On Friday, August 18, Bad Axe Stewards Watershed Council’s Travis Klinkner welcomed about 30 local farmers to his farm for a ‘Water Infiltration’ education event. Klinkner is an organic dairy and crop farmer who sends his milk to Westby Cooperative Creamery.
Klinkner had read the book, ‘Historical Agriculture and Soil Erosion in the Upper Mississippi Valley Hill Country,’ by Dr. Stanley Trimble over the winter, and became inspired to help local citizens learn more about the topic.
Trimble will visit the Coon Creek Watershed for two events on September 7 and 9. Copies of his book will be available, and the author will sign them. For more information on the event, go to www.cooncreekwatershed.org, or find them on Facebook.
“This book blew my mind,” Klinkner said, holding up a copy of the book. “Our area had prairies, wildlife, and streams that ran clear before settlement. Then we started farming, and it was great, but then it wasn’t.”
Klinkner said that the pre-settlement landscapes could absorb as much as seven inches-per-hour of rainfall, but now things are much different.
“Farming is great, but when we began farming this area, and disturbed the pre-settlement landscape, we wound up losing a lot of what we had,” Klinkner said. “I remember hearing stories about a previous owner of my farm who used to have to walk his cattle two miles to the Bad Axe River for water. Why, I wondered, didn’t he just take them to Cox Creek which is much closer? Because due to lack of water infiltration to protect its base flow, the creek had dried up – wow!”
Fishers & Farmers
Heidi Keuler, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife fish biologist brought the agency’s popular water table exhibit to the event. Keuler helps to oversee the ‘Fishers & Farmers Partnership’ in agricultural watersheds in states in the Upper Mississippi River basin.
“Fishers & Farmers helps to hold education events, and funds different kinds of projects such as stream bank restoration, rainfall and small stream monitoring stations, and more,” Keuler explained.
The exhibit is intended to demonstrate how water moves through a watershed in both normal and flood conditions, and how efforts along the stream bank can help to prevent erosion and provide wildlife habitat.
“Everything that we do on the landscape – in urban and in rural areas – acts on the stream,” Keuler explained. “We need to protect our surface and ground waters, and so practices along streams like buffers and prairie strips are really important to anchor and armor the banks and to prevent erosion.”
Keuler said that as a fish biologist, she is a huge fan of measures on agricultural lands that increase water infiltration and nutrient uptake, and prevent soil erosion. She said that measures like cover crops help to keep nutrients on the farm where the farmers need them, recharge our groundwater aquifers which provide sustained base flow for our streams, and prevent excess nutrients like phosphorous and nitrate from entering our waters.
“In our area, the transition away from growing wheat and raising goats really helped turn things around,” Klinkner pointed out. “Growth of the dairy industry, along with deep-rooted perennial crops like alfalfa and pasture meant that water infiltration was increased.”
Into the field
After hearing from Klinkner and Keuler, the group loaded on two wagons and traveled to an alfalfa field on the farm. According to Klinkner, over the last few growing seasons, the field had been in three years of alfalfa, moldboard plowed, first year corn, fall tillage and a drilled rye cover crop, then second year corn followed by alfalfa.
“The infiltration rate of the soil is the velocity at which rain enters the soil,” USDA-NRCS Soil Scientist Jeff Beniger explained. “Good rates of water infiltration in healthy soils cleans the water, takes things out, and healthy soil reduces erosion, and holds water for the plants and the soil biology.”
Beniger explained that there are two things that affect water infiltration rates – the texture of the soil (as first encountered, made up of clay, sand and silt), and other factors which farmers have more control over, such as soil structure, the acidity or alkalinity of the soil (pH), and their management and the extent of compaction.
“Soil texture is something that comes with the land, and we describe that as inherent,” Beniger said. “All the other factors in water infiltration are what we refer to as dynamic.”
Beniger said that a good soil structure with lots of glues to hold it together, living roots in the soil, and worm channels about every inch can infiltrate a lot of water. He said that increasing soil organic matter and soil structure is critical to keep the worms in the soil happy.
“Right now we are seeing extraordinarily dry conditions, and that has a big impact on water infiltration,” Beniger explained. “When soils are this dry, or conversely, when they are totally saturated with water, then the moisture is unable to move in.”
He explained that because of the dryness, life in the upper layers of the soil has either died or in the case of worms, moved deeper into the soil profile. For instance, he said, in dry conditions like we’re currently experiencing, he has to conduct his water infiltration test in the same location at least two times. The first time is simply to wet the soil and allow it to begin to accept water, and then subsequent tests will be able to show the infiltration rates.
“These days we seem to either get too little water, or too much, too quickly,” Beniger said. “What is needed in dry conditions like we have now is either frequent rains close together, or a long, steady rain, and we’re currently not getting either. So, this means that even with recent rainfall events, most of that water is not likely to have been able to infiltrate.”
To test Klinkner’s water infiltration rate, Beniger used two six-inch diameter rings, pounded three inches into the soil. He placed a square of plastic wrap over the ring, poured 440 milliliters of water into it (the equivalent of one inch of rain), then pulled the plastic wrap out slowly and started a timer.
“Really, anything less than 15 minutes to infiltrate an inch of rain is pretty good,” Beniger said. “Infiltration of an inch in 15-30 minutes is good, in 30-60 minutes is okay, two-to-three hours is acceptable, but if it takes more than three hours or more, that’s not as good.”
