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On this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we’re headed to Basse’s Farms in Colgate, Wis., for Pumpkin Fest 2025!

Blake Basse fills us in on the family’s switch to strip-till and cover crops, and the impact it’s having on their world-famous pumpkins.  For the Basses, their implementation of strip-till and cover crops came at the perfect time. Just a few weeks after planting, their farm was hit with nearly 12 inches of rain in less than 2 days during a “1,000-year” rain event. 

Basse explains why he credits their new system for helping the pumpkins survive and thrive the historic flooding and shares his step-by-step process for making strips through thick cereal rye. 

The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.

Since 1930, Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with profitable solutions. From residue management and fertilizer placement to seedbed preparation, our equipment is designed to maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver a strong return on investment. Explore our full line of planter attachments, precision fertilizer placement options, strip-till units, and stalk rollers at yetterco.com. Let Yetter help you prepare your equipment lineup for success today.

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Full Transcript

Hey, welcome to the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, great to have you with us for another episode. Big thanks to our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast series possible. And today we're headed to Basse's Farms and Colgate, Wisconsin for Pumpkin Fest 2025. Yes, it's that time of year. Blake Basse fills us in on the families switch to strip-till and cover crops, and talks about the impact it's having on their world-famous pumpkins. So for the Basse's, their implementation of strip-till and cover crops came at the perfect time. I mean, just a few weeks after planning, their farm was hit with nearly 12 inches of rain in less than two days during what they called a 1000-year rain event. So I stopped by to ask Blake about his new strip-till system and how it helped the pumpkins survive and thrive during that historic flooding. Blake also talks about his step-by-step process for making strips through thick cereal rye.

Yeah, I guess just the first is how long have you been trying the strip-till with the pumpkin?

Oh man, this is our second year, and I feel like this year we finally got it dialed in and got the right equipment from Yetter and got it all figured out just in time for those historic floods to come through.

Oh yeah. So what was the motivation to try strip-till? First of all, I guess origin story, how long have you guys been growing pumpkins?

Yeah.

And what were you just conventional before then or?

Yeah, more or less conventional. I mean, we've been growing pumpkins, my family, my parents have been doing it, jeez, probably going on 30 years now.

Wow.

Yeah, it's been quite a while and for a long time it was just more conventional, just turning soil over, cultivating through, and then just planting right in, not doing any cover crops or anything different. But yeah, now we decided over many years of challenges with having a good pumpkin crop or a consistent one I should say, we would end up just having pumpkins that just didn't turn out, or you get your big rains and you'd just watch them sit on essentially the mud and yeah, the mud's full of the diseases, the pathogens, and essentially what breaks the pumpkins down.

And yeah, we were like, oh, there's got to be a better way. So my dad, awesome guy, super hard worker, he always like, "I'm the farmer." And this and that and I'm more the analytical guy, I'm kind of like the systems guy, and I was like, "Hey, let's take a look at this maybe there's a better way." So yeah, started to look into the cover crops and everything and saw a couple of guys, I think it was out in Omaha area that this was maybe three or four years ago that were rolling down rye and then planting pumpkins into it. And I was like, oh, that's a pretty genius idea. I was like, let's give that a try.

So last year we didn't strip-till, we just planted right into the rolled rye and I noticed that the pumpkins struggled to come through, soil was a little bit compacted so I was like, we got to do something different. So yeah, spoke to Yetter, got ourselves a couple strip-till units and that was the trick, getting a nice seedbed.

Take me through the process of how you do it. When you plant the cereal rye, about how much and then how you're rolling it, and then when you're making strips and all that.

