anyone doing things a bit differently..

Louis mc

Well-Known Member
Thought we needed a thread for people to post things they are doing that are not on line with traditional thinking/standard practice. Please share any out there ideas you have or things you are practising on farm and please keep the discussion constructive. This is not a place to argue the positives of good quality ploughing, liming and being a great lad applying heaps of bagged p and k. It's not that those practises are wrong and they have proven very successful over the years but these challenging times call for much bigger thinking. Please share anything relating to notill, direct drilling,min till, cover crops, conpanion, cropping, Albrecht soil balancing, mob/mig grazing, clever use of organic manures, on farm composting, biodynamic farming, organic farming principles, novel Rotation ideas and anything else that is not mainstream but you feel will benefit your soil and your business in the short/medium/long term (or all three)

No one should be accused of witchcraft no matter how daft their ideas sound but anyone posting ideas should be prepared to back up their thinking with some kind of theory behind them.

Postings of both success and failure are equally valid. Everyone one knows we learn more from failures than success and if you're not seeing some even small element of failure then you're probably not trying hard enough.

I think this might turn into a decent thread....
 
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I have no pictures but last may we overseeded meadow with alteswede red clover for a 1 cut crop. We are not tillage farmers, nor have we any tillage machines. We topped of the meadow, covered it with a good coat of slurry, went over it twice with the chain harrow, mixed the seed with some 10-10-20 and broadcast it with the quad spreader. Finally we rolled it twice. At the end of june we cut it, wilted it for 30 hours, put on molasses (just under 1 gallon per bale) got 16 bales per acre and recently it was tested @ 20% crude protein. It should make excellent silage for our stores. Will get some pics when feeding it.
 
Cover crop direct drilled after winter barley ahead of Spring oats. Hopefully the cc roots will be the only cultivation it gets
 

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I put in a Cover Crop of Fodder rape and put tillage raddish in with it on the headland . I then went and drilled the mixture into another field and did a few runs of pure tillage raddish . This is a field got a shallow run of the horsch to break up the chopped straw and it was sown with the Kockerling . If our straw chopper was better I would just use the Kockerling . I would like to try put in Winter wheat after the beans direct either with the Kockerling or the Horsch ST . In the past I did Companion Cropping of Barley and Peas and Oats and Peas . but I found it hard to control volunteer Spring Rape because of the limited chemicals available .
I would always have a good area to harvest in September so the opertunitys to cover crop would be limited to 1/3 of my area . I hope to be able to graze the cover crop certainly on one field . Next year I should be able to cover crop a block of land and graze it because the fencing is good .
 
I hate to ask, but are there any organic tillage farmers on here? While I'm not about to be converted, I think there is a hell of a lot to be learned there in terms of fertility building crops etc. that we have forgotten about along the way. Would putting a thread together with a tillage reading list be an idea? Create a list of resources maybe?
While I'm there, I grew rye last year for a neighbour to wholecrop, did nothing with it,left a bit standing for seed. On the plus, it was dirt cheap to grow, had no disease, got an autumn grazing out of it, and some tall strawy wholecrop at the end. It's a grain with potential! Rye whisky is good soup. Huge rootball and soil was like a ten year ley after it.
On the minus, following crop of beans was slow to get off after it, down to (forgive my spelling)alleopathic effect I think. And my volunteer problem may be dicey to get rid of. Impressed overall with a few minor learnings.
 
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@Louis mc you should put a good bit of thought into getting livestock into your rotation. I don't mean in part of the farm as you have now, but actually as an element of the rotation. Not just the handy blocks, but even the bigger blocks like we all have, with no fencing and no water supply. There has to be a cost effective, fast, EASY, highly mobile, easily managed way to do this.

There is a massive untapped resource waiting to be exploited.
 
@Louis mc you should put a good bit of thought into getting livestock into your rotation. I don't mean in part of the farm as you have now, but actually as an element of the rotation. Not just the handy blocks, but even the bigger blocks like we all have, with no fencing and no water supply. There has to be a cost effective, fast, EASY, highly mobile, easily managed way to do this.

There is a massive untapped resource waiting to be exploited.
Agree with KJL here. I have a young gent down the road with 20 sheep, no land, and a huge desire to be a sheep farmer. We came to a proposition. I told him to buy woolly pigs enough to clean off whatever I have before spring cropping. We made a deal. It'll give him a start, and if it all works out, will benefit everyone. Great young lad by the way. Increasingly rare.
 
The weather might have scuppered my plans for this year but had planned to graze cover crops close to the yard this year with small cattle.

I'd love to do it with sheep as well and would do so only that I'm not on farm during the week later in the year. From what I read on it you need to be disciplined enough to not graze it to the clay but just take enough off it.
 
Something I was looking at and wondering about yesterday was spraying off stubbles. Would ploughing down the grass and volunteer barley create more worm food in the soil if it's still alive rather then sprayed off and shrivelled up?. Are you returning more to the soil is my point?
 
Not exactly new thinking but a slight break from the norm at the same time. These give us reason to have some grass in rotation, give us some dung and slurry and an alternative source of cash flow. Were unlikely to get Rich off them but I think they're a good fit all the same
 

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Not exactly new thinking but a slight break from the norm at the same time. These give us reason to have some grass in rotation, give us some dung and slurry and an alternative source of cash flow. Were unlikely to get Rich off them but I think they're a good fit all the same

Friesian bulls Louis is it?
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/10053551/Earthworms-protect-against-slugs.html

Roundup and slurry kill worms very well increasing slug activity, compaction, water logging, yield losses and ultimately effecting profits.
If every farmer had 20-30 sucklers, selling that amount of weanlings, stores or fat cattle every year it would be a great boost to the bank account every year.

