Daily Globe

GIBBON, Minn (AP)- It has all the markings of a working farm — 70 milk cows, crop fields, tractors, hay baler, combine.

But there is so much more on the Martin and Loretta Jaus farm northwest of Gibbon. Marshes are humming with the spring nesting activity of wood ducks, teal and mallards, while toads make loud mating croaks.

In the prairie-plant pastures and stands of trees, there’s a constant flitting of bobolinks, bluebirds, swallows, yellowthroat warblers and mourning doves.

“When we first moved back here (in 1980), we had maybe a dozen species of birds,” Loretta said. “Now we have about 200 species that either migrate through or live here.”

The Jauses organic dairy farm is a lush haven for wildlife amid a sea of row-cropped corn and soybean fields.

For Martin, whose great grandfather homesteaded the farm in 1877, having it look largely like farms would have a century ago is rewarding.

But he feels a sense of loss for what has been changed and can’t be replaced.

“I heard the stories of how it used to be around here and wish it was more like that. The prairies had maybe 10,000 (plant) species.

“Now we restore prairies with 10 or 20 species,” Martin said. “There was a big lake over there. My dad used to catch sunfish on a little lake over there. There’s no water (bodies) any more.”

After college, Loretta, with a wildlife biology degree, and Martin, with a wildlife management degree, went to work at a wildlife research center near Chicago. In 1980 they returned to the family farm in Sibley County to work with Martin’s father and take over the operation.

“We came back in the middle of the ag crisis, so our timing wasn’t the best,” Loretta said.

They had no specific intent of becoming an organic operation, but the farm was already being run with low chemical use after Martin’s father had seen increased abortions in his herd and believed it was linked to pesticide use.

“With our training in biology and knowing how natural systems work, we were philosophically leaning that way anyway,” Loretta said.

“One day someone said to us, ‘Do you know you’re farming organic?’ We really didn’t realize it,” she said.

The Jauses got the farm officially certified organic in the early 1990s. “It was close already, so it wasn’t hard to do,” Martin said.

To qualify, farmland can’t have had any chemicals used in at least three years, the livestock can’t be given antibiotics or hormones, and their feed must be organic.

They market their milk through the Organic Valley Co-op, a farmer-owned cooperative started by a few farmers in Wisconsin but now with 1,300 members across the nation. The Jauses send their milk to the Twin Cities for processing and sale under the Organic Valley brand.

“The co-op organizes the processing and distribution in regionalized centers, so the economic benefits are staying in those local communities where the farmers are,” Loretta said. “That’s part of their philosophy.”

Prices paid to farmers for organic milk are usually about double that of conventional milk.

The 350-acre farm is a largely self-contained operation with all of the feed and hay for the herd grown on the farm.

The 105 acres of pastures are planted with a variety of grass and clover species.

“It’s nice to have native plants and variety in the pasture,” Martin said. “Cows know what they need and they get it from different plants.”

The pastures are divided into 25 paddocks with large cows rotated to different pastures daily to give the grasses and clovers time to regrow. A 60-acre field is planted in three crops rather than one.

“We break up all of our fields,” Martin said. “It slows down rodent problems or diseases if they hit and it creates edge effects, which are important to the animals.”

The Jauses say the years of organic farming have physically changed the soil, from fine granules that easily blew away with the winds to a thicker, richer loam that clumps together.

“You have more organisms, the worms, and even microbes that work like glue to hold the soil together,” Loretta said.

Martin said the soil absorbs and holds moisture better. While his field tile lines stop flowing with water a few days after a rain, their neighbors’ tile will continue to flow for weeks, removing moisture from the soil.

When the Jauses aren’t milking and doing other chores, they are usually enjoying and helping the wildlife.

There are about 100 bluebird houses on the property. This year nine pair of bluebirds are nesting while the other houses are used by other birds.

“It’s still not a lot of bluebirds, but when we came here, there were none,” Loretta said.

“One of the things that continues to amaze us is that our wildlife projects tie in so nicely with the organic farm,” she said. “You need the diversity.”

The Jauses said a key to increasing bird and wildlife numbers across intensively farmed corn and soybean land is to have many land owners create a number of small natural areas over long corridors.

“If you have that corridor of small plots, the animals and birds can move from one to another,” Loretta said. “There are farm conservation programs to help do it. People want to do the right thing. They just need some help and encouragement.”

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