Soils

 Tools to help you hear what your farm is trying to tell you are simple enough-in this case a spade and several pails.  Pictured to the right here are two samples from our farm, spaded up today, September 9th, 2018, just five days after our most recent rain which was two and a half inches.  This of course is the latest installment of another very wet season here, the third in a row.


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The samples above are from our corn field, a field now three years in row crop (corn-soybeans-corn) on the left in my right hand and on my left, and your right, from our permanent pastures, seeded twenty years ago and grazed rotationally in a managed system.  Note the fracturing of the soil under grass, the way in which the roots have divided the soil mass into stable particles not very subject to erosion.  There is very much soil life in the pasture sample, virtually millions of little critters doing their thing in a healthy soil.  This soil structure with all its pore space stands up well to excessive rainfall as the formation constantly allows the admission of air.    

The other sample, in contrast is showing the stress of the wet weather.  Even in our soils with their high organic matter content and even with our practice of holding each parcel in row crop for three years only before it goes back to hay production, the soil simply cannot maintain the structure under the pounding rains and is susceptible to ponding, runoff and erosion.  This soil needs more roots in the ground for more of the year.  It shows that we need to improve in our use of cover crops to provide that.