Solar farms can produce energy while supporting livestock, local food systems, and healthier landscapes. But making that combination work takes much more than putting sheep behind a fence. In this episode of The Nature Stack, host Erin Delawalla, founder of Land Steward Partners, sits down with Brooke Watson of Illinois Solar Grazing. Brooke shares her unexpected path from college athletics to farming, the conservation values she inherited from her grandmother, and how she and her husband, Chauncey, built solar grazing into their family’s diversified farm business. At the time of the conversation, their operation was grazing more than 500 acres across 16 solar sites in eight Illinois counties. Brooke explains the daily logistics behind that work—from travel and water monitoring to animal care—and why solar grazing should be treated as a paid professional service rather than an exchange for free feed. Erin and Brooke also explore what developers can do to make sites easier to graze, why native seed mixes need to fit the realities of solar infrastructure, and how cover crops and thoughtful grazing can support the transition from row crops to perennial vegetation. They discuss opportunities for beginning farmers, the importance of mentorship, and the challenges of balancing farm work, an off-farm career, and motherhood. This conversation brings The Nature Stack’s central idea to life: land can create several forms of value at once, and good stewardship helps connect food, energy, ecology, farm livelihoods, and healthy people. When we align incentives appropriately, the land can produce cash flows while also providing habitat for wildlife, resilience for neighboring communities through water management, and keep people working in rural communities.
Connect with Land Steward Partners: https://www.landstewardpartners.com/
Connect with Brooke at Illinois Solar Grazing: https://www.illinoissolargrazing.com/
American Solar Grazing Association: https://solargrazing.org/
The Nature Stack Episode 1 Transcript
Solar Grazing with Brooke Watson
Host Erin Delawalla Guest Brooke Watson
Brooke Watson 00:00
Mowing companies are not mowing when it is best for the native prairie plants and their life cycle and when they're flowering or around when they're seeding. Introducing animals and animal disturbance is one of the greatest ways to help the land rejuvenate.
Erin Delawalla 00:15
Welcome to the Nature Stack Podcast. I'm your host, Erin Delawalla, founder of Land Steward Partners. The Nature Stack is about building a future where nature is infrastructure. We talk with the people bringing together land, ecology and capital to create real economic and environmental value. Because healthy landscapes don't just support nature—they produce food and energy, store water and carbon, and make our communities more resilient. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much, Brooke, for being here today and joining me for a conversation about your work with agrivoltaics and your family's farm.
I'm really excited to have this conversation and I think others are going to be really interested to learn more about what you're working on. So I want to start with giving you a chance to tell us a little bit about your background and where your connection to this work begins.
Brooke Watson 01:03
Thanks so much for having me, Erin. Even though I'm now a farmer, working in agrivoltaics and solar grazing, and then also my day job, which is working for the DeKalb County Soil and Water Conservation District, I did not grow up on a farm. I actually grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago in Glenview, Illinois. I was really fortunate, though. We lived in a home that was right off of the north branch of the Chicago River and also next to a park that had a little bit of a forest preserve.
So from an early age I was outside, probably much to my mom's dismay, like fibbing about how much time I was spending along the banks of the Chicago River. And this is before they really cleaned it up. And so nature and kind of interest in the natural world has always been kind of part of how I'm wired and who I am. My grandmother Gloria Buzard also was a conservation advocate. I took it for granted growing up. She was just my grandma, but she was really a pioneer in her conservation work in Glenview.
And she was part of a group called the Frog and Fern Ladies who helped save the Grove, which is now a National Historic Landmark. It's one of the only kind of preserves in Illinois that has all of Illinois native ecosystems, like oak forest, savannah, prairie, and then wetland, all in one area. And it was the home of a naturalist, Robert Kennicott. He and his son laid the foundation for a lot of conservation work and natural sciences, not just in Illinois, but across the country. Some of their work is in the Smithsonian.
So I grew up kind of with her as a role model, spending a lot of time at The Grove. I didn't know it, but I was getting a little bit of a crash course in conservation and recognizing that maybe not everyone appreciates the land like I do and like my family did. Fast forward, I attended college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I hate to admit it, but I did fit the Chicago stereotype: prior to my college career, I had not spent a lot of time in rural areas or outside Chicagoland and in the central and southern part of Illinois.
My college roommate Nancy was from a small town called Franklin, Illinois, just outside Springfield. And her dad was a hog farmer. And so that was kind of my first experience getting to know someone who grew up with a rural background and around farming. But it wasn't at that point a time where I ever thought that my career or future would ever intersect with agriculture the way it has. I actually was studying recreation, sport, and tourism and was preparing for a career in sport management. So I grew up playing softball.
I played softball at the University of Illinois and then parlayed that into working in college athletics. I spent time not just in Illinois in college athletics, but working at the NCAA in Indianapolis and then also Bradley University in Peoria. And so I had about a 10-year career working in marketing and promotions. Loved my time there. And while I was in central Illinois professionally, I also found myself living on a hobby farm. I started to raise chickens, and that was really the first time I started to think about where my food comes from.
