Bees and Beef

Regenerative tactics have paved the way for the next generation.

Story and Photos by Bill Spiegel

Dennis Anderson knew that no-till and cover crops would make his farm more productive. But he didn't expect adopting soil health practices would prompt his daughter Amanda to join him on the farm.

"I just like the animals," says Amanda. "And when I joined him, he started teaching me about the farm. I'm still learning a lot, but we're figuring how to make a better life for the animals, make the soil better and in turn, a better life for us as farmers."

The Andersons farm about 2,000 acres of corn, soybeans, sorghum, and wheat, and 1,500 acres of pasture in Morris County, Kansas. Their farm is in the heart of the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie. When he was younger, Dennis' dad and grandpa had cattle, but by the time he became active in the farm after graduating from high school, the cow herd was gone; fences had been removed from their fields.

Dennis and his wife Kathy are the fourth generation on his dad's side and fifth generation on his mother's side to farm in Morris County, Kansas. Like many Generation X farmers, he learned how to drive a tractor by pulling a plow in a wide-open field.

"You just had to keep the wheels in the plow furrow and drive straight," he recalls. By the time he'd started farming, the plow had given way to a tandem disk and chisel. Even then, Dennis never understood how working ground made sense. He started no-tilling more than 30 years ago.

"No-till always made perfect sense to me," he says. "I always ask a lot of questions, but I always wondered why the soil is nice and mellow, and then we screw it up by working it in the spring. Why don't we just plant it?"

Why? Being successful with no-till is more than just stopping tillage, however.

He knew cover crops could provide a host of benefits: different root structures, and root exudates that feed the soil biology. In 2010, he bought his local feed dealer's entire inventory of bird seed and planted that mix on 40 acres. Immediately, he began to see how a diverse mix of cover crop roots were recycling nutrients. He started seeding cover crops each year, noticing that soil became more resilient to weather challenges. But the system was missing grazing animals.

"We didn't have any livestock at the time, but we're in grass country and people have yearlings. I had to get fence around it," he says. After renting out cover crop fields for a few years, he bought cows at the sale barn.

Above. Introducing cover crops to his farm has also allowed Dennis to add new revenue streams like honey bees and beef cattle. Adding livestock has given Dennis' daughter Amanda (pictured with her daughter Milyah) an opportunity to join the family farm. Amanda tends to cattle, sheep, and honeybees. Diverse cover crop mixes provide pollinator habitat and give livestock, including Katahdin sheep, a place to graze.

"Livestock make soil health work, but you need to no-till first while the soil structure improves. Then you can run cows on it," he explains. "What goes in the front end comes out the back end, but in a better form."

It was about that time that Amanda expressed interest in helping her dad.

"I was talking to Dad one day and decided I wanted to work with the animals," she says.

Dennis and Amanda now have 50 cows that "work" for them, grazing cover crops or pasture nearly year-round. They keep heifers and raise the steers until they reach market weight.

A few years ago they tweaked the system, adding Katahdin hair sheep to graze in sequence with the cattle. The sheep complement cattle by eating plants the bovines won't touch. They also have hives of honeybees to capture more value from native and introduced flowering plants. Eventually, Amanda aims to add chickens.

Raising animals in harmony with nature is one reason why Amanda returned to the farm. She spends most days working with the livestock; building electric fence, moving sheep and checking cattle.

"We're trying to figure out how to make things better for the animals, better for us, and better for the environment," she says. "They're happy and healthy and wandering around and doing what they should be doing, working for us."

'Crazy ideas.' Dennis has experimented with biological products to feed the soil microbiome. He has even toyed with starting a worm farm to apply worm castings to the soil as a replacement for commercial fertilizer.

He has done research on microbial inoculants and built a small Indigenous Micro Organism Solution brewer, where he uses local soil to create a microbial inoculant that proponents believe can boost soil health and nutrient cycling.

"The amount of research he does is wild. He has all these crazy ideas," Amanda says.

"But that is what makes it fun," Dennis counters. "We're never going to be perfect. We're on a journey, and there is no end." ‡

Agriculture, Livestock/Poultry April 01, 2026

Bees and Beef

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