This week’s farming update from Ben

I attended a soil health meeting on Thursday. It was a program known as the ‘I-90 Soil Health Tour’ with four stops across Southern Minnesota. A real nice free lunch was included. And this wasn’t a “free” lunch with the purchase of something, it was a free seminar WITH a free lunch! 

There was a lot of data presented. We talked a lot about what makes good healthy soil. How much is water, how much is open space, minerals, and how a plant is able to use minerals once they’re bound with the soil. We talked about how quickly some fertilizers or minerals bind with the soil, which means the plant has to use a different process to utilize those minerals. 

One way to  test the biological activity in the dirt is to bury a pair of cotton underwear about 6” deep. Dig it up a couple months later and see how far it’s degraded. Healthy soil with lots of microbes will have it just about all gone. I may have to try and remember that this spring.  

Once the soil gets to a certain point and we begin to understand the different ways minerals are accessible, a farmer can use less fertilizer, which means less money of course, which everybody likes. 

One of the speakers was a soil scientist. He works with farmers all over Southern Minnesota. This gentleman really needed to just lighten up and have a little more fun with his entire presentation, because while the subject was interesting, his presentation was about as dry as dirt. This guy started off trying to get the group to speak up and throw out some answers and apparently he was gonna stand there and wait until he got them. Come on buddy, read the room. Are we just gonna sit here and stare at each other while you’re waiting for an answer? It was during his presentation that I spent a lot of time looking around the room and thinking about what I can use to write this blog. 

He talked about a drop of rain, falling at potentially 45 MPH and the impact that drop can have on one grain of sand, but that got me thinking, how fast DOES rain fall? So I googled that. Generally rain falls at 15-25 MPH. 

There was maybe 150 farmers in the room. I had a good time watching the room, the body language (the guy across the table from me was drifting), a lot of arms crossed, hands on chins, a few elbows on the table with head resting on palm. There was 5 women in the group. One guy limped in with a cane. Maybe he was 85 years old. He had good comments. One thing he pointed out was to get a soil potentiometer first thing. Check for soil compaction and a hard pan before anything else. 

It felt good to see all these farmers interested in improving the soil. 

One of the things I always hope when I write these blogs are to give you some knowledge of farming and how much farmers do care. We have to take care of the soil.

For our farm, I’m looking at how long I think I could be farming yet, knock on wood, (I’m 62. Have I got 10 years left? 20?) and what I can afford to implement and change.  Of course we always hope the farm and soil diversity would outlast us.

These quotes were said at the meeting:

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” – Baba Dioum, Senegalese forestry engineer.

“Dirt is dead, soil is alive”.

“We’ve always done it this way” are the most expensive words in agriculture.” 

These quotes I found online:

“To be a successful farmer one must first know the nature of the soil.” — Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 400 B.C.

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” — Aldo Leopold

And of course these:

“Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and many accomplishments, owes the fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”

—Attributed to Paul Harvey

“One teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people in the world.”

=================

Out in the shop, I got the new ventilation fan wired up last weekend, and I replaced the jaws on the vice on the welding table. Years of beating on things had broken off the ends.

Took me a while to find 4.5” Craftsman jaws for replacement. But then I lubed the bolt and frame and it’s just like new. 

The table this vice is bolted too, I made in 12^th grade welding class. Still using it. 

The current chickens have started laying a few more eggs, and I’m even getting a green one now and then. I don’t know what’s become of the green egg laying hens. Have they just been taking the winter off? We’re back to just one chicken in the garage. 

The coyotes seem to be making the rounds again. The dogs are often out barking at 3AM or 5AM. And then sniffing around the crib. Course it’s too dark to see anything. I may just start shooting into the dirt to scare off whatever is out there. 

I started looking at ordering chicks for spring. My usual place doesn’t have any available until May. That’s later than I like. There’s another place I have used a few times and I’ve got some coming on March 31^st. $260 for 50 chicks. Four different breeds including 20 ‘Easter Egg’, ten ‘hatchery choice’, ten Silver Laced Wyandotte, and ten Lavender Orpington. Mabel from a few weeks ago, I think she is a Lavender Orpington. The chicks will be coming from Willmar, MN. 

EVER DUG UP ANYTHING UNUSUAL IN YOUR GARDEN? 

READ ANYTHING BY ALDO LEOPOLD?