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we'll usually pick our plot actually about this time the previous year. So I don't know where I think we're going to go actually to the east of this field further we got some plots that way and we'll make sure it's as clean as it can be before we go there weed-wise. And then, yeah, there's no science really with the rye, we just plant it thick because-

[inaudible 00:04:01] or [inaudible 00:04:03]-

A drill, we drill it in. Yep, grain drill it in, and yeah, we put it in thick. I'd have to double check pounds per acre, but it's not what you typically would do. We're just looking for a nice thick cover crop so that when it comes up next year and we're rolling it down, it's like a mat you want it nice and thick because the goal is to roll it down and then strip-till, and then plant your pumpkins in those strips and then those pumpkins will start vining out and growing right on top of that rye mat. Which is really a lot of purposes for that, essentially so weed control has been amazing because you just basically blanket the whole place.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, it just keeps a lot of your soil pathogens. When you get rain events, that's when stuff splashes onto the vines and pumpkins, and that's when the whole process of breaking down pumpkin starts. So that's been just a game changer.

So when are you rolling the rye and do you have your own roller crimper, or how do you do that?

Yeah, yeah. We actually, Ozaukee County, they have a rental thing.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, so we contact them, we rent their roller. We don't have one yet, it's one of those things that we were trialing everything so we're like, maybe we'll purchase one. But now that we know what we know and the proof is in the product here, it's like, yeah, game changer, absolutely. So maybe, well, we got enough equipment laying around, but hey, it's sometimes nice to just own it because it's like, wow. Because you'll call up, "Oh, that guy's using it, maybe when he's done." And you know how it is in farming, it's all timing so it's like, oh man, we got a window before it's going to rain, let's get it in. And then it's like, oh, got to wait another week because so-and-so's using it. But yeah, it's great.

And then when do you make the strips? Because we cover a lot of corn and soybeans so I know that pumpkins is a completely different ball game timing-wise. When are you making the strips and when are you planting the pumpkins and the whole timeline?

Yeah, so we've changed that up as well just many years ago of growing pumpkins, I like to say we're smarter than that, but a lot of it's just trial and error. So over the years I've encouraged my dad, I'm like, "Hey, let's just take some notes here as we go forward." And he is a guy who, he's juggling like a million things at once, and I'm more of like, I like to focus so we balance each other, it's a really good team.

So yeah, I mean essentially what we want to do is we used to plant pumpkins around Memorial Day, and that always seemed to be a little too early so now we plant them all the way to mid-June because what you don't want to have happen is two things. If you plant them too early before people want pumpkins, the vines dry down, the pumpkins are here and then they just sit. And that's just more time for them to start to decay, bacteria, diseases, pathogens start taking hold.

So a couple of things we changed is we pushed that plant date more to mid-June, which is a two-week difference, give or take. We want to roll the rye down probably about five to seven days before we plant and then between that five to seven days, I'll come through and strip-till. One thing I did change with the strip-tilling that I'm going to actually do more of this coming year, I made notes of it, is that I want to probably strip-till right away when I can get out in spring, maybe in April, sometime probably mid-April when the rye is maybe about six to eight inches tall. That way I can kind of make my strips work it up already because I was really not fighting per se, but there's so much rye because when it's six feet tall and you roll it down, there's a lot of organic material. So it might be a good idea to strip-till once early spring, heck even come back in mid-May and then you roll your rye down and just make sure you've got your GPS configured right and you should be hitting those same strips again. That's what I'm going to change I think this coming year.

But yeah, I mean, we plant the rye end of October-ish. Once we get the beans off, usually the soybeans, we'll grain drill our rye in, that will overwinter grows up in the spring strip-till a few times, get your crimper roller, roll down end of May, beginning of June, depending on when you can get out there. And then, yeah, make sure you got your nice seedbed. And then we actually use a corn planter and it's a finger corn planter with our pumpkin seeds, and you just go through and make sure you got your seed counts right, that's a little more technical. Actually, I left that up to my dad. I was like, "Hey, you've been doing that for a long time. We're going to let you keep doing that."

He knows how to handle that.

Yeah, he did. I'm like, you take that. So yeah, I mean between doing all that and mother nature got on our side and everything and things turned out. I mean, I was telling you earlier, man, what a year to actually finally get this dialed in because we've never seen rain like that and talking to a lot of guys around here, never seen rain event like that. You get a literal foot of rain in an 18-hour period, everything was waterlogged, everything was overflowing, rivers were running everywhere, it was unbelievable. And we were freaking out, I'm not going to lie. We were like, in any other year having that event, we would've at least had 50% to 60% loss of our pumpkin crop at a minimum.

