June

    June is crunch month.  Most farmers would say this. But it is particularly accurate about farms that are diverse.  And it is even more so when the diverse farm has gone to organic production. We have three livestock species on our farm, and use corn plus a hay seeding consisting of two or three grass species and four or five legumes.  Plus a new seeding of Kernza which management we are trying to learn as we go.  And then of course there are the weeds, too plentiful to count.  All of this diversity, we now know, is just what the soil needs to be healthy.

    Hay and corn conflict with each other. The corn, if planted in April which we hope for, may make it from six or eight inches on June 1st to four plus feet on June 30th, thus putting whatever weeds are in the crop out of reach of the cultivator because the corn is too tall to cultivate.  The hay, meanwhile, generally needs cutting in the first week of June and then raking and baling.  All of these operations on the corn and hay are best done in afternoons when the dew is gone.

    And yet, hay and corn are tightly linked with each other.  And especially is this so on an organic farm.  It is the hay with its legume component that builds nitrogen fertility into the soil.  Hay is going to be necessary to get the cattle through the winter.  Corn is pig and chicken feed.  The very best seed bed in which to plant the corn is tilled hay ground.  The generous root structure that has developed under that grass/alfalfa/clover combination not only offers the best chance at fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, but the root decomposition the next spring at corn planting time offers a seed bed par excellence.  Nothing else comes close.  This hay ground tends to be a bit drier than other acres, thus allowing some of the corn planting to happen earlier.   

The fact that the hay crop has for several years prior been cut and baled several times each year means that annual weeds have mostly sprouted and been killed. The perennials, such as thistles, have had their root strength considerably diminished due to the frequent cutting. 

    Hay and corn go together.  The smart farmer is going to figure out how to get all that work done in one month.  Perhaps the best approach is to custom hire some of it.  Or maybe livestock work can be scheduled away from June as much as possible. For the diverse farmer, getting out of hay and corn production is not optional.  It is the very core of what makes a diverse and organic farm work.

mRNA vaccines

 I am seeing stories  that seem to identify mRNA vaccines as "gene therapy".  Does anyone know what this is about? To my mind there seems to be some distance between vaccination, which builds an immune response to a threat, and therapy, which would seem to apply some version of treatment toward the gene itself.  What is the story here?  Is this an attempt to sort the mRNA approach to vaccine development from the methods used formerly to cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine involved, or even ascribe nefarious motives to any who use messenger RNA in vaccine development? 

This is becoming an issue in our meats business.

Adjusting a pasture attitude

 I have always leaned toward a grazing practice based upon the idea of using animals to harvest what nature wants to grow on soil I pretty much take for granted.  Lately I am seeing some holes in the usefulness of  that attitude.

For one thing, the soil can never be taken for granted.  It must be cared for in use and that truth is as real for a farmer who harvests by grazing as it is for one who is reliant on tractors and tillage.  Cows in wet times can compact the soil.  Careless grazing opens too much of it to the wind and water.  Care with haying must be taken not to transport too many nutrients away.

Attitudes must exhibit some flexibility.

So now we have about 25 or 30 acres needing attention due either to our drainage installation in the wettest area of the pasture a year ago or our practice of winter feeding of hay on pasture.  There is too much bare soil out there and a certain amount of leftover hay mixed with manure in about six paddocks.  Plans are to reseed two of these pads to a hay and grazing mix of perennial forage plants and use the other four to grow a single season grazing crop which will finish early enough for us to reseed pastures then, hopefully without much in the way of tillage.  

Plans are to use Japanese Millet for hay or grazing in three of the four pads that will grow an annual crop with the other one planted to an oats/rape mixture which should be ready for grazing a bit sooner than the millet.

There is another damaged paddock of about four acres adjacent to these which we will leave to its own devices, to see if there really has been any benefit to all this running about with tractors and tools causing extra use of fuel.  I am cheering for the left alone paddock to prove to me that a pasture managed correctly can fix itself!