cottonwoodcreekfarm.net

I am dedicated to improving my soil. I have a fair amount of caliche and two to four feet of Blackland Prairie clay sitting atop about 400 feet of limestone. Early on I decided to introduce good grasses and herbivores to break up the clay, enrich the caliche and thereby develop verdant pastures teeming with microorganisms, dragonflies, butterflies and birds.

This plan is working out. Plus herbivores are fun to have around. My neighbor was surprised one day seeing my cow jumping and running and kicking up her heels. She said she always thought cows were slow, sedentary creatures. Today I arrived with a new round-bale of hay and the cow began running circles around the truck, diving between gates and kicking up her heels; all of which would have been more entertaining if I had not been negotiating a 1000 pounds of hay through the gates.

Perhaps my cow is so agile and active because of her small size. She is a Dexter and weighs only about 500 pounds while a ‘normal’ cow weighs in at about 1300. Or perhaps, she is just naturally high-spirited and leads a happy life here with me–spoiled rotten really. In any case her calf stood and stared at her antics, I didn’t actually see any eye-rolling but the calf made me think of a human teenager embarrassed by a parent. Her eyebrows definitely lifted.

Controlling herbivores is important: they can destroy good land as we can see in the deserts of Pakistan or the bare Greek hillsides. One control I use is to rotate my sheep and cow between three small pastures. First, the grasses need to regenerate after they have been ‘mowed’. Second, worm larvae deposited in the animal manures, hatches and crawls up grass to be eaten, thereby gaining entrance to the digestive systems of stock. The result is debilitation of the grazing animal. Fortunately the life cycle of the these digestive track worms is 21 days, so if the pasture is not used for 21 days, the worms die. Rotation has worked for me and I have never had to treat an animal for worms.

I have about six feet of fencing between my back and middle pastures that is not entirely secure. My Great Pyrenees is able to dig a hole under this section of fence and both of my dogs can then move from pasture to pasture. We had a coyote eying the lambs for breakfast last weekend so the dogs were able to guard the entire perimeter without my having to go out and open gates. But this convenience has ended.

Almost unbelievably, my sheep seem to have commando skills and can drop to the ground and crawl under the same hole in the fence used by the dogs. Yesterday, trying for a third time to stop this ‘security’ breach of my pasture rotation plans, I stacked logs on one side of the fence. The Pyr walked back and forth on his side of the fence sizing up possibilities for his next hole. The sheep stood close by watching him with absolute approval. The cow hates the sheep to be anywhere she cannot go and she bellows constantly when they shimmy under the fence. As the dog was investigating flaws in my barricade, she walked up to him, put her nose gently under his stomach raised him in the air and deposited him five feet away. Did I mention herbivores were fun?

I hate thinning seedlings. Germination was really great this year in my 4 inch pots. Try as I might to plant only three or four seeds per pot, I had a little forest of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and tomatoes appear in almost every pot. Without thinning, The Tragedy of the Commons would occur in my little 4-inch plastic pots, each tiny seedling acting as an individual, using as many nutrients as possible for its own benefit. Without thinning: sickly, stunted plants emerge. So I discard the extras since I have no room for them. The little dying Broccoli bodies pictured here bother me, make me sad, break my heart.

 The name, Tragedy of the Commons, originated in 1833 in an essay by economist William Forster Lloyd that featured a common resource: grazing land. Individuals acted for their own benefit; too many animals were grazed and the pasture was destroyed. In 1968 the idea of overuse of shared resources like a pasture was revisited by Garrett Hardin and is now discussed in the context of our atmosphere, lakes, rivers and soil. A famous modern example of a tragedy of our commons occurred in Canada. The Cod fishers on the eastern coast had fished for 500 years and believed that cod would always be there. But advancements in technology in the 1960’s made catching cod in enormous numbers easy. So easy that the entire industry collapsed in the 1990’s.

I have written often about the sentience of plants but have to say that this does not lead them to have any more regard for restraint than twentieth century cod fishers or eighteenth century shepherds. Plants merrily reproduce until drought or disease or lack of some specific soil nutrient kills them. It’s not hard to believe that we share about 18% of our DNA with plants, they are our cousins. https://www.koshland-science-museum.org/sites/all/exhibits/exhibitdna/intro03.jsp

And plants are as relentless as any human. I am constantly confronted with overcrowded beds of vegetables, irises and lilies; presented with fruit trees that sucker or grow too tall. I cut back, dig up and discard–thin out. Thinning extends to my livestock and my chickens. Country living seems to require as much taking out as putting in and this requires some steel in the soul of the gardener/farmer. I have to face the fact that overcrowding hurts us all and I thin. But that’s only on my little patch.

