Brian Duyck is a busy farmer. There’s really no other type of farmer, but as a grass seed grower, Duyck’s operation requires a lot more juggling than other crops.

Along with his son Tim, Duyck owns Beartooth Seed in the Heart Mountain area, which includes a mill used by other grass seed farmers in the area.

Brian Duyck estimates the mill processes somewhere around 2 million pounds of seed every year.

Duyck grew up on a farm in Oregon, where he first learned about growing grass seed, and he said it’s a good way to make money. Though, it’s not easy.

Asked how his day is going, he said it’s a good day. Some recent precipitation has slowed things down a bit.

“So we’re only going 50 directions today instead of 100,” he said with a laugh.

Farmers typically grow multiple crops. Commodity markets are unpredictable so it’s good not to put all your proverbial eggs in one basket. A typical farmer in the Big Horn Basin might grow corn, sugar beets and barley in one season.

Grass seed is even more diverse than that. While most farmers have fields of hundreds of acres, Duyck said a 40-acre field of grass seed is about as large as they get. But there are a lot of fields with different grasses growing on them.

Ask Duyck how many different types of grass seed he grows and he has to think about it a while.

“Oh ... 10 ...15 ... maybe 20,” he answered as he drove an employee, Larry Nielsen, to one of the fields where grass was being harvested. 

Duyck starts to name some of the different types. They include Siberian wheatgrass, bluebunch wheatgrass, slender wheatgrass, mountain brome, Indian ricegrass, and switchgrass.

After naming off a dozen or so, he looked in the rearview mirror at Nielsen and asked, “Am I forgetting any?”

“Sainfoin,” Nielsen answered.

“Oh right, sainfoin,” Duyck said.

A perennial crop

For crops like corn, dry beans and barley, the farmer plants and harvests over one season. It’s a pretty linear process. The grasses, however, are perennial, meaning they are planted and grow over multiple seasons. It’s not uncommon to see a combine harvesting one grass seed field while another is being sprayed with fertilizer.

Duyck said some fields last 10 years, while others last only a couple.

“You start off with a money maker, and then the yields taper off until you start over,” he said.

The other challenge is keeping this diversity of grasses as pure as possible.

“If you plant carrots in your garden, you’re not going to be too happy if it comes up thistles,” Duyck said.

All those different type of seeds have to be kept as weed free as possible and separate from each other throughout the whole process, from planting to harvest to milling.

“Everything about grass seed is about being clean. It’s got to be clean,” Duyck explains.

To show the buyers they’re getting a good product, the seeds are certified.

Mike Moore, manager of the Wyoming Seed Certification Service in Powell, said the certification involves inspecting the process and the product.

Process inspection begins before planting. The inspectors are looking to see the farmer does all the steps properly. This includes, among other things, checking the documentation the farmer provides and seeing that there are proper isolation practices so grass types don’t mix between fields.

“These things will outcross,” Moore said.

After harvest, certifications test the purity of the seed, the weed content, and the amount of seed expected to grow.

A certified analysis tag goes on the bags of seed, which are piled on pallets and shrink wrapped.

It sounds pretty simple, unless you consider that a farmer who combines one of these small fields of grasses can’t just drive over to the next field and start harvesting a different type of seed. The header has to be cleaned or seeds from one field get mixed in with the other.

Moore compared cleaning a header to having to clean a dirty bathroom with the thermostat cranked up to over 100 degrees.

“Cleaning a combine is a terrible job. It is a very nasty job,” he said.

The same is true for the mill. Before they can start milling another type of seed, the whole mill has to be cleaned. It’s a process that can take four or five hours.

“It’s slow and tedious,” Duyck said.

Duyck said he sells seed to about five companies. Half of it, he roughly estimates, is used for pasture, while the other half goes to reclamation.

After forest fires, public land managers plant grass seeds in the impacted area, which controls erosion. They don’t want to plant noxious weeds that choke out native vegetation, so they buy certified seeds they know will not only take root and grow, but also produce native grasses. If it comes up weeds or doesn’t grow, it’s a waste of money and effort.

“It is very important,” Moore said.

It’s not just grass seed producers that have to clean combines and processing equipment between products. Oat producers, for example, grow different types of oats, which typically can’t be cross contaminated. The difference with grass seed is there are a lot more varieties involved.

“Each one of those grasses has a spot in the market,” Moore said.

The certification isn’t just for grass seeds, either. Dry beans and alfalfa seed have been the main staples the service certifies. Moore said grass seed has become a much more significant player right now, but typically they’ve been about middle-level among the crops they work with.

The certification process can’t monitor everything, Moore said, such as ensuring that a farmer cleans the header before harvesting another type of grass. The service doesn’t have the resources to manage that much oversight. However, a grass seed farmer’s reputation is important to the success of his or her business. 

The grass seed “market is such that if you burn someone once, they’ll remember,” Moore said.

Grass seed farmers deal with the same kinds of uncertainty as any other type of crop. A lot of factors affect markets, and it’s hard to predict. Duyck said he’s seen little correlation between bad fire years and the demand for his seeds.

“Not sure why,” he said with a shrug.

Dave Johnson, who is taking over Etheridge Seed Farms from his father-in-law Ken Borcher, said it can be stressful sometimes when demand for seed doesn’t quite meet production.

“We had years when we haven’t sold a pound off a field, sometimes for more than a year,” Johnson said.

Grass seed farming has a lot of the challenges familiar to any crop, but it also has a few aspects that really keep farmers on their toes.

“This is a lot more intense,” Duyck said.