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Family partners with cooperative to turn nuisances into benefitsBy Jennifer M. Latzke
When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade--or at least that's the way the adage goes. So, when life handed Eric and Cindy Woofter and their family a pasture full of soapweed yuccas, they looked around to see what they could make from this bountiful nuisance resource and found the answer in renewable energy. An efficient idea The Woofters, of Scott City, Kan., have a herd of Shorthorn cow-calf pairs that they raise for club calves. A few years ago, the family purchased a half section of pasture that was heavily infested with yuccas and needed improvements before they could turn out their cattle. As the family was improving the pasture they found a piece of machinery called a Road Boss, an implement normally used to build roadways. The Road Boss has a serrated scraper and a flat scraper, which simultaneously pulls out any obstructions and smoothes over the resulting hole. It wasn't long before Woofter realized that the implement could also be used to efficiently and safely clear yucca plants from his pasture. "When you typically cut off a yucca plant with a shovel, there are mounds of dirt left behind," Woofter explained. The soil is quite beneficial for native grass species, though. The Road Boss will catch a yucca plant in its front serrated teeth, yanking it from the ground. The rear scraper then covers the hole up and spreads out the mound of soil into a flat patch. After the next good rain, Woofter said the native grasses grow quickly over that patch of soil. Another side benefit is that it aerates the ground, he added. "Yuccas are also good hiding places for rattlesnakes, and we hope that by clearing the pastures of them, they'll head to other grounds," Woofter said. "It's important to know, though, that we don't just clear cut all the yuccas in a pasture," Woofter added. Instead, they do leave some yuccas behind as a soil erosion deterrent in rocky areas. Most of those areas are also dangerous to try to get equipment into anyway, Woofter said. Their goal is to increase the usable forage in a pasture, improving it not only for livestock but also wildlife as well. The evolution of a business plan Once the Woofters had cleared their own pasture, an idea began to form that would bring in added income and teach the children the value of hard work. "Our kids are involved in summer athletics and it's impossible for them to have jobs, but we wanted to teach them good work habits," Woofter said. So, the family went to their local banker and presented their idea--a business of clearing pastures of yucca plants using their Road Boss implement. "We created a business plan, and ran through trial runs to see how many tons we could harvest and the numbers worked well on paper," Woofter said. Typically they charge the landowner per tractor hour used and on a flat per acres cost to cover their expenses. They work on the weekends and on their days off from school and their day jobs where Woofter works for Sharp Brothers Seeds in Healy and Cindy is in customer service. "I run the tractor, harvesting the yuccas with the Road Boss," Woofter said. "Cindy and our daughter Justine run the Bobcats loading the yuccas into trailers for transportation. Our other daughter Jess is our truck driver, and our son Jarrett is our mechanic." Cindy also manages the family's books and tracks expenses. "We really have to work out the costs," she said. To keep the costs low, the Woofters make sure to carve out four or five hours at a time to clear pasture so that they aren't burning fuel driving 20 miles to spend 30 minutes cutting yuccas. They also eat a lot of meals in the pasture, Woofter said. Most important, though, is the priceless lesson of work ethics and family bonding they're teaching their children, the couple added. As the news of the Woofters' new business spread through the community, so did the number of onlookers who drove 20 miles into the country to see the Woofters in action. "The cars would stop and people would just watch us out here," Woofter said. "The coffee shop talk was crazy, but soon we could show that we could double or triple the grazing capacity of a pasture." Typical stocking rates in this west central Kansas area are one cow per eight acres, Woofter said. "We have many pastures in the community that are not in good shape," Woofter said. "By clearing them, we can increase the value of the property for cattlemen and we can create native grass seed fields for Sharp Brothers Seeds." After the Woofters clean up a yucca-infested pasture, the property value can double, and even triple. On average, they can clear almost two tons of yuccas per acre. A renewable biomass source The Woofters soon realized that just clearing the yucca plants would not be enough, though. They had to find a way to dispose of the tons of weeds left behind. Through his work at Sharp Brothers Seed in Healy, Woofter knew that the new Prairie Fire Bioenergy Cooperative in town was researching new renewable biomass sources of energy such as corn stover and prairie grass. With this new method of clearing yucca plants, Woofter approached Prairie Fire to see if the company would be interested in using yuccas in their research. Lance Sherwood, general manager of Prairie Fire, said the idea of using yucca plants as a cellulose source had been tossed around before, but no one had an efficient way of harvesting the spiky plants. "No one had been able to harvest them before without destroying the plant or the land in the process," Sherwood said. But, he tested some of the yuccas the Woofters had already harvested and found that there was a likelihood that they could work well. Today, Prairie Fire pays the Woofters per ton of yuccas and has developed a process to turn the once inconvenient weed into a heating pellet for use in pellet stoves. Sherwood explained that the Woofters will spread out the harvested yuccas into long rows in the pasture so that the plants can dry down to 14 to 15 percent moisture content. This usually takes about a month or so in the summer. Once the yuccas are sufficiently dry, a two-man crew comes to the pasture with a Vermeer tub grinder that can process 40 tons of yuccas per hour into a smaller particle size for shipping to its Healy, Kan., facility. "We've been experimenting, and we've found that yucca's ash content is ideal for heating use," Sherwood said. "The dirt in the yucca roots is clean and the plant has a low percentage of binding qualities. Its BTU value is very high, too." Because of yucca's low binding qualities, though, Prairie Fire had to research and develop a way to blend them with other cellulose sources. Prairie Fire found that combining the yuccas with corn stover, wheat straw and other plants allows for compression of the mixture into a pellet form. These pellets can then be used in furnaces. "As a heating fuel it works well, and when blended with other products yucca adds to the overall BTU value and reduces ash content," Sherwood said. Prairie Fire has worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its research and development of this new fuel source, but there are still some questions to be answered. For example, Sherwood said, they still don't know if there's a better season than others for harvesting the yuccas for cellulose. There may be other cellulose sources that can be blended with yuccas to create a better product. And, there's also the contracting, harvesting and transportation process that needs to be ironed out in order to get the yuccas from the pasture to the plant efficiently and economically. "Some people could ship their yuccas to the plant, Eric's brought several truckloads to our plant in Healy," Sherwood said. He advised anyone with any questions about contracting yucca plants for sale to call him at 620-398-2370, or to visit Prairie Fire's website at www.prairiefirecoop.com. Heating pellets made from yucca and other biomasses are already available for purchase from Prairie Fire as well. Jennifer M. Latzke can be reached by phone at 620-227-1807 or by e-mail at jlatzke@hpj.com. 9/29/08 Date: 9/24/08
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