We run a small farm in Northeastern Indiana. We have sheep, Guard Llamas, dogs, cats & chickens, with cattle & pigs in the summer. We have had sheep since 1991, and are the second flock in Indiana to go on the Federal Scrapie Eradication Program, and have enjoyed the trials of being the first on a new program. We have been certified Scrapie free since 2004. One day about 1990 my wife asked me if I liked to eat lamb, I said I guess so. She went to the store and came back ranting about the small size, large amount of excess fat, and poor quality of the store bought meat. She said for this kind of money we can raise our own sheep and get better quality, so we did. We tried about 10 different breeds of sheep before we discovered the breed we are happiest with. It is a rare breed called California Reds. They are very friendly (even the Rams). Some of the rams grow a large red (true hair) mane each year after shearing and look somewhat like a Lion. They make excellent terminal sires and strongly imprint their good qualities on the lambs. The lambs are born easily, are Irish Setter red and are gorgeous. They gain well on their mom's high quality milk, and grass (some people use this breed in sheep dairies). They are excellent mothers, and have a high meat to bone ratio, with very good tasting meat. California Reds grow a medium weight low lanolin oatmeal colored wool with Red true hair mixed in that is excellent for Hand spinners. It takes dye very well. |
||
 |
||
======================================================= Our Experience with the Growers Program: Growers Mineral Solutions has been a significant help to our farming operations. The Growers program solved many problems on our farm that we feel had their roots in conventional agricultural practices . We purchased part of a farm that had been operated conventionally for decades, with no apparent regard for the soil. Our soil is a very heavy, high magnesium clay with a thick blue smack clay layer approximately three feet down. When we bought it, the former renter had harvested the crop when it was very wet, leaving ruts that were over a foot deep in many places. We, in turn, rented the fields for corn for a couple years. We then planted them into an alfalfa/grass hay/pasture mix with oats as a cover crop. When the oats came up so did the Canadian thistle. It was so bad that we were told to cut the thistle before it went to seed or we would be fined for noxious weeds. When I tried to use my heavy duty weed eater to cut the thistle I was unable to do so as the stems were very strong, the plants were tall and in dense thickets. I hired a combine to cut the oats early, which solved the problem temporarily. When the hay field started growing again, the thistles grew faster than the hay. I noticed that there were large areas of my ten acre field where the alfalfa did not even sprout, and the hay/grass only grew about six inches tall for the entire year. Other areas of this field grew well, with good alfalfa/grass height and volume. There were large clumps of thistle over much of the field. Other parts of the field were very wet and didn't drain. These areas stayed wet nearly the entire year. There was a LOT of foxtail and moss, with lots of bare soil in between grass clumps, over the entire field. The area my wife picked for the garden was so bad it wouldn't even grow weeds or moss. I had read Organic Gardening, and other such magazines, since I was a kid. They always said to add organic matter, grow green manure cover crops, double dig, etc.. They didn't know totally why this helped, just that it did. These options would work on a garden scale, but I didn't even want to think about doing it on a farm scale. After looking at these problems for a while, and trying to figure out what to do to fix them, I went to the local farm Co-Op and asked them. They recommended 12-12-12 at a certain rate. I bought half a car-hauler trailer load and applied it to my fields. Then I waited... and waited... and waited..., and got ZERO response after all that expense and effort. I would have had just as good results if I took my money, put it in a blender, and poured it on the fields. That winter we went to our local farm show. As we were walking down the aisle I noticed a booth that had a chart about plant growth posted prominently. On the left side it showed a very stunted plant, with poor root growth; on the right, the plant shown was lush with long, strong and dense roots. It asked, “what is the difference?” Then it stated CALCIUM. I stopped abruptly, nearly yanking my wife's arm out, and said we need to talk to this guy. Her response was “they're all the same, let's go”. I said NO we NEED to talk to this guy!! As we talked to Ed Bulcher, the Growers district manager, he explained why the things Organic Gardening recommended worked. He discussed soil structure, the fallacies and shortcomings of the pH test, the processes that plants and soil microbial life use to enhance plant growth, the damage conventional agricultural practices cause and the soil amendments needed to correct these problems. He said that the main problem is that Calcium is depleted by using conventional fertilizers, and unless we stop using dry NPK, switch to a complete foliar fertilizer, AND PUT ON SUFFICIENT HIGH CALCIUM LIME, we would not be able to correct the root causes of our many problems. We met with him several weeks later and he went over the program in more detail, answering ALL of my questions with information that finally made sense. This information also meshed perfectly with correct principles I had learned in other areas, tying them all together for the first time. We started doing the PROGRAM as he outlined it. Over time, we discovered that the more closely we adhered to his recommendations the better things worked. We were so impressed with the results that we became dealers, and talk to EVERYONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN: INCREASED PROFITABILITY SAVING $ IMPROVING SOIL HEALTH REDUCING EROSION ELIMINATING WET SPOTS WITHOUT TILING HAVE FIELDS DRY EARLIER IN THE SPRING PLOW MORE EASILY, WITH LESS COMPACTION REDUCE, OR ELIMINATE, FERTILIZER RUN OFF REDUCE FERTILIZER AND HERBICIDE RATES & COSTS INCREASE CROP YIELDS & TRUE PROTEIN LEVELS REDUCE WEEDS REDUCE INSECT DAMAGE IMPROVE PLANT WEATHER TOLERANCE AND ON AND ON..... LIVESTOCK IMPROVEMENTS WERE ALSO DRAMATIC: INCREASED BREED BACK RATES STRONGER NEWBORNS BETTER RATE OF GAIN ON LESS FEED BETTER DISPOSITIONS BETTER STRESS TOLERANCE FEWER VET BILLS SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION OF MANURE PHOSPHATE LEVELS AND ON AND ON... |
||
|
||