Tag: Foliar Sprays

Grass Fed is Best? A Horror Story From our Living Lab

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To hear some people talk, you might get the impression that raising chickens and animals on grass is the secret ticket to success in farming and to health. With grassfed, there will be no more problems and the chickens and animals will excel far beyond conventional farming methods. Any grass is good. All you have to do is get the animals out on the grass, in the sunshine and fresh air.

That is not true.

Before you think I fell off my rocker, I will state that I believe that grass fed is BEST! But, as you will see, not all grass is best or even able to properly sustain life.

I was shocked and very disappointed with the large amount of weight loss that our sheep experienced after only 16 days in the new silvopasture. Two specialists from the Maryland Extension service, had visited the silvopasture just before the sheep were put into the new pasture. They were very impressed with what they called the “high dairy quality” of the grasses and clovers. They were concerned that the forage would be too lush, too rich for the sheep and that they might bloat (their stomachs fill up with gas) . On the contrary, the sheep did not bloat and we were in for a big surprise when we weighed the sheep.
The 54 Adult Sheep : lost (-345.5 lbs.) total in the 16 days between May 14 & 30, 2015. This number included rams (males), ewes (females) with lambs, and year old females that were not bred. Many of the nursing mothers lost 10 to 15 lbs!

The 48 Lambs: gained significantly less than they did the 16 days before they were turned into the Silvopasture:

Gain between 4/28/15 & 5/14/15 (16 days) = 465.5 lbs. an average of .61 lbs of gain per day before being in the silvopasture.
Gain between 5/14/15 & 5/30/15 (16 days) = 209.1 lbs. an average of .27 lbs of gain per day
Weight gain difference = -256.4 lbs.

While these weight losses were very disappointing, they showed how dramatically different pastures can be. Grass fed will not produce healthy animals and poultry if the soil is not built up properly. The main part of our farm, where the lambs gained the most, probably had the same quality of grass as the silvopasture eight years ago when we first moved here. We applied some principles that we learned from Carey Reams and some that we had developed on our own from some of his teachings and it made a dramatic improvement in the pastures. The main concept is that at least 80% of a plant’s nutritional food/energy comes from the air. By building up the soil and foliar feeding the plants with milk and honey, we were able to increase the amount that the plants were able to take out of the air. One of the main things that we did was to repeatedly mow our pastures and let the grass lay on the ground. We have explained this in some of our other articles.

I also need to add that there were also a few other things that likely contributed to the weight loss – over maturity of some of the grasses and grazing too long for the quality of the forage.

What was significant was that on the main part of our farm, the pasture alone, with no grain feeding, produced a weight gain of .61 pounds per day in the 16 days before the lambs went onto the silvopasture. That is exceptional for grassfed only and comparable to grain feeding.

Mike Neary, Ph.D., Extension Sheep Specialist at Purdue University says this about lambs in the 45 – 80 lb range, which was the size of most of the lambs that we put on the silvopasture: “Lambs with high to moderate growth potential that are fed a grain based diet with proper amounts of protein should gain from .5 to .8 pounds per day…
“If lambs are grown on high levels of forage [pasture], then one can expect slower gains than if fed diets with a high amount of grain. Gains for lambs grown on pasture will normally be from .25 to .5 pounds per day.” http://ag.ansc.purdue.edu/sheep/articles/feedlamb.html

During the 16 days in the silvopasture, the lambs averaged .27 lbs of gain per day which is at the bottom end of what Neary said is the expected gain for lambs on pasture. However, the results were actually worse than that. During the time that the sheep were in the Silvopasture, it appears that from the amount of weight that the lactating ewes lost, they gave the fat off their backs to their lambs and that is why the lambs gained and did not lose weight like their mothers.

Last week we weighed a few of the ewes and lambs when we were sorting out the lambs to take to the butcher. We were encouraged that they were gaining weight again. Those lambs had gained about .67 lbs a day in nine days. We do not have the data yet for all the lambs.

The lesson in all of this is that all pastures are not the same and will not give the same health qualities to the eggs, meat and milk that they produce. The same is true of fruits and vegetables in the store. They may look beautiful, but be lacking in the nutrition to adequately sustain life.

