Clearing Blackberries

While I have not measured it, I believe that the back portion of our property is about 1 1/2 acres.  Due to property boundaries and certain terrain and water drainage features, in order to get back to the back part of the property, I will have to install a culvert, and some amount of gravel to create a drive of sorts.

I have been able to find my way to where two drainage pipes open into a ditch at the bottom of a "valley" or low spot in the terrain.  My belief is that I will need to add a 12" culvert and probably two feet or so of gravel in order to create a "driveway" of sorts that will allow access to the back portion of the property in the confines of the property boundaries.

I order to get a clear view of what actually needs to be done, I need to clear the area where the drive to the back of the property would go.  Doing so requires that I clear a 60-70 foot swath of blackberries about 10-12 feet wide.  These blackberries are 8 feet tall in places, while the canes, tangled as they are, are often easily 20 feet long.  Blackberries are a pain, literally.

These blackberries grow and die in place, creating a thicket of thorns and tangled canes, both living and dead.  Removing this pain ridden thicket is not an easy task.

I started work on this clearing with hand tools.  These tools included a hand weed cutter with a serrated bar, loppers, hand pruners, and a fork.  Working from the outside in, I probably covered the easiest portion in about two hours.  If you look below, it doesn't look I accomplished much, but it was a good workout.  I covered about 15 feet of ground in a 10-12 foot wide section.  The good news is that so far, the ground is pretty level.  There will be a drop off, but I am hoping that it is confined to a pretty narrow area, which will minimize both excavation and gravel.

To clear more efficiently, I will bring in power tools, but will ultimately use a combination of power tools and hand tools.  A walk behind sickle bar mower will be used to sever the blackberries at ground level.  Perhaps a hedge trimmer or a machete will be used to cut a vertical slice through the sprawling, tangled canes on each side.  One of the challenging questions is how to progress from front to back through the tangled mess, pulling the tangled canes out.  Right now, I am thinking of the serrated weed cutter with about a 42 inch handle on it.  It will allow a reach back from the front, cutting downward from the top.  As this is cut, slice by slice will be removed with a fork, pushing back probably 18 inches at a time through the tangle.

I've thought about a walk behind brush hog, which may work well on some aspects of the project, but it would not work well on the vertical cut through the tangled mess on the sides, where the canes in the mess may be rooted in the area to be cleared, or 20 feet away.

I will learn from the process.  Mistakes will be made and I will learn from the mistakes as well as from what went right.

We Have a Well!

For us, one of the nagging little concerns related to whether or not we would actually hit an adequate supply of water when we drilled a well.  With some level of trepidation and anxiety, we awaited the outcome of the well-driller and his craft.

(photo courtesy of Michelle)

The results were good.  I was hoping for 15 gallons a minute or more, and fantasizing for over 20 gallons a minute.  We ended up with a measured outflow of 15-18 gallons per minute.

Most wells in the near vicinity were in the 125 foot range.  Two across Hobbs Road a bit were in the 170-180 foot range.  For those two wells, the strata at the 125 foot range did not yield adequate water, so the driller went deeper.  On our well, there was no water bearing strata at the 125 foot range.  The driller hit sand at 160 feet and continued down to just over 170 feet before the tailings turned back to clay.  So we have a 10-11 foot water bearing sand strata that is providing us water.

Just below the well, Jim, the farmer, had planted grass seed, forage fescue.  The well drilling process, including cleaning up the well, included pumping a lot of sludge and water.  That sludge and water ran down the hill, and buried about a 30 foot wide swath of the newly emerging grass seed.  I need to call Jim and tell him of the destruction....

We are grateful to have this step of the process successfully completed.