I grew a big garden, a friend taught me how to can. And it was like the light bulb went off: there's a better way to grow food, raise your own food. Not just from a health standpoint, but also from a taking-care-of-the-land standpoint. But again, at this point I did not recognize how my background would intersect with agriculture, energy, and conservation. So I ended up just before 2020 reconnecting with a college acquaintance Chauncey Watson the fourth who is a sixth generation farmer in DeKalb, Illinois. Next thing we're head over heels in love and getting married.
And I moved back north to DeKalb and joined him on the family farm. So here now, we just had our first child, Chauncey the Fifth back in November. So we're really proud now to be a seventh generation family farm. But what's unique about Chauncey and his parents, who also actively farm with us, is that they farm on the same property as his ancestors when they first settled and came to the area. So since 1856, his family's been on the same piece of land, which is pretty rare. But beyond the main homestead, we do not own a lot of land anymore.
And so really how Chauncey and his family has made their living farming is by being diverse and not just relying on crops. They grow and sell hay, corn, and soybeans. They also got into raising sheep and sheep production and have built a really unique market for locally raised lamb that they sell from the farm. Because those parts of farming aren't year-round, that's not enough to sustain a family. So they also have a commercial mowing business and then a commercial snow plowing business. So that's kind of how my husband and his family grew up and kept themselves busy and maintained a diverse income stream throughout the year.
Despite not being a big farming setup and not owning a lot of land. Fast forward: I didn't really know what I was getting into, but in a good way. I had never been around sheep before, never lived on like a full ag, farming operation, and have just jumped in with both feet and I'm loving every second of it. So I know that's a long answer to your short question. But kind of how did I end up or who I was before? And that's led me to this really incredible intersection now, with sheep production, with renewable energy, and really farming and delivering local food to our neighbors.
Erin Delawalla 08:27
Thank you for giving that whole context. I mean, it's a long answer, but appropriately so, because you've had so many different experiences that shaped how you got here today. I also think about my grandmother as inspiration for my connection to food. And also gardening. I spent a lot of time with her outside gardening and she taught me how to pick wild blackberries and plant tomatoes. And I think about that all the time with what is my original connection to this work and why do I care so much about gardening? Those foundational experiences you have as a kid really do help shape your perspective in the world.
And it actually makes me think about the purpose of this podcast and this idea of we need our kids to spend time outside. We need our kids to know where their food comes from. We need our kids to be out on grass, getting dirty, because that is how we raise kids that care about the planet. That's how we raise kids that care about food. They need to understand it from a young age. So you are, I would say like one of the people who is very deeply enmeshed in solar grazing and agriculture, but you didn't grow up necessarily connected to farming.
And so as you got more into farming and raising sheep and participating with your husband and also you had, that connection on your original hobby farm, where was the line for you between your childhood experience with conservation and farming? Like what is the connection there? Because I don't know that people always think, Farming and food are related to nature.
Brooke Watson 10:07
Yeah. And I would really say it came during our solar grazing experience. So for those of you that aren't familiar, solar grazing is utilizing sheep to maintain vegetation on solar sites. A solar site has to maintain a certain maximum height with any vegetation growing so that plants don't block the panels. And no matter where a solar site is located, some sort of vegetation maintenance is gonna be needed. And in the solar industry, the most common form is with mowing. Over the last 10 years, there's been this emergence of people instead recognizing the opportunity to utilize sheep.
In place of mowers. So sheep have the right temperament. Goats are a little too destructive and chew on wires and would jump on panels. Sheep are the right size to get underneath panels and without doing destruction to sites. So when my husband and I heard about solar grazing we recognized that this was another great opportunity to diversify our farm income and revenue and also that my husband in particular had a really unique background for it with just his experience not only with sheep but also with commercial mowing. And one of the first sites we looked at and we were just doing a scouting mission and this would have been probably February of 2024.
We were new to the industry and excited. One of our partners had given us the address to a site. And so we raced there. We weren't even inside the site. We were outside the fence. And it was this dreary February day. And the land the site is on was traditionally farmed for probably at least 50 years, if not longer. It is a spot that has highly erodible soil to begin with. And so we were there on this again, this cold, dreary February day outside the fence, just kind of looking in.
And it started raining and not just like a little bit, but like storming. And during our time there, we realized the water was just pouring off the site. There were gullies. It made you sick to see the topsoil just running off. This was a site that was just finishing construction. And really, if you think about how new solar development is in Illinois, this was probably one of the first generations of sites that was completed. It's hard to believe that three years ago we were just kind of on the beginning edge of all of these sites that had been in permitting and planning for years were now just coming to fruition.
And so I think all partners, all parties involved were learning a lot. Construction companies that normally are used to commercial development, they're not used to any part of land stewardship during the construction process because the land they're developing is just gonna have a parking lot and a building on it. Whereas in the solar industry, yes, there's a construction and industrial element to putting solar panels on the land, but the land is very much gonna be part of nature and in Cases where we're solar grazing, we are actively farming and grazing it and so it's staying in agricultural production.
And that was a very challenging experience. And but also the moment that my husband and I realized like, okay, solar grazing and our responsibility to the land isn't just about sheep. No one else is putting together the pieces and seeing some of the shortcomings in the industry from construction, even the pre-construction and development side, and also transitioning the vegetation on these sites from traditional corn and soybean fields into native plants, which is what I would say 99% of the land used on solar in Illinois that is transitioning their vegetation to being native, which is also a really unique feature that's not happening everywhere else in the country.
