Soil 308: Fever

You probably thought this post was about hemorrhagic fever or some other phyrogenic virus. In the human body, even a fraction of a dead virus or bacteria can cause a fever response. These fractions are called pyrogens. Many years ago, I worked on an implantable cardiac stent and pyrogens were was a big deal.

In soil, elevated temperature typically occurs when we don't have adequate residue on the surface of the soil.

Stages of Learning in Farming - A Land Stewarship Project Guest Post

I wrote Stages of Learning in Farming over the last year with the intention of doing a guest post on the Land Stewardship blog.

Check it out. They published Stage Zero yesterday.

It is called "Laying the Foundation".

Soil 307: Thirsty

Conventional agricultural soils are thirsty. In his book "Your Bodies Many Cries for Water". Dr. B. talks about the critical role that hydration plays in the health of the human body. The same thing applies to the soil. If there isn't enough organic matter in the soil to hold the rainfall our soils won't function properly.

Hydrating our soils is more about having adequate cover on the soil surface and organic matter to hold the moisture than having a certain amount of rainfall. Most cropping regions have enough rainfall, but they may not utilize it well. We should focus on building our soils with the need to retain moisture in mind.

The Best Wings Recipe

Ingredients:

Wings
Honey
Rosemary

Directions:

1) Coat the wings in Honey
2) Sprinkle on the Rosemary
3) Bake the wings in the oven for 21 minutes (try not to burn the wings)
4) Enjoy with the big game, and hope that exactly 3 goals get scored and the kicks are made.

Petersen's Market Menu for February 6, 2016

Candy Carrots, Photo Credit Johnny's Seeds

Here is our market menu for this week.

The carrots and parships are now safely in storage for the winter. November is the best time to pick the best carrots and parsnips of the year. Can you guess why? Frost! You need a few hard frosts to bring out the sweetness of those carrots. The children call our carrots "candy carrots" because of this crunchy sweetness. Here is a link to an article on our web site about why carrots are sweeter with frost?

We will have the following items at the Farmers Market for Saturday, January 23, 2016 (New items are in Bold Print)


Cabbage - Red and Green

Garlic
Carrots
Parsnips
Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Red Onions
Shallots
Squash
Beets



Herb Plants - Rosemary,


Pickles: Spicy Dill, Sweet Sandwich, Okra, Dilly Bean, Corn Relish, Pepper Relish.
Salsa

Chipotle Smoked Peppers

Charcoal (home grown, home made). Made three fresh batches in the last week.

Soil 306: Aged

Soil, like a fine wine, should improve with age. Conventional agricultural soils are aged beyond their years due to our poor farming practices. Our soils are aging, when they should be "youthing", to borrow a term from the health and wellness industry.

Did you know that the North African crest of the Sahara desert was the once the bread basket of the Greek and Roma Empires. What happened to reduce these once fertile soils to one of the largest deserts on the planet.

Soil 305: Confused

Conventional agricultural soils are confused because of the GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) plants and residue that the soil biology is forced to deal with. These new "super plants" have unknown DNA that our soil microbes don't know what to do with, in terms of breaking it down. I think that some of this new DNA is also toxic to soil life as it persists long after is should have been cycled.

Soil 304: Supressed

Conventional agricultural soils are dead (or at least biologically suppressed) due to the use of highly salt based fertilizers like super phosphate, which suppresses soil life and anhydrous ammonia which burns out the organic matter the soil life feeds on.

Soil 303: Depleted

Conventional agricultural soils are depleted of organic matter because we burn out the carbon in the soil by heavy use of anhydrous ammonia. We also export organic matter from the farm when we sell the corn and soybean stalk residue (called stover).

Soil 302: Exhausted

Conventional agricultural soils are exhausted because we don't replace both macro and micro minerals removed by heavy cropping.

Settlers on the prairie would homestead for 7-10 years, exhaust the soil and move on. We avoid the moving on scenario by applying macro minerals N-P-K-Ca. With this regimen the plants look good but the human body and critters we grow for food need  92 minerals.

So what about the other 88 minerals.