Sheep grazing what appeared to be very lush forage in the silvopasture demonstration plot.
Sheep grazing what appeared to be very lush forage in the silvopasture demonstration plot.

The soil in the 8 acres in the silvopasture is about as chemical free as it will get. It has been probably at least 20 years since it had any chemicals or chemical fertilizers put on it. It also had not had any animals on it or any farming activity for at least 10 years before the silvopasture was established; therefore, it did not have the immediate negative affects of chemicals or bad farming practices. The forage specialists had recommended the grasses and legumes to plant to reduce the amount of tall fescue grass that was in the pasture. Tall fescue has a toxin in it that negatively affects sheep and cattle. Those grasses and legumes had been planted and looked beautiful as you can see in the picture.

In spite of the problems, I am looking forward to what we will be able to accomplish in the silvopasture. I feel that we have a solution, by repeatedly mowing the silvopasture to build up the soil. We also will be spraying milk, honey, and egg as a foliar spray to increase the photosynthesis and brix (sugar) of the pasture grasses and legumes. In the next three years, I believe that we will see a very significant improvement in the pasture growth and nutrition in the silvopasture, and a significant growth increase in the trees over the trees planted in the adjacent fields.

For me, the silvopasture gave me a reference point that showed that we had indeed improved our pastures from when we first moved to this farm.

We Have Sequestered 162 Tons of Carbon!

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In the first seven years here on our farm, we have sequestered over 325,500 lbs of Soil Organic Carbon on 35 acres. We have sequestered as much carbon as the yearly CO2 output from approximately 146 cars. That was accomplished by increasing the soil organic matter on most of the farmland by almost one percentage point. That is without spreading organic matter or fertilizers other than lime. The only manure was the droppings from chickens when they are on the pasture and from the sheep and cows while they are grazing.

The method that we used to sequester the carbon was letting the grass grow a foot or more tall and then grazing or mowing the grass and letting it decompose into the soil. This is a method that we discovered as we mowed the grass in the American chestnut orchard located here on the farm and observed the significant increased growth of the grass and the increased growth, vigor, health, and blight resistance of the American chestnut trees. Grasses have approximately the same amount of root mass and depth as the mass and height of grass above the ground. When the grass is mowed from a height of 24″ down to 4″, the roots slough off from a depth of 24″ to approximately 4″. As these roots decompose, they build organic matter in the soil to the depth the roots had been. It is not just organic matter on the surface of the ground from the mowed grass.

The soil tests that we took are just of the top 6″ of soil and do not represent any increase in organic matter below 6″. It would be interesting to test the soil at a greater depth. The soil test from A&L Eastern Labs tested at the end of 2013 shows that the front pasture closest to the road had an organic matter percentage of 4.6%. A soil test from the small parcel of ungrazed fallow grassland adjacent to the road was used as a control to compare with the front pasture soil test since we do not have soil tests before we started managing the farmland. That small parcel of fallow grassland in years past had been part of the front pasture. That area had soil organic matter of 3.8%. 3% organic matter is considered good soil and 1% is not uncommon on cropland. The soil tests show an increase of .8% organic matter in the front pasture.

Our goal is to build enough organic matter in the soil to try to “drought proof” the pastures and to make the soil like a sponge so that there is very little water runoff when there is a heavy rain. Carbon acts like a sponge and holds moisture and other nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous and keeps them from being leached out of the soil into the Bay. The carbon then releases the water and nutrients to the plants as needed.

One method that we have experimented with to increase the carbon content of the grasses was to spray the grass with a mist of a mixture that consisted of water, raw milk from our cows, a little honey, and some eggs. The milk, honey and egg mixture increases the photosynthesis of the leaves and increases the brix/sugar (which is high carbon) content of the grasses about three percentage points. The sugar is transported from the leaves to the roots. In theory, if we can increase the sugar/carbon production in the leaves of the pasture grasses we should be able to increase the amount of carbon that we can sequester in the soil. We want to experiment with this some more. Last year we did not have enough milk.

