{"id":865,"date":"2012-06-07T08:19:52","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T12:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/?p=865"},"modified":"2012-06-07T08:27:19","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T12:27:19","slug":"stil-another-innovation-at-thistle-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/stil-another-innovation-at-thistle-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Still another innovation at Thistle Hill…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0We’re constantly experimenting here at Thistle Hill, looking for new and better ways to care for our farm and our cattle and, not incidentally, improve the quality of our meat.\u00a0 This tanker truck is spraying some test pastures with a mixture of microbes and fungi…one of several approaches we’re using to strengthen the root system and thicken the grasses in our pastures.<\/p>\n

The improved yield means better nutrition for the cows and also could enable us to increase the number of animals on the farm.\u00a0 But what we are particularly aiming for is a stronger, healthier stand of grass in the summer.\u00a0 Virginia’s hot, dry summers bring grass production almost to a standstill.<\/p>\n

Until now, we’ve combated droughts with clover and other legumes but the theory is the microbes and fungi will encourage deeper and thicker root systems, searching farther down for moisture and nutrients.\u00a0\u00a0With better forage through the summer, cows, and particularly calves, will continue to add weight and that benefits their health and our meat.<\/p>\n

There was a time when buffalo roamed right here (do they teach school kids that or do they still believe the buffalo were confined to the West?) and the grass grew as tall as a man.\u00a0 But for all the wonderful accomplishments of our fore-fathers, they were very hard on the land.\u00a0 Just about all the soil east of the Mississippi was so seriously depleted that it is just about dead.<\/p>\n

That’s why so many chemical fertilziers have been pumped into the ground, though we didn’t realize that was actually\u00a0killing what little life was left.\u00a0 It did, however, result in temporary fertilization to\u00a0grow crops.\u00a0 The natural means some farmers have used in recent years have begun a slow restoration process.\u00a0 But it is slow and probably no more than 1% of all farmers have converted to natural production despite its advantages.\u00a0 Change, even beneficial change, is always painful.<\/p>\n

We’ll be using several measures to determine the results of this test and we would expect an early reading in about a month as we compare the sprayed pastures to the untreated ones.\u00a0 We’ll also be using other products and techniques intended to get the same kind of results.\u00a0 But this first test involved TerraOne<\/em> and those who are interested can read about it here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.terraonethickerpasture.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0We’re constantly experimenting here at Thistle Hill, looking for new and better ways to care for our farm and our cattle and, not incidentally, improve the quality of our meat.\u00a0 This tanker truck is spraying some test pastures with a mixture of microbes and fungi…one of several approaches we’re using to strengthen the root system and thicken the grasses in our pastures. The improved yield means better nutrition for the cows and also could enable us to increase the number of animals on the farm.\u00a0 But what we are particularly aiming for is a stronger, healthier stand of grass in the summer.\u00a0 Virginia’s hot, dry summers bring grass production almost to a standstill. Until now, we’ve combated droughts with clover and other legumes but the theory is the microbes and fungi will encourage deeper and thicker root systems, searching farther down for moisture and nutrients.\u00a0\u00a0With better forage through the summer, cows, and particularly calves, will continue to add weight and that benefits their health and our meat. There was a time when buffalo roamed right here (do they teach school kids that or do they still believe the buffalo were confined to the West?) and the grass grew as tall as a man.\u00a0 But for all the wonderful accomplishments of our fore-fathers, they were very hard on the land.\u00a0 Just about all the soil east of the Mississippi was so seriously depleted that it is just about dead. That’s why so many chemical fertilziers have been pumped into the ground, though we didn’t realize that was actually\u00a0killing what little life was left.\u00a0 It did, however, result in temporary fertilization to\u00a0grow crops.\u00a0 The natural means some farmers have used in recent years have begun a slow restoration process.\u00a0 But it is slow and probably no more than 1% of all farmers have converted to natural production despite its advantages.\u00a0 Change, even beneficial change, is always painful. We’ll be using several measures to determine the results of this test and we would expect an early reading in about a month as we compare the sprayed pastures to the untreated ones.\u00a0 We’ll also be using other products and techniques intended to get the same kind of results.\u00a0 But this first test involved TerraOne and those who are interested can read about it here: http:\/\/www.terraonethickerpasture.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minerals","category-pasture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}