Putting Our Water Through the Wringer


Image couresy of The Virtual Dime Museum: www.thevirtualdimemuseum.com

We spent some time detailing the importance of water and, more specifically, rainfall in our determination of where to farm. Access to an adequate and clean water supply was also critical. What we haven’t talked about is just what it takes for us to get our water clean. We are on a well with no access to public water. Upon opening the kitchen faucet on our first visit we were nearly floored by the smell the sulfur in the water. For anyone that’s smelled sulfur water you’ll never forget it. Imagine a strong odor of rotten eggs and the shock of a dutch oven. 

After some testing was done last November we learned that the water is highly ferric (lots of iron) and moderately sulfuric. In addition, there’s high levels of many other minerals (magnesium, etc) and the grains of hardness is off the charts at 18-22 grains.
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The Young and the Revered


"We need more young people farming". I hear you Palmerino!
Since starting down the path of farming my reading materials have transitioned from finance and Wall St Journal-related to substantially all farming-related. It even goes so far as to subscribing to multiple monthly magazines. I’m not talking ad-laden, glossy covered, highly-edited mags like Garden and Gun, I’m talking about old school, gray paper, stapled-together magazines like Stockman Grass Farmer and Graze Magazine. Nothing like reading a good A.I. vs. natural debate on the train to work...
 
I've subscribed to the monthly mailings of both magazines for about a year now and I enjoy them thoroughly. The columnists are almost exclusively older and wiser farmers sharing their experiences and tips for successful pasture-based farming and ranching. One of my favorite columnists (and farm-book authors) is Jim Gerrish. He’s written two incredibly helpful books on management intensive and extended-season grazing and he also writes a monthly column in Stockman Grassfarmer. While I absorb and relish the advice and direction provided by those magazines I sometimes want to hear about what other young farmers are up to. Unless I'm reading a blog, it is exceedingly rare to hear about what's going on with other young farmers.  
 
So much to my surprise this past month Jim wrote about young, beginning farmers. It was awesome.
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Working WITH the Land


"Hell yeah I eat small trees, what about it?"
There’s a few things we’ve chosen to emphasize with our farming model, one of which is to work WITH the land, not against it. Among the multitude of problems we see with so-called “conventional” or “industrial” ag is the unsustainable approach of forcing human technology and infrastructure on mother nature simply because we can and because it’s cheaper and “more efficient” in the short-run. Early memories of dirt feedlots full of cattle eating corn in the deserts of New Mexico come to mind. Those farmers work hard and that’s the way the American milk industry has trended, so I don’t blame them, but that approach just doesn’t make sense to us. So with each decision we not only ask ourselves what it means for the animals, but also for the land.

Because of this we have to remain highly flexible. As we get to know the land better and as it evolves over time we have to adapt our business to make the best use of it. The more time we’ve spent on the farm the more we’ve come to appreciate the fact that right now the land is more suited for dairy goats than it is for dairy cows. Our land is full of wooded areas, cedar saplings, and blackberry bushes. Years of pasture negligence have led to nearly complete erosion of soil organic matter and a rapid increase in “weed” growth. Well, it just so happens that goats tend to prefer many of the “weeds” we're growing and we want to use that to our advantage.  
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