And then, moving forward, when the site is actively producing energy, what role do sheep play in maintaining the vegetation and complementing the growth and development of the native plants? So that moment, I don't want to get on here and share all of the ugly parts about that we've seen in the solar industry because like in any industry, there's good, there's bad and there's lots of opportunities for learning and growth. But that certainly stands out to me as a moment I realized that kind of a lot of my unique experiences were gonna come together in a way that put conservation at the forefront and knowing that we could do a better job in the land stewardship category for any land now under my charge as a farmer.
And that includes our over 500 acres grazed of solar sites.
Erin Delawalla 15:42
Yeah, that's impressive. 500 acres. That's a lot. I worked in the renewable energy industry as well. And when we were coming up with vegetation plans for solar projects, initially we knew we were taking land from row crops to perennial vegetation, but the idea of grazing it at scale was really kind of chalked up as aspirational and unrealistic. That's just going to be too operationally complex. How are you going to find farmers that want to run thousands of sheep on these properties? And so the default was mowing, chemical management, mechanical management.
That's appropriate in some situations, but there is a lot of opportunity to integrate sheep. And what I have found to be really exciting is not only are you offsetting the fossil fuel use of mowers and maybe reducing some of the chemical herbicides and things that you would need to control weeds, but you're adding economic revenue for a community or another party, right? It could be the underlying landowner that's raising the sheep, or it could be a new farmer coming from a different area, which is typically what you are.
So you have a new revenue stream and you're rebuilding that soil health. The sheep are trampling the vegetation, they're eating it, they're stimulating root growth. And so it is a truly a triple win. And it is operationally complex in some ways, but it's worth it for the trade-offs, I think. And the operational complexities aren't that different from mowing and herbicide. They're different, but they are similarly complex. So I'm really excited to hear that you guys are having success and that the industry in general is moving towards more solar grazing.
But I'm curious, like how did your family have to adapt your lifestyle, your home farm management when you were now taking on these sites? And maybe you could characterize a little bit how far you're driving to manage sheep on these sites.
Brooke Watson 17:47
We're managing right now, we have sheep on 16 sites across eight counties. And we're really traveling anywhere. I think the closest site is 25 miles from the farm, and the farthest site is maybe 115 miles from the farm. We don't like to travel more than a hundred miles. And honestly, we have another site that's or a couple sites that are like 85 miles, but that 85 miles includes traveling into Cook County and getting on two ninety four and I eighty with a sheep trailer behind us. And you can imagine kind of how scary that experience can be.
And just the time. It is the time. And I remember when we were first getting into this and we had companies asking us, well, would you consider managing a site here and there? And we like laughed at them. We were like, "No." But as we really did get into it, the biggest investment is time, recognizing too that we were renting pasture land that was at about an hour and fifteen minutes away from our home farm anyway for part of the year, and that this was really no different. The other thing, too is we utilize game cameras on our site.
So we always have eyes on our automatic water, which provides continuous water for the sheep. So that camera allows us to keep an eye on the water level and then also kind of do an eyeball check every day of okay, did we see how many sheep we know are there kind of hanging around near the water cooler at some point? And we've been going and growing where the opportunity is. So we've always had a lot of sheep. I would say, people will ask me, like, well, how many sheep do you have?
And I know that no matter what answer I give them, they're gonna look at me like I have two heads. But, my husband's always kind of had anywhere between three hundred to five hundred sheep on the family farm. Again, we've been a commercial dry lot operation. So we didn't have the sheep grazing except for maybe a little bit, some of the flock got to graze a little bit on pasture over an hour away for a couple of months out of the year. But the rest were, kind of in confinement and we did the best we could with what we had.
But now we know we're raising healthier animals because they're having the opportunity to graze on, fresh grass without a lot of human intervention, without a lot of additional stress from being handled or checked a lot. And that all again is a positive leading to healthier animals. But it's we very quickly realize that solar grazing is financially competitive and there should be compensation for the farmer for when you think about the amount of labor and infrastructure you have to have to get into this. This is not a, you should be doing this for free because your animals are getting free feed.
No. And a lot of that also is the feed that we would be giving them is not native perennial plants. And so there is very much an element of expertise and labor that goes into this. So no, no farmer should be doing this for free. But we wanted to go where there was opportunity. And unfortunately there hasn't been a ton of opportunity close to our home farm in DeKalb yet. We're hopeful that it's coming, but in the meantime. We have kind of found our niche in being service providers, to across northern Illinois, just like a mowing company would or other service providers, you go where the business is and where the opportunities are.
And we're really grateful for those opportunities and continue to see not just the financial benefits, but the animal health benefits of increasing our flock numbers and increasing our flocks access to grazing land.
Erin Delawalla 21:57
Yeah. And I wanna dig in on that point a little bit because I think you made the point that moving animals from a confinement or commercial dry lot to grazing on pasture most of the year, you saw an improvement in flock health. And one of the tensions I would say is that land access is always a constraint, right? Yes. And you have enough land to produce enough food to keep your farm afloat, to pay all your bills and pay the mortgage if you have a mortgage on your land or, pay rent.
