No Till Farming - While Pat served in Iraq he observed that Iraq used to be one of the most fertile parts of the world, and is now a desert. His observation is that they do not take care of the soil, and make sure that enough organic matter is kept in the soil. He has joined/and is very active, in a group which believe there is a way to rotate crops and leave parts of the stalks in the meadow in an effort to build more organic matter into the soil. This is a long term vision and they have already had lots of success with their vision. This winter, they will graze the cows on the meadows, which have stalks full of protein in them, rather than baling hay and feeding the cows that. It seems to be a pretty complex matrix and rotation of crops. Their statistics say they have already returned organic matter into the soil. One of their neighbors who is skeptical of their methods said to Pat one of the days we were there "Your corn looks better than mine." Pat smiled.
Dust - Apparently they just live with dust all the time. Their ranch is on a gravel road and since there is very little rain, any time a vehicle travels down the road there is a cloud of dust. At times, if you are following another vehicle you cannot see in front of you while driving. A farmer, down their road is harvesting potatoes so there were quite a few trucks carrying potatoes to the Coop in town 11 miles away. They commented each time, that since this year will be a bumper crop of corn, that the dust when all the farmers are harvesting will be overwhelming. When we drove the horse trailer and pickup to doctor the calves, the saddles in that short trip had a pretty thick layer of dust already.
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| This was the sky as Pat was fixing the tractor |
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