Gypsum

Step 2: Prepare blog posts in advance to encourage that Frenchie' laziness. So, from Ed's own words this time:

Think of the word gypsum.  Some farmers act like that word means you are going to jip someone or you will become a band of gypsies!  When you hear gypsum, think of oxygenate your soil.  That is what it means to me.  I was looking over our field to SR 28 at dusk last night.  I wish I had done what Ben Franklin did and wrote out This Land Has Been Plastered In Gypsum, spelled out with calcium sulfate on that ground.  The greener letters would stick out!

I get a lot of questions not because I ask for them but because I say things on the Internet, email and talks I give that raises questions.

"I have seen you mention several times on AT about adding calcium on your beans and having a yield response. If this is not a trade secret, would you mind sharing how much you apply, and in what form i.e. pelletized, granular etc. 

We soil test regularly and apply lime VRT as needed.

No trade secrets here, folks, just a few hundred years of experience I have read over my 6 decades.  Think oxygenated soils.  Ca is the weaker cation of it and magnesium but it moves to gravity when applied to soil, bringing oxygen with it and taking H2O deeper into the soil profile.  That is exactly what I want to do.

A triangle of calcium, sulfur and ammonium (nitrate) is a powerful force for good for soil health to feed crops. This is what I think of when I hear gypsum, calcium and sulfate.

This Land Has Been Plastered

My goal is to get all of our land "plastered."  I need more oxygen in all of my soil so my crops can grow more efficiently.  I want to put that simple triangle to work.

While that is going on under the soil, I can cause more of it to happen right beside the germinating crop by adding a furrow applied side dress of 2 gallons of calcium nitrate mixed with 8 gallons of reverse osmosis structured water.  On the other side of the row I can apply my nitrogen and sulfur and voila, we have our triangle of power in the root zone until the crop roots get big enough to reach more we already applied.

I also looked at where I had applied drywall and planted tillage radish over the top.  The soil was all black and granulated and looked like it had been tilled from underneath!  That is one beautiful looking soil and the earthworm activity was very evident!

When you hear radish, thing of radish ripper or radish tillage, a great biological ripper with so many more benefits.  When you hear gypsum, think of calcium sulfate that will oxygenate your soil.

Ed

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Do-nothing farming

Chimel here, taking over Ed’s blog during his and LuAnn’s vacations, or, as I like to call it, the “How to destroy 20 years of a farmer and ag teacher’s reputation in 20 days” experiment.  ;)
Today, step 1, give away your Blogger password to a total stranger.

To go back to the subject of this post, I would like to dedicate today’s blog to Masanobu Fukuoka and his 1978 book “The One-Straw Revolution”. Yep, these were not my own pictures.

While in the U.S no-till really started in the 70s with the development of appropriate equipment and improved herbicides, Masanobu Fukuoka had been developing since the 50s a completely different form of no-till, more harmonious with the landscape and the laws of nature. He calls it do-nothing farming, and it inspired the permaculture method.

His learning on the job cost him dearly at first, but he finally managed to evolve a double crop rotation of rice and winter barley or rye that each yields about 80-90 bushels per acre, as well as a no-pruning method for fruit trees.

His method goes beyond no-till and is based on his observations of the natural cycles. For instance, barley or rye is sown in the still standing rice field, 2 weeks before harvest, and the rice is sown back in the field before winter: Its natural dormancy will allow the barley to be harvested while the rice is just getting started. The field is flooded for 7 to 10 days, allowing the rice to shoot up and overcome the weakened weeds. Rice is then grown in a dry field, not the traditional paddy wet fields. Masanobu Fukuoka also developed an ingenious method to protect the rice seeds from being eaten by animals or insects, by encasing them in clay pellets, like we do for coated seeds.

The only fertilizer used in the fields are clover sown in the field, and a small cover of chicken manure spread over all the straw mulch from the previous crop in a double crop rotation of rice and barley or rye.

