Homeless Issues Committee - Regular Meeting

Time being 5.05, I'd like to call the meeting on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026, meeting of the UW Extension Committee to order.

Great. I can do roll call. Supervisor Andre? Yes, I can. Doolin? Doolin here. Downing?

Here in Perry.

Freeze?

Here.

Supervisor Croning? Here. Supervisor Rylander and Supervisor Smith.

We have one. So let's see, first item after that is consideration of minutes. We have the minutes of June 27th, 2026, the extension committee meeting. We have a motion. Andrea wants approval. All right. Is there any questions or comments or discussion about the minutes before you take the vote? If not, then I would like to have it recorded as asked unanimously. And so we've recorded our next item D presentations. educators from the Human Development and Relationships Institute. Oh, no, that is the next. Sorry.

It's all right. We've got.

No, I'm not. No, today has been the upside down. So we're going to show Winter Barley Childs.

Actually, we're going to switch our order a little bit and have Allison present. Sorry, just to add one more thing. So dairy programming.

All right. So dairy programming overview, Allison.

Yes.

Thank you.

Let's see. Okay. Did it. Yeah. So hello, everybody. My name is Alison Pfau. I'm the bilingual regional theory educator from UW-Madison Extension. I cover Dane County, Jefferson, Rock, and Walworth counties. And what I'm going to talk is about like an overview of what I've been doing and reporting and activities that I've been doing the whole year. So as a bilingual regional educator, so my main focus of my main areas are animal welfare, cow-calf care, and training programs for bilingual workers in dairy farms. Also like what I do is I do programs for the farmers, for the owners about information that they want about reproduction or any other areas that I'm not like, like expertise, but I bring my other colleagues to bring information for them. So it's not like I'm not working on those topics. It's just, I bring more of my colleagues to help me to update those dairy farmers. So this is just an overview. We have 331 farms that are classified CAFOs, so it's the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. So they are like the big farms. They have more like 100,000 animals. We have in those around like 14,684 dairy workers where 9,000 around is immigrant dairy workers, and the other 10,200 are workers for the dairy industry. So knowing all of these amount of people that work in dairy farms, so my work is very important because I'm bilingual, so I can provide information for them in Spanish, so they do a better job, and also they can be educated about the things that they are doing at the farm. So in Dane County, we have around 157 dairy farms. In CAFO farms, we have 12 CAFO farms. So this is one of the big programs that I've been doing for the past two years. So it's the Calbee Management and Neonate Care workshops. So those are the pictures for those programs. So this is for the audience, these farmers and their employees. The idea is just provide this same information for also like managers and employees. So it's for that I do one day in Spanish and one day in English. providing the same information with the same speakers. So I always bring bilingual speakers who give them the same information. The goal of this is to do training to get them knowledge about what they are doing, reinforce things that they are doing, best practices. And also the good thing of these programs is I like to do the hands-on part. where they just not get the theoretical part because we are adults, we learn in a different ways. So I do the practice part. So I do the hands-on. So you can see we have, we collaborate with the vet school at the UW Madison and they provide us the model of the cow and the calf. So I teach them how they just can assist babies when they have like very bad labor, they have kind of like dystocia or problems during the labor. Also in the picture in the right, we were just teaching them how the tooth has like for feeding. So when they don't give it like a bottle, So they just tube them. So they put a tube inside the esophagus so they can provide the colostrum in the first hours. So I just teaching them with the tissue, like, like give them like a knowledge that this is the esophagus. This is the trachea. This is the way that you have to do it. And like I say, it's in English and Spanish. And also we provide some certifications for educational programs. certification knowledge so they can use it for other things that the farms needs like for auditories or all of that. This is the other one that I collaborate with the specialists from the UW Madison Extension. So about milk quality. So this was more for like the dairy managers and also the milking parlor leaders. So this is a program more for like the trainers. So the idea is just train the trainers. So with that, we just don't make more programs for, you know, like the milkers. It's just like train the supervisor, the manager, so they can train in their own farm. The person who was doing this program, I was helping and also just giving a couple talks about milk quality. That is not my area, but I helped. She was just providing milk quality and other health information. Also, the participants could learn how to explain the why behind the best milking practices. Because I think for us, that is the most important question, like the why. Some of these employees, they just do things because people told them to do it, but they don't know the why. So it's that we just kind of like a step on that and say, hey, why? Because of this or this. So they understand and they do a better job. And also this help with the retention on the farms because they feel that they belong to the farm. They feel like they are doing a better job and they feel that they are. important in their job. So that is the kind of like the important part. So the impact of this was a more like approximately a hundred farmers and dairy workers around, not just this area around the state. This is another bilingual resources that we create. So it's a Bowie Noticias. It's a bilingual e-newsletter that we have quarterly. So this is for, again, managers and employees. So this has like a very specific information, like tips about that they can use at farm. So we are kind of like, this is not a normal newsletter when you can find very, scientific information. This is more like, like I say, like a practical tips, for example, like tornadoes, like we have quarterly because we can like do seasonal. So this one was the summer one. We have the winter one. We have the fall one. And we have this spring one. What is the other one? So we talk about safety. We talk about different areas of the farm. We talk about like human health, how, you know, like communicate with the others, you know, like kind of like that part, like that human part, because for us it's important, not just like the animals, also like the people and how they feel working at the farm, because knowing that that could impact like their productivity of the farm. So this is one of the other resources that we have. People can be registered and you can find this in Spanish and English and download it and print it if you want.

