'Fertilise' your pasture for $30 a hectare for spectacular results!
In a nutshell, this is what we do:
- use only a worm solution
- use a calcium product
- use multi species and multi family varieties of pasture
- out-compete the weeds
- make the weeds delicious
So how did we do this and why?
We began using the current modern farming methods, on the pasture as well as the vegie patch. You know what I mean: burn, kill, spray anything that looks like a weed or pest. What you end up with is dead soil that you have to keep propping up with chemicals, every season, shelling out thousands of dollars.
What we learned is that everything is connected in soil ecology, that we need all those 'pesky' insects and weeds, that everything is an indicator of what is going on below the surface. If there is a big patch of nettles under a tree, its because the soil there is good but not a lot of light gets through. Mother Nature wants cover over bare ground, so she sends whatever will grow there best, to correct the pH, to keep moisture in the soil, to attract pollinators, to bring worms to the surface, to aerate the soil, any way she can. This is to keep the soil alive.
I've also learned how to bottle fruit and vegetables, the easy way. No big canning process needed! I even bottled spiced pumpkin soup, which is sitting in the cupboard with the tomato salsa I made, the pickles etc. I don't want to spend a lot of time on these things and be a slave to it, so it has to be a quick, simple thing I can do whilst making dinner or doing other things.
Once we ditched the monoculture method and embraced natural farming, biological farming, with the aim of improving the ecology of the soil FIRST, everything started to work! Now we spend $30 a hectare on a worm product, Nutrisoil Biological Solution and THAT'S ALL. It isn't a fertilizer but a stimulant that helps the plants photo synthesise and support beneficial bacteria and funguses in the soil. This kick starts the whole natural process of nutrient cycling. We have also worked on correcting the pH with a lime based product, Calcipril. The key thing is, once you have woken up the soil, you don't have to keep applying everything! We need to apply less each year as the soil increases to meet the needs of our pasture through the fungal and bacterial presence that works to feed the plants. The plants were just not able to access the necessary nutrient before because of imbalance in the soil.
The other crucial thing to do is broaden the variety of plants you sow in your pasture, from different plant families, such as legumes, herbs and grasses, as well as your vegie patch. Forget neat rows of one type of plant in one box. Mix up flowers with your spring onions and broccoli! Grow marigolds with your tomatoes. There is plenty of evidence and information on the net about what to grow together. It's called companion planting. But we take it a step further with our pasture.
The reason this works is because different plant families cope best with certain conditions, for instance some plants cope well with frost, others cope with dry soil, others with wet soil. What happens under the ground, the part you don't see, is that these plants communicate with each other and support each other, sending nutrients back and forth in varying conditions so that the network stays alive. Amazing, isn't it? If you haven't seen it already, the Netflix documentary "fantastic Fungi" explains this process extremely well. To find out more about what plant species we used click here: plant species
But modern agriculture destroys this network, by killing pollinators such as bees with pesticides, killing weeds (that are indicators of problems) with herbicides, without paying attention to the function of these things. Modern (and traditional, if we're honest) insistence that sheep must graze upon a uniform pasture is just wrong.
Our sheep eat weeds!
If you look at our pasture, its mown with precision and looks lush and consistent. But when you get closer you notice there are all sorts of plants being eaten, including what grows naturally on this property, such as reeds, bracken and blackberry. Rather than continue to try and eradicate these 'pests' we made them tasty and the sheep eat them all! Improving the soil makes everything taste better, even to the sheep. This has the added benefit of giving the sheep a very varied diet and improving their gut health. It's also generational. Lambs are born with the gut bacteria and the desire to eat what their mothers ate.
Results speak for themselves
- Lamb mortality is way down
- Ewes don't have birthing complications or die
- Ewes stay in peak condition even during lactation period
- Lambs begin nibbling pasture earlier
It has taken three years of steady improvement to reach the point now where our lamb mortality is 5% and this year we noticed that the ewes, while feeding their lambs, are not skinny, worn out looking things, but FAT themselves, even though their babies are tugging the life out of them all day long. The other thing we noticed is that the lambs are eating pasture much earlier, thus supplementing their diet, making weaning easier. Why has this happened? Because the soil is alive and the pasture provides all the nutrients the sheep need, year-round.
When we let Nature show us the way, everything balances naturally and works. Fighting Nature makes us all sick, because we have to spray harmful chemicals on our food, which goes into our systems through the animals and plants we eat. There is plenty of scientific evidence of this. Just look at the class action against Monsanto in the USA. Of course Monsanto was thereafter bought out by a larger company and 'disappeared'. These chemicals are making us ill, causing cancers and reducing our lifespans.
But we can do something about it, by rejecting their chemicals and growing our food the natural way.
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