Eating Nutrient Dense Foods – The Role of Brix is Not What We Thought

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Testing fruits and vegetables for brix, the percent sugar, does not appear to be as reliable a method for testing their mineral density as previously thought. International Ag Labs released a report earlier this year in which they tested butternut squash samples for nutrient density from 29 different sources. Unfortunately, I was not able to find the explanation of the nutrient density standard that was used to rank the samples. However, the results show some interesting things:
The brix reading does not correlate with protein content.
The brix reading does not correlate with calcium content.
The brix reading does not seem to correlate with any other mineral content.

What this report shows is that testing the brix of fruits and vegetables produced by someone else, such as from the grocery store or from a farmer’s market, or even from your own garden, is not a reliable indicator of nutrient density. However, that does not mean that testing the brix content is worthless. In general, a higher brix squash tended to have a higher mineral content. Also, this test was an evaluation of only butternut squashes and not all fruits and vegetables.

Last summer, I started questioning the accuracy of testing fruits and vegetables for brix to find the mineral content. Our green beans were only 7 brix (between good and average on the brix chart with 10 being excellent), but the yield was incredible, and the taste was some of the best I had ever eaten and the beans were very tender. The leaves of the green bean plants were 15 brix. I did a little testing and found that doubling the moisture content cuts the brix reading in half. Cutting the moisture content in half doubles the brix reading. Therefore, knowing the moisture content (dry matter percent) is important if you are comparing the brix between two fruits or vegetables grown in two different locations.

But! Before you throw out your refractometer as a worthless test instrument, the refractometer is an important test instrument in your garden. If you can get the brix of the leaf of the plants above 12 brix, the bugs will pretty much leave the plants alone. You can test the plants to make sure that any nutritional spray, such as milk, honey and egg spray, is increasing the brix reading in the leaf. Also, if you have put down soft rock phosphate and high calcium limestone on your garden, you know that the minerals are there at a higher level, even if the brix reading of the vegetables does not test in the excellent range, especially if the leaves of the plant test 12 brix or higher.

This summer, it has been difficult to keep the brix reading of the leaf high because of all the rain and cloudy weather that we have had. It is the sun shining on the leaf that helps make the sugar in the leaf. We have had a lot more problems with Japanese beetles this year, and I believe it is because of all the rainy weather.

The squash study by International Ag Labs highlights the importance of growing our own food or purchasing it from someone we know who has put the minerals into the soil. Eating nutrient dense foods is not as easy to accomplish as we would like it to be, but it is vitally important for our health.

The results of the butternut squash study can be found at this link:
http://marketgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Compiled-Butternut-Squash-Data.pdf

An Incredible Substance – Raw Milk

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Raw milk is a much more valuable substance than what most people realize. Everything that we have fed it to has become more healthy. Our family consumes about 7 to 10 gallons of the stuff a week. The yogurt that we make with it is usually mild and not very tart. We noticed a difference in our children’s health one winter when our cow was not producing milk. The children had more sickness, colds, etc. than they had other years when our cows were producing milk.

We feed the baby chicks raw milk and it has made a significant difference in their health. The chickens grow much better and we have very few die. The milk also seems to make the chicken meat more tender. We have found that calves and lambs that we bottle feed do much better on raw milk than on milk replacer. Raw milk is one of the best protein sources for laying hens. We don’t give the hens milk very often because we do not have enough extra milk, but we have used it when a flock was not doing as well as it should, and they improved with the raw milk added to their feed.

Last summer we discovered another valuable use for raw milk. In our garden, there were a number of different types of vegetables that were low brix. We tried different types of foliar sprays that should have raised the brix. Instead, they lowered the brix. The Brix Talk discussion board did not have any solutions. I couldn’t find a solution anywhere. So I asked God to show me what to do. He brought to my mind that in the Bible the Land of Canaan (what is now Israel) was called a land flowing with milk and honey. I always assumed it meant that it was a very productive area that produced a lot of milk and honey. This time the thought that came to me was, "What if milk and honey put on the plants would make them more productive?" I did a test and sprayed some milk and honey on various plants in the garden. About an hour later I tested the brix. To my surprise and joy the brix had risen 3 brix on most of the plants. The brix of clover raised from 8 brix to 13 brix. We have used the milk and honey spray on our garden this year with excellent results.

