"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

CornishTone · Nov 10, 2021

Samcowman said:
Something I was looking at doing using humates to give everything a bit of a boost at the new place. There’s plenty of old sprayers about that could be used for the job. What do you reckon @CornishTone

Looks like your question has been answered long before I got back on here!

Your new place has a very good compost producer not far away. I don’t know the farm or it’s history but it might be all so well to have a few lorry loads of decent compost to kick start the processes.

We can use fulvic acid as a safener when applying foliar N and it’s good for getting plants to take up herbicides or foliar micronutrients.

I tend to see humic acid and similar soil bio-stimulant products as a fit for horribly, horribly degraded land where it really needs a kick start to become productive. I doubt your new place will be anything like that bad. I’m looking forward to having a mooch around this place of yours!

Humble Village Farmer · Nov 10, 2021

Brought my cattle in from the mob grazing arable field today without issue.

There's about a week, possibly 10 days of grass round the yard before they come in, all with permanent fencing round. So I can now report that they never broke out again after the bad spell in May and I've got a heap of silage from where they should have grazed throughout the summer, so I should be able to turn them out in the spring.

Thanks to all on here for the advice and support. IT made a sh!t time slightly more bearable; not everyone else understands do they?

Rob Garrett · Nov 10, 2021

Kiwi Pete said:
https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/healthy-soil-healthy-farms?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=192b2d96-1949-4d00-ae43-fb2eb6fb5b97

I thought this was quite interesting, I think we already kinda knew this but

Have always been a bit disappointed at the size/colour of my nodules, on the white clover that is! Been undersowing spring oats with white clover & winter bale grazing cattle on the stubble/regrowth, plus blathering plenty of fym about. Result is legumes aren't working & high bacterial soil. More fungi required, compost, compost, compost!

Humble Village Farmer · Nov 10, 2021

Rob Garrett said:
Have always been a bit disappointed at the size/colour of my nodules, on the white clover that is! Been undersowing spring oats with white clover & winter bale grazing cattle on the stubble/regrowth, plus blathering plenty of fym about. Result is legumes aren't working & high bacterial soil. More fungi required, compost, compost, compost!
View attachment 996721

I've done a bit of that as well. Not checked the nodules but the clover is good and green. Was kind of assuming that was good enough?

som farmer · Nov 10, 2021

Kiwi Pete said:
https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/healthy-soil-healthy-farms?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=192b2d96-1949-4d00-ae43-fb2eb6fb5b97

I thought this was quite interesting, I think we already kinda knew this but

nice to know we are not being just 'trendy', and what we think will work, is being believed by some scientists as well !
And to be fair to the research, they are not telling us to spend money, another first !
It boils down to simple sustainable farming systems, easy, really.

som farmer · Nov 10, 2021

Humble Village Farmer said:
I've done a bit of that as well. Not checked the nodules but the clover is good and green. Was kind of assuming that was good enough?

perhaps we ought to do more digging, l assumed that, as well.

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

som farmer said:
nice to know we are not being just 'trendy', and what we think will work, is being believed by some scientists as well !
And to be fair to the research, they are not telling us to spend money, another first !
It boils down to simple sustainable farming systems, easy, really.

Yes, I have always really been drawn to the Jena experiment and how the diversity of species in an area may just prove to be the key to its resilience, but I was still pleased to see that.

Especially what they found to test as an indicator of relative soil health

CornishTone · Nov 10, 2021

Rob Garrett said:
Have always been a bit disappointed at the size/colour of my nodules, on the white clover that is! Been undersowing spring oats with white clover & winter bale grazing cattle on the stubble/regrowth, plus blathering plenty of fym about. Result is legumes aren't working & high bacterial soil. More fungi required, compost, compost, compost!
View attachment 996721

Have a look at molybdenum. Critical to the N fixation pathway and always applied as a foliar feed to legume crops, but usually overlooked in pasture legumes and quite often not much of it about. Maybe we aren’t fixing as much N as we think in some parts of the country.

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

CornishTone said:
Have a look at molybdenum. Critical to the N fixation pathway and always applied as a foliar feed to legume crops, but usually overlooked in pasture legumes and quite often not much of it about. Maybe we aren’t fixing as much N as we think in some parts of the country.

Good call. You'd be amazed how little moly we apply in a year, compared to all the other stuff that goes out the back of the spreader.

One place, owned by expat Welshmen, stands out as an exception to that rule - they usually drill ½ the rate of clover and then spin the other ½ with moly after establishment (usually because they feel the need spray the heck out of it and kill what they drilled)

it's quite interesting because of all the N that we sell to sheep/beef farms, their farm probably accounts for 40% of the tonnage. Heaps of new pasture... heaps of dead cows and sheep too

it's quite a contrast to what I would call normal kiwi sheep/beef farming, but we are pretty backwards down this way, sh!t they spend some $$$$ to get to their sweet spot

hendrebc · Nov 10, 2021

Kiwi Pete said:
Humate -as Rob said it's basically coal that never quite got to be coal, not enough pressure, so it stays softish.