Austin, can I ask you a question?

Yes.

Just on that last slide, I was curious about the Latin there about problem solving and discussion facilitation. What are the issues that are coming forward? What's the role there? Are you actually hands-on helping people negotiate some sort of problem they're dealing with at the farm?

So, Nomi, we have another person in another area is from farm management. He's more like the... uh human resources card so he's kind of like more doing those kind of like articles and uh programs about how deal with people negotiate like solve problems in that we just create these to bring information about what is what what we does but like i don't do that like me is more like the animal production sure but like we want to bring that area to that we believe that this is very important

So that newsletter is more like the human-centered piece? Yes.

This is El Breaking Polechero. This is Spanish webinar for the dairy industry that this year is going to be the fourth edition. This is to help dairy employees, again, and farmers to get information, also not just from U.S., not from Wisconsin, not from just U.S., as for like the whole international market. So this webinar, I bring speakers that speak Spanish, that they work here, not just in Wisconsin, also in U.S. They are very, very, normally are professors from different universities talking about different topics about calf care, nutrition, genetics, things that they are very important right now. I make this program every year in September, October and November. So it's kind of like a very short one. I'm doing just in Spanish, but we have the ability to Also like give it to the person if they request in English, we can have the possibility to give them the information in English. This webinar is also very, very important. It's been very, very important for the dairy industry, the Latino dairy industry, because we don't have too much information in Spanish. We have everything in English, but these would be like very helpful. And it's a big resources that we've seen that a lot of people need it. And farms here in Wisconsin are using it. So what they does is like, because I make it at noon, so they just put it in the dining, like in the... lunch break room and they just put it in a TV and they just watch it while they are eating or we record it so that also they can use it for training if they want.

You get like hundreds of people on each. Yes.

Normally I have 500 people register for this program. And in each session I have around 200 people live. So it's very good. People make a lot of questions. So in an hour, is not enough for like the amount of questions that we have, but we can like sort the best questions and just provide it. But also we just tell them that if they need, if they have more questions, they can reach out to the speaker itself. So, yeah. And this is one of the programs that I have next month. It's here in Dane County. So it's the best practicing for cattle vaccination and medication administration. So if you don't know, like the National Farm Program is a program that every dairy is kind of like Subscribe it. I don't know how to say that. So this is just to them to complete some different trainings for the employees and also for them and also for auditory. They could check that as a checklist like, oh, yeah, I did this and this and this. So this is kind of like. show the farm that they are doing the right thing. So I've been kind of like all my programs are being certified by farm and this is going to be next month. And what I do is like, I bring this silicone cow that I've been working on that today. So the idea with this is, like I say, for me, it's very important, the hands-on demonstration and hands-on programs. So what I'm going to do with this one is just teaching them how they can inject some medications in the back of the ear of the animal. It's an antibiotic that specifically is right there. So I'm making some more of these. So with the idea, they just can just pinch and do it. Because I feel like for adults, it's much better to understand why they are doing it than when you just see it in a picture. So I have these. I have other models, like silicone models, about the muscles. So they can just pinch too. I have a big head of the cow. They can just pinch in the neck. So it's a different... resources that I have and I provide to them to work with that and learn and understand more how they do it. Alison, do you want to share about your dream of the birthing cow? Yes. So talking about my first program about cow being, so the cow model that the veterinary school has. So the idea is just me have one because I work with them because they have it and I have to go around their schedule to use it. But if I have one, I can do more that program. The problem with that is the price. So that cow with the baby, I just, let's see if you guys can see it. Where is it? Yeah, is that one that I'm right there? The black one in, you know, the picture in the middle, they have the baby. So that calf, that calf in the cow is $20,000. Holy shit.

So if you know anyone who wants to donate, yes, we are open or money.

We, I'm happy to do it. Like this is a very good resources and people is asking for this program all the time. So the problem we, I can not provide it like as much as I want is because I have to just wait for the veterinarian to be with me and bring the cow with me. Otherwise with him, otherwise I cannot do the program because I don't want to, you know, like, have a cadaver and use it at the program because then how am I going to discharge the cadaver and all of that? So it's not like a good idea. This would be the most good idea, but the price is a little high.

So just... So is this, I mean, this multiple intelligence model, is this like the first of its kind for this industry? I mean, it... I mean, it stands to reason people who are in physical, I mean, I was a hairdresser. I taught at a barber and a barber. So we use that kind of thing for everybody. And how do you notice the outcomes?

I mean, so when I yes. So after programs, what I do is some farmers email me like, thank you for this program. I've seen that they are more picky or asking more questions or questioning why we are doing these programs. I've seen the procedure is going very well. So they really tell me, or they call me, or if I have to go to that farm just to follow up, like, what do you think about the program? They always tell me, like, thank you. They understand. They trust you. They trust your knowledge. They are very happy with information. And they always kind of, like, give me the option to, okay, what is the next program? Like, we need this program. We need this program. And it's like, Just calm down because I have I have a big region. I have to just try to figure it out how work with that. So, yeah, but they always tell me how they think about. So this is one. This is a dairy farmer that he told me that like, we owe you a thank you. I know our team is in a better place from attending the close by session that you and the extension team put on the past years. Please keep up the good work. We need people like you to help our team strengthen. So this is kind of like the emails that I get and I'm like, you know like I'm doing a good job you know like so and those are kind of like the trainings that I do just giving some sometimes I go to farms and just provide some information there or like a small trainings depending the topic and I provide just certificates and that so it's been very good I really like and enjoy working with them because they trust me so that is the the big thing knowing that I'm not from here my accent you know like sometimes they I'm a small like they they believe that well the first time that they meet me is like they think that I'm big and you know like like a farmer and I'm like no but I have the knowledge and I have the experience I've been in farms I work in these like I know how it's working in a farm so don't Just don't think that because I looked at this whole different package. Yes. So so it's been very good. And I have a lot of farmers that work with me and they like to go to my program. So I'm very, very happy with what I'm doing. So well, with that, I am done. So thank you so much. If you guys have any questions.

