Even if your intentions are good when it comes to conservation plans in Wisconsin – Mother Nature can dismantle the best project, quickly! Just ask the 2017 Conservation Farmer of the Year, Windy Hill Ranch in rural Hazel Green.
Dan and Kristie Shelliam have been on their farm for over 15 years, recognizing early on that the land they were working with had challenges – lots of challenges. “This year we’ve been trying to forget,” Dan chuckles talking to Pam Jahnke. “Our ground is so much different than anybody else’s. A lot of our ground is old mining ground.” The remaining heavy metals left in the soil are actually toxic to any traditional plants that Shelliam might want to plant. There’s so much lead ore and zinc in the ground, that when they do soil testing, they can actually measure the zinc in grams as opposed to parts per million which is the normal increment.
If that’s not enough of a challenge, factor in the cool wet weather that most of Wisconsin witnessed this spring. At Windy Hill Ranch, they had one rain incident that brought in more than 9 inches of rain at once. Conservation planning or not, that’s a lot of water for a farm to handle. Looking back, Shelliam says his cover crops really helped slow down the movement of all that water, although admitting that it still devastated their operation taking fencing, cattle and nutrients off the farm.
In fact clean up continues this week as they prepare to host the states Conservation Observance Day on Friday. The Shelliam’s are currently operating about 500 acres that includes 150 acres under a prescribed grazing plan, over 200 acres of cover crops, 1,500 ft. of streambank protection and 9 acres of waterways enrolled in the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Conservation Reserve Program. In fact the streambank protection is one of the areas Shelliam’s most proud of. “If people would’ve told me a while back that some of this stuff would work this good, I wouldn’t have believed them.” He continues, “These four crossings (he’s put in), we run cattle through 9-10 different paddocks right now. We’ll have 120 head of cows and calves so instead of using the creek bank to climb in and out, they use all these crossings. So our water disturbance is very minimal. You’ll see these cattle lined up side by side drinking out this water that passes through – cool, clear water in the shallow end of the stream. There’s a lot of neat things going on here.”
The public is invited to see what the Shelliam’s live every day during the event on Friday which begins at 9:30 with special presentations, followed by three separate field tours.
Shelliam Family’s Windy Hill Ranch at 30518 County Road W, Hazel Green, is located one mile east of the Village of Hazel Green in Lafayette County. The rolling hills of this non glaciated portion of Wisconsin are home to many wonders, such as an artesian spring and the Principle Meridian (“Point of Beginning”).
Find more at http://wisconsinlandwater.org/events/conservation-observance-day