And so a lot of times farmers do utilize a confinement system so they can produce more livestock, more pounds of meat on a smaller footprint of ground. Yes. And But there are some downsides to that, right? The animals are more concentrated. Maybe they're not getting as much they're not getting that natural experience of being on grass and like pooping and peeing as they walk along rather than all in one location. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Brooke Watson 23:01
Yeah, and we still have part of our operation that is a dry lot. And I don't know what the future holds. At some point we might have to go back to being exclusively a dry lot operation. So this is not a knock on dry lot, but It's just kind of common sense and science. Like when you have more animals in a smaller area, yes, like if there's a disease that's gonna go through your flock a lot quicker. Yeah, they're not able to they are more they're pooping and eating kind of in close quarters and just anybody can tell that like long term that might not be the best for animal health.
So there's nothing like Doing it like nature intended and seeing animals grazing on, green grass and having space to move around, to run around and yeah, and spread out the manure and
Erin Delawalla 23:58
Yeah. And you would imagine it's different. Yeah, there's probably less need for antibiotics, less need for any kind of disease treatment for the sheep because they are just in a naturally more healthy environment. But it's not an easy situation. Like you can't just say everybody should move out of the commercial dry lot system and go to pasture-raising because land access is a real issue and farmers are trying to survive. So I think one of the interesting opportunities with solar is that you have this land that is now designated for energy production, but there is also a really beneficial second use that is compatible with energy, which I think is so exciting.
Like it really offers more opportunity for more production of healthy food. Yeah. And
Brooke Watson 24:43
Like on that, just to throw a stat out there, and this is one of my favorite stats, but when we're looking at sites, we try and for our energy partner provide them with like how many four-ounce servings of lamb are going to be produced by having access to this new land and the ewes that are gonna be on it. And so on a twenty-eight acre solar site, we'll have on average about 50 ewes. So adult female sheep. In a sheep flock, your goal is for each ewe to have twins when they reproduce.
Or if you can't do twins, 1.5 lambs per ewe. So you could probably plan on that those 50 ewes in their next production cycle will have 75 lambs. If you were gonna take all of those lambs and put them into the food system after they're grown up and have hit the hundred pound range and then had them processed, those seventy five lambs would produce thirty five hundred pounds of meat, which is the equivalent of a hundred and forty thousand four-ounce servings [editor’s note: 3,500 pounds equals 14,000 four-ounce servings] of lamb for the local food shed.
Erin Delawalla 26:01
That's amazing. So it's an incredible number.
Erin Delawalla 26:06
On twenty eight acres.
Brooke Watson 26:07
Twenty-eight acres. And so, when people kind of think that sheep are a gimmick or well, because you're not doing crop rotations now on that land, it's not really an agriculture production. Right. I love to share this stat because we're so proud that we can generate that much food to sell into our local food systems.
Erin Delawalla 26:34
Yeah, for sure. And I think the more you have local small producers raising animals and putting that food back into the local economies, the less dependent we are on these mega supply chains. These conglomerates that aren't necessarily thinking about our health. They're thinking about profit and margins. And so the more local we can make our food shed, the better, I think. So yeah, I think it's really exciting. And yes, I think there is a misconception. The sheep on solar sites are a marketing play, but there is so much work going on behind the scenes to make that happen.
And then to get that sheep to the market and to a consumer's plate is a whole other set of work that it's really an undertaking. So congratulations on kind of creating that pathway and being able to produce so much food for the local food shed. It's really remarkable.
Brooke Watson 27:32
Thank you.
Erin Delawalla 27:33
So I think we've talked a little bit about some of the complexities with solar. I'm curious what you think about, what could be done to make solar grazing easier for sheep farmers? Like as we're thinking about wanting this to scale, I think right now 7-10% of solar sites in the country are participating in solar grazing and the rest are under mechanical management. Not every solar farm in every region is going to be as productive or as compatible with grazing. If you're in the desert Southwest, perhaps you may not really need to, it may not be a fit.
But on the sites where it is compatible with grazing, it could be grazed, what could be done to make it better from the beginning during the design phase to support a grazing operation?
Brooke Watson 28:21
And I will also preface this with what we love about sheep: yes, there are complexities with solar grazing, but really you can utilize sheep on about any site unless it has wires hanging down. Now I think some of the kind of early generation of sites in Illinois, that was something that we did see more of. But now that's going away because even if you're using mechanical mowing, that's still an issue for mowers and string trimmers to get caught up in. But wire management is something that from an early stage you can do to help.
Any ability to bury cables is beneficial. It's easier to work the sheep and if you're gonna be doing rotational grazing on a site to paddock off certain areas of the site to do that. But again, we work with plenty of sites where nothing's buried and there are wires that are, hung up but still very, very visible and the sheep make it work. That's why they're also such a great tool is because they're small and can fit under a lot of that infrastructure. You're talking about a time and labor standpoint.
Really when you're getting sheep off of the site or if you're doing rotational grazing and moving them around to different paddocks and setting up new paddocks within the site, that's where it's more labor and time and money from the farmer's input with it. Certainly, in Illinois, again, one of the unique characteristics of the site is the native vegetation. And I think it's wonderful. I mean, no one's talking about this, but in Illinois we're probably undergoing the greatest change in or conversion of land that's been traditionally farmed into pollinator habitat in history.