Yes. So how many farms do you actually?

I could say. in Dane County could be pretty much like 12 to 13. Like most of the K-4 ones are that I serve. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because I have some small farms, you know, like family farms that came in like, but they They really don't want my help. They just, they just don't reach out that much. They just, just want to refresh information and that's it. And it's totally fine. But like big farms are like, we want more information. We want them to be trained. We want them to be better. We want, you know, like more productivity, more productivity, more performance. It's like, okay, I work with you. It's fine. So yeah.

And I would feel like the opposite, but now I'm starting to kind of understand, I guess, why. Yeah, like a small farm sometimes.

Yes, and they don't want to change any procedure that they've been doing for a while. They also have fewer workers. Yes, they don't have workers. So they are kind of like my brother, my son. And sometimes the son, the daughter, they don't want to keep the farm. So it's when the farms just disappear because they sell it and they are done with the business. So it's kind of like that. So they don't want my help that much. I really want to help them, but I just want to, what I do is just provide the information. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Any questions from online? Supervisor Downing, I see you unmuted.

Yeah, I do have a question.

Yes.

So I appreciate this presentation. I'm wondering when you do the workshops, are they recorded that people could view them later?

No, no, those meetings are in person just because the hands-on part, like I want them to be here so they can do the hands-on part. Otherwise, it's kind of like a... not enough information that I provide in the morning because in the morning I provide information but in the afternoon we just like compliment like okay you remember guys that we talk about this morning well we're gonna do the this that or so they are like okay let's do it and I do different practices and I do questions what we do normally is do stations so they we set some groups and they will be rotating different doing different things during the afternoon so I cannot be record that because that would be kind of like complicated. And also because I know people like even in my webinar, sometimes they say, oh, I won't be in your webinar, but I will be checking your record. Like not too many people come back and check the webinars after they record. So I know that. So no, no.

Well, that makes sense. And given that you have a newsletter, I'm sure they can pick up information there.

Yes. Yes. That is the idea. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. So now we can go to the Winter Bartley trials. Sure. Okay.

I think I'm going to move up here so you can see the screen behind me and not have to go like that. Does that make sense? Oh, I can't. Oh, man. Well.

Maybe not. They can't see me.

They can only see the back of my head, which could be fine. This will be fine. We're just going to say it's going to be fine.

All right.

All right. So Allison's able to figure out the Zoom stuff very quickly. Let's see if I can get to it. Is it off? All right. We good?

We're good.

Everyone here? People on the interweb? Just click here.

All right.