I have no idea how to think about this issue Worldwide. Human population was approximately 600,000 in 1700, and now it exceeds six billion. With factory raised animals and corporate farming, we have plenty for each and every individual. For now.

I had intended to write about the use and destruction of soil by ancient civilizations for another couple of weeks, but the stories will still be there next month; I think I’ll take a break from farming follies.

A big thunderstorm hit last night. I forgot to bring my trays of seedlings indoors and expected them to be beaten down this morning; but the tiny plants were fine. Perky. Lightening is good for them; they like it, like I like expensive cheese or fine chocolate. Can’t live on it– but it makes life better. Plants probably know electric and magnetic energy surround us and use it when they can.

Charged particles are a part of the air we breathe. We live in a gigantic magnetic field that extends from Earth’s interior into Space. This field protects us from the solar winds, cosmic rays, ultraviolet radiation and certain destruction. Beyond are the Van Allen radiation belts, pictured to the right– “giant swaths of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles that surround Earth.” Getting through these belts is a big problem for NASA. http://www.space.com/33948-van-allen-radiation-belts.html.

Within our magnetic soup bowl, lightening forms. It produces hot electric charges in clouds; then Nitrogen and Oxygen come together to make nitrogen oxides that descend on their own or in raindrops. Although Nitrogen is all around us, (almost 80% of the atmosphere) plants can’t use it until lightening works its magic.

I don’t like this diagram, it makes a series of grand events look banal. But I love circles and the circle below describes Nitrogen’s trip through our soil and back to the heavens.

Gardeners are always anxious about the nitrogen in the soil. Other elements stick, but not Nitrogen. And atmospheric nitrogen fixation that occurs during thunderstorms only contributes 8% or so of Nitrogen used by our plants, but we are greedy and take what we can get. I think all these charged particles created in a rain storm have value beyond the quantification of 8%; that soil and our plants might engage in activity we don’t understand–yet. I am by no means the craziest gardener on the subject of electricity in the garden.

We are counseled to drive wooden stakes into the garden and run copper wire around them to attract static electricity. Another suggestion to attract static electricity is to use metal stakes for plants like tomatoes and to tie the plants to the stakes with pantyhose. Since pantyhose were undoubtedly developed in some dark place in the underworld, it makes me happy to picture them on a stake in the hot sun. http://www.veggiegardener.com/how-lightning-benefits-your-garden/

Like I said, gardeners take what they can get. I wrote last week about the Chinese at the turn of the 20th Century. No labor was too hard, no conservation too extreme if it improved their soil. They added their clothes to the compost pile. Considering all the work and aggravation associated with improving soil, it is a wonderful thing to sit on the porch and watch a storm. I like to watch the lightening improve my soil while gently moving my rocking chair and sipping a glass of wine.

Historians have not spent much time looking at land use and its relationship to human civilizations. Much of the ground around me is very rocky, very degraded and I cannot find any reference about its history. I was told by one thoughtful and well-informed person that there used to be a couple of feet of soil on these hillsides and another thoughtful and well-informed person disagreed. I have no basis to judge, no contemporary diaries, letters or research that I can find.

What I can do is wonder at the repeated human destruction of natural resources that produce their comfortable lives. In a 1955 publication by the University of Oklahoma, Tom Dale and Vernon Carter point out that strong and wealthy nations have plenty of natural resources; but many poor and weak nations “once had plenty.” Topsoil and Civilization

Greece, of course, is fine example. Ancient Greeks produced educational methods and philosophy that remain unsurpassed. Their architecture, art and statuary are the envy of the world. Their well-equipped armies and navies are legendary. But with civilization, the land on the Greek peninsula and surrounding islands was spoiled; the extensive old Greek forests felled, large fertile grasslands degraded.

Like the rocky soil in my neighborhood, little has been written about Greek soil management. Historians are city dwellers according to Dale and Carter, so “…we must use modern soil science and logic to figure out what happened in Greece.” One historical mistake made is the assumption that Greek soil had always been poor. But modern soil surveys have revealed that, for example, in Attica, early on there was deep clay loam that created high yields; and, even on steep slopes, the soil was thin but fertile. Topsoil and Civilization.

