Is grass truly the basis of life?

One  of the pages above on this blog is about grass and how grass is the foundation of life. As odd as this sounds, it is in direct opposition to commonly held and taught beliefs in the agricultural world. Most of the agriculture world recognizes corn as the "perfect food" and the basis of life, even for animals that do not naturally eat anything but grass. I suspect this is due to the fact that the US government has and still does subsidize the corn crop of America to such an extent that no other crop can compete. For whatever reason, the government pays for corn to be planted so that it can be sold below production cost.  I'll stop here on corn since that is a separate blog post.

My purpose in this post is to state that my own views are evolving, and today I would offer that grass is at the foundation, but is not the foundation.  Something even more fundamental supports the growth of grass. My thinking in that post did not go far enough.  It is not enough to point to grass as the plant that provides the basis of the food chain, rather it is the soil that the grass grows in. The soil, its chemical and biological makeup, is the basis of life.

I'll be updating that blog post as soon as I can (and when the research on this is complete).

Turkey tree

In our first effort to make the pasture more appealing to the turkeys... We built this odd looking "tree". Hopefully we can convince them to roost on it.

Land, Sea, Plants, Animals ...

In my researching methods for sustainable farming (farming here encompassing animals and plants) a fascinating sub world has come to light.  We all have seen "exciting new discoveries" from time to time that seem too good to be true. Only occasionally do they stand the test of time.  This discovery seems very interesting.

A respect PhD, Dr Maynard Murray, deceased, conducted some experiments all the way back to 1938 with fascinating results. Inspired by the extraordinary resistance of sea animals to degenerative disease, Dr Maynard explored what would happen if the qualities of sea water were applied to plants and animals on land.  The results are nothing short of astounding.

To summarize, virtually all degenerative diseases  tested were cured or significantly reduced through simple application of the trace minerals in  sea water. This was even the case for animals specifically bred to produce genetic dispositions to cancer. In this case, the genetic disposition to cancer was reversed in two or three generations.  the list of degenerative illness is amazingly long, surpassed only by the list of cures shown through sea minerals.

There is no magic bullet here, no single element or compound that affects this health change. It is the balance of minerals that seems to provide benefit. Changing the concentration of a few, even while leaving the components complete, makes the application ineffective. That, sadly, is probably one of the reasons that this knowledge has been all but forgotten in the modern world. It is only within the last few years, when people are finally realizing that we are killing ourselves through our food supply, that notice is being given to this amazing discovery.

The method is simple, sea water or the minerals evaporated from it, or added to the soil. plants grown in this soil are inherently more disease and pest resistant. Animals then fed on these plants are also amazingly disease resistant. It is as if restoring the soil to the balance of ingredients in the sea is a magic process for restoring inherent life to plants and animals.

We have not tried this out for ourselves yet, but I am hoping to implement a sea mineral application before next springs' garden and pasture growth. We will report here any findings. Until then I encourage to read through this amazing excerpt from Dr Maynard's book:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/SEA.html

Another baby rattlesnake found

It seems that those who guessed the baby snake we found the other day was a rattler were correct. We found another one today, exact same size and coloring. This one was not more than 20 feet from where the other one was. Both were very near the turkey coop. After killing this one, I inspected the tail very closely and sure enough, there was a single tiny rattle segment at the very tip. The head was triangular also.

As happy as I am to have identified it, now I am worried. That makes two baby rattlers killed within 20 feet or the turkey pen within a week., This must mean that there is a mommy rattler hiding with her nest of eggs somewhere very close to the turkey coop. I don't know how many eggs are normally laid but surely its more than two, so there is a mommy and several more little babies slithering around our pasture. Having all these animals and three little kids running around makes this an unacceptable situation.

Sounds like it's time for a snake hunt... unless someone has a better (and safer) idea?

one turkey gone today

We let the turkeys out of the pen today to see what they would do. Sure enough they headed straight to the sheep shelter. So, we installed the rest of the electric fence to block off a third of the sheep pasture, and connected the electric charger. Then we moved the turkeys back inside that portion in their pen. When we let them out again, most stayed in, a few flew over the electric fence, and one unfortunate tom flew the other way into the horse pasture. He was stuck behind the center line fence as turkeys get stuck, unable to fly back over. He just walked back and forth at the fence crying for his friends.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Louie, our springer spaniel, took an interest in this one lost bird, and must have thought he was fair game. He started chasing the turkey. I made him stop and sent Louie out of the pasture, then went on about my business. Soon Louie couldn't resist, snuck in the pasture and started attacking the bird. By the time someone noticed what was happening, Louie had the turkey pinned down to the ground. We pulled Louie off and the turkey was able to walk. Unfortunately, he had serious damage. All of the skin on his right side from the neck line to the feet was torn off. Some of the wing bone was exposed and his breast and leg were completely exposed. Oddly there wasn't much blood loss.

At first I thought we could try to save him and placed him in the barn to heal. But, on closer inspection and realizing the extent of the wounds, it became clear that there was no way to prevent infection with such a huge gaping wound. He was obviously in a huge amount of pain and acting as if dazed. If we tried to save him, and he didn't make it due to inevitable infection, he would be wasted since we cant use a bird that dies from infection. So, there was only one choice. We put together a makeshift butchering station and put him out of his misery.

The good news out of this is that we were able to save most of the bird's meat to eat. We needed some poultry since lately we have been forced to buy poultry from the store (ack!).  I was also happy this happened to a tom and not one of our breeding hens. Nevertheless it was a sad thing to have to deal with.