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Archive for the ‘Farming’ Category

Saving the World with Topsoil

Posted in Farming, tagged , , , , on May 16, 2013 | 2 Comments »

We hosted a seminar at Steve’s house last weekend about topsoil. For starters, the presenters Abe Collins and Eric Noël  gave us a crash course in soil science. Fun fact (new to me, anyway): topsoil does not grow from the surface up. It grows from the surface DOWN. Really? I always thought it was the decaying plant material plus manure piling up that made topsoil. Wrong! It is that organic stuff being drawn DOWN into the inorganic clay, silt or sand. So what brings the organic stuff down? Worms? Please! It is roots. And some roots are better at it than others. OK, here is the mind-blowing part: does building 3 feet of brand-new topsoil take millions of years? No! Under the right conditions, it can happen very quickly—like 3 years! And we can create the right conditions. How to create the right conditions was the real subject of the weekend seminar.

In case you didn’t know, mankind is busy destroying the world’s topsoil with conventional agriculture. So the idea that we can reverse the process comes as great news. There is also hope that we can sequester a significant amount of carbon this way. Anyway, a big thanks is owed to Abe and Eric for the seminar, and to Doug Hamm for the catering, and to all the attendees.

Eric Noël demonstrates how to use a penetrometer to measure soil compaction. Compacted soil is impenetrable to roots.
We all gave the instruments a try.
Abe Collins delivers an underground lecture.
Eric and Abe use the “Vermont garlic press” to squeeze some liquid from a grass sample onto the refractometer.
Steve checks out the refractometer to see the sugar content of the grass.
The Yeomans plow was invented by Percival Alfred Yeomans of Australia. It can reduce compaction without turning the soil.

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Landscapers at Work

Posted in Farming, tagged , , , , on April 29, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Pigs Preparing SilvopastureGolf courses and English parks can be very pleasing to the eye. John Barrow postulated that this is because humans evolved in the savannahs of Africa. When we see a grassy landscape with a few trees, our subconscious is thinking “good hunting grounds.” Increasingly, livestock farmers favor these sort of landscapes as well. But not because they look nice. The practice of combining trees with grazing livestock (called “silvopasture” in the ag business) can be a win-win-win. The trees are a valuable cash crop in their own right, plus they provide shade and shelter for the livestock. In hot weather, trees can even increase the growth of forage by shading it.

It is not clear how well this will work in our climate, but we are experimenting to find out. Peter Nash has selectively thinned a piece of his forested land. Our pigs pictured above are happily working on step two: preparing the soil for planting an organic pasture seed mix. It will be some time before we know if it will be possible to graze cattle here. If not, I’m thinking the golf course business looks a lot easier than farming anyway.

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Worth Watching

Posted in Farming, tagged , , , , , on November 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The NRCS has done us a lot of favors. OK, beyond favors—they have actually given us money to offset the costs of several conservation projects on the farm. So we thought we would return the favor and help them promote Ken Burns’ new film, THE DUST BOWL, which premiers Sunday and Monday (November 18 and 19) on PBS. The film chronicles the man-made ecological disaster in the great plains in the 1930s that engendered the NRCS. In light of the planet’s changing climate, we agree that the story of the dust bowl is “a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us—a lesson we ignore at our peril.”

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Jim Gerrish Grazing School

Posted in Farming, tagged , , on September 30, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

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We had the great honor of hosting a grazing seminar by Jim Gerrish last weekend. We converted Steve’s garage into a little classroom, where Jim unloaded his grazing wisdom on us for two exhausting and exhilarating days. Of course, we also toured our pastures, where we had a chance to implement some of the skills and techniques we were learning. I have been to a lot of grazing seminars, pasture walks and lectures, and I can say without the slightest hesitation that Jim’s was by far my favorite. Most academics I have met from the Monsanto-funded land-grant universities roll their eyes at the idea of grass-finishing beef. Jim was a professor for 20 years at the University of Missouri, so he can cite scientific research with the best. AND he is a big advocate of grass-finishing.

Thank-you to the Granite State Graziers for producing the event and to the NRCS for providing the grant that paid for it. Also, thank-you to Craig Fournier, Doug Hamm, and Denise Fournier for setting a very high bar with the catering!