Okay. My name is Will Fullider. I'm the regional crops educator with UW Extension based here in Dane County. I cover Dodge County as well in that role. I have definitely fewer counties than Allison does. She covers quite a wide geography. I work mostly with row and forage crop producers, farmers that row corn and soybeans and wheat, as well as forage crops, which would be crops that would feed the livestock, alfalfa, hay, etc., And most of my work is really on-farm research is kind of what I've chosen to be the focus of my outreach. It's the tool that I use to engage farmers, as well as the tool that then kind of spreads the information that I'm working on. And the goal there is to work with farmers on the questions and challenges that they have, that they're coming up to me and being like, hey, here's this issue that I have. Can we work on something to make it more systematic, to have a kind of scientific approach to it? And I'm like, yes, let's do it. Let's put together a protocol. I'll help you with the sampling. We'll get some results. We'll have a field day. Invite a bunch of other farmers to see, did it go well? Did it not go well? What can we learn from it? So that's kind of one tack to take. And it runs a spectrum. The research project runs a spectrum from the very farmer-generated all the way to the kind of, it's my idea. And I'm engaging with farmers to be like, hey, I'm noticing these challenges within Dane County, within Dodge County, across the state that we have in agriculture, profitability, environmental impact being two pretty big ones. What is an approach that kind of taking these challenges into mind, seeing how farmers farm, how can we surmount those challenges? What is an avenue that we could take? And let's work together on some research on your farm to see if this could work. So I have kind of four larger projects that are, run the gamut between that spectrum. And one of them is this winter barley trials work that I've been doing for a couple of years. And the goal here is to have a kind of win-win-win scenario. It's a crop that's providing farmers with more money. So it's a win for farmers. It's a crop that overwinters. So unlike most of our crops that we grow here in Wisconsin, it's not just growing in the summertime, it's protecting the soil over the winter. So it's a win for the environment. And it's also maybe, helping to kind of regionalize some of our supply chains, bringing some of the foods that Wisconsinites eat back to being grown here in Wisconsin. And so that's the goal here. This slide I shared actually last time I talked to this committee, which was this time last summer. And it's a slide that informs a lot of my work or an image that informs a lot of my work, which is on nitrate levels in groundwater in private wells across Wisconsin. So the EPA has established a threshold of 10 milligrams per liter, I think that's what it is, of four nitrates in groundwater. And even above five, kind of background is about three, you're starting to have health impacts. And as you get above 10, it can really get to serious health implications, especially like blue baby syndrome is one of them, for example. And so in areas where we have really high nitrates because of of that loss of nitrogen from the soil into the groundwater, it can have health implications. And this can come from over application of synthetic nitrogen, which is a huge tool for our agricultural systems. It's heavily needed for our corn crops, for example, but it can also be leftover in the soil. And when it's leftover and there's not a plant to pull up that nitrogen to its roots and to build the plants, it can be more liable to be lost. And it can be lost in surface water, or if that, for example, there's a rain, and that rainwater, rather than running off the soil, drains through the soil, that nitrogen likes to get attached to that water and move through the soil into our groundwater. So in areas where you have a soil that doesn't hold onto water very quickly, very well, like in the central sands area of the state, you usually have higher nitrates in groundwater. So what are ways that we can kind of, agriculture can help to alleviate these issues created by this synthetic nitrogen that we use in a lot of our cropping systems. In our kind of common crop rotation that we see, we have a lot of corn and soybeans in the state. Those are crops that you planted in early spring and you harvested in October and the rest of the year, there's nothing growing in the ground. And so that nitrogen sitting there can be more likely to be lost. And so those periods when we're not growing anything, those are called fallow periods. What I try and work on is a continuous living cover form of agriculture. That's when we have crops, be they cover crops where we're not harvesting them, we're simply growing them to trap the nutrients in the soil. They're pulling up nitrogen from the soil. They're protecting the soil from erosive factors like wind and rain. So that doesn't end up in our water bodies either with phosphorus and other nutrients. Or we could be promoting other crops like wheat that Over winter, they protect that soil, and then you harvest them off as well. So a lot of the work that I do, not just these winter barley trials, is really looking at how do we make money from this? How do we incentivize farmers to adopt practices that are beneficial to our environment and can alleviate some of the symptoms that we have from agriculture on our landscape? And so I have worked different projects that kind of encapsulate those. Three years ago, two years ago, I talked about this project, which is looking at cover crops planted after winter wheat, that how much can we grow nitrogen from these crops? And those are things that over winter, they protect that soil, but they can then maybe give some nitrogen, some nitrogen from an organic source, not from synthetic nitrogen, back to our nitrogen hungry crops like corn. So I talked about that. Last year I talked about winter camelino, which is a potential to reduce some of the yield effects that we have on some of our crops by cover crops. So I talked about that last year. And then this year I'm talking about winter barley, which is the potential to gain money from something that overwinters by having it actually be a crop that you harvest and sell into markets. Okay, so like why winter barley? Why did I choose this crop? because we love beer in this state, and there's nothing more central to Wisconsin than cheese and beer. That's not the only reason that I chose that, but we also have a really strong history of production of barley in this state. All these breweries that used to be here in this state, They made beer from barley that was grown in the state. Barley is no longer grown in Wisconsin. It's mostly grown out west because of quality and disease issues that push that to more arid environments where it's not as humid. And so we lost a lot of that barley production, but it was also spring barley. So planted in April, harvested in October. That's not protecting our water resources by having something that overwinters and keeps that soil separate. So part of it is history. Part of it is... that it's kind of fulfilled a lot of needs for farmers, that it's low input. We're not putting that much extra nitrogen on these crops to grow them, onto winter barley to grow them. It fits into existing crop rotations. People are used to growing them. They know how to grow winter cereal crops like that. There's market access here. There are maltsters that malt this barley to be able to be used in breweries that still exist in the state. The largest specialty roaster, maltster in the country is actually here in Manitowoc, Greece, has a long history in the state. And people can make money off this. Farmers get more money for barley that's of a molting quality than they would winter wheat. So being able to boost those profit margins, maybe not be as susceptible to the commodity markets that swing wildly year to year because of the loss of supply chains. Trying to restore some of our supply chains here in Wisconsin so that we're providing food for Wisconsinites and also having it be less susceptible to some of those market shocks from if Brazil had a good year of soybeans, for example. But it's not just for farmers. We've got to see if we're going to make this crop work for the state. That's going to help to protect kind of our water resources. It needs to meet the needs of the brewing world, distilling world as well. They want quality, quality, quality. Quality looks like something very different to a brewer than it does to a farmer. And so trying to like speak the same language, that's a challenge. Consistent supply is also an issue when we try and regionalize supply chains. We try and bring those back into one industry kind of zone if we have a really bad year and suddenly the supply is gone, how does that affect things? And then it also has to be affordable for these brewers as well. One of the bonuses of winter barley is that it's a flexible crop. You can grow it for molting, but you can also grow it for feed, for dairy cattle, for beef cattle, for chickens, for whatever. It's a great feed. And then you can also cut it as a forage in the spring. So that would be before it even comes to grain in the early spring, your crop doesn't look like what you thought you can cut it. It's a great feed for livestock. So it's very flexible for kind of an environment that constantly feels like it's shifting and variable weather. Speaking of weather. One of the issues with winter barley in this state is it typically doesn't grow here. We used to grow spring barley because winter barley wouldn't overwinter. But this is a chart from the state climatology office and Dane County Center. And it shows that from 1950 to 2023, we have five degrees higher of the lowest winter temperatures.

