Diary of a Carbon Farmer

This is the diary of an Australian family who escaped from the city, joined a farming community, and learned to love soil. Carbon Farming is about growing soil carbon - the first link in our food chain. The topsoil is where God's creation is taking place, at every moment. Carbon is the building block of life. By growing it we can restore ecosystems to health. At the same time we can remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as Carbon in the soil.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Animal impact is where it's at

One of the 'tools' we have at our disposal as 'holistic' farmers is animal impact. We use this instaed of a plough and a sowing machine to provide us with pasture. Native pasture species respond well to the tilling effect of the animals' hooves and the fertilising effect of their urine and dung. This is best applied by bunching the animals together in tigh groups. This is why we have small paddocks (or fields) and move the animals quickly through them.
We have a paddock we call Viv's because it is adjacent to a neighbour's property (separated by the Cudgegong River.) It's only a couple of hectares. I became overgrown with Scotch Thistle and rank grasses. So we let the sheep in.

This is what it looked like after 24 hours with 2000 sheep in there. They wrecked it! That's called animal impact and plants need it in order to grow fresh shoot.