I don't know that we'll ever see kind of this transition again really. Right. But whether you're using sheep or you're gonna be mowing how we are doing the installations and doing the seeding of that vegetation really is very important and is gonna determine the long-term success of that vegetation taking off at that site. So I think doing more cover crop seeding during construction. So you don't have those horror stories like I shared of, in February middle of a rainstorm and topsoil just washing away into gullies. Cover crops during construction can help that.
And then also really working with whether it's a farmer or vegetation, like a seeding company to make sure that you're putting in quality seed mixes. Not every native seed mix is a good fit for solar. I know that some of the early sites we're on we're fighting plants that were part of the seed mix that are now growing 10 to 12 feet tall. And yes, they're a native, but that probably wasn't a good fit for a solar site just because it was in the native seed mix. Right. So being more thoughtful about the not just the natives but the types of natives we're planting on solar, recognizing that solar natives on solar is kind of a different land category.
It's not it's not quite a true restored prairie. It's not quite NRCS conserved land use either. It's kind of its own beast and making sure that your vegetation plan matches that.
Erin Delawalla 32:08
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that you and I've talked about is that when you take fields out of row crop production, they've been in this corn soy rotation for years, they haven't necessarily been managed for soil health, and then you try to plant native vegetation in year one. Then there are all these heavy impacts from construction. Those plants may or may not establish. And then you turn it over to the sheep farmers and say, okay, manage this and keep the vegetation height below, the panels. There's a lot of variation on what you're inheriting as a site manager.
And there's often a need to use cover crops really for at least a year or two to really build that soil health. And also to think about that time of construction as like repeated disturbance. So if you're tilling all that soil, you almost are starting back at the beginning. So there are some successes out there of pre seeding with cover crops and some permanent plants as well. But it should be viewed as like more of a transition period as opposed to plant one time and you're good to go.
Yeah, you have a native prairie that can keep sheep alive. Yeah.
Brooke Watson 33:16
Yes. But even with mowing, I mean, to maintain the maximum vegetation height in Illinois, especially with our rainfall, you have to mow three to four times. Mowing companies are not mowing when it is best for the native prairie plants and their life cycle and when they're flowering or around when they're seeding. They are going in when they can get a crew deployed and the weather cooperates. And so I think too that there's this perception that mowing is somehow a better tool to manage native vegetation. And I would argue that can't be further from the truth.
And I really think that there's gonna be a reckoning in the next couple of years when these sites that now have been around for three or four seasons and they've only been mowed and they've been kind of like buzz cut three to four times a year, there's not gonna be natives growing there. And people are gonna say, What happened? And it's like, well, because there's a land stewardship piece. That's what I go back to all the time. This isn't just about sheep. This isn't about mowing. This isn't just about natives.
It's truly a concept of regenerating the land as we're helping the land evolve from being traditionally row cropped. And you and I talk all the time how introducing animals and animal disturbance is one of the greatest ways to help the land rejuvenate.
Erin Delawalla 34:45
Yeah, absolutely. I guess can you talk a little bit more about that? Like how does rotating the sheep, why is that so important for land stewardship and building the vegetation health?
Brooke Watson 34:56
You don't always have to rotate the sheep, but you do have to have a plan. You can't just put the sheep out and then show back up in two months and expect that things are perfectly managed. One, a lot of reasons you might need to rotate the sheep is yes, grazing is much healthier, but there still are some parasites, particularly that really impact hoof health in sheep, that the longer sheep are in one area, those parasites will build up. And so by rotating them throughout an area, you're gonna disperse kind of the parasites and they won't get as established.
But doing low density grazing, which is really what we advocate for over a longer period of the growing season, make sure that the sheep aren't overgrazing certain areas of the site. I say it's like getting a haircut, they're clipping kind of whatever is growing tallest. A lot of the times, particularly for the first part of the year, that's gonna be your annual weed. So your ragweed, your marestail, your thistles. But as they take care of the annual weed pressure, the natives will start to catch up towards the second part of the growing season.
And then again, when you do low density, so by low density, that would be like only about one to two sheep per acre. That ensures that they're not too aggressively going after certain parts of the site or certain plants. Again, they're just kind of snipping what's tallest and that changes throughout the year. And then they're able to give moderate trimmings as opposed to like a high intensity trimming during a certain season or certain time period. Yeah. And again, them just having a low density or rotating them make sure the manure is dispersed evenly.
That their hoof impact is varied across the site, not too concentrated in one area. And all of those things really impact and have a positive result on the biodiversity of the site and the soil health and the plant health and honestly the habitat health.
Erin Delawalla 37:11
Yeah. And I think, I mean, also it's very driven by the size of the solar project and how many different blocks there are. Those serve as kind of natural fenced-in areas to rotate the sheep through and give some areas rest. But not every solar project has that. Some solar projects are smaller in scale and they have one large fence. And if you're coming from far away, it's hard to be moving them on such a frequent basis. So this is another way to manage the vegetation and also maximize the sheep health and all that.
