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

[Kiwi Pete]

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.

Make sure you try to get both a visual soil assessment, and get a feel for/record a landscape function assessment .

These are the things that you'll rapidly change with good management - if you go to the Keyline Scale of Permanence you'll note that soil is the least permanent one as you can rapidly better it and rapidly lose it

 

[Samcowman]

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!!

They are going to do it yes but the farm is in a Farm carbon assessment pilot job already so most of it will be done as part ignored that I would have thought.

 

[CornishTone]

Make sure you try to get both a visual soil assessment, and get a feel for/record a landscape function assessment .

These are the things that you'll rapidly change with good management - if you go to the Keyline Scale of Permanence you'll note that soil is the least permanent one as you can rapidly better it and rapidly lose it

Reckon you’ll get your landlord to pay for that @Samcowman, let alone understand it?!

 

[CornishTone]

They are going to do it yes but the farm is in a Farm carbon assessment pilot job already so most of it will be done as part ignored that I would have thought.

Make sure you try to get both a visual soil assessment, and get a feel for/record a landscape function assessment .

These are the things that you'll rapidly change with good management - if you go to the Keyline Scale of Permanence you'll note that soil is the least permanent one as you can rapidly better it and rapidly lose it

To be fair, if they’re sticking to the full FCT protocol, they’ll include Earth worm counts, VESS, infiltration and Slake tests.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

To be fair, if they’re sticking to the full FCT protocol, they’ll include Earth worm counts, VESS, infiltration and Slake tests.

Good one!

I really only stumbled on the LFA relatively recently, it's probably the hardest one to "measure" but really has the greatest implications and gives you the fastest feedback on your grazing

it might be just one for the operator

can you remember how it goes, Sam? I've got a slide of it if you want it

 

[Samcowman]

Good one!

I really only stumbled on the LFA relatively recently, it's probably the hardest one to "measure" but really has the greatest implications and gives you the fastest feedback on your grazing

it might be just one for the operator

can you remember how it goes, Sam? I've got a slide of it if you want it

I had a quick look up. Yeah I remember it. What is your slide does it make it simpler?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Good thing I had another search, that top slide is new to me and better

 

[Samcowman]

Definitely. Less busy

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Litter is still the biggy.
I think a lot of "regen grazers" aim to provide litter by leaving grass from last time for next time, which we did, and it works to an extent

however by next time it is like a snapped-off tree and really difficult to get that laid down so it can be cycled

after trying all manner of stuff to get that to happen, we went back to what's more conventional over here, use high utilisation but use our efforts with stock density to keep the area small, rather than use density to flatten the grass (waste) and what we immediately saw is that next time, the litter is soft fresh stuff and it takes care of itself

the only thing left to balance is getting timings in the ballpark, so that we aren't running out of litter between grazings, but we aren't having pileups either, our sun isn't strong enough most of the year to intentionally shade the growing points and when it is, the grass is tall and abundant

then it all goes back to reducing area under grazing, and as you see from my a year ago picture post, we're only grazing 20% of the area at a given time

it's just a different mindset, more conventional than "wasting grass" or "measuring height", all about expectations of when the grass might need grazed next, and a response

intake takes care of itself when you have a whole farm full of grass you could graze, platemetering just says it's time to take it away

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

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

I've had this Galaxy X-Cover Pro for 18 months now and am pleased with it on the whole. It was half the price of a top S series and its way more rugged, battery does around 1.5 days intensive use and you can swap batteries if you need to (carry a spare).

 

[Rob Garrett]

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.

Looks like I need some Molly Bedlam in the mix.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Yes, looking at that I would say perhaps what is there is unavailable as the iron and manganese are highish? But I've tried to forget chemistry so that may be crap advice.

Don't forget a tickle of S, if possible some straight sulphur 90 or elemental S

 

[Rob Garrett]

Yes, looking at that I would say perhaps what is there is unavailable as the iron and manganese are highish? But I've tried to forget chemistry so that may be crap advice.

Don't forget a tickle of S, if possible some straight sulphur 90 or elemental S

I know what your saying about the chemistry/analysis, useful to backup what you see, but don't let it lead or you'll end up with empty pockets! Seems once the soil gets working, it shorts itself out.