Wow.

Over 73 years, we're not hitting the lows that we used to hit, more or less. And this is historical data. This is not model data. This is purely historical. And so it means that we're not, yeah, maybe not the best for like, you know, Overall, but for winter barley, it's a boon. You know, we can be like, oh, we don't have as desiccating of temperatures as we had before. Maybe we can grow this crop. There's also new breeding efforts in the upper Midwest to make winter barley over winter better here because it has that potential to be grown here. It doesn't have the disease loads that spring barley has as well. So it has it has a higher potential to meet from that quality. Do you have a question?

Yeah, I do. So how is that measured? Is that like overall sustained temperature or? Yeah, I think they take things like a cold snap or a warm trend.

Right. So I think that this is this is based off of the minimum temperatures that we receive in this time period versus 2023 and that overall change over time. But we're seeing a five degree shift in those minimum temperatures over these 73 years.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Yeah. Feel free to ask questions throughout for sure. Yeah. So how I decided to approach this is, okay, this crop has potential, but it's an edge crop. That's not a real word. I made that word up, but it's something that doesn't really grow here. Historically, can we make it work? We have to do some research in order to figure it out. So I worked with colleagues across the state to plant it in two different areas to see, hey, let's take the most winter hardy varieties that we have that can be used for feed or malting, Let's plant them at three different periods when crops usually come off the fields in Wisconsin. So that would be after corn silage, which is when the whole corn plant is taken down, chopped up and made into livestock feed. That's typically mid-September. After kind of early soybeans in early October. And then usually when soybeans get harvested in mid-October. So three different planting days, five different varieties. And of course, it's scientific, so we have to replicate it three times, four times. And we're looking at the winter survival of this crop, that forage yield, and then also the grain yield and quality. So this is all some of the work that we're doing. We have results for it, but I'm not going to bore you with that necessarily. You can ask questions about that, but this wouldn't matter at all if the brewers weren't like, I can't make beer with it, right? So the other side of this project is trying, we got to pair the agronomic data, which is like, this is the variety that we want. It does great to see, is it do any good? Does it make a good beer? Does it taste like crap? I don't know. And so the whole idea is to bridge this gap Get the people to talk to each other in a way. And I did that. That's me with a massive turnip. That's a cover crop. This is a cover crop inside my head. It was wild. That's also right before it started raining torrentially. It was the coldest day ever.

That's why you're still smiling. That's why I'm still smiling.

You can see. Yeah. Anyways. So I've been working with this regional grain network called the Artisan Grain Collaborative since I started. It's a really great group of people. It's bakers. It's millers. It's farmers. It's eaters. It's all these people. It's breeders. It's scientists. All these people that work on grains, trying to regionalize. our grain supply chains here in the upper Midwest. Really based around the upper Midwest with people in Ohio as well. I think that's kind of the furthest out there it goes. This is a great network and I came to the AGC, one of their meetings with Brewer Distiller Group to be like, hey, I'm doing these winter barley trials. Are there any brewers that would be interested in making beer with this barley? And I got some people to bite, which was awesome. So I got four brewers to be like, yes, I wanna brew with this barley. Uh, for this first year and also interested in kind of expanding that for, for a second year. So I got these four brewers, two of whom are in Madison, Stein Jones and the Herbiary. Uh, and then there's one in Bailey's Harbor Sway and then Schramm House in Minnesota. And then I also connected with some, with a micro maltster who's they also farm. And one of them was also my previous housemate. So there's already a connection there, uh, to malt the barley that we're growing at the, uh, at these kind of sites, uh, in Wisconsin. And then I had connections already with farmers, but those solidified some of those connections to also have farmers in the area to be growing it, not just me growing it kind of at some of these research sites and at the county farm. So this barley from last year that was in the picture with my hand that was holding barley, that got malted in June. It's being brewed with right now as we speak by these four brewers. And the goal is to have an evaluation. So I helped to work with, I worked with a couple of the brewers to make this full evaluation of how does this barley perform in the brew house compared to the barley that you'd normally use that would not be coming from this nonsense. So we had this evaluation. Obviously, there's a tasting component at the end to say, hey, it doesn't taste like crap, but it's pretty good. And they're all making an Oktoberfest style beer. And the idea is to have a public event in October to also solicit the public's opinions on it as well. Several of them are brewing control beers, the same recipe, but with the barley that they were normally used in order to do that comparison as well. But a lot of it is going to be like, what do you taste? Not, is it better than, but like, what do you taste? What are the notes that you're taking? And because of this thing called terroir, right? This idea of like, what is the soil in Wisconsin providing as far as taste? And what does a Wisconsin grown beer taste like? And so we're doing that this year. We grew a lot of wonderful barley this spring. It looked gorgeous. I was so excited out there in the field. And then it got infested with cereal rye, which was a total bummer. So we hand harvested to get the agronomic data, but we're not going to have the barley to be able to do the variety trial in the brew house this year. Planting again this fall, hopefully next year, to be able to have each brewer have two to three varieties that they grew the same beer with. So we can kind of have this disaggregated variety trial in the brew house and be able to pair the agronomic data that we have out in the field with the brewing data being like, what varieties should farmers be growing and should brewers be looking to brew with if they're looking for Wisconsin-grown barley? So that's what I got for you.

Well, it's so cool. It's fun. It's my favorite project. Do you happen to drink beer yourself? I do.