Brooke Watson 37:45
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Erin Delawalla 37:47
So solar grazing is still kind of a young industry. How do you hope it evolves over the next 10 years?
Brooke Watson 37:54
Right now we're seeing a lot of adoption in Illinois because there are some incentives related to getting sites connected to the grid sooner and to the transmission lines. If they're solar grazed, there is a little bit of a tax benefit. And so I'm happy that's there to incentivize developers to maybe try something that they wouldn't have thought to otherwise. But I hope that in Illinois we can get away from that being the only reason people opt into solar grazing over mowing. I hope, by continuing to be an advocate, and again, I'm a broken record, but when you talk about the land stewardship of sites and recognizing that mowing is not a solution to that, mowing is not gonna help heal the land.
Improve soil health, rejuvenate it for the next generation. It really is being part of a regenerative agriculture system through grazing. And so and the other thing too, I think people think, that solar grazing is expensive. It's cost competitive and honestly a little bit less than traditional mowing. And I can say that confidently because we do have contracts that we only do traditional mowing because that's what we're contracted to do and there isn't wiggle room for sheep. The other challenge in Illinois is that if you are going to be from a zoning standpoint, if you're going to be solar grazing on sites in most counties you need a special permit to incorporate sheep.
It's kind of funny, these sites go from being zoned agriculture to being zoned industrial once they are transitioned to solar. And then you need a special permit to bring sheep back out to the land. Right. And so I think when people and developers like think they're gonna need another permit, they get a little anxious, especially because so many permitting processes are contentious that they don't want to do it and think it's not worth the hassle. So I hope that municipalities too, and even people in particular sites that are in town can see that sheep are not impacting neighbors, there's not an additional smell.
Or noise hindrance because we're really using, a lower quantity of sheep in Illinois, like they're doing amazing things in Texas where they're having thousands of sheep on sites. That is not the reality of 95% of the sites in Illinois that are community sized solar sites and are going to be in neighborhoods. So I just hope that maybe there's also working with county boards and municipalities, there can be a little bit easier of pathway for agrivoltaics integration and solar grazing across the state.
Erin Delawalla 40:45
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that will come with a growing recognition that this is a way to keep agriculture on this land and it doesn't need necessarily to go to that industrial classification, or maybe it goes into that characterization, but you can still utilize sheep as a default if it's a solar site with grass.
Brooke Watson 41:05
Yep. That's spot on, Erin.
Erin Delawalla 41:07
So do you think solar grazing is helping beginning farmers who maybe don't have land access get experience?
Brooke Watson 41:15
It is. And I know because I'm friends with them and network with them. And honestly, like I put us in that category. Yes, I'm so grateful that we're now a seventh generation family farm, but we're a small family farm. And we're not able to get by, although I don't know many farm families that are able to get by just working a couple months a year, just doing row crop anymore. That's not the reality of farm families. And most farm families, I don't think we're unique in that I have to have a job off the farm in order for us to be able to keep farming.
And also to take care of our family. So and I think that's honestly the most challenging thing for new farmers that don't have land access is you're not gonna be generating enough income to be able to do this full time, especially when you're first starting, you're first making a lot of investments in your flock and equipment, you're gonna have to have a day job. And so how do you balance meeting the needs of the sites? Like we still do a lot of work on weekends, holidays, evenings. My husband is able to do it because he's farming full time.
But again, the work when you're managing 16 sites across eight counties doesn't stop eight to five Monday through Friday. So I think that's one of the challenges for new farmers getting into this is balancing your day job and other commitments with this new career. But undoubtedly it's an incredible opportunity for new farmers, for young farmers, for farmers from diverse backgrounds to be able to actually make a living farming. Last year, my in-laws have been incredibly supportive, but I think they were a little skeptical until last year, our second year in it, our income from solar grazing far outpaced what we brought in our traditional row crops.
And we were doing maybe half the acreage last year that we are this year. Not even half. Like probably I could crunch the numbers, but it's probably less than a third of what we're doing this year. So I know that's a story that's not going to be unique to my family and that it's happening across the country, but there is definitely room for that next generation of farmers to get involved with solar grazing. And I'm happy to stick out a hand and help however I can and help them walk through that door with us because there's enough sites to support anyone who wants to get into this.
So that's another really cool thing. There isn't a lot of competition because there's enough work for everybody.
Erin Delawalla 44:00
Yeah. And I think the need for mentorship and apprenticeship is so critical as for beginning farmers, especially on solar sites, because solar companies may say, We don't want to hire somebody who's brand new and has no idea what they're doing, but they might hire you, knowing that your local person boots on the ground is going to be a beginning farmer, but you're managing them, you're supervising them and making sure they're doing everything correctly. And so more and more I think there is a need for that. And I think that is starting to happen.
You're getting the experienced solar grazers, even if you're three years or two years of experience, the solar companies now want you to mentor the next person. They won't just give the contract to a newbie. And so that's more work for you. But hopefully, there are ways to kind of grow. And that supports your growth too over time.