Each field unit is a quarter acre, easily manageable by one person even at harvest time, and providing food for 5 to 10 persons. This type of farming produces jobs and high yield at a cost lower than both organic and conventional farming. Not taking any position here, but such reading is a nice break from the current productivity race. The rest of the book contains several other peaceful considerations on farming politics and many other matters. I’ll leave you with one excerpt from the book to reflect upon: There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song. I strongly recommend the book if you are curious about other farming practices, it is as much a reference book as Edward H. Faulkner's Plowman's Folly (1943).

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We Can Do Better, Farmers!

I read our local paper tonight and right there is a stick in the eye to the agriculture industry:

.Syngenta Settles Lawsuit With City of Wilmington

Come on farmers and industry, we can do better than that!   The suit points out they had to prove it has been going on over 10 years.  Now I am wondering how they are applying atrazine between here and Wilmington to go over the EPA regulated amounts so much so long?  It's not that much and I do not believe it is that harmful, but I know we can do better than that.

We lost our best corn herbicide, Blades or cyanazine doing these things, why in the world didn't we learn our lesson?  I cost myself bushels last year because I did not use enough atrazine and returned a bunch to Philip Huffman.  I am too conservative.  Obviously others are not.

Before your bash all pesticide use, remember the book from the Hudson Institute proving all the benefits of pesticides because they are natural in nature.  I can't think of the name of it but my copy has a dark soft cover and I can't find it on my bookshelves.  I probably shared with someone who was bashing pesticides.

Some pesticides are more harmful in nature than others and atrazine easily moves in water.  The label of precautions is huge although it is a mild herbicide compared to others.  Ir just moves freely in water.  We were told that the salt of glyphosate is very safe if you swallow it without the oils but it stays in the soil a long time and chelates minerals the plant needs and can't get because it is so firmly attached to the soil.  We were told that glyphosate was safer to man than a dose of aspirin or a cup of coffedd.  More so, Robert Kremer of USDA proved it is a biocide, killing off the good guys in the soil so the bad guys like pythium run wild, killing plants.

The city of Wilmington, Ohio couldn't be happier and I couldn't be more concerned.  We don't need black eyes like that in Clinton County or any county agriculture, 3088 of them.  We must do a better job.  This is inexcusable.  I will talk to my industry friends and find out more how this happened.  I knew EPA kept finding very low levels of atrazine in Wilmington drinking water but I never dreamed Syngenta would have to pay a fine like this because of simple misuse.

Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics

If you click on this review, I do not entirely agree with the reviewer although he points out the weak points in the argument.

I am of the opinion after a life of study that DDT and Alar and so many pesticides should have never been banned.  PCB's yes, I have never seen a good way to deal with PCB's which are currently hard to avoid because of the way we transform electricity.  People can use so called science to disprove real science.  Perhaps the glyphosate GMO issue fits here.  We are far from proving that but the evidence so far does not look good to me.

Farmers and agricultural industry, I know we can do better than this, especially right here in Clinton County.

Ed Winkle

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Herman Warsaw

Herman Warsaw was one of the first farmers to break 300 bushels of corn per acre 35 years ago.  He truly was a pioneer in growing high yield corn.  I wandered over to his farm one summer when I was a young man and his corn was even better than the corn dad and I had raised beside the cattle loafing shed.

Joel Gruver at Western Illinois University just converted those http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn-LDU1RJ0s ols VHS tapes so now we can all see his great advice and wisdom.  Even if it is 40 years old, many of his tips work today like soil fertility and soil tilth for example.

Herman had great soils, better than our older Illinoian Glacial Till Soils on his Wisconsin Till Plain.  Saybrook Silt Loam was named after his town, Saybrook, Illinois.  It is just north and west of Champaign, Illinois and I still love to stick my hands in that soil.  I got to do that once more on my trip home from Farm to Plate Conference in Riverside, Iowa.  Everyone seemed to get near his yield level in that area in the last decade but their yields have been going downhill the last five or six years.  There are many reasons for that we won't discuss here today.