 

[awkward]

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.

The coal or sludge ontop of coal is called leonardite, interesting stuff more like a primordial ooze rich in all the necessities of life.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I know what your saying about the chemistry/analysis, useful to backup what you see, but don't let it lead or you'll end up with empty pockets! Seems once the soil gets working, it shorts itself out.

I've got no issue with it, but it seems like every farmer is a chemistry whizz and I can tap into that quite easily - just ask

I just find the world of what we don't really know so much more interesting than swapping recipes for [limited] success, I mean if those returns were real then farmers would all be multimillionaries and have not alot left to do

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

I've got no issue with it, but it seems like every farmer is a chemistry whizz and I can tap into that quite easily - just ask

I just find the world of what we don't really know so much more interesting than swapping recipes for [limited] success, I mean if those returns were real then farmers would all be multimillionaries and have not alot left to do

I remember listening to a talk, I think it was Frederik Thomas, saying, "If these sprays were as good as they say they are, why have we still got weeds?"

 

[som farmer]

I know what your saying about the chemistry/analysis, useful to backup what you see, but don't let it lead or you'll end up with empty pockets! Seems once the soil gets working, it shorts itself out.

if we grow deep rooted plants, ie chicory, which is meant to bring up minerals, does that help the soil as well ?
A lot of mineral 'shortages' are often because 1 mineral, is 'tying' up others, as in molybdenum, ties up copper.
Over the years, we have had to apply a fair bit of lime, as our indices were around 5 - 6, virtually all the recent tests, have come back as fine. Same with copper shortage in cattle, everything was bolused with copper, for the last 6yrs, being told, not short anymore. In the copper shortage, our cattle used to go ginger, with the classic spectacles, which disappeared after treatment. Obviously not complaining, just dubious about why two problems, just went.
We use a gen purpose mineral bolus, on the dairy, at drying off, and again preservice period. And wouldn't stop, we seem to get on fine with that policy. There again, if cattle get more mins in the grazing, from deep roots .............
And l cannot say it's the changes we have made, because it predates them.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I remember listening to a talk, I think it was Frederik Thomas, saying, "If these sprays were as good as they say they are, why have we still got weeds?"

That's so true.

Ag is a classic life example..
all the weight of the past being pushed into the future, when all there really ever is, is today

If I look in one of these little paddocks I see thistles

but if I see those thistles and then think "they were bloody thick over at Ross's last year, imagine if they choked everything out, I wouldn't have much grass in the wee paddock if they got like that" then it's going to change how I see my thistles tomorrow.

They just got 'problem status' attached

It's all these little attachments that I notice, because I'm not really attached to problems, not really attached to growing more grass and selling more produce

I do know that my cows don't really pay their way unless we attach a few more calves to the cows, so we just get on with that

freedom is really quite cool

 

[CornishTone]

if we grow deep rooted plants, ie chicory, which is meant to bring up minerals, does that help the soil as well ?
A lot of mineral 'shortages' are often because 1 mineral, is 'tying' up others, as in molybdenum, ties up copper.
Over the years, we have had to apply a fair bit of lime, as our indices were around 5 - 6, virtually all the recent tests, have come back as fine. Same with copper shortage in cattle, everything was bolused with copper, for the last 6yrs, being told, not short anymore. In the copper shortage, our cattle used to go ginger, with the classic spectacles, which disappeared after treatment. Obviously not complaining, just dubious about why two problems, just went.
We use a gen purpose mineral bolus, on the dairy, at drying off, and again preservice period. And wouldn't stop, we seem to get on fine with that policy. There again, if cattle get more mins in the grazing, from deep roots .............
And l cannot say it's the changes we have made, because it predates them.

There so much interaction just between the nutrients, it's a bit mind boggling, without even considering the biology! At some level you have to accept that the soil will indeed "sort itself out", it's managed for the last umpteen million years after all, else you'd drive yourself mad, like trying to hit the top of the grain market and the bottom of the fert market each year!!

Moly is an interesting one. It's required in such tiny amounts, and can complicate other nutrients if there's too much, that your average fert salesman isn't going to bother with it for the sake of a couple of quid per hectare.