Water can make more forage, but what's the cost? Here are some tips to help you decide if you want to irrigate so that you can prep for this summer's heat.
Victor Shelton of the NRCS in Indiana puts out a monthly newsletter called "Grazing Bites." In the June issue he talks about what we can do to stay ahead of our forage when it's growing rapidly in the early grazing season.
While substitutes can be found for many finite natural resources mined from the Earth—copper in phone lines can be replaced by fiber optics, steel in car bodies by composite plastics, and petroleum in transportation fuels by biodiesel or hydrogen cells—this is not the case for phosphorus in food production. The U.S. Geological Survey lists the following under the heading Substitutes for Phosphate Rock: “THERE ARE NO SUBSTITUTES FOR PHOSPHORUS . . . ”
Nitrogen is the most expensive, and most difficult to manage part of the fertilizer equation; too much and you waste money, too little and you don’t get the crop production you need. Here Dan Hudson shares the results of his year-long trial using two different modeling tools so you can choose the one that will work best for you.
Spring has barely arrived, and some of you may not even have moved your animals to pasture. So why are we talking about stockpiling? Because as you're putting your grazing plan together, knowing what you have to do to extend your grazing season will help you make sure you get there.
Dairy farmers wanted to know how to implement this practice on their farms the authors took on the task of checking out how it works for farmers using it in Pennsylvania and New York.
Ron Holter is one of the smartest farmers you could meet. He thinks things through to create the life he wants. Now his dairy cows eat no grain, aren't high producing, and he has time to take a nap just about every day. Here's how he makes a good living in spite of (or because of) all this.
Considering a CSA? Here, Mark shares different CSA options and how they distribute risk among the farmer and the consumer so you can figure out what could work for you.
Over the years, we've lost a lot of the knowledge that our farming ancestors had. With his new book, Jack Lazor gathers hundreds of years of grain-growing knowledge, adds his decades of experience to it, and shares it all as easily as if he were telling a story.
Last week Kathy shared the budget for a backyard broiler operation. Now, here's a budgeting tool for doing it on a larger scale to tell you what kind of profit you might expect from your own operation. Does it pay to do this? Tell us!
Most of us are unaware that a fungus isolated from a Missouri soil sample became an antibiotic that has saved thousands of lives, and that it was discovered by a 76 year old botanist who had come back from retirement to do something significant. It's a story we should know because it gives us another reason to take good care of our soil.
