Continuous corn formed much of the cropping component for Beringer Family Farms from its start in the 1950s. It was mainly used to feed the 1,000 head of feedlot cattle as Lillie Beringer-Crock was growing up on the Cascade, Iowa, farm.
However, she saw more potential for the farm’s cropping system and its sandy soils.
“It sort of happened by accident,” she says. “When I moved home after graduating from college in 2018, a neighbor asked if I wanted to graze some of their cover crops with my cows. So, we custom-grazed that fall after the corn was out.”
Beringer-Crock was hooked, as the cows loved grazing the lush cover crops.
“My heart and passion are with the cows,” she says. “If there’s anything that I can do to have them feed themselves instead of me feeding them, I’m all in.”
She has shifted the farm’s crop acres to a no-till corn and soybean rotation accentuated with a cereal rye cover crop. “We have very sandy ground,” she says. “Continuing to till it every year didn’t make sense.”
After cows calve in a 40-acre field in spring, they move to a soybean stubble field that provides a bovine banquet of lush 6- to 7-inch-high cereal rye.
Depending on the year, the cow-calf pairs can graze the cereal rye stubble for three to four weeks before moving to summer pasture.
Besides saving on feed costs during cereal rye grazing, the resulting manure helps curtail commercial fertilizer applications. Meanwhile, calves love it.
“The sandy ground with a green cover crop is a perfect combination,” Beringer-Crock says. The clean environment curtails disease and keeps the calves healthy and thriving.
The no-till and cover crop combo holds promise for soil health perks, such as decreased erosion and increased water infiltration. Benefits don’t immediately surface, though.
“This is our fourth year into this,” she says. “What I’ve learned is it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It takes a long time to fix what was broken.”
How she does it
Beringer-Crock custom-hires for planting and harvesting her row crops. This saves a sizable investment in equipment. She splits corn acres between silage and grain, and sells soybeans on the cash market. She also raises hay for cattle feed.
Beringer-Crock has varied cover crop seeding techniques between years. In some years, she’s had cereal rye laced with fertilizer aerially applied. Conversely, she also drills cereal rye into cornstalks or soybean stubble following harvest.
Fall droughts — such as what occurred in 2024 — challenge cover crop growth. Still, cereal rye seeded last fall snapped back this spring with excellent growth, Beringer-Crock says.
She also has revamped the farm’s grazing system. With planning and financial assistance through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, she converted 40 acres of cropland to permanent pasture and established a five-paddock rotational grazing system with new watering systems.
Beringer-Crock says the new rotational grazing system mitigates overgrazing, improves soil structure to help grass rest and grow, and creates a natural fertilizer source.
For these efforts, Beringer-Crock was named the 2024 Iowa Conservation Woman of the Year by the Conservation Districts of Iowa.
Social media start
Beringer-Crock didn’t stop there, though. She has revamped the farm’s beef marketing strategy through an online business that ships 21-day dry-aged individual Angus beef cuts to customers nationwide. She also supplies beef to a local restaurant and several schools in the area.
Social media spurred this business.
“When I went to college, I shared with friends about what I did on weekends on the farm,” Beringer-Crock says. “One of my friends told me, ‘Lillie, what you’re doing is super unique. Have you ever thought about sharing it on social media?’ ”
Initially, Beringer-Crock thought what she did wasn’t that special. “Then I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should start an Instagram and Facebook page, and share about my days what I’m doing, and show consumers about how we raise food,’ ” she says.
Beringer Family Farms now has about 80,000 followers on several social media platforms.
“My whole mindset was if one person could learn from something that I’m doing, then it was worth it,” Beringer-Crock says.
Can I buy your beef?
After several months, online visitors asked Beringer-Crock how they could buy her beef. This request — coupled with her purchase of a farm from her grandfather’s estate — spurred Beringer-Crock to think about how she could diversify income and exert more control over her farm’s beef marketing.
So, she began processing her beef at a federally inspected plant that can process small lots of five to 10 steers at one time into individual cuts packaged in clear, vacuum-sealed plastic that Beringer-Crock ships to customers.
“We started selling that way in 2021 with a goal of 10 head the first year,” she says. “We ended up selling 18. Now, we sell about 50 to 60 head a year through this route.” She markets the remainder of the herd through a local sale barn.
Beringer-Crock also opened a farm store in 2024 that sells the farm’s beef, as well as pork and chicken from other local farms. The store also offers the following items, all sourced locally within an hour of the farm:
- eggs, milk and cheese
- fresh greens
- maple syrup
- honey
- baked goods
Direct marketing sales give consumers a full connection to the farm in how an animal is born, raised and finished, Beringer-Crock says.
To gear up for this business, she built a walk-in freezer to store frozen beef before shipping via UPS in boxes cooled by dry ice. She also added a small fall-calving cow herd after launching her beef business to extend inventory over more of the year.
“The longest time frame where we don’t have animals ready is from December to April,” she says. “Otherwise, we can process every month of the year.”
Always outside
For Beringer-Crock, the farm’s transformation fits her lifelong interest in farming.
“My punishment growing up was having to be inside instead of outside,” she says in jest. “I’ve been involved in the farm from a really young age, always helping out.”
Her passion about agriculture is apparent to others, says Addie Manternach, an NRCS district conservationist in Jones County, Iowa.
“She believes our food should tell a story, not just be a label,” Manternach says.