Principles of soil health
Beniger described the principles of soil health that if achieved, can “help to return things to the way nature intended them to be. Those principles are:
1. plant diversity which leads to diversity in the microbiological life of the soil
2. less versus more disturbance, such as tillage
3. continuous plant roots in the soil to feed the soil, and hold the water
4. keep the soil covered or ‘armored’
5. add livestock into your operation
“Travis has achieved three of the five soil health principles – diversity, continuous roots and armor,” Beniger observed. “Even though he tills, and doesn’t have livestock on the field, he is doing good things for his soil.”
Klinkner reported that he had avoided use of the moldboard plow on the field this year. Instead, he said he used a disc to shear off the sod followed by chisel plowing to incorporate the residue, then run over it with a cultipacker to help compact the top layer of soil and hold it in place prior to planting.
“This approach has allowed me to save money on diesel fuel, and reduce the number of tillage passes over the field,” Klinkner said. “Using the cultipacker still leaves the soil great for planting, and for me, corn-on-corn with a rye cover crop works better than planting into alfalfa sod within my organic management system.”
Other infiltration tests
Travelling back to the farmyard, participants in the event were treated to two more infiltration tests by Samer Kharbush, Vernon County Watershed planner, and Beniger.
The first, overseen by Kharbush has become increasingly common at soil health events – the rainfall simulator. In that test, pans of soil under different management are placed on a slanted table, and water simulating rainfall is sprayed over them. There are two rows of buckets in front and back. The front row demonstrates the amount of rainfall runoff and soil erosion, and the back row demonstrates the amount of water infiltration.
This type of water infiltration demonstration will be held at the 2023 Crawford County Fair, by Crawford Stewardship Project, Wisconsin Farmer’s Union, and Southwest Technical College, on Friday and Saturday, August 25-26, from 12:30-1:30 p.m.
At Klinkner’s farm last week, five pans of soil from a pasture, a cornfield, a hay field, a no-till soybean field, and a field planted in pollinator prairie were tested side-by-side.
The most runoff and soil erosion came from no-till soybeans, followed by the hayfield. The water off the hayfield, however, was more clear and lower in volume. The most water infiltration hands down came from the prairie, followed by pasture and corn. The hayfield and no-till soybeans showed very little infiltration.
The final test was a soil slake test, with pieces of soil from the no-till soy field and the cornfield placed into a tall beaker of water. According to a USDA-NRCS publication, ‘slaking’ is the breakdown of large, air-dry soil aggregates into smaller sized micro-aggregates when they are suddenly immersed in water. Slaking occurs when aggregates are not strong enough to withstand internal stresses caused by rapid water uptake. Internal stresses result from differential swelling of clay particles, trapped and escaping air in soil pores, rapid release of heat during wetting, and the mechanical action of moving water… slaking results in detached soil particles that settle into pores, and cause surface sealing, reduced infiltration and plant available water, and increased runoff and erosion.”
Both of Klinkner’s soil samples held up very well in the slaking test, with the corn sample exhibiting minor disaggregation. Klinkner received a round of applause from the farmers present, congratulating him for this evidence of the health of the soils on his farm.
Prairie infiltration
Valley Stewardship Network’s Dave Krier shared results from a farm where he had helped to install prairie plantings, alongside fields where a no-till corn and bean rotation existed. Water infiltration tests were conducted in two adjacent fields in which prairie, and corn/beans were planted – about 10 inches apart, with the same soil and slope.
“The prairie STRIP has continued to grow and mature over the three years of testing, establishing deeper roots,” Krier explained. “Over the years of testing at the same location, the corn/bean fields infiltrate about 2.5 inches of rain in an hour consistently, whereas the prairie STRIP has grown to be able infiltrate five inches-per-hour of rainfall.”
Krier said that the prairie STRIP can infiltrate two inches in about 10 minutes before runoff would occur. The corn/beans can absorb two inches of rain in about 35 minutes, but if the rainfall comes at a greater rate than that, it would run off the field.
Prairie as forage
Valley Stewardship Network’s Dani Heisler, who spent much of her professional life as an animal nutritionist, shared results of testing prairie as animal forage. According to Heisler, forage from prairie in 2023 showed crude protein of 7, total digestible nutrients of 60, relative feed value of 95, and neutral detergent fiber of 56. Similar, but slightly lower results were found in the same field in 2022.
“Digestible nutrients in the prairie compared very favorably at 60 and 58, with early bloom alfalfa at 59, grass mix hay at 58, and wheat straw at 43. It also compared favorably in relative feed value at 95, with early bloom alfalfa at 140-150, and grass mix hay at 70-100.
‘Total Digestible Nutrients’ is a measure of digestible energy, and ‘Relative Feed Value’ is an index where a value of 100 indicates that the sample has the same energy value component of full bloom alfalfa hay.
As far as ‘Neutral Detergent Fiber,’ indicating fibrous components of the cell wall limiting the digestibility of forage, prairie outcompeted grass mix hay (63 percent) and wheat straw (80 percent) at 56 percent. Alfalfa Hay Early Bloom was more digestible at 45 percent.
For crude protein percent, prairie fell short at 6-7 percent, as compared to Alfalfa Hay Early Bloom at 19 percent, and Grass Mix Hay at 10 percent. It beat Wheat Straw at three percent. ‘Crude Protein Percent’ is an estimate of the nitrogen content, and must be considered in the context of plant maturity, species, fertilization rate, and other relative factors.