I've seen years where we will have some fields total loss with a big rain event, three to five inch rain event, and we were so incredibly blown away when we came out here. And also our patch that's on lower ground, much lower ground than this we did the same protocol over there with the rye and everything, what a difference. I mean, we barely have any rotten pumpkins in a year that typically you would lose so much, so something's working.

Yeah, that's unbelievable. I mean, that rain event was almost a foot of rain in 24 hours, and so-

It was unbelievable.

... even if you didn't make this switch to strip-till and cover crops, it would've been a loss [inaudible 00:10:33] is what you're saying?

It would've been a big loss. I don't know how, but it's one of those things that it's the unknown what it would've been, I know it would've been very bad. But what we had, and we currently have turned out to be really great. So it's one of those things that we don't know for sure, I could pretty much tell you what it would've been, it wouldn't have been good, but thank goodness the timing worked out.

Yeah, these pumpkins look pretty good.

Yeah, thanks.

Now, when you're making the strips, so is the strip-till for you just for a seedbed preparation, or are you applying any nutrients with that?

Yeah, yeah, we're doing some broadcast nutrients. Yeah, you're like 20-20-20, a lot of potash. And then yeah, we've been doing more cover crops too with just general farming and stuff, which we really like a good mix, especially sunflowers in their mix as well because you get a lot of nitrogen back into the soil. And then we've been doing a lot of work on just proper drainage, more field tile seems to be the better in a lot of cases. We have a very heavy soil, so a lot of underneath you've got your blue gray clay so yeah, over the years we've really put a lot of work into just trying to grow the best product that you physically can. And 30 years of, call it trial and error, taking some notes, and it really comes together when you start to figure things out.

Yeah, you're still new to the whole strip-tail thing too, only a couple of years.

Oh, yeah. No, I am no veteran by any means, but I can really see the benefits. And I'm sure we were even talking more so, I mean, we do about 450, 500 acres in total of everything we do. Pumpkins, strawberries, apples, you name it, sweet corn, and then a lot of corn soybeans too for rotational purposes. And yeah, I'm definitely looking into more ways to utilize the benefits of strip-tilling, absolutely. So I'm a fan, a big fan.

So do pumpkins usually follow soybeans in that rotation?

Typically, yeah. I mean, if I can, I'd like to follow corn or wheat because our biggest problem pathogen is phytophthora, and certain other crops are hosts for that as well. So soybeans is technically, from what I've been told a host as well for phytophthora. But soybeans, there's a lot less residual, it's a little bit easier to go off of. Plus, sometimes we can't get the corn off until quite late so it's this balancing act of I would like to go after wheat or corn because phytophthora, a grass it's not the host that it wants to be on. But given certain circumstances, we'll have to choose a clean bean field that's nice and clean. The biggest thing that we fight out here in the pumpkin patch is perennial weeds, your milkweed, your Canadian thistle, some of that stuff.

But yeah, that's usually what we do is we try to pick a good plot sometimes it's soybeans, sometimes it's corn that we'll follow. Sometimes if we can get the corn off earlier, I actually prefer it because we'll leave a lot of that residual matter from your corn harvest on top of the soil, so you've got additional mat, so to speak. And then if you can get your rye through it you've got just more organic matter on top of the soil, which I honestly am a fan of just because more stuff for our pumpkins to sit on. There is a balancing act with that too, because you get too much organic matter on top, and you can get a wet feet effect for the root systems of your pumpkins, which can also be a challenge. And that's something that some other guys have told me about as something to watch out for again, a year two here with pumpkins, they definitely don't like to be too wet so it's a balancing act.