When the brix (sugar and mineral content) of the leaf of a plant is above 12 brix, insects will leave the plant alone. The high sugar content of the plant causes alcohol to be produced in an insect when it eats the high brix plant. It gives the bug diarrhea which results in dehydration and death. We had heard that when the vegetables in a garden are high brix, the insects will leave the vegetables alone and start attacking the weeds. We found it to be true. Insects attack plants that are low quality. In poor soil the weeds are higher brix and the vegetables are low brix. When the plants have the right amount of calcium and phosphates the opposite occurs. The weeds are low brix and are attacked by the bugs and the vegetables are high brix and the bugs leave them alone. Conventional agriculture mindset is to spray anti-life chemicals on the plant to kill the bugs, and then feed the poor nutritional quality vegetables to us. The following pictures show some weeds that the insects were eating.


The bugs attacked the weeds in the corn patch. The brix of the corn leaves was 15 brix.


Japanese beetles were eating on the weed in the center of this picture which was in the potatoes. We did not have any problem with potato beetles eating the potato plants. The brix of the potato leaves was about 12 brix.

We had a problem with the Japanese beetles eating our grapevines. After we sprayed the grapevines twice with milk and honey about a week apart, the beetles left. The milk and honey mix that we use is:
3 1/2 gallons of water
1/2 gallon of raw skim milk
1 cup of honey

I put the milk and honey spray in a pump up bug sprayer and sprayed the plants. It might be possible to get the same results without using the honey. I have not experimented with that yet.

Recently I read an article in a farming magazine, The Stockman Grass Farmer, about a dairy farm in Nebraska that had raw skim milk that was a waste product from making butter and cheese. To get rid of the milk, the farmer applied it to his pastures. He found that where he applied milk it made a significant improvement. It significantly increased the microbes in the soil and the growth of the grass. Further test plots showed that the raw milk applied once, at the rate of three gallons per acre, increased the yield of the hay by 1200 pounds per acre! Their conclusion was that raw milk could be worth two to three more times more money as fertilizer!


Several weeks ago we bought another cow – a Guernsey. Why a Guernsey?

One reason is that my grandfather had a purebred Guernsey dairy herd and sold "Golden Guernsey" raw milk. My father talked about how good the golden Guernsey milk was. We found that we like it better than our Jersey milk. But the real reason that we wanted a Guernsey is that some recent research has found that there are two different types of milk protein – A1 beta casein milk protein, and A2 beta casein milk protein. The A1 beta casein is what most people who have casein intolerance are allergic to. Goat and sheep milk are A2 beta casein. There is a "controversial" claim, based on 16 years research, that the A1 beta casein which is drunk by most people in the US could be a cause of diabetes, heart disease, autism, and schizophrenia in people with immune deficiencies. It is also claimed that the A2 beta casein does not cause these problems. Research has showed that 96% of the Guernsey breed of cows have the A2 beta casein, while the Holstein (black and white) breed from which most of the milk in the US is produced, has the A1 milk protein. Obviously this is very damaging information for the dairy industry and there has been considerable attempt to suppress the information about A2 milk.

For more information read
http://www.naturalnews.com/026684_cows_diabetes_protein.html or the
book Devil in the Milk by Keith Woodford.

Another use for milk is to help a person refuse what is bad and choose what is good. In the Bible, Isaiah 7:15 says that Jesus would eat butter and honey so that He would know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. That is one of the benefits of adequate calcium in the diet. I have heard that the proper type of calcium, according to a person’s body’s need, can help an alcoholic give up alcohol, or a smoker give up cigarettes. The proper calciums can also help children calm down and be well behaved without the use of mood altering drugs.

Raw milk can also be used to cure a number of chronic diseases. The Weston A Price Foundation has a very interesting article about raw milk being used to cure a number of different diseases. http://www.realmilk.com/milkcure.html Recently we purchased the book Milk Diet as a Remedy for Chronic Disease, by Dr. Charles Sanford Porter. It is a reprint of a book that was originally printed in 1905. This book goes into great detail about how to conduct a milk fast to cure sickness.

Raw milk can also be an important survival food. It is a food that can be produced fresh every day year round and consumed without further cooking or processing. This idea came from the Bible, Isaiah 7:21-22: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep; And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land."

