Working with Pigs to upgrade your land.

[Ian James]

Adrian you can post photo's on here if you want, it's not hard
you just click on the IMG box up above your text when you are posting and then enter in the URL of your photo then click the box again to finish of the code like this ...
img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3128/320 ... 0bf9_m.jpg[/img]



I got the code for your photo from looking at the source which you find by clicking on View on your web browser then choosing source

[Ian James]

You are on the right track Adrian.

Keep on posting,

I have a sandy farm and I am now looking at ways to implement Peter’s ideas on it on a large scale.
Peter will visit my property on Thursday the 26th of March.

Peter has been here before to look at my other trial which involved making a leaky weir in a creek.

When he was here I asked him to explain to me how the weir in the creek was going to influence the soil health of the land higher up the slopes.

He said to me, "it wont, to do this you have to work at the top of the slopes and from there work on the gradient in steps down towards this creek"

I told him that some farmers were spreading chicken poop on their degraded land in the hope of bringing it back to production.

I said it is very difficult to spread because it is light and the recommended rate is 3 to 4 tonnes per hectare and it is difficult to make it come out of the spreader.

He said " don't spread it, lay it in a bank along the contour of the land and as it breaks down and joins with the environment the water that lies against the bank will dilute the goodness in the chicken poop and transport it through the profile down the slope towards the creek which is the drain at the bottom of the system"

He also suggested that I allow plants to grow below the bank to utilise the nutrients seeping from the poop bank and to allow it to become balanced for other plant life to use.

So when I read about your pig poop ideas it made sense to me straight away.

You are on the right track

[Ian James]

From what he told me, I visualise a series of banks made from soil or chicken or other manure or bio matter winding along the contour through my farm with a band of trees and other vegetation growing below the banks.

I don't know if this strategy would suit your horse paddock but I really liked your ideas to lay the trees on the ground as a method of trapping mulch which blows or flows over the land at times.

I have thought about ways to do something like that but as my land is so sandy and quite flat rainfall soaks straight into the soil and moves down the slope under the surface.

The only place that rain will flow on the surface is down the roads or tracks on the farm or on the few non sandy areas of the farm.

Of course when it does this there is always damaging erosion

I like the idea of farming on the contour as it would help stop erosion caused by rainfall runoff and also I believe it would help stop a lot of the wind erosion which is caused by strong winds blowing over large flat areas that may become bare of vegetation towards the end of summer from over grazing of stock or just from stock movement.

Of course this would only be one measure to help the land among many that I will be implementing to help build the soil of my farm back to health.

The other methods I am expecting to implement are:
The introduction of soil microbes into the soil through inoculation of the seed I plant.
: The spraying of crop residues with sugars and microbial mixes to aid the decomposition of the stubble back into the soil to become crop food for the following rotation.
: The reduction of all fungicides and herbicides which I expose my land to and which kill off huge populations of beneficial microbe colonies in the soil.
:The reduction of chemical fertilisers which can have a strong short term benefit for plant life but a similarly strong long term detriment to the health of my soil.
: The continuing effort to trial and implement new methods and strategies on my farm that may improve the long-term health and restoration of my degraded land.

Keep it up.

[Adrian]

I thought about ways to do something like that but as my land is so sandy and quite flat rainfall soaks straight into the soil and moves down the slope under the surface.

The only place that rain will flow on the surface is down the roads or tracks on the farm or on the few non sandy areas of the farm.

Of course when it does this there is always damaging erosion

Ian something that i have noticed to help the erosion would be to use wooden pallets! These have gaps in them for the grasses and sunlight to get through but also stop the cattle from getting ontop of the soil. We have a site on the farm where the junk sits which just so happens to be ontop of a small sandhill, the cattle graze around this but because they cannot get to the soil its self the grasses have a good root system which has binded well into the soil.
To find the wooden pallets is quite easy as alot of businesses get them, some of the pallets are under a contract so the businesses must return them, but the one without contracts have no writing of a company name on them. Businesses would love you to take these off there hands as they can get so many they mostly throw them into the bin or either burn them. Some may ask for something along the lines of $2 a pallet but there is plenty of them around the country that you could pick up for free.

[duane]

Adrian


That's a lot of pig s#*!

Dare I say that I am concerned that the speading of the manure over the dry barren paddocks prior to your planting a crop.

As Ian suggested earlier Peter told him

" don't spread it, lay it in a bank along the contour of the land and as it breaks down and joins with the environment the water that lies against the bank will dilute the goodness in the chicken poop and transport it through the profile down the slope towards the creek which is the drain at the bottom of the system"

He also suggested that I allow plants to grow below the bank to utilise the nutrients seeping from the poop bank and to allow it to become balanced for other plant life to use.

The reason being that this prevents leaching and plants below help to hold fertility and the contours allow the dissolved nutrients to get to the plants after a rain event has wet the soil first and moved fertility across the top second. Its the Australian landscape sequence.

You could try building Peter's contours by simply mounding the manure....dont cut into the soil....simply mound the manure a form a level water line across the lenth of the mound right across the high part of the landscape.

Try this perhaps on a section of the paddock and see how it goes.

[Adrian]

Duane,
I understand your concern but i am only doing my job that i'm told to do.
After spreading the waste we went along and dug the waste into the soil to stop the oxidising of the pig waste, this will keep more of the Nitrigen in the soil for the crop to use.

[Adrian]

Had no idea how long i have been away from the site. Been way to long!
I have been keeping on with Peters way of thinking for all this time and i can see why Peter is seen as someone with a chip off his shoulder. In my area the main thing people tell me about Peter is that he has a different rainfall and area of country than where i am. But i still belive in peters ways and i think i always will, no matter what anyone will say to me. I have found it alot of good for me to bring up parts of Peters ideas and let others try to prove it wrong, until i come to a part where dollars don't always make cents.

On another note, after driving around the country side looking at the crops in the area i am pleased to say that the paddocks that we had done with the pig manure and straw are the best looking crops so far. I have to be honest thou im note much of a crop farmer but the crops look so healthy to me. The season hasn't been the best but the rains we have had have been just in the right nic of time.
I will post some photos of the different paddocks that we sowed, each has a different history and a different way of being handled. The first will be the pig waste paddocks, then the rotational style cropping paddock, and last where the paddock had not been cropped for about 15 years.
Hopefully my photos i take next week will show the colour well enough to show you all the difference.

Another thing we done last year was leave the crops that didn't go to well, to go to seed and let self seed for this year just for feed for the cows to graze on. Very wise choice it was as no labour nor money was spent on the paddock and know the cattle have been on there for around 3 weeks now and will stay there for some time yet. One thing was done with the paddock thou as we were going to cut and bale the whole paddock but only done a few rounds before we called it quits.
The northside of the paddock has suckers growing wildly of gumtrees which has produced alot of shade for the lucrene plants to thrive in compared to the other plants, you could see the difference between where the sun gets to all day and the shade provided by the trees to keep the moisture in the ground

[Ian James]

I like the idea of the pallets, although possibly not on a broad acre scale.
Whatever it takes, stop that erosion and bring back the life.