Brooke Watson 44:50
And absolutely, and we're so grateful. And the American Solar Grazing Association has developed a certification program. And that's the resources too, though, that just a $75 annual membership provides from them with webinars and the chance to connect with more experienced grazers and just also share best management practices with new grazers and just be part of conversations and networking. That is one of the most incredible professional organizations I've seen in any industry. Maybe the best. And I know that they're a big reason too that there is such a tremendous opportunity that's being tapped and a pipeline of farmers that are being developed to do this work.
Erin Delawalla 45:39
Yeah, they really are doing a great job of building the community, disseminating information and normalizing solar grazing as a solution for solar. So, changing gears a little bit. You recently became a mother and I'm curious just how that experience has been. It felt like every time I had a child, I have three, each time I grew a little bit and changed in unexpected ways. So I'm just curious to hear like how has that transition been affecting your work or you personally and whatever you're comfortable sharing there?
Brooke Watson 46:15
Yeah. I mean, my husband and I are figuring it out. We're loving every second of being parents. But we're surprised every day. And I would say I'm someone who historically across my life has been pretty good at like compartmentalizing and keeping all of my different varied interests or careers kind of like separate in their lane, like switching, from one to the other. And with motherhood, I figured out that's just like motherhood is messy. You can't keep things separate and like neatly packaged. But how cool that the solution to that is that my son is there every step of the way and is gonna grow up being an active part of what we are doing from farming and solar grazing, and gonna learn and grow into it himself, as he gets older.
He's already been on some solar sites. We have a little hard hat for him. Amazon's amazing. You can find anything on the internet, including hard hats for infants. But that's out of necessity because we don't have a bunch of people that work for us. And when we have a coyote issue on one of our sites and we need to remove sheep from the site, you're looking around at who can jump in and do that on a Sunday afternoon. Well, it's me and my little guy strapped on the front, kinda working sheep and getting them on a trailer.
Instead of thinking of it as a burden that he has to be part of it—my in-laws, they're right there too with us. So there's no kind of leaving him at home. He's just kind of along for the ride. I hope that's something he grows up appreciating and doesn't resent us for. But just how cool. My husband can't believe some of the things I had no idea about growing up, even what we eat. Like I definitely grew up eating more processed foods because it's what we had available and in a busy sports family, it was what my mom could cook quick.
Now we make everything from scratch. What do you mean you have to go to the store for meat? Like we have a whole deep freezer full and I hope that more families and more moms start to look for more locally produced food and can have that same opportunity for their kids to just eat better, healthier quality, and less expensive when you're getting it straight from the producer and there's not a bunch of middlemen in there marking it up.
Erin Delawalla 48:56
I think about that stuff all the time because when you're running around with kids, keeping up with schedules, sports, activities, et cetera, it definitely became the norm to default to the processed box of mac and cheese or whatever. And more and more, if you build it into your system—we don't have very fancy meals at my house. It's often a protein and cucumbers and like maybe potatoes. But it's real ingredients and I think like using that is sort of foundational to your life rather than an inconvenience.
Making everything from scratch is a tall order. I don't know how you balance that as well as your three jobs.
Brooke Watson 49:38
Maybe I should clarify: I do not want to sell myself as someone who doesn't always occasionally enjoy a good box of mac and cheese. But yeah, it's instead of using the premix with the powdered cheese and things, it's like, okay, we're gonna like buy our own noodles. I'm gonna try and get some that like have maybe organic in the title and don't have a lot of added ingredients. We're gonna grate our own cheese that we put in here. We're gonna use, stuff.
Erin Delawalla 50:05
That's amazing. Well, and I think being a mom, there's a lot of balancing and a lot of giving yourself grace that you're doing your best. And some days you'll have a homemade meal and some days you won't. But the goal is that sometimes you are using local ingredients for cooking from scratch, et cetera, and like teaching your kids and exposing them to that. So it's not about being perfect always. It's about just being mindful and looking for opportunities to introduce that stuff.
Brooke Watson 50:34
And have a husband that cooks and cares about those things too.
Erin Delawalla 50:38
A hundred percent. Your partner has to be invested in that.
Brooke Watson 50:40
And I would say I learn a lot from him. He does a lot of the cooking too. And he's the one that showed me what it's like to eat with good quality food.
Erin Delawalla 50:48
Yeah. That's amazing. I think your son will grow up having such an appreciation for this childhood. It is so unique and really special. So I think that sounds pretty cool that he's gonna get that experience from pretty much day one.
Brooke Watson 51:04
Thank you.
Erin Delawalla 51:05
So I guess just to close out here, thank you so much for all the time you've shared with us. What do you hope will be better for the next generation because of the work you're doing today?
Brooke Watson 51:17
I hope that we don't have to try as hard to conserve our natural resources. I hope that it's just like cool, like don't pollute, like leave the land in better condition than you found it. Yeah. I think if you asked our parents, they started to figure that out when they were becoming adults. They are probably sad that it hasn't been solved with our generation, and it's something we're going to look to our kids to solve. Taking better care of the planet and our water resources. And I think though too as it relates to agriculture and farming.
One of the things marrying into a farming family is I ask a lot of questions because I don't have the experience or knowledge to know why we do things. And I think the more we can challenge the status quo and really not just accept the answer of like, well, because that's the way we've always done it. Take a hard look at like how we got here, recognize that agriculture has been significantly influenced by monopolies and that's trickled down into like how we buy and sell commodities and how our food gets processed and how farmers take care of the land isn't necessarily about their personal beliefs or how well they'd like to take care of the land.
