Northern Farmer

Finished up cutting second crop meadow hay this afternoon. That did pretty well in the dry and hot conditions that we had this summer. There’s one more possible hay field to cut that seems to be reawakening after the rains we finally recieved last week. I don’t want to cut hay into the fall because it could all die from winterkill if stressed to much from the cut. No sense killing next years crop just to get a little more now. We should make the winter with what we have on hand now. The corn improved dramatically after the rains too, so we shouldn’t have to chop until early Sept. Sounds good to me.

Last night before bed I was reading, I always try to read before sleep, it helps calm the mind down, and was reading “Makin Hay With Horses” by Lynn R Miller, the publisher of Small Farmer’s Journal, and I came across something I’ve never seen in print before. He stated that for sustainability and improvement of the soil alfalfa should always be cut in the full bloom stage. Now the modern way says to cut really young for the high protein stuff, but I never have. We wait till it’s half to fully bloomed. This is what the oldtimers always did. The book says that the full bloom hay regenerates the soil and is healthier for farm animals. The animals live longer and healthier. The soil compaction is busted up and re-fertilized. When it’s plowed down the soil is healthy and fertile for crops such as corn. Reading this I realized that this is a first. No wonder things are improving on this farm year after year. No more petro chemical fertilizers and the like. Sometimes a person just feels good about what we’re doing. Non farm readers please excuse this subject, but this is rather big and opposite news from what industrial ag has been telling us for decades. We’ve done it, cutting in bloom, because it just felt right, I don’t know why. Sometimes I think the Lord leads us to do things and we don’t even know we’re being led.

Through the years I’ve observed so many farms being run by the “book” and they just keep spiraling downward. I say, take care of the Lord’s land and the Lord will make sure it takes care of you. It’ll still have it’s ups and downs but a better life I haven’t found.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.