NUTRIENT MANAGEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

Closely tied to our permits and regulation is nutrient management planning, a structured way to protect water quality and soil health by managing manure and its nutrients. As you can imagine, a farm with 1800 cows produces an abundant supply of manure.

Having a Nutrient Management Plan makes good business sense for any farm. Besides the benefits nutrient management planning has for our crops, it demonstrates that we care about what goes into the ground and beyond our property line.

Manure is applied in the fall for the spring planting season. Just like we are responsible for every gallon of manure our animals produce, we are also held accountable for every gallon of manure we apply to our fields. It’s important that the crops we plan to plant each year will completely utilize the nutrients. Too much, and the excess could run or leech into our water supply. Of course, too little and we won’t maximize our crop yield.

At the end of each year, we turn in an annual report to the DNR showing where and how many gallons of nutrients we applied to our fields. This means we are held accountable, of course.

We’re fortunate to harvest our own manure, a product we have no shortage of at our dairy! It’s worth a lot of money to us!