Grass Fed Is Best

In the early 1990's, I ran across a book, co-authored by Jo Robinson, entitled, The Omega Diet.  It highlighted the unhistorical imbalance of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids in the modern US diet.  I found it compelling.  Part of my Acres USA reading led me back to Jo Robinson, Sally Fallon, and others regarding the nutritional superiority of grass fed animal products.  This tied back to the omega 3/6 imbalances from The Omega Diet.  Ultimately this thread tied many things together for me related to how to feed animals, how animal agriculture changed dramatically after WW II, human health, self-sufficiency, animal health, ease of farming, and several other things.  In a nutshell, ruminants like cows, sheep, and goats are not designed to eat high grain diets, yet, high grain diets we feed them.  Monogastrics like swine and poultry are omnivorous, yet received great health benefits from being out on pasture, with access to good quality forage (grass and legumes), as well as the insects that co-exist in that environment.

I was led back to another book by Jo Robinson, Why Grassfed is Best!  In the book, Robinson explained in very accessible language several things, including healthier animals, healthier farmer, food safety, environmental benefits, and health benefits for consumers of grassfed animal products.

Standard industrial farming practices confine animals in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).  Animals lack exercise, stand endlessly on concrete, and are fed unnatural diets that are aligned with quick turn around times in the CAFOs, but not aligned with the genetic metabolic needs of the animals.  Ruminants are designed for a forage diet of grasses, legumes, forbes, browse in the form of tender new tree and bush branches.  This diet is balanced with omega 3 and 6 fats.  The CAFO diets are dramatically out of balance with typical diets having an omega 3 to 6 ratio of 1:20.  This leads to inflammation in the animals.  In addition, those high grain diets lead to acidosis in ruminants.  In a project I worked on at USU, we fed cattle sodium bicarbonate to try to neutralize the stomach acid associated with the high grain diets.  This diet and lifestyle led to rapid burnout in the cattle.  At Rawl's pastured dairy farm, typical productive life for cows was about ten years.  In the CAFO style, high grain diet farms, five years is unusual.  The cows most often burn out within two, yes two, lactations.  Monogastrics face similar dilemmas, but are not as severely impacted by high grain diets.  Yet they lack exercise, fresh air, the vitamins and minerals from fresh forage, etc.  The benefits of pasture in the diet express themselves directly in the animal products as well.  Have you ever seen an egg yolk from a chicken with access to grass?  The grassfed yolk is rich in beta carotene and expresses itself as a bright orange yolk instead of a pale yellow yolk.  My daughter tells me that the baking qualities of a grassfed egg is dramatically different as well, better, MUCH BETTER.

 Farmers working on grass farms have better access to fresh air and exercise.  They are not subjected to high ammonia and sulfur concentrations of CAFO buildings.  They also get to eat nutritionally superior products of their own production.  Grass farming also requires significantly less capital investment, easing the financial burdens of the farmers.  Many grass farmers have little to no equipment, with perhaps the exception of a four wheel drive ATV.  Many grass farm thousands of acres with no tractor, no baler, no hay making or hauling equipment, and no buildings.  Financial crisis has historically been one of the key drivers of farmer suicides.  Grass farmers face less financial pressure than conventional farmers.  Additionally, farmers producing grassfed products have a greater opportunity to more easily engage in direct marketing and capture the lion's share of the consumer dollar, mostly reserved for the middle man.  Grass farming is good for farmers.

On the food safety front, CAFOs are bad, bad news for salmonella, E. coli, and campylobacter contamination.  These pathogens thrive in the crowded, knee-deep-in-manure conditions of CAFO environments.  Work conducted at Cornell University by Russel and Diez-Gonzalez conclusively showed that grassfed beef showed dramatically lower E. coli contamination rates.  Other studies have shown that CAFO cattle infected with E. coli, removed from the CAFO environment, and put back on pasture, are almost entirely free of the pathegenic E. coli variants within four weeks.  Likewise, eggs from hens on pasture are far less likely to be infected with salmonella than caged or confined hens.  Additionally, most animals kept in CAFO environments are fed sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick and to boost growth rates.  Grassfed animals are rarely on antibiotics, unless there is a specific clinical need to fight an infection.  This lack of antibiotics helps to protects against antibiotic resistance, which is threatening both human and animal health.