But like I had said earlier, we've been putting in tons of field tile where we can to properly manage and drain and keep that water table lower, which has been really beneficial as well. So I think it's a lot of this coming together, a lot of these things coming together, but the cover crop and our strip-till for planting has really made a difference. And I even saw this year versus the previous year by strip-tilling and getting that perfect seedbed, man, what a difference our pumpkins instantly pop through, looked great, you had a lot of vigor with the root systems and the whole season, everything looked better. Whereas previously, you could see the soil was a little compacted, your rye is pulling a lot out of that soil and then you plant into it, and for whatever reason, the soil can definitely get a little compacted. So hitting it with a strip-till getting your rye to stay where you want it. Yeah, it turned out.

Let's burn a quick time out for a word from our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. Looking for innovative solutions to maximize your farm's productivity? Look no further than Yetter Farm Equipment. They're dedicated to providing farmers with the highest quality equipment from row cleaners and closing wheels, to fertilizer equipment, strip-till units, and Stalk Devastators. Yetter has the tools you need to optimize your farming operation visit yetterco.com, that's Y-E-T-T-E-R-C-O.com to learn more and find a dealer near you. Now, back to the conversation.

It's a good combination the [inaudible 00:16:44] and strip-till.

Yeah, absolutely.

So going back to your strip-till equipment now, was this a custom-built solution you needed from Yetter or tell us a little about the equipment.

Absolutely. Yeah, I was doing a lot of research for a good strip-till unit and also one that we could customize. I reached out to Yetter and I was like, "Hey, do you guys have a toolbar so to speak, or an implement bar?" They're like, "Yep, we got one." And then I was like, "Can I buy just all I need is two strip-till units?" And they're like, "Yeah, why not?" And we slapped them on our bar up to our three-point hitch on our tractor. It did take a little bit of configuring depths because I didn't want to be digging too deep, but I also wanted to be able to agitate the soil just enough so there was a little bit of monkeying around there, but we ended up getting that figured out.

But yeah, I mean, those guys were great to work with, we got our implement from them and after getting it configured and everything, it worked out great because what we do is we take our corn planter and we're on 30 inch rows and we're skipping two rows when we're planting our pumpkins, so I believe that's 90 inches in between. Because that's the other thing with pumpkins too, if you plant them too thick you're going to get a lot of vine and canopy, which isn't good for disease management, airflow. And then also it seems that the plants just kind of try to fight each other and they put out more vine than pumpkin. So yeah, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, man, there's a lot of variables, a lot of nuance that goes into it.

Complex.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's fun to talk, I got my Hayride drivers that are taking people out to the patch and this and that, and I have a lot of these same conversations with them and my tractor drivers, they love having those tidbits of knowledge to share with the customers. And some of the customers, they just keep asking questions they're like, man, I never knew the amount of effort, and thought, and work that goes into a pumpkin that they're putting on their porch or carving up with their kids. So it's fun, I like talking about it because a lot of people they don't know all that goes into a pumpkin.

Yeah, I'm going be thinking about this when I make my lantern.

Yeah, there you go.

So about how deep are you making the strips with the strip-till? You said you didn't want to go too deep.

I don't want to go too deep, I'm at four and a half inches, and my goal is just to agitate and get just a really nice seedbed on top. So yeah, I'm not going very deep.

And you said the strip-till bar applies to nutrients too?

Oh, no, no, that's separate.

Touch up?

Yeah, we just do a broadcast and then, yeah, with crop rotationals and previous years of other cover crops, usually we can keep our nutrient level pretty darn good. I mean, what pumpkins really seem to want more than anything else is potash. So you always want to make sure you've got enough of that worked into your soil or integrated one way or another.

And you said about 20 pounds of that you use?

Usually, yeah. Yeah, per acre seems to be about enough typically.

I guess just kind of wrapping this conversation up, so all these pumpkins that we see here, these go towards the Basse's Farm.

Yep, you got it.

And tell us about that, that keeps you pretty busy here in [inaudible 00:20:05], right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, over the years, my parents started it back in 1996, they started a corn maze, and then from there they added a couple bouncy houses and then a straw pit, and then the petting zoo, and then a little train that goes around our pond, one thing after another because winters are long in Wisconsin, so we always think, Hey, that was fun this year, people seem to have a great time, what can we offer people in the coming years? So yeah, now we've got two corn mazes, three different train rides, hay rides, pig races, live performances, I think we've got lumberjacks coming this coming weekend. I think we've got 65 things that families can do and enjoy, and we've got a beer bar and a wine trough, we've got all kinds of fun stuff for just all ages and stuff.

