Working For Wildlife Habitat Hero: Dangelo Family Farms by Sophia Sorboro, Ohio Partner Biologist, Pollinator Partnership

As part of Pollinator Partnership’s Working for Wildlife series, we have interviewed and are sharing the experiences of agricultural producers who have successfully undertaken projects that benefit pollinators and other wildlife with the help of technical and/or financial support through conservation provisions of the USDA’s Farm Bill. We hope their stories encourage and empower readers (including you!) and help foster a better understanding of the programs available to help support thriving food and ecosystems that we all rely upon!

In this installment, it is our privilege to feature Habitat Hero Jimmy Giannone of Dangelo Family Farms. We invite you to join us in learning about Dangelo Family Farms’ habitat journey in the interview below. You can also watch the accompanying video featuring the story of this inspiring Habitat Hero below:

Q: Tell us about your farm.

This is Dangelo Family Farms, in Columbiana County, Summitville, Ohio. We have about 110 acres total. The farm has been in the family for over a hundred years. I would be the fourth generation but there are five generations around the farm right now. We have predominantly hay and pasture ground for cows but we also have 20 acres of forest land, with probably 20 to 30 acres set aside for wildlife. We also have around 30 acres of cropland as well. The cropland is rented out, they do no-till corn, beans, and hay. So, we don't do the cropping, but everything for the livestock, pasture, hay, and the forestry, we do ourselves.

In addition to the farm, we also have a native plant business, Deep Roots Native Nursery, where we grow all native Ohio plants. Last year was the first year I did it, and we had around 66 species that we propagated. We have plans to expand that this year. A lot of the seed that we have grown is collected from the farm here or surrounding farms in this area.

We take an ecosystem approach, and we utilize everything on the land in the best way we can. The overall goal is managing for wildlife and habitat. That's how we look at things here.

Q: Why is this farm important to you?

A big portion of why this farm is important to me is because of the sentimental value and the history with the family. My goal in my lifetime is to put back as much into the land as possible. Having a chunk of land that I can contribute and do that on means a lot to me. I'm honored and thrilled to be able to maintain that here on the property and also have something to pass down to our future generations.

As far as providing things to the economy and locally we've only been farming for three years. There was about a fifteen-year break from my grandfather until now. I've only been doing this for three years but being able to raise livestock and provide that to family, friends, and neighbors, that's important to me. You know, things are expensive now with the economy and being able to provide something that's locally raised and grown at a reasonable price is a good thing to have as well.

Q: Why did you want to become a farmer and what first made you interested in pollinator conservation?

I wanted to be a farmer and manager here on the farm for a lot of reasons, but a big one that strikes me is Aldo Leopold’s quote, “...game can be managed through creative use of the axe, plow, cow, fire, and gun”. I want to be a steward of the land because I think agriculture, conservation, soil health, and environmental health can all play hand in hand. Being able to have a chunk of land and to try to utilize every single one of those components really drove me to want to do this. I can utilize all these tools to benefit the land, benefit the local economy, benefit us as a family, all while benefiting the ecosystem. That's not to say that just by getting cows you're benefiting the ecosystem. It is through the use of wise management. The conservation practices that we utilize with our cows and the conservation practices we do in the forest are all playing a role in ecosystem health. That's what we focus on and has been my driving desire of why I want to do this on cold mornings like today.

Q: Since you started farming, what differences have you observed in farming practices or food access in the community?

I think farming practices have definitely started to adapt more towards soil health. One of the differences that we've had from generation to generation with farming practices is historically, whenever my grandparents had livestock here, they were on the field out in front of us for the majority of the year. The cows were in one big open area which led to them walking the same path back to the pond. You can see the lines on that hillside are all livestock trails from the last 60 -70 years and that's because they were not implementing rotational grazing at a level that we're doing here today.

One of the big improvements that we see with the farm is implementation of rotational grazing and going from essentially two very large paddocks to now having essentially half the acreage and 30 to 40 different paddocks that we rotate so they're not on one chunk of ground for an extended period of time creating damage. We've also gotten away from conventional tillage in our row crop systems and are geared more towards reduced tillage or no tillage. I think people are really starting to realize that improving the land is improving your crops, which is improving your operations.

Q: What pollinator friendly or other conservation practices have you implemented on your land?

The list of conservation practices that we have done on our farm is starting to get fairly extensive. We have done quite a bit of pollinator habitat, tree plantings, a lot of forestry work like invasive species control, forest stand improvement, and early successional habitat. In our pastures, we do rotational grazing, watering systems like water line and watering tanks that help improve our rotational grazing. We've also done fencing and inter-seeding of our pastures, as well as installation of bird boxes and structures for wildlife. We've done quite a bit of those conservation practices.

We also are doing a tree removal to promote oak and hickory growth, which is going to benefit pollinators. This spring we have a tree planting plan. We're going to be planting about 700 trees back north of the woods area. We have our conservation practices spread out across the farm. Within our grazing system this winter we are planting native grass and wildflower pasture that is going to be utilized to graze and for forage.

