Farmers across the country are finding the connection between the health of their soils and the health of their operation. Some farm families see an even deeper connection.

“We are farmers of life, for life,” says Dawn Breitkreutz, explaining the approach she and her husband, Grant, take on their regenerative farming operation northwest of Redwood Falls, Minn. “The conventional model wasn’t working for us. We were going broke; we were strongly contemplating quitting farming.”

The couple started the path to regenerative agriculture over 20 years ago, “back when it wasn’t even called sustainable agriculture,” Dawn says. “We just wanted healthier cows and more feed for our cows. So, we started tiptoeing into this with our cattle and our pasture management.”

Practices gradually morphed over to the couple’s row-crop land, and when the term “regenerative agriculture” started being used, Dawn says the couple realized, “Yeah, we’re that.”

Stoney Creek Farm, named not for an actual creek but rather how rocky the area is, is where Grant and Dawn call home and manage 1,750 acres. About half of the land is pastureland, and the other half is for corn, soybeans, small grains and hay ground for winter feed for cattle. They run a cow-calf operation, where they raise the calves to market them as yearlings late in the following summer. They also raise pasture-raised broilers as demand arises for laying hens year-round. During the growing season, the laying hens are housed in what Grant calls egg mobiles, traveling across the pasture following the cattle. Hogs also are pasture raised, and he says the hogs are moved every five to seven days in the pasture.

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The no-till cropping system consists of corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, barley, triticale and rye. In addition, about six years ago the Breitkreutzes started growing a seven-grain mix for the layers and hogs. The mix of wheat, oats, barley, peas, flax, lentils and faba beans is planted together with a drill, but since “flax is last to mature, we windrow it and combine it as dry grain, and that is the protein source for all the poultry and the pork,” Grant says.

For their efforts, Dawn and Grant were recognized as the recipients of the inaugural Minnesota Leopold Conservation Award on Dec. 3 at the Premier Soil Health Event in Mankato. Watch this video below to learn more about the Breitkreutzes.

Generating life

Even though the definition of regenerative agriculture fit what the couple was doing, they felt that term was being abused and marketed, and “we realized that we were more about generating life here, as well as generating an income, rather than having to kill things to make that income,” she says.

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Grant adds: “Years ago, when we started farming here, it was like what pests or problems that we have to worry about or kill today. We’re so far down this path, and we understand that it’s about life. If we can promote life in the soil, it puts life above the ground also. Whether it’s the cattle, poultry or the crops, as long as we’re focused on putting life in the soil, we’re going to have life above the soil.”

The couple’s “aha moment” came when they witnessed a drastic change in the health of their cattle by improving the health in the soil. “We used to be an $8,000-to-$12,000-a-year vet bill-type program here, and that was treating sick cattle,” Grant says. “As we healed the land, we noticed the cattle health changed to the point now that we’re running four times the amount of livestock we used to run” but with a lower vet bill. Their vet bill this past year was $1,300 for vaccines they choose to use.

They soon had an epiphany that the benefits go beyond the health of the soil and the livestock.

In 2002, Dawn was diagnosed with breast cancer. This came after she had lost her mother at the age of 34 and her sister passed away at the age of 31. Her niece also died from breast cancer. “When I was diagnosed, I was absolutely terrified because nobody had survived it in our family,” she said.

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She has learned that she is BRCA1-positive, as are all her children. “I had to believe there was something, a reason that I am still here. That I need to talk about how our farming methods or the things we’re using could potentially be affecting our human health in monumental ways,” she says. “That’s become my mission to get people to realize that the soil isn’t just a medium anymore to grow food in. It’s life — there is life down there — but stop killing that life with everything that we do and promote that life with the understanding that that life is nurturing our bodies in addition to all the food that we grow, including the animals and the wildlife that’s here. It’s all about nurturing life here and finding our place in the whole circle of life.”

Too good not to share

Realizing their story was too good, they shouldn’t keep it to themselves, and they have started to share what they are doing on their pastures and cropland in Redwood and Renville counties along the Minnesota River. Grant says it was 12 to 15 years ago that they started presenting at seminars, conferences and speaking engagements. They also saw the need to open their farm to visitors to see the practices in action.

Visitors range from school-aged children, FFA chapters and even representatives from General Mills, who have visited “over the years just trying to understand what we’re doing different than our neighbors, how it’s functioning and how it can fit into their businesses. For the younger kids, hopefully we can influence them for the future,” Grant says.

For years, the University of Minnesota soils team would visit the farm, and Grant says it was eye-opening for the students to see the benefits of cover crops. “Sometimes they would show up after a rainfall event, and they’d get out of their vans with muck boots on, and their instructors, who know what soil health is about, they would just keep their tennis shoes on knowing their feet wouldn’t get muddy because we had cover on our soils, and we had soil structure and infiltration rates. It was neat to see the faces of those young people as they saw that we can grow corn and soybeans in basically what looks like and is structured like prairie soil that’s never been disturbed.”

About the Leopold Award

The Sand County Foundation and national sponsor American Farmland Trust present Leopold Conservation Awards to private landowners in 28 states, and the Breitkreutzes take home a $10,000 award.

The award honors farmers and forestland owners who go above and beyond in their management of soil health, water quality and wildlife habitat on working land. It is named in honor of renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold, who in his 1949 book “A Sand County Almanac” called for “a land ethic,” or an ethical relationship between people and the land they own and manage.