On the environmental front, CAFOs are bad news for the environment.  CAFO animal waste is not treated in the same way that human waste is treated.  It is collected in leaky, open air lagoons and spread on fields periodically in a very dense, overwhelming manner.  This management is being regulated more and more, but it is overwhelming with regular leaks into streams and rivers, contamination of acquifers, and almost unbearable air pollution, particularly related to swine operations.  Properly managed grassfed animals deposit their waste at sustainable, recyclable, utilizable levels on pastures.  They eat the grass and deposit waste there, insuring the recycling of nutrients right where they need to be.

For the human health benefits of grassfed animal products, please go to the Health Benefits section of Jo Robinson's Eat Wild website.  In an nutshell, the health benefits include the following: balanced omega 3/6 fats, increased vitamin E, substantial CLA, increased beta carotene and vitamin A (retinol), higher levels and more balanced minerals, and higher in B vitamins.  Of course that is not completely inclusive, but it gives you a good start on some of the health benefits.  Humans never ate CAFO products before about 1950.  We are not designed to eat, process, and utilize the output of CAFO operations.  The animal products coming out of a CAFO operation vs. a grassfed operation are very different.  Humans have been eating game and other grassfed domesticated animal products for millenia.  Vote no to CAFO and yes to grassfed.  You will be healthier for it.

Acres USA - Soil Science and Nutrient Dense Foods

Acres USA led me down the path of understanding the multi-causal decline in the nutrient levels of foods people consume over the past several decades, perhaps centuries.  With the post WWII focus on the big three soil nutrients, NPK, other soil nutrients were neglected, which is one of the primary causes in food nutrient level declines.  To think that something as complex as soil could be reduced to three elements is understandable as people generally try to simplify complex things.  Oft times, the simplification falls outside of reality to the point where serious problems arise as the result of too much simplification.

Acres USA's go to source for identifying the problem of declining soil fertility leading to declining nutrient density is William Albrecht, a soil scientist at the University of Missouri.  Being the book nerd that I am, I have on my shelves the entire Albrecht collection of books.  Albrecht took the novel approach of using a two stage controlled study protocol.  When assessing the impact of fertilizers on forage and feed crops, he not only measured the impact of the forage and feed crops themselves, but also also through animal feeding trials.  He consistently found that animals that were fed feeds from well-mineralized soils performed better, were healthier, and were more satiated.

There are a myriad of studies which show the decline in food nutrient levels over the course of the 20th century.  Protein levels and mineral levels have with relative consistency, declined across a broad range of plant food and carbohydrate levels have increased.  Obesity and diabetes anyone?  Scientific American has identified several studies and summarized these studies in sort of a mini meta-study.  One of my favorite examples in field corn, the type of corn from which corn meal is made.  Back in the early 1900's, field corn had an average protein level of 12-13%.  Today's field corn has an average protein content of 8-9%.  Among other factors, lower soil sulfur levels drives decreased protein content.  Since farmers get paid for the corn by the bushel, lower protein levels were of no real consequence to them, unless they were feeding their animals the corn that they grew.

Separately, Washington State University has published several peer reviewed articles on the nutrient content of organic vs. conventionally raised produce.  One article outlined the benefits of organic farming methods, particularly as it relates to nutrient density and lower levels of pesticide and herbicide residues.  This is not surprising since by default, organic fertilizers contain broad arrays of nutrients, unlike conventional NPK focused fertilizers.

Many of the more sophisticated conventional soil scientists recognize the importance of many micronutrients.  The note that Liebig's law of the minimum dictate that the soil nutrient that is in the least supply relative to need becomes a limiting factor in production.  For example, if phosphorous (P) is the lowest nutrient from a relative need, production will be limited by the availability of it.  See the diagram below.  Among the things that Albrecht brought to the table that furthered the discussion was ratios of nutrients.  For example, too much calcium or magnesium can cause a potassium deficiency as they prevent plants from absorbing adequate potassium.  So in addition to the law of the minimum, there are optimal nutrient ratios.  When mineralization levels are optimum and ratios are optimum, food nutrient density also becomes optimum.

