfalfa in the rotation. But here's the bad news is that in order to be successful, you have to keep this alfalfa in that area for multiple years, and you don't have access to grow vegetables for one year. Right. So in my context, I can't put alfalfa in for years at a time. So are there any practices you recommend just to not eliminate but prevent the spread, given that I have these small little patches of it?

Yeah, and so in that case, I think trying to look at some competitive annual crops to get into the mix might be a good option. So there are some sorghum species and some other really competitive annual crops. Cereal rye is one that you might try and get in at least one year. To prevent its spread in your area, since you have these small patches, I think it's really important to be aware that anytime you conduct any type of tillage in that area, you have the potential to spread those perennial roots because they'll break. They can actually be smaller than the size of a pencil and still be spread to other parts of the field. So you really want to try and be diligent and minimize that ability. But my guess

is you're relying on a lot of tillage for weed management correct yeah i mean last year i flagged the different spots uh did my best to avoid uh any soil cultivation in those spots and then i was also taking because they're small and small i was also coming out and trying to using a flame torch to uh to burn them back periodically uh trying to discourage that we'll get rid of the above-ground biomass, but most of its stored energy and biomass is below ground. It'll just regrow. Yeah.

So there actually has been work done, I believe it was in Kansas, where they went out and every 21 to 28 days would go out and do intensive cultivation of field bindweed. And they would repeat this on these 21 to 28 day cycles, if memory serves. And eventually they got rid of the population. But here's the bad news. They had to do this, you know, 10, 15, 20 times. Yeah, it's serious. Yeah. So basically, if I can use some non-academic terminology, it's just a real bastard. Yep. I think that is an appropriate term to name for that. Since you have a small area, often when I tell people, if you really have a small area, is get out there with a shovel, dig down a foot, physically remove all of the roots that you can from that one foot of area and then put the soil

back. And you will be amazed at the reduction in the populations from doing that. Now, obviously, you can only do that in one or two small areas, but you can have an impact. Well, I might just have the context where that would make some sense. These are small enough patches that wouldn't be too laborious. So that's interesting. We're running out of time, Mark, so we didn't touch. Is it much of an issue in livestock pasture management? So out in some of our more arid areas where moisture is limiting, it can really be a problem in those areas. In the Midwest, where we tend to have more moisture, more competitive grass species, really the grass species kind of, we don't have as much of an issue unless there's an overgrazing situation.

So I'd say out West, yes. In the middle and eastern part of North America, not so much of an issue, to be honest. But it is definitely, in your terms, a bastard of a weed. Yeah. Okay. Well, look, Mark, we are out of time. Do you want to point our listeners to any particularly interesting or helpful resources online? Yeah, I mean, I think that we have a wealth of information available in Wisconsin and others. I would just, you know, encourage you to rely on your Internet searches. You can search for my information by just typing Wisconsin weed science and pastures,

and you can get to it. And really, there's a wealth of information out there in whatever region of North America. I just encourage listeners to go out and seek that information and ask questions. Mark Renz, I really appreciate you sharing your insights, and I enjoy talking to you. Thanks a lot for coming on the show. Okay, great. I've met a whole army of weasels, a legion of leeches, trying to give me the screw. But if we bury our love in the tree, one. And at the top of the show,

I said I had made no apologies for being so intermittent with my episodes, but I do apologize. I wish I could be doing it more. But the end is in sight on the season that is right now, and farming, I mean,

and I'll be back at you soon enough with a little more regularity. So until then, and, you know, eat your veggies. this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands Tristan, wake up! Strong, so we'll run right out into the wilds and braces. We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be 다음 영상에서 만나요!