I remember the 1066 IHC tractor in the videos but I don't remember the big Massey V8.  Maybe he didn't have it yet when I was there, I don't know.  In fact I thought he had a 1206 IHC so maybe I was there a few years earlier.

Herman's name has been brought up many times on Crop Talk since its inception but it has come up again as University researchers can't produce the yields Herman did 40 years ago.  Everyone wants to know why?  Again there are many reasons but one noticeable difference is GMO corn had not been invented when Herman farmed.  I don't know if that is the reason for the yield differences or not but it sure makes me think. 

Here is another link where you can read more about Herman.  https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=herman+warsaw+corn&oq=herman+warsaw+&gs_l=hp.1.1.0l2j0i10i30j0i30.0.0.1.38.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.ukrXbvlO46k&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41248874,d.b2U&fp=43632ea51b4889a4&biw=1896&bih=894

Since I am having problems imbedding the link in my text I will leave it here until I can fix this later.  I wanted you to catch up on the talk of high yield corn going around.

I am no Herman Warsaw but I can help improve corn yields.  I think we all can but not by doing what we have done in previous years.

Ed

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Details

We are down to  last minute details.  Things are coming together like this was God's plan, not ours.  I can't believe the hurdles we've crossed to be able to do this or even travel at all.

I can't wait to give a big hug to the Pellow's Monday.  They are such wonderful people, close friends in a distant land and we've only met once.  That one time was enough for a lifetime of friendship.  They farm in a peaceful valley one hour south of Auckland near the villOKage of Onewhero.  Try to pronounce that the first time.  It is spoken like Aneephero.  Wh is ph in the native language.

Calcium nitrate just might be the magic tool to get Chris's yield up to tillage corn yield levels.  I have discovered this past year the average farmer gets 20 more bushels per acre by putting a little alongside the seed trench.  I know his soil and his fertility program and this just may be the answer.  I hope we get to find out!

There is no magic in farming or traveling or relationships, it just seems like magic when the right chemistry and biology come together.  Follwing God's plan for my life reveals a life that really seems like magic to me.  When I am in step everything flows.  When I get out of step the whole world comes crashing down on me.  Each day is one repreive.

Some days I really wonder why we are here.  Why did He pick me and you to do His work?  Would I have known any difference if he hadn't?  I clearly see what happens when you don't figure this out, you get a life of misery instead of joy and peace.  I have great joy and peace at this moment.  I wish that for all beings not just myself.  So, I pray for God's Will for everyone I know and don't know.

This wasn't intended to be a lecture or a mini sermon, just what I am doing to complete last minute details.  Instead of getting scatter brained like I did most of my life, we have planned this out since the day we booked this trip months ago.  Every thing we have done has been to progress us to this point.

My farm plan is the same way.  I have been planning this out since the day I planted my first crop in 1963.  I didn't know it then but I was going to learn from every mistake.  I hate repreating the same mistake expecting better results.  I am open to try about anything,, thus our trip to Australia finally after hearing those faint CW signals the same year I planted my first corn.

Just like life and society has changed, my farming plan has greatly changed the last nine years.  I am doing things today I didn't do in 2004 because I knew to do them then, I just didn't think they were that important.  NoTill, cover crops for biology and calcium for chemistry.  How you mix the three is really important, just like every step we will take from Martinsville to Auckland.  There is nothing like a fine tuned machine or a fine tuned plan!

That's what's happening today.  I was going to share a link to how 11 states have more takers now than makers.  I hope this is not the indication on the path for America but I think it is.

Ed

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The Old Wood Stove

I just sang one person barbershop quartet to Sable.  She just sat on her haunches and stared at me moving her head to the music.

The old wood stove, the old wood stove,
is such a cove, is such a cove.
It keeps you warm, it keeps you warm,
On frosty morn, on frosty morn!

Only 72 hours before lift off and I think I am getting punchy.  The more we work to dot every i the more t's come up to be crossed!

