On the 700-acres of cropland at Clear Springs Cattle Company in Minnesota, every inch is working overtime.
The Wulfs grow crops for feed so that their registered Simmental and SimAngus herd can withstand the tough Northern winters, but they usually don’t use that feed until at least Christmas. Keeping their herd on forage has a number of benefits, according to patriarch Jim Wulf.
“In the past, we would get to Thanksgiving without feeding anything and my dad would pat me on the back and say I was doing really good,” Wulf says. “Now, we typically get to Christmas or even into January without feeding any cows, which is a huge cost savings and labor savings for us so we can focus on other parts of our operation.”
The longer the cattle stay on forage, Wulf believes, the better they set up their calves for success.
“They depend on mom up until weaning time, and they’re learning because they’re grazing, but if you take mom out of the picture, if you just put that animal in the pen and feed it out of a bunk, and then next summer, you turn out to graze, did they really know how to graze?” he says. “This way you wean that calf, make that animal graze all the way up until the snow flies and you’ve set that animal up next year to be a good grazer too.”
Maximizing the Feed
Thirteen years ago, when Wulf and his wife, Twyla, bought the property that would become Clear Springs Cattle Company, they bet on it being a place where they could invest in the future of their immediate family. Middle son Travis took control of the livestock genetics on the farm, protecting their herd that is “bred for balance” for their land and climate.
But, the family had the cropland and knew it wasn’t reaching its full potential. Jim and Travis hired someone to custom plant, spray and harvest, but it needed some investment of both time and strategy.
The crop management role is where Brady Wulf, the youngest son, decided to plant his on-farm roots.
He invested in education at South Dakota State University, staying an extra year to study agronomy, took an internship at Jorgensen Land & Cattle and then went to work for another farm as their agronomist.
Innovating an Old Idea
Brady had grown up with cover crops. His dad had always used the practice. After all – the Wulfs are cattlemen – it made sense.
“If you look around a pasture you never see the same species, like just one pasture that’s all say smooth brome or orchard grass,” he says. “You see a diversity, so we transitioned that into our cropping system as well.”
With his education, on-farm experience and boosted by an article from John Deere’s The Furrow magazine, Brady was ready to transform their crop acreage into a cover crop powerhouse.
The family first tried skip-row corn at 30-60-30 spacing but Brady says they struggled. So, they made their own algorithm, settling on 44-inch rows. The wider spacing was sufficient to leave room for their diverse cover crop mix, which shields the soil, keeps living roots in the soil and in the end, provides grazing material for his cattle.
“In this mix, we’ve gone pretty heavy on the brassicas, like radishes, and then some cool-season grasses like oats and annual rye grass,” he says. “Corn is our warm-season grass – you look at corn as part of the overall mix.”
Brady is also interseeding sorghum with corn for silage, which is working out well so far.
They carry this strategy over into their small grains as well.
“We just got our seed for small grains and I think there’s about 12 species in it,” Brady says. “We can plant corn into green rye, hairy vetch and winter camelina the following year to have something new and growing.”
Reaping the Benefits
Brady hears the naysayers – the ones who say he’s just farming for his cows. And, while he is, he’s also holding down corn yields that are going toe-to-toe with his cash crop counterparts.
Recently, during the Trust In Beef 2025 Sustainable Ranchers Tour, he told attendees his secret to still getting 200 bushel corn with the mix.
“I think a big testament is that, in this system, we can do close to 200 bushels,” he says. “It all depends on the year, but anywhere from 180 to 210 bushel corn on 120 lb. of nitrogen. I put a lot of that to the cover crops that we’re putting after this small grain.”
Through their whole-operation rotation and diversification, they are lowering input costs and increasing yields.
“We’re doing all non-GMO corn, so we’re saving a lot on seed costs and we’re saving a lot on fertilizer costs because the only P&K we’re putting on is manure when we do the cover crops, and then some starter fertilizer, which saves us a lot.”
But, it’s not just benefits to the operation’s bottom-line that Brady is seeing.
“Last year, we planted the soybeans in standing rye and we had plenty of spring moisture that year so we let the rye and the beans grow together,” he says. “Because that rye was competing with those beans, it helped push those roots deeper, and when the rain shut off in August for us, they didn’t dry up near as quick as some of our neighbors.”
The long and living roots are working overtime to break up the soil and reduce compaction, which makes soil sampling noticeably easier on their farm than on their neighbors’ farms.
“Last year, the guy running the soil sampler called and told me that when he puts the probe in the ground on other fields, it practically lifts the pickup off the ground, but on ours the probe was going in like butter,” he says. “To me, that’s a good testament that our compaction layer is in the top half inch whereas in a row crop, they’re just burying their compaction layer so they don’t have to think about it.
“In our field, we can cut through with the corn planter with the drill and just take off.”
The Proof Is In The Sampling
Brady has been using soil sampling on their farm to render a baseline in organic levels, but he feels there’s more that sampling can unlock. He’s investing in that next, but for now, he likes what he sees from the data.
“When dad bought the farm, our soil organic matter was less than 1%,” he says. “Our last soil sample showed we were at 3.5% organic matter.”
For Jim, the soil health investments on their farm add up to protection of what he calls his two biggest assets.
“We have two things that we get free in agriculture — sunlight and water,” he says. “If you don’t have something growing, you’re not capturing them.”
Trust In Beef works to secure the future of American ranching by providing the information that ranchers need to make the decisions that impact the resiliency, profitability and resource management of their working lands. Learn more about Trust In Beef and their 2025 Sustainable Ranchers Tour by visiting www.trustinbeef.com
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