During the spring, summer and early fall months the air is often filled with the songs of many different species of birds. Since we have all of our land planted to grass we often get meadow and prairie birds that haven't been in this area very often before. One of these birds is the Bobolink that is around in late spring/early summer. They generally come and are very noticeable through the nesting season which goes through about June. After the nesting season we don't see them a lot. Another meadow bird that we see and hear is the meadowlark. They are around all summer and into the fall. Blue birds are quite common now also because we have several blue bird boxes on our fence posts. I think some of the blue birds stay around all winter now. The most important way to help the blue birds survive is to keep the common English sparrow out of their nests.

Here around the farmstead we have a lot of barn swallows that nest in our buildings. They are often swooping around and are very helpful in the regard that they eat a lot of flies and mosquitoes. They also go to the pastures and eat insects there. Tree swallows are also very plentiful and almost exclusively spend their time swooping over the pastures catching insects. The barn swallows are usually the first birds up in the morning; you will hear them twittering by 4 in the morning.

There are many other birds that spend their time around our farm; far too many to list. One of the reasons that we can observe this broad range of birds is because our farming practices encourage them to be around. We don't have large machinery that goes to the fields every day. And often when we are out working it is relatively quiet and we can hear them. Since we do not have row crops, and encourage different grasses, meadow birds that are often thought of only being seen in the western prairies are finding homes in our pastures.

Last time I talked about how grass is healing for soil. The process is also helped along by earthworms and dung beetles. The past few springs we have noticed some strange sounds when we walk in the wet pastures. It's a sucking sound that comes from the soil. We finally realized that this is coming from earthworms. When the ground becomes very wet in the spring time the worms will come to the surface. As soon as they feel the vibrations from our feet then will go back into the soil. There are so many of them that when this happens there is literally noise coming from the soil as they all go back underground. It really is amazing. The earthworms serve many purposes including converting organic material into nutrients that plants can use, increasing the soils water retention, and bringing minerals and nutrients that are deep in the soil up to the top where plants can utilize them. This is another reason why when we get heavy rains our pastures soak up far more water than neighboring row crop fields. 

Dung beetles are also amazing little creatures. From what we understand, dung beetles will not come unless the soil is healthy. We have noticed them on our pastures for several years now. They live off of dung piles. They will take little balls of dung and burrow them underground. This benefits us in multiple ways. One is that it is a way of utilizing our natural 'fertilizer.' They take the nutrients from the dung and burrow it underground so it can help and the organic matter goes far below the topsoil. This is kind of a composting mechanism. Flies like to lay their eggs in dung piles. Flies have always been a problem for us, as they are for all livestock farmers. As the dung beetles have populated our pastures we have noticed our fly problem has decreased. This is because the dung beetles are burrowing the dung underground leaving no habitat for the flies to lay their eggs. This past summer we put some cattle on rented pasture a couple miles from our farm here that has only been pasture for 2 years. We noticed how many more flies were at that location than here where our pastures are well developed and dung beetles are prevalant. Isn't it crazy that we don't have to spend money on pesticides and insecticides to get rid of the flies?

We feel our pastures at the home farm have made a full circle to where they used to be, many years ago. Back in the 80s there was an older German soil scientist here at the farm and he went out and dug in our hard clay soil and said, "This soil is dead. It would have great potential if it were healed and made alive again." For the past several years we have had soil samples taken and tested from our pastures. Two years ago, the soil consultant came back with the results and was apologetic about the results. He said that he tried to scrape the ground as to take any organic matters off of the top of the ground, but the tests came back with such high organic matter that he was concerned that he took the sample wrong. The organic matters were high last year also. It is such a testimony that nature and time can heal the soil.

Why all this discussion about healthy soil? If the soil is of poor quality, so will everything else that comes from it; whether it be crops or livestock or any by products of these. Good soil is the root of proper nutrition.

The area where we are located is known for its heavy clay soil. If you walk through this soil when it is wet it will stick to the bottom of your boots or shoes and it seems like it will add inches to your height! We have often in the past bemoaned the fact that we have to deal with such heavy soil. It is really not suited well for row crop farming such as we used to do. We have since learned that it is actually an advantage for us to have the clay soil. This is because there are so many rich minerals and nutrients in the clay soil, if cared for properly, that will result in high quality meats and cheeses (from the milk). I understand that grass is a good soil 'healer' and what you see on top of the ground is mirrored below the ground as far as root structure goes. The more roots there are and the deeper they go, the less erosion there is and loss of the important organic matter that is most prevalent in the topsoil layer. There are many organisms that help improve soil quality and next week I will talk about earthworms and dung beetles.

Until then, enjoy what little sunshine we get this time of year.

This time of year can be a bit slow for us. Since we are a grass based operation, most of our meat products are grown during the growing season. We do winter over our dairy cows as we are not seasonal and do milk year round. Also, we have a beef brood cow herd that is wintered over at our farm about a mile from the home farm. The dairy and beef animals are fed dry hay during the winter time. We were actually able to take the beef animals off of our farm for a few months this summer and to another location. This allowed to grass to grow and become what we call 'stockpiled.' This is nice because the animals are still grazing the pastures and we have not had to feed them any hay yet this winter. About the middle of January we will probably have to start putting hay in for them as they will have the grass all grazed down.

Our meat chickens and turkeys we only raise during the growing season, so we do not have them right now. We do still have our laying hens over the winter. We move them into our greenhouse where they are kept out of the wind and winter elements. They naturally go through a cycle that as they get older they slow down in their egg laying production. We try to keep a cycle of new hens rotated in so the egg production stays pretty steady. Also, during the winter months if the hens are not kept warm, they will spend all of their energy keeping themselves warm and not laying eggs.

We do keep the dairy cows close to the milking barn in the winter. This enables us to feed them hay conveniently. They are bedded down on a straw pack in a loafing shed where they can keep out of the wind. Since they are bedded down we do have the manure to haul out from winter bedding. But otherwise, when the cows are grazing on the pasture they spread their own manure.

As long as the ground is frozen the hay feeding and manure hauling is not too bad. If the ground gets soft it makes these chores more of a 'chore.'

Each season has its own ups and downs. But, we are thankful for the different experiences.