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  • From: "Paul A. Bock" <bockpa AT plesh.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] multi-farm crop rotations.
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:15:40 -0400

I know this isn't really market gardening, but I recently heard what a
couple of dairy farmers did with a couple pieces of land recently that
sounded a little like what someone suggested doing between CSA farms in lean
and fat times.

There are two dairy farmers. One only has equipment to harvest hay. But
they harvest many cuttings because they use this neat technique where the
bail it up in round bales when still wet, (but I am beginning to think they
let it wilt just a bit before they do, certainly no where near dry) and then
they wrap the big bales in plastic. The hay ferments right in the bails.
The bails are left in the field, along an edge or road, until needed, hence
no cost for hay storage, or a silo.

The other diary farmer uses pretty much just corn silage, though has a few
fields that he uses for pasture. A completely different set of equipment
for chopping corn. They do use vertical and bunker silos for the silage.

Well, they both own land and rent land. And the trick comes in with their
crop rotations. They swap land for their rotations. When the hay fields
need to be reseeded, the corn grower tills the fields and gets two years of
corn off. And in exchange the hay farmer gets the hay off the corn grower's
pasture. After the two years the corn fields will be tilled and drilled
with alfalfa again. And so both farmers don't need complete sets of corn
chopping AND hay bailing equipment.

The hay farmer apparently can keep the protein levels high in the milk with
only hay because they take it off when it is still young (they got something
like 5 or 6 cuttings from the field behind my house, and they bag it damp
and let it ferment. That process keeps the nutrients high. It is very
similar to pen type rotational grazing.




  • [Market-farming] multi-farm crop rotations., Paul A. Bock, 06/14/2003

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