I'm not the biggest beer drinker, but it's fun to be able to not I mean, I love working with farmers. It's what I do for my job and I love it. But to be able to span the gap of, I mean, I leave it at the farm, right? They sell it at the commodity market. I don't deal with it anymore. But to be able to follow that and be like, actually, we're going to have people eat the food that we're growing. You don't often see with the grain farmers that I work with because it's ethanol or it's livestock. And then if it's made into milk, then goes to the co-op and who knows where it's at. So it's, and that component of it is fun. It's very exciting.

I suppose you must assume that some of the crops you work with are not going to work out. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, like we have these different varieties that are not going to be it. Winter barley may not even be the crop, but the idea is to get people excited about growing something different and having them thinking about how can I grow something that actually gets consumed by the people that live around me, that is less susceptible to commodity markets, that really, it's hard to make a living as a farmer right now. Prices are in the, yeah, prices are low, very low, and inputs are really high. So can we capture more of that value by making a specialty product that people still already know how to grow?

And somebody who issues... export certificates for most people's employers for tops all over the world. Like I get it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So let's say you learn, this is awesome. We figured it out. It's magic. You know, there's this cool ecosystem going on. I mean, is this like, you know, really like scientific dissemination of findings? Is that your lane or like you're using extension networks and the rest of the world to get the info?

The former I don't care about.

Yeah.

Like, I'm not interested in writing scientific papers.

So this is very, like, practically applied. Right. Everyone is using all the networks here to share all the lessons learned, formally and informally.

My goal is to have, hey, to work with farmers, be like, this is the variety you should be growing. This is the variety that brewers will recognize as a good variety. They know how to brew with this. And I don't know, like, this is hard. This is an edge crop, like I said. Not every year will it overwinter. So what does that happen when that leaves a farmer... They've maybe tried to work with a brewer. It doesn't overwinter. What happens then? That's why we're doing these trials multiple years to see, okay, if it doesn't do so great, can we still get a harvest out of it? What's nice is if it doesn't do so great, it's a cover crop. The seed is not that expensive, even if it's a name variety. So there's movement in that system. It's not like they're putting all their eggs in a basket and they're planting something that costs them an arm and a leg. Corn is much more expensive than barley to plant. So, and the amount of inputs that you're putting in this crop are a lot. less, therefore.

So the idea is there's a plan B and you can't plan A, it doesn't work. Right, exactly. There has to be.

There's actually a plan C and a plan D in that if you can't meet the quality, you can take that grain and use it as feed, which you could sell at a lower amount than the malting. And what's interesting is that protein is a huge arbiter of quality.

Yeah.

Um, and so if you're high protein, it's not what you want for molting barley, but it's great feed. So it's kind of the opposite. If you get high protein, you're going to be, it's going to make a better feed, but if you get low protein, it's going to make them better. Molting barley. That's very basically like kind of a base level, but you have that kind of ability to shunt it off to a different market. That's the case. And the forward aspect, if it's a bad stand, you're not happy with it. You kind of put forward to feed it to livestock.

Oh, How do you envision this fitting into a road to high-profile education?

Totally. Let's see how fast I'm going to go back. Okay. So our professor... Some of the farmers that I work with, a lot of them, this is kind of what they're aiming for. They want their three crops so that their risk is better kind of positioned out. They don't want to be harvesting all of their crops in October when who knows what the weather is going to be like. They want to make sure that there's other harvest periods. So they have three crops at least. Wheat and barley take the same position kind of in this little schematic. Winter barley cannot be planted as late as wheat. So we have, we can't really go after a full maturity soybean. This is getting a little bit into the weeds, but soybeans, you have different maturity groups, some that come off earlier, some that can come off in late September, and then some that take until the end of October. And yield is slightly tied to maturity groups. So it really depends on the farmer, but you can go a lower maturity group. So you're taking that off October 1st, you could plant the barley, and it's likely that'll do pretty well, at least from our experience. And like I said, the reason why we're doing this, for example, at the Rock County Farm and not on tons of farms in the area is because it's an edge crop. We're not sure which ones work well year after year. We want to make sure that we're not saddling farmers with all of these plots that then they have to manage or that they plant six acres of it and it all dies. A lot of it is that's the reason why we have county farms. That's the reason why we have ag research stations to be able to assume some of that risk for some of those more experimental species. So barley fits into this tradition really well. It just can't be planted this late. Wheat you can plant up until October 15th. The barley that we've planted October 15th does not look as good. After a corn crop, then the barley. So yeah, so corn, this is like a grass cover crop. Corn is usually off November, early November. That's too late for barley. So then you'd put in like a rye cover crop. Next year, soybeans. The rye actually does a good job of preventing, helping to manage weeds in the soybeans, which is our main issue here. And then after the soybeans, you'd plant either wheat or barley. And then after that's harvested, you can put it in a full season, like a big cover crop that then maybe like this project, Can we grow our nitrogen for our next corn crop? And then you kind of move back to the beginning again. This is nitrogen hungry. Can we grow nitrogen here? Can we give it to this plant? That's pretty cool. And then maybe half of your fields go to wheat and half of them go to barley, right? Because each farmer is not growing all his fields in corn or all their fields in soybeans. It's a mix. Yeah. And I did a little bit of math as to what is the potential of this crop as far as acreage and based off of yields that I think are attainable and the market here of how much craft beer is made in the state year after year. And so I calculated that if we had about 20,000 acres of barley in the state, we could probably grow enough. Well, actually there's a shrinkage. So it'd probably be more like 25,000 acres that we could probably supply most of the breweries, craft breweries in the state, which is not that much. We grow, you know, a million, some millions of acres of corn. In the larger scheme of things, it's not that much, but I don't anticipate farmers growing you know, a hundred acres of barley. It's probably like a 10 acre field here and there that it's an extra money for them. You know, it's a smaller crop. It's an industry that we're trying to pull up. I don't imagine it being super, super widespread on everyone's like hundred acre fields.

