Orchard Hill - Horse-powered Organic Farm Part 1 - Rotational Grazing, Potatoes, No-Til Vegetables
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- Joe visits Ken and Martha Laing on their organic farm in St Thomas, Ontario. This 93 acre farm has been in Martha's family since the 1820's and they took over in 1979. They operated a pick-your-own fruit farm for 17 years. Once they decided to go organic they were not able to make it profitable. In 1997 they converted to a CSA, headed up by Martha and their daughter Ellen. It turned out to be the most profitable business they have. It is particularly well suited to the use of draft horse power. They eventually offered education in CSA farming and draft horse power in exchange for labor during the growing season.
In the first of our three-part series on the Laings, Ken explains his rotational cattle grazing system, some of his vegetable crops and some cover cropping experiments he has under way.
First Ken takes us to his 22 acres of grazing land and explains his system of intensive rotational grazing. He has the entire plot surrounded by permanent electric fencing. He rotates the cattle to a different 2-acre section each day. He explains how he uses poly tape electric fence for the temporary sections and some special home made tools that help him do this alone. He moves the mineral feeder and recycled nylon water barrel each day. He demonstrates how easy this system is.
Next we visit his potato fields as he explains his involvement in a potato breeding research project. He grew many varieties and is no narrowed it down to just a few. One in particular has great promise as an organic potato as it has been bred to be resistant to leaf hoppers.
He was also involved in a trial for the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario. They were developing no-til for spring cereal grains. He is demonstrating these four different cover crop combinations in adjacent rows with a
Sorghum-sudan grass
Oat/barley/pea
oat/barley/fava bean
diakon radish
the diakon rows are turning out to be the least weedy and most vigorous plants.
Lastly Ken takes us to his vegetable fields and discusses his no-til and cover crop methods on his rhubarb, garlic, sweet corn, radish and asparagus.
Coming Soon:
Orchard Hill - Horse-powered Organic Farm Part 2 - Horse Drawn Farming Implements
Orchard Hill - Horse-powered Organic Farm Part 3
thank you for sharing your farm. I wish I could have done this with my life. I love to work with horses.
Here's a quick tip for filming, take the close up view of people walking and show a little bit more distance from a better angle. It's super hard to view your first several minutes of video due to the camera person jolting along next to the person being filmed. Love the channel.
This is great! I'm excited to learn more about how the no-till drill was outfitted to be used with horse power and I hope there will be a follow-up video on the results of the no-till drill crop experiments compared to the conventional system.
Wow great farming new subscriber
Great video but double check your editing on that ad if you meant to leave it in at the 9:01 ish mark
Thanks for catching that Bob! It is being fixed as we speak.
This video isnt working for me is anyone else having this problem? Is there somewhere else I could find it?
It has sound but picture is frozen
same
Is it possible that the best cover crop now might not be the best later as the soil evolves?
Not an expert but for the most part you should watch out not to use plants that compete for the same nutrients too much. Like kale and mustard for example.
When you´re not out for a peak harvest of youre primary crop, you might even want to plant a secondary crop that covers the ground. Something like beans or aromatic herbs.
There are many organic farming publications that cover that topic.
@@sullivanmkii, that makes sense.
Love Farming I hope Ican get My own property. Im I'm working on It . Do know Who sale draft Horses like Percheron OR Belgium draft Horses.Im in Kansas City Hope you can Answer my question
Go to their respective horse association and see if any are for sale in your area, you may have to drive quite a distance depending on what you want in the animals. You will want a well broke and older team also have the animals vet checked so you know they're sound.
Tony, Checking with local/state draft horse clubs is an excellent start. There are also some draft horse auctions out there. Some are getting cancelled but there is one in Boone County, MO in September: boonecountydrafthorseandmules.com. We have a calendar of events including a sales and auctions on our website. we try to keep it up to date with all the changes lately: www.ruralheritage.com/new_rh_website/calendar/calendar_events_listings.php. In addition, there are breeders out there. We have a small list on our website also: www.ruralheritage.com/new_rh_website/resources/advertisers/advertiser_horses.shtml. That should get you a good start! Good luck.
Don't jump into equines right away. Start with easier livestock and then graduate to horses.
Electrified polybraid wire is the best.
This video is broken. Can not play in Chrome.
👍👌🇨🇦❤
I'm not familiar with CSA. What is it?
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.
From USDA: Community Supported Agriculture consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Here is a good website to help understand the concept and related articles: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/community-supported-agriculture
It´s Community Sustained Agriculture - The customers/shareholders pay an annual/monthly fee to receive a weekly bask of produce during the vegetation period.
The basic idea is to support your local organic farmer with getting over the year, and not just during the vegitation period.
Feed for the animals in the winter, wages during harvest, tough stretches in the spring where the only have a few winter crops.
I hope he realizes a tractor is more efficient
Everyone knows a tractor is more efficient than horses but they have by products that useful for a farmer and most horses are a joy to work with.
They do, and consciously decide against it.
Ground compression by heavy machinery is a thing and would ruin the whole concept of hand weeding, cover crops and no till.
A tractor will not love you back.
@@sullivanmkii you can do strip or no till with a tractor. We do it all the time With no problems but they like to work with the horses.
Efficiency vs cost effectiveness. Useful byproducts versus toxic waste. Wholesome work environment vs. offensive machines.