And the pumpkins are really, what is the center point around it, it's Pumpkin Fest so yeah, it's a lot of fun. And I think we've got 40 acres of pumpkins, this is a 20 acre plot. We've got another eight over there, and about another 12. We've kind of got them all over the place just because that's the other thing too, we want to mitigate our risk of, you've got some in your lower fields, you've got some in the higher fields, you've got some closer, you've got some farther away, so it all just kind of over the years too, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. We've had years too, where you get your drought and you don't really have much that comes out of the high ground, and then your low ground makes up for that.

So yeah, it's a science, it's a lot of fun. And yeah, we've got all kinds of other fun stuff too at Pumpkin Fest. Yeah, we used to give a pumpkin away per admission to our Pumpkin Fest, and that damn near killed us.

Oh, I bet.

Actually, it ruined my dad's rotator cup on his shoulder, he had to have surgery. And then everyone was like, ah, complaining more about a free pumpkin than even now when they have to... We keep them cheap, they're $4.39 each. But yeah, it was unsustainable, but it got our name out there, which was kind of nice.

Yeah, it's a good marketing strategy.

Yeah, it totally was. But yeah, it was like, wow, this isn't sustainable. Maybe it is now because we have the ability to grow what seems to be consistent and really nice pumpkins. In the past, we weren't on rye and we had a lot of other things that weren't going our way. And there were years where I'm like, we're going to run out of pumpkins because they're rotting too quick, or this and that. I know we have other farmers that we know that were buying pumpkins off and all that stuff.

Yeah, these look great.

But yeah, check this out, man. This is untouched over here.

Wow. And you probably have tons of leftover pumpkins, right? Or you use them all?

Believe it or not, use them all pretty much this whole field we'll just about use every pumpkin out here. Now, some are a little bit smaller, some aren't quite "marketable" but just about all of them we will end up using. And what we don't use, we'll just till back into the soil, it seems to just be a good way to re-nutrient what you got out here for your next rotation.

But yeah, after the historic floods and everything, I couldn't believe how well this turned out. And you can see we've got our ryes still laying down there, and we got our pumpkins all sitting on top of that rye there. So it's really helped with disease pressure, weed pressure, it keeps our pumpkins clean too. So now that they're on the rye, when we go to pick them, there's barely any dirt on them which is wonderful for customers because when they're taking their pumpkins into their car, last thing they want is dirt covering their seats or all over the back. So I can't speak enough to how much better the whole strip-till rye process has been in terms of just quality all around, which has been great.

Yeah. You touched on how your fields were resilient in that historic flooding. Can you elaborate on that as to how big of a benefit that's been with strip-till and cover crops?

Yeah, and these are one of the unknowns, but what I do know is the rain event of that magnitude in the past, we would've seen at least a 50%, 60%, even 70% loss in our fields. We were shocked and during the flooding event, we were quite worried because we knew what happened in the past, but we came out here after those historic rains, we had a foot of rain in a two-day window, and if it wasn't for all of our pumpkins sitting on rye and strip-tilling and getting them off to such a great start to sit on the rye, and stay on the rye, and disease pressures down, we would've had a much different outcome if it wasn't for strip-tilling using that cover crop rye. I mean, that's the only thing I can chalk it up to because these are the big differences we just made.

And fortunately enough, obviously we didn't know that the rain event was coming, but we are sure happy that we decided to make the changes we made because I believe that it really made all the difference in the end of the day.

All right, that'll wrap things up for this edition of the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast. I had a lot of fun visiting with Blake out at Basse's Farms in Colgate, Wisconsin. And I got to tell you, their Pumpkin Fest is incredible, it's like they have a mini amusement park that they've built over the years since launching it in 1997, so cool stuff there. Big thanks to Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast possible and for all things strip-till head to striptillfarmer.com. I'm Noah Newman, we'll see you next time.