Gotcha. So, but extra money is good?

Extra money is good. Farmers need the extra money.

Yeah. Supervisor Downing, I see you unmuted again.

Well, I do have a question. Will, you mentioned that at one point rye infiltrated the crop. How do you deal with that?

The old fashioned way, which is we went and harvested it by hand, which is not fun. So I kind of had an option. I actually worked with our soybean and small grain specialist to bring a combine down from the Arlington Ag Research Station. to the Rock County farm to harvest it so that we could retain this grain and see if we could spit the rye out the back because the rye matured later. But it didn't work. The rye was too wet. It would have caused pretty much the whole thing to gum up and it would have been a big old mess. So unfortunately, that's why we couldn't do the variety brewing trials this year. And so what we decided to do was forego the barley as far as supplying for the beer this year for the different varieties. We're still making a beer with the variety we had from last year. And we just went in there and hand harvested and pulled out the rye. So we didn't take the whole plots. We took different samples of the plots. We would take four rows of about this length, harvest the barley, take out the rye, throw it in a bag. And then next week, I'm probably going to go to Arlington and have 60 bags and throw them in a combine and do it like that, which is the super inefficient way to do it. But that's kind of how you have to do it.

Well, is there a way to avoid having to do that at all?

Yes. Have a good crop rotation, which we did not have. at the farm because we need that early planting date to do this trial. And there's no crops that come up at that farm at that time. Farmers in Wisconsin have that opening because they'll grow like lima beans or corn silage or other things that come off earlier in the fall. But at that farm, where we have more ability to manage, nothing came off. So we actually planted into what was a hybrid rye field. We tried to terminate the rye twice and it came back, which was a total bummer. Yeah, but in the barley field, there was no other weeds, which is, it really did a great job of suppressing the other weeds other than the rye, which was a bummer.

Well, thank you. Of course.

just think i um send the food council for the last few years i know just from extension has been involved there and i'm just thinking about all the connections here with the work we do i imagine that's all kind of plugged into food systems work already yeah they actually haven't talked with jess about this project specifically but that's definitely where um that organization ah

AGC comes in because they're so grain focused. It's really nice to, people think food systems, they think of like, you know, more so are kind of fresh market vegetables and et cetera. I'm not saying that's what Jess, I don't know, but I feel like that's typically the way things go. So to be able to have in the room, people that are only focused on grains, it's just a very different in market. And the people that are involved in that are quite different. Yeah. But I should talk to Jess about it, for sure.

I'm really envisioning a feature in Edible.

Yeah, we have to get it to overwinter before that. This year was, it looked great. I showed that picture at the end. It was my baby. I was out here. I was like almost emotional. I was like, Oh my God.

When is that?

This is like what month? This is May.

Okay.

This is kind of late May. I have other pictures that I didn't put on here, but, um, and then by the end of June, I saw the rise started to come up and it was really heartbreaking. Um, and I was sad, but I'm just like, whatever you live up, you live another day. Live and play another day. But yeah, so this was in May. And I totally forgot the question that I was trying to answer now.

I don't remember.

Yeah. I don't remember. But yeah, so we're going to do it again next year. This fall, actually. But oh, this was a... I know what it was. This was an exceptional year for overwinter. It got really cold in January, but we had a lot of snow. Our snowpack has been a little bit more intermittent over the last few years. So it's not a guarantee that we're going to have snow when it gets really cold. Two years ago, it got really cold and there was no snow. And then the barley did not look good. I don't think I have a picture up here of it. But it kind of looked more like this. Really dead. Except for one variety that did end up overwintering. And that looked terrible in the spring, but it ended up yielding pretty good. Any other questions? Yeah.

I'm going to go to Swag and tell them.

Do you know Swag?

Yeah, my folks live nearby. Oh, nice.

Yeah, when he signed on to do it, I was like, I don't mind coming up to Bailey's Harbor.

Yeah, I know. And we'll make sure you invite us to the tasting event.

Yeah, everyone's invited. And you can say if the beer is terrible. It won't hurt my feeling.

Any other questions from online?

Yeah, if I could ask a question, that'd be great. Sure. I guess my question was, what type of system are you using here? What type of cropping system are you using? And what's your primary method of weed suppression outside of the barley in your rotation?

