Amusing Soil Musings

I’m on a curious undertaking to build soil, feed my family, restore my land, learn how to farm on a small scale in a big way. Converting the dirt to biologically active soil is the path I’m on but there really isn’t any instruction manual. Most authors and speakers scoff at the recipe everyone wants. What is the recipe? What is the recipe for my soil, farm, family, and life. Your biography is the recipe. A prescription learned from literature and lectures, basic science, bench research, experimentation, clinical/field trials, and finally experience. Oh the parallels with medicine and any type of discovery are right there.

So let’s go at my first real attempt:

Based on my Kinsey agricultural organic recommendations here is what each of my 24 beds need (70’ long, 30” wide). All weights/numbers are pounds:

1. Protein Meal- 1.6

2. Miller compost- 20

3. Sulfur 90-92%- 0.5

4. Soft Rock Phosphate- 2

5. Calcium Carbonate- 3

6. Pelleted Calcium Lime- 1 (really for the curcubit and green beds but I added to my mix for every bed)

7. Dolomite (magnesium)- 8

8. Potassium Sulfate- 1.5

9. Chilean nitrate- 0.1

That’s about 12- 50 pound bags to create my custom starting blend and 420 pounds of starting compost which fortunately contains enough copper, boron, and manganese.

I also looked at balancing one of my cattle pastures (grass farming!). That would require 4410lbs of material (not including compost).

That is quite a recipe! But that’s not even the real recipe! The deeper I go into this world everything begins to make less sense while become more clear. I’m trying to amend the soil, to grow plants that harness the sun through photosynthesis, while feeding all the microorganisms in the soil that then feed the plants, which feed the animals, which then feed the plants some more, while feeding other animals, and in the process we get some food that we can’t completely consume and then we feed the soil some more through compost.

How on earth do you design a close looped system like this? External inputs right now have been vitally important to getting me started (seeds, minerals, knowledge, compost, irrigation equipment, etc) and crop/animal planning is probably even more important.

Basic steps in my plan:

1. Soil- amend and build (no-till, species diversity, intelligent crop rotation, roots in the ground, weed control through cultivation while trying to minimize soil disturbance)

2. Plant- perennials, annuals, grass, crop rotation

3. Animals- diversity, rotational grazing, fencing and farm infrastructure

4. Integrated Soil/Plant/Animal/Life system designed to produce the most food possible while still building the soil.

Soil Test Result for one of our beds:

Compost Analysis

Crop Rotation

Questions for me and our future:

1. How much food does my family of 6 need?

2. Can a Zone 7 annual/perennial/rotational grazing system on 60 acres feed a family of 6? (minus the mangos and sugar). Ok to the real question is how much of our own food can we actually grow?

3. What’s the real recipe I’m going to settle on.

4. Is the Joel Salatin, John Kempf, Gabe Brown, JM Fortier, Singing Frogs vision for the future attainable for me!

5. Is anyone reading this and if so do you want my crop rotation spreadsheet?