The Bovine Bugle

Compost makes the grass grow best

Today I attended a field day at the Fourges' family dairy farm in Alburg, Vermont. Travis and Henry are also Organic Valley farmers, and they started shipping organic milk the very same day we did, October 1, 1997. The past two summers, they have been working with Bill Murphy, a University of Vermont professor, author, and grazing expert, on experimenting with different soil amendments and with irrigation to see what would give them the best grass production on their farm.

Their test plot was divided into at least 8 different plots, with one plot a control where nothing was applied to the land. On the other plots they applied such things as compost, fish-based fertilizer, fish-and-kelp-based fertilizer, crab meal, and a balanced N-P-K fertilizer. I was very happy to see that the plots yielding the highest tons-per-acre were the plots that had only compost applied to them. This means a lot since compost can be generated right on the farm at a low cost to the farmer, compared to buying these other soil amendments that can be quite expensive per acre to buy and apply. I hope Mr. Murphy will be publishing his findings so that I could post them here at some point.

It was nice to visit someone else's farm to see what they are doing different from us, and it was nice to see some familiar faces and hear what is going on in their lives. I even managed to make a deal with one of the folks at the meeting to trade some turkeys for half a pig to put in our freezer. Pork is the one thing we don't raise here at Howmars Farm....yet. On September 15, another field day discussing soil and forage fertilization will be held at a couple of farms just miles from our place. I'll have to go to that one to hear what those farmers use on their fields and to put up Professor Murphy's findings for discussion. A little controversy is always interesting.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

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Posted by Blogger Chris at September 9, 2004 06:13 PM