Plato left us a contemporary record. He recognized the degradation of Greek soil as early as 360 B.C. He writes about the luxuriant forests and pastures of the past, then he gives a grim description of his present: “… in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left.” http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/critias.html

The Greeks cut down trees for planting crops. They plowed up hillsides for crops. Then they overgrazed what was left of the pastures and found it necessary to clear more forestland for destructive, unmanaged grazing. The cleared land eroded quickly in the heavy rain and winds that hit during the winter. To get more production, the Greeks stopped using a system that left fields fallow in alternating years. Greek engineers began draining marshes, but eroded silt filled streams near the sea as fast as the engineers could drain them. Mosquitoes then descended carrying Malaria.

Seeking more food and a better life, emigration became a fact of life for the land-starved. One bright spot was that after 600 B.C., the Greeks found grapes and olives would grow well in lean, rocky soil and began exporting these crops or the refined versions of these crops, to other countries for cash. Unfortunately, most of the olive trees were chopped down by invading armies during the Peloponnesian War. By the time of this famous war, most arable land ruined, Greeks became traders, merchants and industrialists, the income of which allowed the purchase of food for Greeks from Egypt and Sicily. This is always a tenuous existence, and Greece declined to its present state, living today on credit supplied by European bankers, a mountain of debt and no natural resources.

The average life expectancy of a civilization is 800 to 2000 years, after which the civilization declines or is forced to move because humans ruin the environment that helped develop the civilization. Topsoil and Civilization The Greeks enjoyed about 10 centuries of power and plenty before they began their fall.

.Next week, Part 2, will feature China who amazingly managed to keep their soil, healthy alive and productive for 4000 years, 40 centuries.

I was thrilled to find asparagus in the garden yesterday. If someone asks me what to plant first in the garden the answer is always asparagus. There is a three year wait to harvest but then one has asparagus for two months each year for thirty years.

And my milk cow gave birth to her calf last week so I have fresh milk each morning. Milking is an easy 15-minute job. The cow and calf are separated during the night so the calf doesn’t drink the Plantswoman’s share of milk. The calf sleeps in the barn on a comfortable pile of hay.

I let her out first thing to run over to her mother and start nursing. The cow will not ‘let down’ her milk for me, but she floods her bag for the calf. After a minute or so of nursing, I open the barn door and the cow knows her sweet feed and alfalfa are waiting for her in the milking stall. She tears into the barn well ahead of the calf and I slam the barn door in the calf’s face. The high point of this comedy is the calf’s face is almost white with milk and milk foam and calf slobber. I milk my quart I use for my coffee, cooking and making cheese while the cow eats her breakfast. I then let her out of her stall and she heads back outside to her waiting calf.

During and after the calf’s breakfast, my mother cow cleans her baby…thoroughly. More thoroughly than I have ever cleaned a child. She uses her big black tongue, it’s just like sandpaper to my skin, but she starts with the back, tail and backside; then cleans the eyes, ears, chin and the belly. I have no idea why this little creature stands still for what looks like a pretty rough cleaning treatment. Perhaps she is just full of hot milk and a little woozy; perhaps on some deep level she is hard-wired to know the dirt and germs and microbes have to go. Even the most cursory internet search of the medical problems of calves reveals a list of maladies that makes an episode of The Walking Dead look like Happy Time. I have never had a sick calf and I credit my cow for her maternal diligence. It is generally accepted that she can provide nutrients and antibodies in her milk to combat diseases that her calf might contract. An extension of that theory, is that, IF she loves her human, she can intuit health problems of her human and provide necessary curative elements in her milk. This idea always, always makes me smile.

Escaping predictions by both sides of the political spectrum that the tumbrils are approaching, I have spent this week reading about artificial intelligence. I find I am surprised at the confidence expressed by AI designers of creating a real robot, which I, probably unfairly, take to mean one like the beautiful Rachel in Blade Runner. On the most basic level, engineers just want a machine that can perform as “a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

I am not sure humans can measure up to this standard set for machines, but I have long been skeptical of the search for AI since I am not sure AI engineers and scientists spend enough time thinking about the workings of the natural world. The AI work always seems so human centered. I am not sure they are anywhere close to making a machine as thoughtful and intelligence as my milk cow. She has close social interactions with the dogs and sheep. She can solve problems, routinely getting into fenced areas where she has been forbidden. She can reproduce herself. She meets all the above criteria better than, for example, an inkjet printer or the current versions of self-driving cars. For that matter, the asparagus plants in my garden perform as  flexible rational agents, producing in late January when the weather has been to their liking. The plants send up shoot after shoot, some harvested but others turn into beautiful plants that set seed for their future. I am not sure about their social life, but hope they are encouraging the carrots that are barely surviving.