The Key Is In the Soil
This month sees us starting to talk about the winter months and what the rough plan is for our cattle mainly since we only have about 15 sheep on farm now.
Our farming practices are slightly different than some other farms in the area who have a different soil type and ground to what we have. We have a soil type that is very free draining. With only about 6 inches of actual soil before it gets to a stone we call shillet, which breaks up very easily for a few feet then it turns into what my dad calls Black Ram rock which I need to check if this is its real name or something we have learned to call it over the years. This type of soil means often we can out winter a large proportion of our cattle especially the younger and often lighter in weight stock. This helps us to cut costs and to be honest if the weather is not to harsh they love being outside rather than in. Many farmers with heavier clay land can not do this however, but they grow more grass in the summer when our grass burns off to make it look like the desert.
The type of soil and land matters because for the last 10 years, my primary focus has been soil health and rebuilding soil, because we only have 6 inches of it over 90% of the farm. We don’t know where it went, or why there is so little soil other than the way we have been farming it has possibly been taking too much and not returning enough which we are fixing now by grazing the cattle in paddocks. The use of artificial fertiliser has meant the soil we do have has become very lazy and no longer works as it should, because it expected its man-made fertiliser every year, when it would have a big flush of growth and we would get our winter feed sorted.
Great! You would think but what was happening is we were causing more work for ourselves. Most of us have basic biology knowledge we all know plants need water, sun carbon dioxide and soil to grow. The soil being where the roots grow to gain food for the plant. Right, plants like humans need the right amounts of nutrition as well, key minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium, potash and a plethora of others all need to be in the soil or stone and taken up by the plant for it to grow.
When the soil becomes lazy however this connection stops happening, and suddenly you are growing grass/plants to feed livestock, but it is lacking in the key minerals that it and the animals need. This causes illness and disease in the livestock, which invertedly takes up lots more time, because sick animals do. It’s also emotionally and mentally quite distressing when animals are sick and you are working hard to keep them alive, and they go and die anyway. Sheep spring to mind here. For us it was our sheep showing us the biggest problems, I just didn’t know it 20 years ago. It would have caused less heart ache if it did, we live and learn.
It’s not the animals fault it’s just that we farmers haven’t been considering the whole picture of things or even consider thinking about soil. We have been focusing on through put and amount of product to help feed the nation instead. Which when animals start dying and you don’t know the root cause means even more upset and even tighter bottom line.
Any how after my 10 years or so of really focusing on soil health we are starting to see the fruits of our courage. It takes a lot for a conventional farm to decide to stop using artificial fertiliser because we still need to feed our animals. Which in the last 3 years we have relied on being bought in. We buy in our hay and our silage for the winter feed now because the farm is not growing the same amount of grass as it was in the summer YET! I know and trust that one day sooner rather than later the whole farm will be growing amazingly just by having rain, sunshine amazingly alive rich soil and of course doing its bit for carbon offsetting, putting carbon back in the ground where it belongs to be food for the soil and plants.
This will be when we will see that we truly did make the right decision, it can just be a bit daunting to get there.
Healthy meat to help create healthier bodies is our end game as I have written about in my book “Farming Broke Me But I Keep Fighting” my health has become the driving force for change because without our health we have nothing.
Therefore, by focusing on the health of ourselves as a family and our customers through our direct sales business this enables us to make better decisions for the overall health of our business as well, and give us that much needed longevity to still be here farming in 20 years’ time, for those who want locally sourced grass fed beef and lamb.
Leanne Barriball- The Devonshire Shepherdess
