Mill Swamp Indian Horses Summer Program: Environmental Protection and Pasture Enhancement

Yesterday's summer program focused on the application and creation of non-chemical microbial fertilizer. The resulting product provides forage for millions of earthworms, each of which work hard to increase water absorption, decrease runoff, and increase pasture production.

Koreans have used these techniques and have mastered the fine points of microbial farming. We have not done so. However, even our crude efforts to enhance microbial development have yielded tremendous benefit to the soil.

A week ago we fenced in a small section of pasture that was a bit over grown with weeds. Our Scottish Highland cattle made short work of the weeds. While in the small enclosur,e they seeded the soil with bacteria, fungi, and enzymes from their manure, hooves and saliva. The chickens and turkeys were attracted to the area and they brought with them additional species of microbes.

We then applied liquid fertilizer that we made last summer.  We put sprinklers over the area to insure that the fertilizer reached into the soil (We are going through a hot, dry spell. Otherwise I would have skipped this step.)

We then began to make additional microbial fertilizer. We pulled up hundreds of cockle bur weeds that had not yet gone to seed. We gathered leaf mold, loaded with beneficial fungi, from beneath pine trees and supplemented that with leaf mold from beneath hard wood trees to provide additional bacterial growth. Next we sealed in cooked rice and spoiling fruit rinds with vermicompost and the plant molds to grow for a while.

The weeds sit in a covered barrel waiting to be covered this morning with water, a handful of cattle mineral, and a handful or two of corn. I will then add in the rice, leaf mold, vermicompost and fruit rind mixture. The barrel will be sealed and in less than a week intense fomentation will begin.

At that point we will mix the brew with water in a ratio of about 5-1 water to fertilizer and we will be able to apply it directly to the pastures. If past experience holds, I will see little change in the pastures for several months, but by the time the cool season grasses start coming in strong in early fall the increase in microbes in the soil will be significant.