Albert Lea Seed House Spring 2018 Organic Newsletter | Page 2

Wilson Organic Farms
Never Sitting Still
Keith Wilson (center) and his nephews, Kim
Wilson (left) and Kevin Wilson (right).
We caught up with Keith
Wilson and his nephews at the
OGRAIN conference and again
on a bitterly cold February day
at Wilson Organic Farms in
Cuba City, Wisc.
Keith: Yes, some of them even come
to our field days now.
Herd Health: The Organic Advantage
Keith began running the farm in his
early twenties after his father died.
He came back from college and had
bought in to the chemical revolution.
But then they lost a lot of cows.
The Wilson family milks more than
400 cows on 2,900 acres. About 750
acres of their ground is in pasture. The
family has been farming a while: their
great-great-great grandfather started
the farm in 1848.
They began farming organically in 1996,
first on a few acres with food-grade
organic soybeans. But the following
spring, they decided to “do it all”
organic.
Kevin: We do run a lot of ground. But
organic farming is great work to be in.
Keith: In the early days of organics,
if you got three or four people who
knew something about organic
farming, it was amazing. Most of the
farmers around us sort of sniggered
at us when they went by. They didn’t
think we were going to make it.
Kim: Some of those same guys now
are interested in what we’re doing.
Kevin: Actually, some of those same
guys are now organic.
Kevin: We feed the herd a high-
nutrition forage. About 80 percent of
the feed ration comes from forage. So
we’ve got a four-year rotation on the
home farm. We have hay down only
one year. But on the land where we
don’t get manure, we have a five- or
six-year rotation, and two of those
years are in hay and small grains.
Keith: Some of the kids fed the
heifers what they mistook for mineral
supplements, but it was actually
insecticide. I got called out of bed
about two in the morning about some
of our cows laying and bloating.
The veterinarian came out and tried
everything he could, but it just took
them down. Keith: Two years in hay seems to be
our peak.
Then one morning, I was out in the
barn milking, and our neighbor came
into the barn, and he said, ‘We’ve
got to do something different. What
we’re doing isn’t working.’ And he was
right. Cows weren’t as healthy as they
should be. Kim: And on the dairy side, you’re
really getting paid for components:
milk fat, protein, and other dairy solids.
Kevin: In the early 1990s, we were
calling the vet every day. Now we call
out a vet maybe once a month, and
that’s only if a cow is having a hard
time calving. It’s not for a sick cow.
Benefits of the Rotation
For the Wilsons, a disciplined
approach to the rotation pays off in
terms of soil health.
Kim: Guys think you’re nuts when
you’re out there rotovating 18-inch
hay. They’re wondering why we aren’t
taking the first crop of hay off of it.
Kevin: But then the corn that follows
that is just unbelievable.
Keith: So putting up better hay adds
to the components. It’s not just the
breeding on the cows: it’s what you’re
putting into them. I’ll tell you, the
bugs in the soil: they just love it.
Kevin: It starts from the ground up.
Keith: Ever since these guys have
been working with me, we’ve been
talking about healthy soils. That’s
where it all starts.
Kim: And you can see the results in
our hay tests. We’ve got a nutritionist