Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper
Merla went looking for some cow manure on a BD farm to make her Horn Manure and her CPP. Some practical advice came back to use what you got, locally, even though it ain't exactly organic. Generally speaking I go along with practical advice like that. Get the engine running, the adjust the carburetor. Yet, the tale of the four cow pies comes to mind. All of these farms I have walked on in the last year, so my observations are fresh in my mind, and it is something I'm reflecting on. Ozark Farm #1: Rotational grazing; integrated with turkey manure and composting. I can go into long details about all the conservation practices and subsequent healthy indicators coming back to this farm. The farm is not organic but it is certainly a model of a sustainable grass-based livestock farm. The bottomline is the cow pie. These animals are healthy cows with healthy cow pies. The cow dung is quickly invaded by teeming hordes of insect life, especially dung beetles. Within a few hours it looks like an apartment dwelling with tunnels and honeycombs. Within a few days is has flattened to the earth. Nutrient cycling thus accomplished; organic matter returned to the earth. A living energy exchange has taken place. Ozark Farm #2: The farm has cows, yet it is a run down farm because they use continuous grazing and they medicate the cows heavily and use systemic insecticides to worm the cows. The forages are low grade and over run with weeds. When the cow pie hits the ground it just sits there. Weeks later it is still there in the same shape. The only insects visible are flies, indicators of a putrefactive microbial turn of events. There is no life in this cow dung, it is a rotting corpse of undigested organic matter. India Farm #3: The typical Indian peasant farm is integrated, working 1-3 acres of subsistance foods and cash crops with a bullock to raise a few extra rupees. The family lives close to their animals. They keep a cow for milk and yogurt, a few baby animals lounge about, and a bullock or two is there to work the fields. The woman gathers leaves and grass for bedding, and hay for fodder. The farmyard manure (FYM) is used to spread on fields, or used in a compost pile or to make vermicompost. The animals are healthy and contented. They exude a peaceful calm. It is against the law to kill a cow in India. The cows are naturally healthy and free of antibiotics and insecticides. The dung is free of contaminants, it is strong in quality and life force. The dung is used for soil fertility, for fuel cakes, and to smear on walls as an insulation, among other uses, including BD compost and CPP. India Farm #4: The farm uses water buffalo, so the dung is buffalo dung. A group of Indian farmers are visiting, sitting around drinking tea and discussing the merits of biodynamic farming. A question arises as to any differences in quality and power of CPP, cow pit pat, between cow dung and buffalo dung. The answer comes back from the more experienced biodynamic farmers that buffalo dung has 40% power. So I am reflecting on these observations and the quality of cow dung. I remember seeing those dead cow pies on an adjacent pasture, and then I think why not drive my pickup truck to a farm a little further away to gather cow manure of better quality. Steve Diver P.S. My colleagues at ATTRA put these two items together on nutrient cycling and dung beetles, of interest perhaps to some readers. The dung beetle pub is especially fun to read and think about. Dung Beetle Benefits in the Pasture Ecosystem http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/dungbeetle.html http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/PDF/dungbeetle.pdf Nutrient Cycling in Pastures http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/nutcycle.html http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/PDF/nutrientcycling.PDF
Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper
Steve Diver wrote: Merla went looking for some cow manure on a BD farm to make her Horn Manure and her CPP. Some practical advice came back to use what you got, locally, even though it ain't exactly organic. Generally speaking I go along with practical advice like that. Get the engine running, the adjust the carburetor. Yet, the tale of the four cow pies comes to mind. .. So I am reflecting on these observations and the quality of cow dung. I remember seeing those dead cow pies on an adjacent pasture, and then I think why not drive my pickup truck to a farm a little further away to gather cow manure of better quality. Sure, I agree the sentiment and practicality - if fresh healthy organic cow manure can be got locally, then get it. If it cannot, go for what's available provided it does the job. The operative word is 'locally'. Like 'sustainability' that means different things to different people. It may mean the immediate locality, particularly if one does not have means of transport, or a much larger area if one does. Take my country, for instance - very large in area, small in population. Canberra is 250 kms (150 miles) from the outskirts of Sydney, the freeway between bypasses all towns and cities, traffic on it is not heavy by US or European standards, the journey takes just over two hours. Dalgety is 180 kms (110 miles) from Canberra, the road is average blacktop, poor in places, and passes through four built up areas, again the journey is two hours plus a bit. Between here and D. there are approximately one million stock animals of all species. The vast majority are on conventional (ie chemical) agriculture properties. To my knowledge, the only organic/biodynamic farms within reach of that road are a 100-acre mixed cropping farm near Bredbo ((115 kms away plus 15 kms of connecting dirt road which is awful) and a piggery at Berridale not far from D. There are BD farms around Canberra. Lez Patten's place 'Wingrove' at Gundaroo 40 kms away is probably about the closest but she doesn't have cows - her manure comes from an organic feedlot at Temora 200 kms further west. Just under a month ago, Hamish Mackay sprayed the 40 hectare