Largest farm in Minnesota to receive Certified Producer award

5L Farms north of Gully received Minnesota Water Quality Certified farm award. They are the largest farm in Minnesota to receive this award. 5L Farms, with all the Vettleson names starting with “L” was started by the father Lealand Vettleson. The other four names are his son Lawrence and Lealand’s grandsons: Lawrence ”Gus”, Lealand “Lee” and Lon.

Lawrence Vettleson and his son, Lon now operate the farm.

Lawrence started farming when he was 16 years old. He received land north of Trail in 1955 from his grandmother. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Crookston Ag School. He was the manager of a cotton farm in Arizona for ten years before coming back to Minnesota where he started milking cow, farming and coaching track at Red Lake County Central.

They started working to get into the Minnesota Agriculture Water Quality Certification Program (MAWQCP). That is a voluntary opportunity for farmers and agricultural landowners to take the lead in implementing conservation practices that protect the water. Those who implement and maintain approved farm management practices will be certified.

The Vettlesons received a large map to pin point all the parcels of the land that they owned. They had to look at several different factors:

•Physical field properties like potential to erode, organic matter, leaching potential

•Nutrient management for N and P

•Tillage management

•Pest management

•Irrigation management

•Drainage management

•Conservation practices installed or needed to correct a resource problem.

This year they had 2000 acres in wheat, 2000 acres in soy beans, 4850 acres in edible black turtle beans and 1000 acres in sunflowers. That is the last field that they have had to do this fall.

They also have 600 acres north of Trail that they are using for wild life restoration. They are getting it back to the way it was years ago. When they harvest their crops they left patches in the fields for wildlife. 

The Vettlesons’ worked with Agronomists from Gully and Oklee to get the rate of how much fertilizer to apply each year to their soil. They have mostly peat and mineral soil primarily. They don’t do any fall application of fertilizer because they felt that it would be wasted during the run-off in the spring and in many cases they apply fertilizer below the recommended rates.  They do no-till saving them 2/3 of the amount of fuel each year. No-till farming is a way of growing crops from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage. Reduced tillage on their fields keep soil loss below the allowable soil loss is really critical, especially on their fields that have peat or mineral soils.  

They spent time with Glen Kajewski. He works part-time as the Area Certification Specialist working on the Ag Water Quality Certification Program in 12 Soil and Water Conservation Districts in northwest Minnesota through the East Polk Soil and Water Conservation District, SWCD. He does the checking for the growers to see if they are doing a good job of land stewardship.

Whole-farm planning and evaluation assistance for water quality is provided to farmers that apply for certification; a water quality risk assessment is done for every parcel and every crop in the farm operation.  As needed they help producers develop site-specific solutions for risks to water quality.

All of the fields for each crop grown by the Vettleson’s had to score at least 8.5 out of a possible 10 points to be eligible to get certified.  That’s a pretty high standard – every field and every separate crop grown on that field had to score better than 8.5.   5L Farms active cropland fields ranged in scoring from 8.57-9.52.

The advantage of being certified is that for 10 years “Certified farms are considered to be in compliance with any new State water quality rules or laws and considered to be meeting their contributions to any targeted reductions of pollutants during the period of their certification.”