Soft brown coal

I've dug some of that here when putting a gatepost in. I couldn't tell you which gatepost it was but I definitely did! I thought it was an odd type of clay or something but soft brown coal would describe it better.
On my grandfather's farm a few miles away from he had some coal on the surface on one field where the soil had slipped. I never saw it but apparently it wasn't very good coal it burnt too quickly and was a bit brown. That would probably have been humates as well then

Didn't know that's what humates were. Learn something new every day.

Samcowman · Nov 10, 2021

CornishTone said:
Looks like your question has been answered long before I got back on here!

Your new place has a very good compost producer not far away. I don’t know the farm or it’s history but it might be all so well to have a few lorry loads of decent compost to kick start the processes.

We can use fulvic acid as a safener when applying foliar N and it’s good for getting plants to take up herbicides or foliar micronutrients.

I tend to see humic acid and similar soil bio-stimulant products as a fit for horribly, horribly degraded land where it really needs a kick start to become productive. I doubt your new place will be anything like that bad. I’m looking forward to having a mooch around this place of yours!

There will be a soil assessment done for each field before we start so will be a good guide of where it’s at at the moment. It’s been well looked after by the looks of it.
Some compost would be good, just did a quick google. Is it over towards Newquay?
Will be looking to have a walk around in the new year sometime.

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

hendrebc said:
Soft brown coal
I've dug some of that here when putting a gatepost in. I couldn't tell you which gatepost it was but I definitely did! I thought it was an odd type of clay or something but soft brown coal would describe it better.
On my grandfather's farm a few miles away from he had some coal on the surface on one field where the soil had slipped. I never saw it but apparently it wasn't very good coal it burnt too quickly and was a bit brown. That would probably have been humates as well then
Didn't know that's what humates were. Learn something new every day.

It's similar to peat, but actually quite different.

Much of Southland's plains have both in large quantities, which is why when I moved there from the hills I managed to get tractors stuck in every little dip and hollow in the ground

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

Ha, guess what popped up on my FB memories from a year ago today

today it looks more like this

and this

hendrebc · Nov 10, 2021

Kiwi Pete said:
Ha, guess what popped up on my FB memories from a year ago today
View attachment 996752

today it looks more like thisView attachment 996753
and thisView attachment 996754

Looks healthier now. The grass under the feet of the cattle is almost fluorescent green like regrowth from dairy silage ground that had lots of nitrogen. the second and third pictures look like grass. Maybe it's my phone screen?

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

Doesn't really look a great deal different! Really. Just spring grass.

All the grass is wanting to chuck a seedhead up, the difference is really what I think about that

looking at 2020 we had those animals in about a 2ha break and IIRC on a 22 day rotation, 2021 we have 4 mobs there, so .4ha

The cells they're in have had about 30 days, we could be back there in 27 days or 127 days depending on what we want to do

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

hendrebc said:
Looks healthier now. The grass under the feet of the cattle is almost fluorescent green like regrowth from dairy silage ground that had lots of nitrogen. the second and third pictures look like grass. Maybe it's my phone screen?

I think it was a bit of a filter to brighten the old photo up, that phone had a lot of dust under the lens cover

just like yours

see you're a man ahead of your time

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

I'm looking at those residuals and thinking that they could really use another day in there....

because I know what happened by about mid January, we were screaming to destock those cattle and all those sheep... if only I had followed my gut and slowed down!

hendrebc · Nov 10, 2021

Kiwi Pete said:
I think it was a bit of a filter to brighten the old photo up, that phone had a lot of dust under the lens cover

just like yours see you're a man ahead of your time

You've noticed

I don't take many pictures any more

This phone is 3+ years old and it's falling apart literally held together with sellotape to stop the screen falling out. Battery is a bit crap now and it tells me the memory is full every day. Keeps going though I don't like throwing things away when when still work!

Kiwi Pete · Nov 10, 2021

I went away from the Samsung S series and went for an A72 this time - I'd look seriously at one .
They call it a 2-day battery and it really is, it's thicker and chunkier and quite a bit cheaper than an S10 or above, has all the stuff you need but the battery life is fantastic, I think it's a 5000mAh so it only needs a charge every other day.

It's got 4 cameras too, which seems overkill but then you have a panorama wide angle one, and a nice zoom, a macro one which is really good for documents etc

it was about $500 cheaper than what I would have bought myself if I hadn't asked the very helpful lady in the shop about something with a better battery and a bit less flimsiness, most new phones are designed for urbanites and just don't hack living in farmers' pockets

CornishTone · Nov 10, 2021

Samcowman said:
There will be a soil assessment done for each field before we start so will be a good guide of where it’s at at the moment. It’s been well looked after by the looks of it.
Some compost would be good, just did a quick google. Is it over towards Newquay?
Will be looking to have a walk around in the new year sometime.

You’ve got one near Wadebridge (St Tudy) called TinTen Farm Compost and one down at Hayle. The Hayle lot are https://www.greenwastecompany.com/ and have a very good reputation but haulage will be more than the St Tudy gang I guess.

Are the landlords going to do your soil tests before you go in? I would think they ought to but I’ve heard of 2 recently where the landlord has weighed out of it and it’s caused issues. I’m sure your landlord will be all over it though!!

"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

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