Totally. So this farm, the Rock County farm, is primarily corn and soybeans. There are some other... Josh, who kind of manages the farm, is the one there to the left in this picture, also grows some wheat. But there's a lot of other efforts being done on this farm on weed suppression specifically, because this farm has a terrible giant ragweed problem, like really intense. In the plots that they have as controls, it looks like they're growing giant ragweed and not corn. And where the barley is, I have a picture it's not on here. This year, for that first timing, we didn't use any herbicide treatments in this because I wanted to see the weed suppression from the barley. And there was not a weed in that field all the way down. And you could see the giant rags coming up all right next to it. So I was really impressed with the weed suppression from that first timing. As you get later in the season, you get less of a wintering when you plant it. And so you get less of that weed suppression. But with the barley, we're not using anything because we want that data. But if they were a conventional farmer, they would probably use husky as an herbicide because that's what you use in winter wheat typically. And the other component that I'm didn't talk about, that's more of an issue in wheat or winter cereals than the weeds is actually fusarium head blight, which is a disease that causes high DON levels, some type of long thing that is called palmitoxin. And if it's at high enough levels in food, it can cause people to be sick or in livestock feed. So you have to make sure that your winter cereals are below this amount of one part per million. in order to not have any health effects. And that's like way far below what you would need. And so all this needs to be tested for that. And that is a disease that really affects our winter cereal grains when they're flowering and when it's hot and humid. And so spring barley, because it's planted in spring, goes through that when it's more hot and more humid because it's flowering in June. not in mid-May when it's cooler and less humid. And so winter barley doesn't have as high of a disease load in that as our spring barley does. And that's really the reason why that barley went out west, because they don't have a huge issue with that because they're not as humid. So definitely disease is a huge part of it. And so farmers would often spray a fungicide as well, but we didn't use any fungicide because we're interested to see what is the disease load as well.

Cool. And I just had another follow-up question with... your winter camelina study. Did I understand that that was used as a living mulch in that corn there? I saw corn growing with something. Was that just weeds or was that a... Let's see.

Oh, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Here?

Yeah.

So this is just cover crops planted after soybeans here in this picture. But I have worked on this picture where I'm holding that radish. That was from a interseeded cover crops, kind of what you're talking about. So that was a farmer that planted cover crops into his corn and kind of adds that living mulch system down. And then his goal was to graze it after the corn was harvested, which is pretty slick.

And then I guess before I go, I'm going to do a shameless plug for something similar to this. If anybody's free on Friday and willing to drive four hours to Paxton, Illinois, the lab I work in is hosting a seed to spirit field day with the Artisan Grain Collaborative that's looking at organic grain crops to spirits. So it should be fun to have.

The gal who's pouring something into the brewing vessel here is Hannah Francis, and she's going to be on that panel at that field day. Oh, super cool.

Yeah.

I wish I could go, but it's four hours away.

Yeah.

But that's exactly the type of stuff that needs to be happening. So have fun. Thanks.

Thank you very much.

Yes, of course.

Great, so we can move on to the reports. Yeah.

Um, so you all received the June board report. Um, just wanting to highlight, um, we were working with some community health workers with the, uh, our food wise team at Allied Wellness Center. I know you mentioned working with Meadowood and, um, we're gonna expand some of our partnerships working with Sheree and others. So we're in conversations with them. Um, but do folks have any questions about the board, the June report at all? Then just a few other quick updates. Claire and I reported on our budget. We had to make some cuts, as I mentioned in the last time. We made just a few few suggestions, there were no major questions. And so we're just waiting to hear back from the executive in terms of those final recommendations. We did have one colleague, our Diversified Vegetable Educator, Sarah James-Uguretz resigned the day I got back from vacation. So that was unfortunate news, but we'll be working on posting that position. That's a fully, for the most part, fully county funded role. Then also I'm working with the other departmental chairs on the executive plan. So they added me to the economic development pillar. So really open to any thoughts and suggestions you all have for us as we work on that. And then our colleague Ellie wanted me to share our youth governance program interns Just a thank you to those of you who are willing to mentor those folks and we should have our intern joining our committee, hopefully at our next meeting. So those are my highlights for you all. Any other questions or? Yeah.

Oh, did you just share with your budget proposal to meet the guidelines? Oh, yeah. Was it like programmatic stuff we cut or was it any FTE?

It was no FTE. So it was much smaller than last year. So I think last year was near 60,000 and this year was closer to 13,000. So we were able to cut, I can pull up some of those. numbers, but yeah, we were able to reduce the FTE or not reduce any FTE. Things like our tree board, we had funding for $4,000 for trees in Dane County and took that down by a thousand. So I feel like we took little bits from a variety of different areas, but nothing that I felt like, that we felt like would impact programming severely.

but maybe if there's $20,000 a year or two or three from now, maybe we're looking at the cow. Exactly.

I was thinking more about some philanthropic approaches potentially. You know, if someone wants to name the cow, we'd be happy to. Yeah.

With a cow, you know, because, you know, if you lose a calf, you know, right now, we might put a live bull if it was $1,000. Right. So if you reach out to some of those farmers and say, you know, if you train your people better, you'll lose less.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

One of an interesting idea. Yeah, Alison.

when she was describing her position to me was kind of like, I'm the OBGYN for the dairy cows, right? And so I think that's, yeah, but the importance of having those hands-on tools.

Outreach, like an outreach angle.

Yeah. Yeah.

Any more questions? Okay. I'm sorry, could I just briefly announce my deep embarrassment and complete lack of excuse and thank Supervisor Doolin so much for stepping in. I really appreciate it. All right, that's right, I got your back.

I'm also really bummed that I missed things about brewing and cover crops, because those are areas that are very interesting to me. So it was disrespectful to everybody, and I'm so sorry that I missed it, and it won't happen again.

No worries. All right, so in fact, Andrew is German. Right, and if there's no objection to that, I'd like to have that reported as passing unanimously.