Raw milk is a valuable substance. It is unfortunate that it is illegal to buy or sell raw milk here in Maryland. Perhaps some day…

Update, August 9th:

One thing I failed to mention in last month’s article is that the milk and honey foliar spray did not work for us on green beans. It actually decreased the brix. The foliar spray that we use on our beans is:
4 gallons of water
12 tbsp molasses – we use feed grade
16 oz. Cola soda – a source of phosphoric acid
4 tsp hydrated lime
10 tbsp liquid fish
4tbsp seaweed powder
8 oz. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp sea salt

We also alternate the above foliar spray with milk and honey on our sweet corn. Our sweet corn was 26 brix this year. 24 brix or higher is in the excellent range.

Producing High Brix Food

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A number of people have requested information on how to produce high brix food and how to increase the brix of the pastures.

Producing high brix food is not achieved overnight. It takes three to eight years to get the nutrients balanced in the soil so that high brix food can be produced. When you first get your refractometer and start testing your vegetables it is discouraging discovering how poor they are. However, it becomes exciting as you see the improvements in the brix reading, taste how much better high brix food is, and you know you can’t buy this quality of food in the stores.

The best way to know what minerals should be added to your soil is to do a soil test. It needs to be a weak acid LaMotte soil test such as is done by International Ag labs, not the usual strong acid soil tests performed by most labs.

The first year, in the fall of the year, plow the soil and apply soft rock phosphate at the rate of 100 pounds per thousand square feet or 10 pounds per 100 square feet. After applying the soft rock phosphate, apply high calcium lime at the same rate. Do not use dolomite or limestone with more than 5% magnesium. Magnesium releases nitrogen into the air and messes up the soil balance. We get lime from Frederick Farmers Coop in Frederick. It is called Thomasville lime (Old Castle) for $3.05 for 50lbs. Soft rock phosphate is available from Lancaster Ag for $11 for a 50lb bag. They will ship UPS. Lancaster Ag also has garden blends to help gardeners produce high brix food.

Producing nutrient dense, high brix food is more involved than just putting down soft rock phosphate and limestone.

There are also foliar sprays that you can apply to increase the brix. Our tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and cucumbers were low brix and I could not find a foliar spray that raised the brix. I remembered that in the Bible it referred to the land of Canaan as a land flowing with milk and honey.  I tried two cups of raw milk and a little honey per gallon of water. It raised the brix of the leaves of the plants from 7 brix to 10 brix. It raised the brix of the clover in the pasture about 5 brix.

A foliar spray that we used on the green beans and the sweet corn that raised the brix and produced 28 brix sweet corn was:
Per Gallon
6tbsp     molasses – we used feed grade
8oz.       cola soda – a source of phosphoric acid
1tsp       Hydrated lime
3tbsp     liquid fish
1tbsp     seaweed powder
14tbsp  apple cider vinegar

If you want more information, I encourage you to check out the websites listed below.  I also recommend reading the book Nourishment Home Grown by Dr. A.F. Beddoe. Refractometers that test the brix reading are available inexpensively on eBay. Get one that reads in the 0 to 32% range.

Weston A Price Foundation – High Brix farming and gardening
http://www.westonaprice.org/The-Quest-for-Nutrient-Dense-Food-High-Brix-Farming-and-Gardening.html

Soil tests and articles – International Ag Labs
http://www.aglabs.com/soilTesting.html

Supplier – Lancaster Ag, Lancaster, PA
http://www.lancasterag.com/catalog/garden/intro.html

High Brix Gardens
http://www.highbrixgardens.com/

Brix Book and articles
http://crossroads.ws/

Test equipment and articles
http://www.pikeagri.com/
Check out their user guides – plant sap analysis and compost guides

If you are a farmer, we highly recommend the Carey Reams seminars that Pike Agri has. They are well worth the cost. They take you to levels of agriculture that you did not think possible, such as how to produce alfalfa that is 28% protein, grows 12 to 17 feet tall and produces 20 to 30 tons per acre! Carey Reams was hired by the nation of Israel, when they first became a nation, to show them how to turn the desert into highly productive farmland.