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Meet Emily

Posted in Farming, tagged on September 12, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Our summer was a little brighter this year with Emily Coughlin working at the farm. Now that she is back at Campbell High School in Litchfield, her schoolwork and cheerleading take up most of her time. But happily, she still has time for the farm after school. Emily’s goal is to study veterinary sciences one day—possibly toward a career as a veterinary nurse or doctor. She has a great head start from observing, handling and caring for our animals day in and day out. Whatever Emily chooses to do, we’ll be cheering her on!

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Expanding the Herd

Posted in Farming, tagged on August 27, 2012 | 6 Comments »

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We have wanted for a long time to expand our herd so that it is big enough to produce all our own calves. The main problem has been a lack of land to support an expanded herd, but since we gained access to more land this summer, we have recently been looking for the right breeding stock. We found it last week at the farm of Eric and Hannah Noël in Highgate, Vermont. We are very excited to be bringing home 35 beautiful Galloway breeding cows and two bulls. This is a great foundation for our genetics, and a great first step on the way to becoming self-sufficient.

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Pastoral Chickens

Posted in Farming, tagged on August 13, 2012 | 3 Comments »

I was walking down to the lower field the other day, when I came upon this view of our broiler chickens foraging. Sometimes it is hard to explain why our pastured broilers taste so much better (and are so much better for you) than supermarket chicken. It struck me that the sight of them roaming around, looking for bugs and eating grass says it all. So I took a video.

And just by way of comparison, here is what a supermarket chicken’s home looks like:

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Not for the Squeamish

Posted in Farming, tagged , , , on July 30, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Patrick captured the action on his mobile phone the other day when Steve had to assist one of our heifers with the delivery of her first calf. The labor was difficult, because the calf was in breech presentation (hind legs first instead of head and front legs first). This is the kind of event that I worry about. When Steve goes up the street for groceries—let alone out of town for a holiday—I pray for this not to happen. Our cows have a pretty good record. So far there have been dozens of births with only one that was complicated. Spoiler alert for the movie: mom and calf both end up fine.

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The Versatile Black Locust

Posted in Farming, tagged , , on July 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

We just took delivery of a truckload of Black Locust fence posts. As you can see, they are not the straightest. Steve likes them crooked, because it hides the fact that he cannot drive a post in straight anyway. But the main reason we like them is that Black Locust lasts longer than any other kind of wood available. That even includes pressure-treated wood (which we are not allowed to use under the Organic rules).

The Black Locust tree has a long list of virtues. It is a legume, which means it gets its nitrogen from the air, so it can grow in poor soils without fertilizer. It grows incredibly fast, making it a renewable and “sustainable” resource. As firewood, it has the highest heat content of any wood common to the United States (comparable, in fact, to anthracite coal). Black Locust blossoms produce such delicious honey that the trees are widely planted in Europe for honey (however, it blooms only 10 days per year, making the honey rare as well as delicious). And Black Locust lumber is prized for everything from shipbuilding and furniture making to flooring and siding.

Sadly, Black Locust trees are susceptible to damage from a beetle called a Locust Borer. Infestation is so widespread, that it is difficult to find wood that is not affected. Borer infestation causes deformed growth and generally makes wood useless for lumber—hence the crooked fence posts.

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Mob Grazing

Posted in Farming, tagged , on June 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Cattle grazing as a mob. Yesterday’s paddock (foreground) is evenly grazed and trampled.

I don’t want to tempt Fate, but I have to say the conditions for grazing on our farm have never been better. When we started, the land had been tilled for years, which is, by design, a catastrophe for the soil. Now in our third summer of grazing we see evidence that the soil health is coming back: there is earthworm activity where there was none before, and the pastures are thick and lush.

With thicker vegetation, we can now stock more cattle per square foot on the land. We seem to have reached that critical herd size where the cattle start to behave as a “mob.” They stay bunched together as they mow down the forage evenly, trample what remains evenly, and deposit manure evenly throughout the field. As always, we move the cattle to a new paddock each day and we let the land rest for a long time before hitting it again.

On top of it all, we have benefited from a perfect balance of sun and rain throughout the spring. We are hoping it keeps up, and we are making beef while the sun shines.

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