Photo of Braeburn the barrow, a fine hard-working woodland pig we had, who fed a lot of folks a few years ago
"So, operationally, all effectively renewable energy on planet earth comes from sunlight. So we need an agriculture sponsored energetically from sunlight, in which fossil fuels are a minor input, or no input at all."
That's what I said a few weeks ago. The relevant experiment I was working on is the smallholding/homestead that Aimee and I have in Jackson, Maine. Now that spring is almost over and we are running primarily on on-farm sunlight, it's time for an update on our efforts to reduce fossil energy inputs to our many and various food-growing projects.
The sheep are currently kept very busy making a living from several small rotational grazings, but their main job is keeping three acres of lightly wooded pasture well-grazed. I fenced this in early spring, not without bloodshed, since I got bit by hundreds of blackflies and quite a bit of fence wire for my trouble. Four sheep per acre of productive pasture is the rule in Maine, and we have 12 on three, just right, but currently this particular land is scrawny, not having yet had the full "treatment." The system we worked out last year includes logging off all the saplings and many of the larger trees for firewood, leaving only the best forestry and conservation trees widely spread, to let on lots of sun, but also provide shade so it doesn't get dry, then scarifying with the York rake and spreading timothy and red clover seed. The tree stumps coppice, but the sheep make short work of the sprouts. There's a total of another acre of lush grass regularly grazed right now on which we use portable electric fence, and several more acres of varying quality available if we need it.
Three scrawny acres and one satisfactory one, is how I would summarize the land we actually use so far, out of our 15 1/2 available acres. The bottleneck in using more is twofold: if we are to utilize it, we need more animals to graze it, and more fence to keep them in. Both are expensive. We would also prefer not to keep too many more critters through the winter. The sheep herd will grow naturally over the years, and we can add to fence as we have dollars available. We have hoped for a couple small work ponies to aid in getting the firewood and a few sawlogs out of the woods. Fjords are the breed we want, because if we got a mare, the foals might be sold on at a good price, and they can handle our terrain and the small to medium size of our trees well.
Ewes with lambs to nurse need a little grain if they to be on such scrawny pickings. They now get oats, which come from from Aroostook County, as their main grain, reducing the embodied fossil energy in their feed. This is the big new thing, an experiment. They still need a little mixed feed, for Selenium, without which sheep get white muscle disease. But the oats replace 60-80% of the expensive bagged, mixed grain, and the cost savings is quite large. A bag of "Coarse 16" mix for sheep from Blue Seal feeds, their previous ration, is about 12 dollars for 50 pounds, or 24 cents a pound, while the oats are 10.9 cents a pound. In summer, with the switch to oats, it takes about 60 cents a day to keep our sheep.
The last of the mixed feed will soon be gone, at which point we'll shift to 100% oats and a protein/mineral block. The protein block is for selenium and trace minerals in the absence of the formulated bagged feed. We can reduce their oat ration yet further this summer when the smallest lamb is large enough to be weaned. Until the mid fall, this will be the picture: a little oats for energy and protein, with most, 90-95% by weight, of their feed coming from the land. A little boost of grain in tupping season, then we will switch to local hay with oats for energy and winter maintenance until the ewes start to grow new lambs in January.
Next, the poultry: The chickens are earning 90-95% of their living from bugs and small plants they peck at while roaming free for the daytime hours. They needed a little calcium supplement to their diet -- the eggshells were very thin, and so we added some calcium. They still get a little free choice bagged feed, but they eat very little of this, preferring to clean up after the sheep and pigs. The chickens are thus currently very sustainable in terms of fossil versus sunlight energy input. The four baby chicks get formula. We can't take chances with such young animals. But they're still so tiny, they don't each much, and they were just shifted to the chicken tractor yesterday, in which device they will learn to eat grass.
Now for swine: The pigs are still young, and so for good growth and until their gut develops the power and performance of a full-grown pig gut -- which is a truly powerful thing -- we have to be careful. But they'll eat the oats from Aroostook too. Pigs need 15-16% protein, and so the oats at 13% or so are not a strong feed. We have some cornmeal and cracked corn to experiment with, but that's not strong either, although it is a complementary protein, and so we will be are looking to get some local soybean meal or soybean pellets too for this purpose, but the current notion I have is to put a half ration of their remaining bagged, mixed feed on the bottom of their communal feed pan each feeding, and add free choice oats, as much as they will eat, on top, and see how they do until the mixed feed is gone, then switch to our own blend of soy, corn and oats, using the soy and the oats as the mainstay. They also get regular fork-loads of manure from the sheep's winter bedding, in which they love to root for tasty piglet morsels. Yum. Eventually, when they get a little bigger, they'll be put in a pen with tons of this stuff to go through, which they'll help break down and enrich for garden compost. They also get all the garden and kitchen waste. Running the waste through the pigs reduces the attraction for a bear, coyote, raccoon or other predator, which are a threat to the chicks, chickens and lambs.
In general, our Aroostook oat experiment will be ongoing all summer. We've already reduced our expenses for bagged mixed feed considerably, and replaced about 60-70% of the imported feed with locally produced feeds. The trick will be to find the mix that keeps everyone healthy and the meat animals (the three wethers and the two piglets) growing steadily.
We'll be monitoring this all very carefully.
We do this kind of experiment all the time, either formally or informally. Aimee makes fairly detailed lab notes of her work with plants. I tend to prefer the old mechanics approach of trail and error, and the nostrum, "if it ain't broke don't fix it."
I don't keep notes, unless I write them up like this. May be I should. Aimee is a much better scientist than I am though.
No comments:
Post a Comment