Being able to manage and control soil nutrient levels and ratios has been one of my primary motivating forces in order to provide my family with the best food possible.  Since food is foundational to good health, ultimately, the idea of providing excellent food and the resulting healthy outcomes is rooted in soil science.

Acres USA - Soil Science

Acres USA, the monthly publication, led me down a path of discovery on how to optimize soil, leading to more nutrient dense food and healthier plants and livestock.  One of my idea, goals, or ideals has been to raise the best food possible for my family.  Acres USA led me down a path of figuring out how to do that, in part.

In the organic gardening and farming world, one of the key ideals, if not dogmas, is that healthy soils create healthy plants and healthy plants provide better nutrition to people and animals that consume them.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is generally true.  Washington State University has studied nutrient content of a variety of foods grown conventionally and organically, and finds with some level of regularity and consitency that organically grown foods have higher vitamin, mineral, and protein content than conventionally raised foods, but not always.  There are a lot of reasons why the generality is true and a lot of reasons why the specifics don't concur with the generalization.

From Acres USA and related publications, I have learned several things.  The soil is made from weathered rock and organic matter.  The rock is different from region to region, which leads to different nutrient profiles for soils in different areas.  Generally food and forage crops perform best with a good profile and ratios of various soil minerals, which originate with the native rock material.  Oganic matter in the soil promotes and sustains soil life (bacteria, fungi, and higher order life like earthworms).  The soil life, in conjunction with plant life work on decomposing the rock materials, making it available to other plants through a slow weathering and then infinitely recycling process of growth and decay.  If the native rock material in a specific region does not provide the optimal mineral profile, the food quality and quantity produced can be improved by supplementing with materials, preferably naturally occurring materials.  We generally think of that as fertilization.

I had heard about farmers farming a plot of land and then "farming it out," or depleting the nutrient levels of the land, then abandoning it and moving on.  This still happens today in the Amazon rain forests, where indigenous people slash and burn and area, farm it, then let it grow back to forest.  The interesting thing is that there is a cycle of farm, recovery (long recovery), farm, recovery.  The trees pull up minerals from the soil far below the soil surface, and deposit them on the surface through leaf fall, or the death of trees and surface decay.  The land naturally provides a mechanism to heal the soil.  Man's interference in otherwise natural processes should mimic that, perhaps at an accelerated rate.

As a basic example, one of the minerals that is considered a micro-nutrient is selenium.  It does a lot of good things for people and animals.  Here is the Willamette Valley, low selenium levels lead to white muscle disease in cattle.  The native rock material is low in selenium and the relatively high winter rain levels disolve and leach away much of the small amount that is there.  For optimum human and animal health, selenium needs to be supplemented.  Given that it is a micro nutrient, the levels required are minimal.  Selenium complexed in carbon as a food source is much more readily available than taking a mineral selenium supplment.  This is why I eat brazil nuts as a source of selenium.  The top six inches of an acre of soil is about two million pounds.  The amount of selenium per acre required is between one and two pounds.  That seems like such a trivial amount that one would wonder why it matters.  It does matter.  However, too much is toxic.  The holding capacity of the soil (CEC or TEC) and the total amount of a nutrient and the ratio of each nutrient to other nutrients all play important roles in the growth of healthy plants and animals, leading to optimally healthy foods for people.

The fact that since WWII, that farmers have been told to focus on three or four, maybe five soil nutrients is leading to a steady decline in the vitamin, mineral, and protein levels in the foods.  This is very well documented.  Farmers are told to focus on nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.  Separately, they accidentally focus to a degree on calcium through liming to correct soil pH.  Some farmers pay a little attention to sulfur, a precursor to the development of most proteins.  In effect farmers have not considered other nutrients because the focus on these things do create lots of pounds produced - but in decreasing nutrient density.

