WAPELLA, Sask. – Glen and Dawn Ekert know that the sight of healthy cattle grazing on healthy grass starts with what they can’t see – healthy soil.
The Saskatchewan winners of this year’s Environmental Stewardship Award, or TESA, have worked hard to improve the soil on their cattle operation along the Pipestone Valley south of Wapella.
That has helped them reach goals they have set through holistic ranch management.
Glen and Dawn represent the fourth generation on the Ekert land.
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Over the past 34 years, the mixed farm evolved into cattle only.
“I got sick and tired of going round and round in circles,” Glen said about crop farming.
He said the light land was better suited to grass and cattle.
The excess tillage so prevalent in their organic farming at that time was not in the soil’s best interest.
In the late 1990s, the Ekerts saw a flyer about holistic ranch management, offering advice on how to reduce input costs, improve soil and enjoy a profitable lifestyle.
“We were already doing the organic farming,” said Glen, president of the Organic Producers Association of Manitoba. “We thought, ‘How can we lose?’”
That course and others taught the couple how to set goals and make decisions, Dawn said.
“The simplest definition I can come up with is it’s a method of taking care of your people and taking care of your land and making a profit all by making better decisions,” said Glen.
By 2000, they had sold their farming equipment and converted their 2,000 acres to permanent cover. Some of their sainfoin fields are 15 years old and still producing well.
“We eventually learned the health of the soil is going to get us what we want,” Glen said.
They now run between 350 and 400 head, which originated out of a purebred Charolais cow herd. The Ekerts have used different bulls but longer-haired Galloways now sire most of their calves.
A good hair coat is important for cattle that spend their entire lives in the pasture. They are moved every few days in summer in a one wire electric fence rotational grazing system and graze on bales during the winter.
The manure is left on the field where it should be and Glen said the cattle are healthier now.
The Ekerts took advantage of the environmental farm plan to put in almost six kilometres of shallow water pipeline and 10 troughs, which are fed by a deep well. This is providing water when and where the cattle need it.
The herd is certified organic, and the Ekerts purchase organic grain when they are finishing animals for slaughter. All the steers and some heifers are finished at home, slaughtered at Renard’s in Virden, Man., and sold to organic stores in Brandon and Winnipeg.
This year, they finished 11 steers on grass. Dawn said those steers got the “candy” of the grass and the others came in to clean up the rest but no paddock is ever grazed to the ground.
It is critical to leave grass standing to trap snow in winter and to have some of it trampled.
Dawn said healthier soil and land have led to increased biodiversity as well.
“Different native grasses are coming in now,” she said. “There are bobolinks everywhere.”
Neighbours also took holistic management courses and eventually about 20 families formed the Ranchmasters Management Group, a group of farmers who learn from each other and help one another. A work bee at the Ekert farm saw more than 20 people show up to take down barbed wire fence.
Glen and Dawn ranch holistically because they want to do their best to improve the land and leave it in good shape for the next ranchers. Their son, Lee, is an orthopedic surgeon who retains an interest in the cattle.
Holistic ranching is also a practice that they say is best for them.
“We’re still here and we don’t work off the farm,” Dawn said.