It's because there is a hard line of using the land to produce income for your family. And unfortunately our farmers are stuck in a system that prioritizes yield over quality. You and I have talked a little bit how it seems like the momentum's never been greater for a regenerative agriculture system as where we are right now. And I hope that there are real paths forward for farmers to shift into regenerative systems in ways that are profitable and can sustain family farming. And in agriculture, we keep innovating.
How can we use technology as a tool, but also how do we bring back some of the practices that maybe sustained us before the 1970s, before kind of the big boom in agriculture and demand for cheap yields. And find a better way to take care of the land and our natural resources.
Erin Delawalla 53:49
So great answer. I share a lot of those hopes that you gave. Okay. I have a couple lightning round questions for you. Okay. Yes. Ten seconds ten words or less. Okay. If you weren't farming or working in food and ag, what do you think you'd be doing?
Brooke Watson 54:06
Working in college athletics. But I'd be more stressed and I wouldn't be getting as much sleep.
Erin Delawalla 54:12
Fair enough. What's one thing that you grow that you never get tired of eating or drinking?
Brooke Watson 54:16
I'm a big herb gardener and basil. Yeah, cilantro, parsley, those are kind of my big three.
Erin Delawalla 54:24
Nice. What farming belief have you changed your mind about?
Brooke Watson 54:28
That farmers are rich. When I first got into ag I assumed that if you owned a lot of land or farmed a lot of land, you must be doing pretty well and be high on the hog and didn't need to be a dual income household and that couldn't be further from the truth.
Erin Delawalla 54:43
Okay. And what's something consumers misunderstand about sheep farming?
Brooke Watson 54:48
That when we're selling lamb for meat, people in their head have the idea of that animal being like Mary had a little lamb, like cute lamb, tiny lamb. And it's not. When a lamb is ready to be processed, they are like probably 90 pounds, they're at least six months old. They are definitely looking more like a sheep. And I still struggle sometimes with processing, but I recognize that we took really good care of this animal and that it's fulfilling its purpose.
Erin Delawalla 55:28
Yeah, that was something that I had to learn too. I was thinking these tiny little lambs, and they're not, they're large by the time they're processed. I think more people would like to eat lamb if they didn't have that mental image in their head. I think that it's just something that can be hard for people to overcome. Yeah. What's your favorite thing to cook with lamb?
Brooke Watson 55:49
Kebabs.
Erin Delawalla 55:50
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. We've been doing a lot of lamb gyros.
Brooke Watson 55:55
Yes. Yep. We do gyros too. Or honestly, ground lamb. I prefer ground lamb now over ground beef. So any recipe that calls for ground beef, sub it with ground lamb. It adds a lot more flavor to it. And it's just so delicious.
Erin Delawalla 56:12
Amazing. Okay, last question. What's one thing your family understood about farming that it took you years to appreciate?
Brooke Watson 56:19
That we can't save every animal during lambing. Lambing is hard. So I mean, we're from a production, we'll have 200 ewes at a time usually delivering lambs. Sometimes you did everything right and a lamb doesn't make it. Or you did everything right to help the mom, but there was something that you couldn't overcome in the birth process and she's weak and then she passes away after birth. And now you have bottle lambs. And bottle lambs, there's nothing cuter, but they'll break your heart. That's what we say. Don't name them because it can just be really tough for a bottle lamb to make it to adulthood, even when you did everything right.
So there's a very emotional and human part of being a farmer and caring about your livestock. And I hope I don't lose that. I hope I don't get jaded. But my husband and his family have a better sense of like, it isn't gonna make it. We probably, need to make it comfortable, but not try and stay up all night nursing it when it's just gonna pass anyway. Cause I've had a couple of those episodes happen in my first couple lambing seasons.
Erin Delawalla 57:40
Yeah, I think that's a really hard thing for people who don't live on farms to understand that if you're gonna have livestock, you're gonna have some animals that die. Yes. And it's part of it. Circle of life. Yes. And like your kids being exposed to that early, will have a greater appreciation maybe for like that circle of life. And also understand like why is it so hard to grow good quality food. It's like there's all these other factors. When we're eating it in our kitchen in the city, we're ignoring ninety-nine percent of what happened to get it there.
So I think it's so important to have your perspective and for others to think more about it and understand kind of more of how our food gets from, the field to the plate. So thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. This was fantastic. It's great to chat about this always with you.
Brooke Watson 58:36
Yeah. And Erin let me know however I can contribute to the conversation further. Anyone who's listening, you can visit our website, illinoissolargrazing.com, and that has my contact information. Please reach out. If you're interested in learning more about food, if you're wanting to get into this area, happy to help you however I can.
Erin Delawalla 58:59
Thank you, Brooke.
Brooke Watson 59:00
Thanks, Erin.
Erin Delawalla 59:01
Thanks for listening to the Nature Stack Podcast. Remember to like, subscribe, and follow along wherever you get your podcast. It really helps support our mission. Thanks for being here and looking forward to the next episode. Take care.
The Nature Stack | Transcript | 1