nutrients

     Numbers can be useful. Christine Jones, soil scientist, provides these about the recent reductions in nutritional quality of foods.  She compares levels from 1940 with those found in 1991.  27 vegetables show these declines:

copper declined by 76% over that time.

calcium is down 46%

Iron is down 27%

Magnesium down 24%

Potassium is down 16%

In the meats, similar levels are found:

Copper down 24%

Calcium is down 41%

Iron is down 54%

Magnesium is down 10%

Potassium down 16%

Phosphorus down 28%

These are figures from Australia.  Figures here may differ somewhat.  I think the principle concern remains.  Jones does not believe this is primarily a factor of depletion by overuse, however.  She pins the problem on lack of soil life, which is a direct result of our farming practices.  Soil life working with root systems are critical for nutrient uptake. 

This is one more problem we can do something about if we pay attention.

Management

 Any farmer who copes with a northern climate with its short growing season faces a choice.  Get more for the crops that can be grown.  Get the government to pay you what the markets won't provide for these crops.  Or, try to get more out of the season.  I am not opposed to any of these choices, but the last one of them often seems to be the alternative most available.  

For our farm which feeds hay to the cattle on pasture in the non growing season, an opportunity presents itself.  Or perhaps it is just making lemonade out of a lemon, as I heard a farm boy from the plains of Texas tell when he described the mixing of cattle and sheep on the same pasture not as "combination grazing" but rather, "just what we had to do to make a living".  Because where we feed the hay is regularly tromped into oblivion, shortening the grazing there to just a cleanup of whatever grows late in the season, this year we finally woke up enough to get some seed out there instead of just taking what the farm and climate offered.

So we seeded oats and an improved variety of rape in early September.  Oats will grow anywhere at any time and is generally pretty palatable and rape is thought to have a two month growth window before being ready to graze.  Additionally, this variety of rape is reputed to withstand temps down to ten degrees before quitting for the season.  This does not make up for seeding it about a month late, but we can observe, see what we get and adjust accordingly for next year.

Questions remain.  Will the rape/ oats provide a satisfactory ration for the cattle or will it need to be supplemented?  How to follow it up and get back to perennial pasture?  Will the rape succeed on our low and poorly drained pastures?  I formerly used rape in producing hogs, and it worked very well, but that planting was on higher and sloping ground.    

It would be helpful in terms of establishing a perennial pasture next spring if the cattle could take the crop pretty much down to the surface without pugging the soil, but that depends entirely on the fall season.  If they did leave it relatively smooth, we might have a shot at no tilling the new pasture into the area fairly early in the season.  Minimizing machine use is always a goal here at Pastures A Plenty.  I did use the disc and then the drag to prepare for seeding.  I am not sure that seeding it early would have changed the need for that.  

Perennials are better for the land than annuals.  That being true, we have wanted not to interfere with the pastures at all once they are seeded down.  So this attempt is on the order of an experiment.  If we are to evolve into a better farming, we must make it up as we go along.