It gets grass into the rotation.
Using your own straw makes selling straw less of a headache.
You have access to quality dung on your doorstep for free.
You will encourage earthworm activity in your soil, built fertility and decrease slug infestations,
You have the option of using your own grain/
beet for feeding cattle.

Wintering cows in a makeshift shed is not the hardest thing in the world to do.
Farmers need to become farmers again, not machinery fanatics.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/10053551/Earthworms-protect-against-slugs.html

Roundup and slurry kill worms very well increasing slug activity, compaction, water logging, yield losses and ultimately effecting profits.
If every farmer had 20-30 sucklers, selling that amount of weanlings, stores or fat cattle every year it would be a great boost to the bank account every year.

It gets grass into the rotation.
Using your own straw makes selling straw less of a headache.
You have access to quality dung on your doorstep for free.
You will encourage earthworm activity in your soil, built fertility and decrease slug infestations,
You have the option of using your own grain/
beet for feeding cattle.

Wintering cows in a makeshift shed is not the hardest thing in the world to do.
Farmers need to become farmers again, not machinery fanatics.

I never heard that about Roundup, I would love to read the research, if you have it handy.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/10053551/Earthworms-protect-against-slugs.html

Roundup and slurry kill worms very well increasing slug activity, compaction, water logging, yield losses and ultimately effecting profits.
If every farmer had 20-30 sucklers, selling that amount of weanlings, stores or fat cattle every year it would be a great boost to the bank account every year.

It gets grass into the rotation.
Using your own straw makes selling straw less of a headache.
You have access to quality dung on your doorstep for free.
You will encourage earthworm activity in your soil, built fertility and decrease slug infestations,
You have the option of using your own grain/
beet for feeding cattle.

Wintering cows in a makeshift shed is not the hardest thing in the world to do.
Farmers need to become farmers again, not machinery fanatics.
Great post, we have gotten to a rut of doing what is convenient for us. I'm pretty sure the definition of farming means an integration of crops and livestock of some shape or form.

While roundup might not be perfect I'm sure it kills less worms than plight and power harrows.

Totally agree on the slurry, we have in the last two years started treating our slurry with bugs to turn it into s more useful soil biology friendly product
 
Great post, we have gotten to a rut of doing what is convenient for us. I'm pretty sure the definition of farming means an integration of crops and livestock of some shape or form.

While roundup might not be perfect I'm sure it kills less worms than plight and power harrows.

Totally agree on the slurry, we have in the last two years started treating our slurry with bugs to turn it into s more useful soil biology friendly product

Any more information on the bugs, are they coming from the man who sells parts? How much are using and what's it costing? If you don't mind me asking.
 
I'm as guilty as anyone of being a gear head believe me.
I'm just stating the point that maybe there is a link between intensive tillage farming and roundup and the increased slug activity, more compaction, less drainage we have seen in recent years..
I know nothing about suckers or. any kind of cattle farming but, I'm wondering if it's the way forward.
I'm just throwing ideas out there.
 
Great post, we have gotten to a rut of doing what is convenient for us. I'm pretty sure the definition of farming means an integration of crops and livestock of some shape or form.

While roundup might not be perfect I'm sure it kills less worms than plight and power harrows.

Totally agree on the slurry, we have in the last two years started treating our slurry with bugs to turn it into s more useful soil biology friendly product
Imo the slurry argument is the way its applied
People horsing on 4k+ gallons is going to swamp most things...i mean slurry isnt treated out of a cows ass
.dribble bar or trailing shoe is best
 
No tillage here at all but have changed a few things in the last few years.
All slurry and fym used to get basically dumped on silage ground early in the year just as a way of getting rid of it.
What I've started doing is base fertiliser on all land ( 0 7 30 ) two bags to the acre on silage ground and about a bag and a half on grazing ground. Three bags of nitrogen +5%s on silage ground per cut.
On the grazing ground since applying the fym and slurry on this ground I have cut my nitrogen needs to near nil. Have been trying to keep on top of weeds/rushes with the weed licker and am finding a nice establishment of clover in the fields with was more or less wiped out years ago due to mortone being applied from sprayer for rushes.
Have finally got the most of the land sectioned off so cattle have about 5acre blocks and seems to be giving me nice grass on a one month rotation.
Same if not a few more stock than previous years but less expense and hoping to keep going up in numbers over the next few years.
 
QUOTE="wheatwhacker, post: 477636, member: 2944"]I'm as guilty as anyone of being a gear head believe me.
I'm just stating the point that maybe there is a link between intensive tillage farming and roundup and the increased slug activity, more compaction, less drainage we have seen in recent years..
I know nothing about suckers or. any kind of cattle farming but, I'm wondering if it's the way forward.
I'm just throwing ideas out there.[/QUOTE]

I was just wondering, round-up is being blamed for all sorts these days.
I know a good few who moved to non-inversion and direct drilling that increased the frequency of glyphosate use and saw a big increase in earthworm numbers and slug issues.
 
How about.....a dwarf or low variety of clover under cereals? Would it give enough N to push it along?
 
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