Dalgety TSR project site with a bacterial compost tea at a rate of 150 litres per hectare. Made on site to specifications provided by James and Barbara Hedley and diluted 20:1, the compost component was supplied by me from Canberra sources because there is nobody within the D. region who makes a suitable compost. In fact, no one who makes any sort of compost! I run a yahoo mailing list called Pyemeet. Not surprisingly, it deals with Pye familiy history and it has members in a dozen countries. One of the difficulties list members have is adjusting their own research expectancies and experiences to other country realities. If I want to check a detail of a possible relative in England, I can ask a dozen people there; they in turn have as many information sources again at their fingertips and the answer comes within a day or two. Reverse the situation and an enquiry takes months (if not years) to resolve. BD NOW! is even further flung and rightly so. It too suffers from reality differences. What is possible in North America may not be elsewhere. Often is not. Definitive statements regarding what should or should not be done in a given situation, or what may or may not be used, have a tendency to put people off doing anything at all for fear of not being able to meet the parameters. I try not to be definitive; I don't always succeed. roger %% Our only limitation is our capacity to believe. (Charles Rogers) %%
Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper
Legacy of 9/11. More than a year ago, Ferdy and his daughter smuggled all the preps. into Mexico by air successfully. I guess organic cowpie could blow up buildlings! In Nov. after 9/11, I went to an anthr. Agric. Section mtg in Pasadena, CA, USA. The US Immigration were no problem. It was the Canadians who tore me apart. Even to the point where I was told off for not renting a car in Los Angeles! Michael (BC, Canada) - Original Message - From: Merla Barberie [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: BD Now [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 4:48 AM Subject: The great international cowpie smuggling caper We drove to Canada Sunday to buy some BD manure from Aurora Farm for making 500 and BC. Woody greeted us. (Barbara was gone on a trip.) He showed us the burial spot of his old cow and his compost piles and we talked about storing preps. He served us Chia tea and biscoti in the barn. His barn and house were built by a solar-minded architect and are well done and sited atop a butte overlooking the whole Purcel Trench . Unfortunately, US customs wouldn't let us take the manure into the US so we had to backtrack and return the excrement of the sacred cow back to the Aurora Farm barn. Woody was gone. I retrieved one small cowpie and hid it in my purse. I sat still in my seat as we went back through customs. Herb chatted with the inspector as they looked in the now empty barrel about how he was going to shovel up the stuff that drops out on the road in Sandpoint when the cattle semis come through from Canada with cows for slaughter in US processing plants. I will have my cow horn filled with BD manure, the BC is another thing. The next closest BD farm is Victor, Montana, but it's too far. I will have to try and find an organic cow in Sandpoint. Best, Merla
Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper
The next closest BD farm is Victor, Montana, but it's too far. I will have to try and find an organic cow in Sandpoint. It's always important to remember, folks, the even a teacher as particular as Peter Proctor has stated 'Half a cherry is better than no cherry at all in terms of making the preps. Courtney said the same to me the other day, something like 'Well, there's ultimate BC and there's pretty good BC. Not being able to get eveything you need for ultimate BC is no reason for not making and BC at all.' Look for a source of lactating cows that graze on good grass. Once you've found that, find 7 white buckets worth of very symettrical cows pies within a 3 day period (picking in the mornings). I don't know how you could lose. (If you can't find cow pies that reflect the order of the universe in the first pasture, well, then, you're going to have to look for another pasture because we don't want to stray TOO far in our choice of ingredients, do we?! ;-) Hope this info is as helpful to you as it has been to me. -Allan
Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper/another joke with wheelbarrows
How about this one? A man from Sumas, BC, Canada was seen crossing the border into Sumas, WA, USA every day. Each morning he would walk across the border with a wheelbarrow, but, the Amercans never found anything in or on the wheelbarrow. He would return later that day without a wheelbarrow. Finally, the Canadians asked him what he was trafficking. Why, wheelbarrow, of course! replied the man. - Original Message - From: Gil Robertson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 3:44 PM Subject: Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper D S Chamberlain wrote: No drama! All the rest is just icing on the cake. Assume still talking Cow Cake. Remember the school yard yarn. Man wheeling barrow load of cow cakes passed mental health establishment. Client looking through bars, asks What are you going to do with that. Put it on my Stewberries was the gruff reply. Geez, we use cream here!
Re: The great international cowpie smuggling caper
Here we go again making up all sorts of restrictions. Merla, just find some grass fed cows, preferably off unsupered pasture and get it while it is fresh. No drama! All the rest is just icing on the cake. David C Thanks, David. This is a very important point, folks. A lot of bd work goes undone because would be practitioners feel that either they or their materials are not worthy of the work. If you take this stance, you're mmissing a lot. The only way you'll really learn how to work with the biodynamic preps is by working with them, working with them in your own patch. Don't get unnecessarily sloppy, of course. Keep your eye on the prize and get on with it, at every chance you get! -Allan
