Steve Diver wrote:
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.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.
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
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"Our only limitation is our capacity to believe."
(Charles Rogers)
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