There's a lot of really good benefits to the livestock and, again, having the native grasses with some wildflowers in there is a huge benefit to pollinators as compared to an overall cool season or introduced grass field. We look forward to seeing how those projects are going to turn out, and we're really happy with what we've done so far and the impact that we've seen.

Q: What was your motivation to implement these practices and have you noticed a positive impact to pollinators and other wildlife?

The motivation I have to implement these practices on our farm is overall ecosystem health. Since we've implemented our pollinator habitat, done some of this forestry work, and incorporated different land uses on our farm, we have really noticed quite a few different species on our property. Since I planted the pollinator habitat we see all of the native bees. We've never noticed the number of different bees before. We always just thought, “oh, honeybees are going to be out there,” but there are tons and tons of small little bees that we're seeing on all of the wildflowers. It is really cool to see pollinators in their larval stage on some of our plants out there.

Out in the field, since we've managed the land differently, we have a lot of grasshopper sparrows. We get bobolinks and meadowlarks everywhere. I stumbled across a grasshopper sparrow nest and I made sure the cows couldn’t bother it and I kept an eye on it for a couple of days. It hatched and there were four little babies in there, so that was really cool to see.

Then on our forest land, we see all of the neotropical migrating songbirds during spring migration, those are a big favorite. We've gotten Kentucky warblers, Blackburnian warblers, Wilson's warblers and stuff that we all see during the migration period.

It’s a treat to see that on land that we're managing and knowing that it’s benefiting things like that.

Q: What other types of changes, positive outcomes, or benefits have you seen after implementing your practices?

So definitely in the areas that we've been doing pollinator habitat there is increased water infiltration, which I think has been huge. For example, behind me we have our roof runoff structure. Our downspouts run out there and I know that the pollinator plants and the deep roots are helping with that water infiltration. Wildlife has also been drawn to our property from the forestry work we’re doing. We get a lot more migratory songbirds stopping over and utilizing that area and the pollinator diversity (the butterflies, the bees, the dragonflies) has also increased - everything that we have around us has been a treat to observe over the years.

This has been the best year that I've seen for monarchs. I know when I was spot mowing out in our pasture where we had some multiflora rose coming up, just driving around our 25-acre field out here, I had to have seen at least 30-40 monarchs. We have eggs all over a lot of the milkweed. So it's been a banner year for them here on our farm.

In our warm season grass field, we have seen how it benefits livestock. With introduced and cool season grasses, they produce the best in the spring and in the fall. During the heat of the summer, we go through what's called a summer slump, where there is a dip in forage production. During the summer slump, our native grasses produce a ton of nutrient-dense forage for our livestock. There's also native wildflowers, such as the Helianthus and Silphium families which include things like sunflower species, cup plant, and compass plant. They have really high nutritional and protein values for livestock. We are going to incorporate some into the mix.

I think a big part of that comes from the deep root systems pulling up nutrients from the soil that our cool season grasses can't get to. I've seen time and time again where I let cows into a cool season field, and they'll walk by a bunch of orchard grass and go to native Deer Tongue Grass.

As for the pollinator benefits within the forest, a lot of people don't think of trees as relating to pollinators, they think of wildflowers. Our trees, like many oak species, act as host species for countless caterpillars. Our Oak-Hickory forest provides a lot to the caterpillar and larval stages of butterflies and moths. White Oak is a keystone species; you can see how much the ecosystem relies on it in the springtime during bird migration. Migrant birds heavily populate the treetops of the white oaks, feeding on the larvae of pollinators and other insects. It's cool to see that go full circle.

Q: Describe how your farm benefitted from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), and/or other programs and how did you first learn about this support? If applicable, which type of NRCS Programs did you choose to work with?

We are currently enrolled in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) through our local NRCS office. Through EQIP, the practices we implemented are practices that help address resource concerns such as livestock health, soil health, and plant productivity. We did a lot of improvements that are going to improve our grazing operation and the ability to implement intensive rotational grazing on the farm. Which, in turn, helps our grasslands. So, rotational grazing or prescribed grazing was a practice. I rotated the cows. I still do about every day or every other day. We've done the perimeter fencing for the cows. We've done the watering system which was livestock pipeline and waterers. I've done an above ground water line and watering tubs, so that we can move them every time we move the cows. I've done a lot of forestry work through EQIP as well that helped improve wildlife habitat and the forestry conditions, such as invasive species control, forest stand improvement, early successional habitat, and tree plantings. Going through EQIP has been a blessing. I am not going to say we couldn't do this without EQIP, but it sure makes management easier and allows us to speed the process up. I heard about EQIP through a local Soil and Water Conservation District office and through my work. I've always been a partner with NRCS, so I knew of the programs, but never participated as a client and was good to go through that process.

Through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), one of the things we're going to be implementing is inter-seeding forbs into our pasture. One of the things we did in EQIP was a native grass pasture planting. So, we're going to focus on the rest of the pasture and inter-seed some forbs to improve grass quality and grazing quality.