My goal is to grow food that is ever moving towards more optimal levels of nutrient density.  This is a key foundational element of my drive to have a farm.  The idea, ideal, and goal is to grow the best food possible for my family.  This can only be done if you pay attention to the soil and treat it appropriately.

Soil testing and understanding nutrient and mineral provides a foundation for understanding the first phase of soil treatment.  The soil needs to be optimally mineralized.  Once that is done, the foundation is set for increased soil biology and sustainable nutrient cycling, which when combined with plant selection and other food raising techniques, leads to the best possible food.  The starting point is soil mineralization. 

I have taken soil samples of our property and determined a few important things.  The soil is lacking in calcium in a fairly significant, but not unexpected way.  Magnesium is close, but a little short.  Potassium and phosphorous are both fairly abundant, perhaps to the point where I don't know that I will ever need to add these two elements, at least in the next several years.  Iron is high, sulfur is sufficient.  Zinc is low, selenium is low as well, as I suspected.  There are many other aspects to consideration, but these are foundational.  This is where I will start, along with the addition of a modest amount of compost.  The soil already has pretty good organic matter, but it could still be improved.  Making these soil corrections will set the foundation for the growth of fantastical foods.

While I did not learn all I know from Acres USA, the publication set me on the right path to understanding the soil and how to grow the best food possible within certain natural constraints and the very human constraint of imperfect knowledge.

Oats Harvested - What Next?

This past weekend, I drove by the property and saw that the oats had been harvested.  While I had not intended to walk the property that morning, I seized the opportunity.  As I walked the property, thoughts of "what next," flooded my mind.  One of the ideas that crossed my mind was getting a basic "soil correction" done for the property before the tenant farmer tilled the oat crop residue into the soil.

Earlier in the spring, I had taken a soil sample across the whole property.  The soil sample indicated that calcium levels were low, requiring about 300 pounds of actual calcium per acre, or about 800 pounds of high calcium lime (calcium carbonate).  Magnesium levels were in the right general range, so dolomitic lime would have been inappropriate.

Mid-summer I came across the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) soil survey maps of the property.  The maps suggested that the soils across the property were of different classes.  There were three basic categories of soils, Quatama loam, Verboort silty clay loam, and kind of a non-descript category of Xerochrepts and Haploxeralls.  The best soils on the higher parts of the land are Quatama loam.  The lower, drainage pathways were the Verboort silty clay laom. Lastly the area in the lower middle of the map that rolls off towards the stream bed below were the Xerochreps and Haploxeralls.  I think the last designation means that when they did the soil survey decades ago that the area was coverered by trees, so they didn't want to work to hard and climing through the undergrowth to properly categorize it.  But that's speculative on my part.

I had initially sampled the property in the spring as one homegenous property.  With this new soil map, I started thinking that maybe I should sample the three NRCS soil types independently to see if they were indeed dissimilar, meaning they should be treated differently, or if there was really no significant difference, meaning they could be treated the same.  I determined to sample the sections of the land that corresponded to the NRCS soil survey map.

I took my trusty soil probe to the property to collect 60 soil cores needed to do the sampling for three different soil types.  After about 15 minutes, I had taken about 1 1/2 cores.  The soil was dry and as a result, fairly impenetrable with a soil probe.  When I had taken samples back in April, taking the samples was a breeze because the soil was very moist.

Since I really could not get soil samples, I'm thinking that I'll wait on the soil correction until next year.  I don't know when the tenant farmer is going to till the oat crop residue into the soil, but it will probably be before the soil is in good condition to take soil samples.

In the meantime there are many other "what next" projects that are garnering my attention.

Oats in the Morning

This was a photograph from a week ago at our property in the early morning, showing the oats that are currently planted and ripening.  I find it peaceful and idyllic.

Peaceful.  Engenders thoughts.  Direction.  Hope.