Beach, ND area farmer/photographer James Zielsdorf says he’s found “the missing link” for building soil quality on his farm AND he has the pictures to prove it! He’ll be sharing those pictures and his insights this Friday, March 7, beginning at noon at the USDA-ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory (NPARL) in Sidney as part of that facility’s 2014 BrownBagger series.
Zielsdorf’s presentation – “The Missing Link: What it looks like in Western North Dakota” – is open to the public and runs from noon to 1 pm. The lab is located at 1500 N. Central Avenue in Sidney, MT.
In his talk, Zielsdorf will explore the cover crops he’s planted for the past three years, what he chose to plant and why, and his goals in doing so. He’ll illustrate his cover crop journey with his own detailed photographs depicting everything from seed emergence through freeze termination. In addition, he will share his unique photos of the microorganisms he’s found in the soil and how they have changed over time with the addition of cover crops.
It’s been a change all to the good, he notes. “In 2010 I attended the North Dakota Manitoba Zero Till meeting in January,” Zielsdorf, a no-till farmer since 1985, said, “And I finally understood the hype on cover crops and decided to farm my last 10 years putting soil health concerns first. Three years down the road I am more excited than ever that cover crops give us access to the missing link, biology!”
Zielsdorf describes himself as a “win-win” kind of guy, which he attributes in part to being born on June 1, 1950, “in the middle of the year, in the middle of the century.” A native of Beach, ND, he attended North Dakota State University where he studied sociology with an emphasis on anthropology, before returning to western North Dakota to farm with his father in 1974. At that time he also opened up his own photography business, which he operated until 2004. But while he may have given up the business, he didn’t give up photography, instead using his skills to catalog the changes occurring underground as he works to build the soil health on his farm.
Please join us for this very interesting presentation. For more information, contact Beth Redlin at 406-433-9427.
NPARL’s 2014 BrownBagger series is held in the lab’s Tech Transfer Room, typically on every other Friday, from noon to 1 p.m. Our next speaker in the series will be Dr. Laurie Kerzicnik, Insect Diagnostician and Assistant IPM Specialist in the Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology Department at Montana State University in Bozeman Her March 21st talk at the Sidney ARS lab will focus on spiders as biological control agents in agroecosystems.
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