• Home
  • About
  • How We Raise Our Pigs
  • Ordering a Whole or Half
  • 25lb Boxes/Retail Price List
  • The Odyssey Farm Journal
  Odyssey Farm, LLC.

The Odyssey Farm Journal

Rocky & Bullwinkle and the Livestock Underground

9/21/2016

0 Comments

 
     There’s a great series of Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes where they attempt to operate a ranch that Bullwinkle purchased. Moose and squirrel travel west only to find out that Bullwinkle bought a “worm ranch”. The rest of the series hinges on the pair learning to run the “worthless”ranch.
     While pulling weeds the other day, I uncovered some earthworms beneath several large plants and thought about the worm ranch episodes. The whole premise couldn’t have been further from the truth (the “worthlessness” of the worm ranch part, not the idea of a talking moose and squirrel—we suspend our disbelief for that, jeez.)
     Location, location, location, might be the mantra of real estate value, but if we’re talking about land’s intrinsic production capability, then the mantra becomes soil life, soil life, soil life. One of the most visible indicators of soil life is worms. Decades of intensive row cropping and chemical use depleted and compacted this farm’s soil. When I could get a shovel to penetrate, I’d only bring up a slab of lifeless—worm free—clay.
     We raise pigs (there’s a picture or two on the website, you know—some words about them here and there), but the pigs and their regular paddock changes over pasture and cover crop all fit into a larger scheme: soil building.  The cover crops prevent erosion, provide the shade and moisture retention for fungal life to break down organic matter, and put down root systems that feed soil microbes with sugary and starchy excretions. When pigs graze and disturb the cover crops, the plants’ roots die back, leaving organic matter in the soil, which becomes food for more soil organisms—most noticeably, earthworms.
     Earthworms convert the organic matter into plant-available nutrients. They eat their way through the soil, digesting organic matter and leaving a trail of castings—worm manure. Earthworms can produce their own weight in castings in a day. Their borings aerate the soil, providing routes for oxygen and water to enter. There are thousands of other organisms at work in living soil, but earthworms are an easily visible indicator of soil life.
     I have years to go in soil building, but I’m glad to see more (any) worms. We have a pig farm on the surface, but part of our future success in farming depends on building up our livestock underground.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Ryan Erisman

    Former Marine Infantry Officer. Iraq Vet. Interested in Regenerative Agriculture at any scale.

    Archives

    February 2023
    February 2022
    March 2020
    November 2018
    April 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All
    Making Things
    Raising Pigs
    Recipes
    Thinking

    RSS Feed

Odyssey Farm, LLC
5586 County Rd N
       Sun Prairie, WI 53590

 Dane County 2022 Climate Champion

A Veteran Owned Business


608.616.9786
         ryan@odyssey.farm

Copyright © 2016
  • Home
  • About
  • How We Raise Our Pigs
  • Ordering a Whole or Half
  • 25lb Boxes/Retail Price List
  • The Odyssey Farm Journal