We got the deermobile down to Jason's last night but boo hoo, Mass had been cancelled!  Maybe we need to read the bulletin more carefully?  We agreed that has to be the 10th time we have done the same dumb thing, creatures of habit that we are.  Maybe Ed should get a smartphone so he can text Judy, is there Mass tongiht?  He could also text his spiritual director Steve "I feel like ****."  Hmmm, that is something to ponder!

When God spoke through Ed Saturday He raised a lot of eyebrows.  Now the email is crashing in after the computer did the same thing.  Not good.  As LuAnn said so eloquently last night, we will do all we can do and then Saturday they won't be able to find us!

I can't wait to tell Perry and Chris what's happened the past year.  I think better spray water and calcium nitrate could help them both very much.  Chris emailed that Dr. John Baker of the Cross Slot Drill wants to meet with us to show how they are drilling corn or maize down under.  I am very interested in that.

I am heading to Dr. Albino's for a spinal alignment like the deermobile needs and to Dr. Mehnert for a hoof trimming job so I can walk the many miles the next 30 days.  There is a corn school in Wilmington today but I don't think I will be able to stop and look.  Alan Sundermeier is speaking on cover crops and I would like to see what he says.  I was asked to do that March 22 for NRCS.  I should have said only if we get our CSP contract worked out!

If I had bought corn and wheat calls last week like I wanted to I would have already made a thousand dollars.  It's hard to write a check on a gamble you think you know the odds on.

Such is farming my friends, such is farming.  Life too, you know!

I think I'll rest by the old wood stove a few hours before we take off but I better stay busy because my dear wife is working her tail off.  Seriously.  I cheated on the picture.  That's the Countryside corn burner pellet stove, not the Vermont Defiant.

Ed

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Dogs DO Eat Avocado!

LuAnn was scraping an avocado shell and Sable was just sitting there so alert, her way of begging.  LuAnn said, dogs don't eat avocado?  Her dog Alex ate carrots and we have all heard stories how dogs eat strange things.  Trixy loved corn and carried ears everywhere on this farm and yard.

So LuAnn let her taste the last bite of avocado and she started licking the spoon.  Hey Mikey, she likes it!  Dogs DO eat avocado!

Sable is a really good dog.  Sable is a really smart dog.  She missed me last week and about ate me up when I got home.  I know she isn't going to like 30 days apart so I sure hope Cozy Pets can tease the trucker who owns Rico to stay and play with Sable.  Those two dogs are a hoot, she almost forgets I am there when they are together.

I just wiped out a paragraph on this laptop.  My computer died the blue screen death so its going to the shop in a bit.  The same thing happened a year ago.  Brian works third shift and I don't want to wake him up.  Everything is saved on the G drive but I just remembered I better bring all my software.

Three more blogs and I am going to turn this over to Chimel.  I have written a few extra blogs for him but I am using up material as fast as I type it.  I like my MicroSoft keyboard so much better than this laptop and you know how I hate texting on the Droid.  That is no way for me to write a blog.

I am getting lots of questions about my posts from NNTC last week.  There is glyphosate showing up in soil and manure tests and farmers are asking what to do.  The structured water concept is raising tons of questions.  How little we know about the water we drink and spray!  We take water for granted!  You can a post about farm to plate by Bear's Fan on Crop Talk.  It is still on the first page at this writing.

I need to make sure we get everything ready as possible.  I am asking my friends to take me off their email lists for awhile.  We will only be reading personal email and texts to LuAnn after Friday night.  We have two vehicles to move, the dog to move so the bathroom remodeling crew can take over our house.  I've had the mail held and visited the sheriff and done about everything I can think of.  We have a list we keep adding to.  30 days is a long time.

I challenge all farmers to rethink everything you do.  Do you have enough calcium?  How much is your water reducing your spray?  Do you really need genetically modified seed?  Do you really want to spray tank cleaners to control your weeds?

That is about as simple as I can put it.  Just as simple as Sable eating avocado.

It won't be long until we will be seeing Sarah and Perry and our friends down under!

G'Day!...

Ed Winkle

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