Sunday, May 2, 2021

Farming organically.

After a couple of years thinking about it, weighing up the pros and cons, farming without using artificial nitrogen, growing a crop of oats successfully without any chemical inputs and an unsuccessful crop of barley I finally took the plunge and signed up to go organic for 5 years, provided that my farm passes inspection. I won't know for definite until September or October. All the 'experts' are telling us that everyone who applies will get in, but they have a bit of a financial motive to say that, everyone who applies to farm organically has to pay a non-refundable €350 to cover the cost of inspection, registration etc. So if there is 400 of us applying that's a nice little pot of €140,000 to keep a few people in a job somewhere. The deadline for applying to join was 5pm on 30th April, we don't know yet how many applied, last time that applications were being accepted 60 people didn't get in, so they'll get first priority. I will have to farm organically first for 5 months until a decision is made and then until April 2023 in conversion before I get certified. My first job as an organic farmer yesterday was to spread 1500-2000 gallons of slurry per acre on red clover silage sward and the 'traditional hay meadow'. The THM can't be cut until 15th of July. The red clover and ryegrass will probably be cut twice this summer, it has just been grazed. The 'experts' tell us that red clover dies if it is cut too low (lower than 7 cms) or if it is grazed too tight. My first experiment as an organic farmer is to investigate what happens if red clover gets grazed hard. I put the cows on to graze red clover to 3 different post grazing heights, high, medium and low. High is about 10cm, mediun is 7cm and low is about 3 cms. I'll have a look at these plots every Saturday for the next few weeks to see what happens.
What changes will I have to make? Cow numbers are going to be cut by 30% and there will be no more bull beef. All the bulls on the farm are going to be sold ASAP as they are too old to catrate them organically. Instead male calves will be castrated at 7 days with a rubber ring and sold as forward stores at about 18 months. I'm not sure yet what to do with female calves, some will be retained for breeding. I hope to finish some at about 20 months. Selling them at 1 year old to other farmers for breeding is potentially another market too. With vet supervision (€!) we are allowed treat animals for parasites or if they get sick, but withdrawal periods for drugs are double or in some cases treble what it says on the can/bottle. We won't be able to feed non-organic feed to organic cattle. Housing This is going to be the hardest for me I think. I have cubicles for the cows, but they need to be bedded for organic, and cattle need a bedded lieback area. Where to put this lieback area could be a problem for me. We are allowed use woodchip as bedding, this is great as I bought a woodchipper late last year. Cropping Forestry won't be included in the organic system. I'm already growing red clover for silage. I plan to grow some cereals, oats and perhaps rye in rotation with the red clover. The oats can be sold as a cash crop, apparently organic breakfast cereals are a good market. Approx half my farm is permanant grass which can't be ploughed as it's too rocky/wet. Maintaining fertility is going to be a problem for me, my P levels are adequate but K levels are low. If P and K levels were both low, importing slurry or dairy sludge would be allowed, but I only need K. Perhaps keserite, the raw material for potash fertiliser can be used. Bit of a catch 22 situation here I'm afraid. I'm looking forward to meeting the challenges of organic farming. I've always been interested in what happens to plants, how they grow etc. but now I'm looking forward to learning about what happens to the soil. How far do different plant roots go down for example? Can I grow crops by strip seeding instead of ploughing? Can I reduce my carbon footprint? Can I make better use of my resources, soil, cattle, buildings and machinery etc.?