I'm going to do more structures for wildlife. We're going to put a wood duck box up and some bluebird boxes around the field. The wood duck box will be on our pond. In the woods, I'm doing a small tree planting that was in a forest opening where we had to cut some trees down due to oak wilt. It made a big opening, so I want to add some different species and increase the diversity in the woods in that spot. I'm also adding a couple acres of pollinator habitat and monarch butterfly habitat enhancement in some set-aside ground we have out in the woods.

Q: From your experience, what would you say other landowners can expect when working with NRCS, SWCDs, or other programs?

It depends on what you're asking for when you go in there. Soil and Water Conservation Districts and NRCS are there to provide technical assistance to the landowner. Meaning that even if you're not interested in a financial assistance program like EQIP, you can still go to NRCS for help. NRCS can help write a grazing management plan even if you don't want to do any federal programs. They can do an assessment and come up with a tool that tells you how many acres you need for the number of cows and your forage production.

They can help get you on track and make a plan with you to meet your goals for your property over time. It can help you make management decisions, which is going to help you financially. The biggest takeaway to me is that your local offices are the technical service experts. If you have a question, those should be the folks that we go to, and you should expect good quality, science-based answers and explanations for things to implement on your farm.

They can come out and do field visits and shoot some ideas at you and kind of help you decide for yourself, or if you are a brand new beginner farmer and you don't know what you can do or what the possibilities are, they'll come out and do an assessment with you and help you develop a plan from scratch. Especially as a beginner farmer or somebody that's new into this, you need to heavily weigh on the people that have that experience.

Q: What is something you wish you knew before going through this process, especially in terms of habitat establishment and long-term management?

One of the things I wish I knew, well I kind of knew...but I didn't realize to what level... is that whenever you really started doing pollinator habitat establishment, patience is everything. I think people can do everything right and have a failed seeding. You can do everything wrong and have a great seeding. Once you put seed on the ground, it's in Mother Nature's hands, but don't give up on it for a couple years, because sometimes seed can sit dormant for a while and pop up after two or three years. Not everyone in my family is super into all the wildflowers and everything. So whenever I do something like pollinator habitat, I tend to want the quickest results and the most beautiful flowers so somebody can drive by and say “oh man that was beautiful!”. That's not really the reality of it and that's not my goal to begin with, so it's important to keep your goals. They will kind of help you stay grounded and realistic, but patience is everything when doing anything with conservation and any environmental work.

Q: What is some advice you would give to others interested in implementing pollinator friendly conservation practices on their land?

Some advice I'd give to somebody interested in doing some pollinator habitat or any pollinator conservation practices is to think outside the box and go into everything with an open mind. Understand that patience is everything. You may have to try things one or two times. You may have to reseed things. Also, pollinator habitat isn't just planting wildflowers. There's a lot of other pollinator-friendly practices that you can do around the farm that are going to make a big difference. Things like reduced herbicide usage, vegetation management, and timed mowings can all benefit pollinators. Identify what you have on your property and just recognize it and know the value that it holds for pollinators. So just getting out there and figuring out what you have, that's a big step in pollinator conservation.

Q: What is your favorite pollinator or wildlife species that you've seen in the habitat you've created?

Pollinator species-wise, whenever we did our pollinator planting we instantly noticed all the different bees that we had - like native bee species. I can't identify every one but I knew we had a diversity of them. We started to get some moths too and a lot of spiders as well. Of course, the monarch butterflies and all the caterpillars we see. As far as non-insect wildlife species goes; my favorite species is going to be a grassland bird.

I do love my grasshopper sparrows and bobolinks probably the most because I see them every day out in the pasture. But out in the woods during the spring migration, we do get a lot of neotropical songbirds. I can walk out in the woods and get 50 to 60 different species of songbirds! I've seen a Wilson's warbler and cerulean warbler. Those are two of my favorite songbirds. Cerulean warblers were actually nesting in our woods!

Thank you for joining us in reading this installment of Pollinator Partnership’s Working for Wildlife blog and special thanks to Jimmy Giannone of Dangelo Family Farms for sharing their Habitat Hero story! Watch the Habitat Hero video featuring Dangelo Family Farms.

This video series is made possible through funding and support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service. The USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

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To learn more about financial and technical assistance available to famers and landowners visit: pollinator.org/nrcs-regional-partner-biologists or https://www.farmers.gov/

Thank you again to Jimmy Giannone for sharing their Habitat Hero story! To read the full interview with Dangelo Family Farms check out our blog post here: https://www.pollinator.org/blog/dange...

To find out more about Dangelo Family Farms and their operations check out the links below

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To learn more about financial and technical assistance available to famers and landowners visit: pollinator.org/nrcs-regional-partner-biologists or farmers.gov  

This video series was created by Pollinator Partnership (P2). To learn more about P2’s mission and how you can help conserve pollinators, please visit the links below: