Part 1 A Special Note; Forward Background and Objectives Cause For the Development of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Short Sighted Remedies The Elysian Fields Name The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Activities: A Call for Dynamic Environmental Systems Change
Part 2 Masanobu Fukuoka and “Natural Farming” Fukuoka’s Four Principals Seed Pellets Preparation of Seed-Pellets Successes Using Seed Pellets in a Pasture Sod Cropping Environment F. Newman Turner and “Fertility Farming” Weather Proof Haymaking and Harvesting Sir Albert Howard, and the Indore Composting Process Genrich Altshuller / TRIZ Technology TRIZ 40 Principles S Curves of Development ASIT- Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking Evaluation of the System Solutions via Holistic Management
Part 3 Results: Further Pasture Sub-systems and Elements employed Quality High Tensile Wire Fence and Installation Devices Biomass Grid Strawbale Structure Utilization in Conjunction with Bedded Packs Strawbale Designs and Pasture as Housing Pasture Infield Harvesting Apparatus, Trellis Curing, Feed Storage, and Feed out Pasture Mobile Milking Parlor or Bale, and Milk Handling Utilities. Pasture Mobile Robotic Milking Stations Pasture Slaughter Facilities and Compost In Sod Step-In Tombstone Feed Bunks, Comfort Stalls and Stanchions Invisible Sub-Perimeter Fence For Pastured Cows, Mobile Bunk-Line Feeder In-Field Water – Air Conditioning Pasture Laneways, Lime Stabilized Staging Areas, Water And Sewer Systems
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Part 4 Financials: Elements effects on Farm Income Statements and Balance Sheets Side by Side Pasture Dairy Farm Comparisons Part 5 Conclusions: Initiatives In Future Pasture Super System Design “…..animal units between 10 and 10,000 or more…..” A Sustainable Municipal Solution, Available To All Footnotes, Resources, Suggested Reading 4
Part 1
A Special Notes section concerning this Winter – Spring 2006, 10th edition
Again the title name, “The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project”.
I have received many requests this year for updates; Prototype testing will continue ongoing.
I am continuing to add to the written works of F. Newman Turner to the main body of this edition of the Project, and to include gleanings of his written works: Fertility Pastures and Fertility Farming concerning leys and other topics as I find them of a useful utility and basis for transition and beyond, utilizing biological pasture cropping functions.
With this edition, F. Newman Turner’s references to Sir Albert Howard writings have lead to the introduction of our adaptation of the Indore Composting Process’; and A. J. Hosier’s “Dairy System”, both studies from early twentieth century written works.
Continuing also with this revision is the further inclusion of a series of short “Problem Statements” and their assigned “Solutions” laced throughout the document in a boxed border format.
Forward, by Royal A. Purdy, The “Real” Man from Elysian Fields
I continuously seek out chances to comment and relay to others about the (often updated) contents of this document and its contained subsystems editorials. A number of years ago, I set about opening up a website discussion forum, dedicated to the subject matter; often attempting to explain, capture or compare the overall scope of various “next generation pasture systems” conceptual design and planning, traditional western agricultural perceptions of a proposed pasture ley and nomadic harvest system verses that of other nations and other ages and other cultures historic solutions, and current pasture and pasture cropping systems’ limiting factors to the elements being developed for, and / or which are currently contained in this private agribusiness experimental model now known as: “The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project”. I think interested people, both he and she dairy, beef and too commodity (perhaps organic) crop farmers interested in remaining competitive within their industry in an open minded and open-ended sustainable manner and now too (increasingly) non-farmers interested in promoting preservation of sustainable agriculture and open spaces within their sub-urban and other municipal neighborhoods via a uniquely viable form
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hybrid vision aspect of community supported agriculture (CSA), and others; would all welcome the chance to know what is perhaps another alternative available for their considerations within this document for them.
Although the model is comprehensive by intent and design, not all the selected methods or numerous elements involved in the project and /or included here are thoroughly tested on or envisioned adaptable for every farm site and dairy farm enterprise situation our dairy farm or others business’ will encounter; however they all do, and will continually represent my personal best attempt in approaching and developing practical applicable and theoretical implementation solutions involving the present modern logistical challenges facing area dairy, livestock, and crop farm type agriculturalists, area municipal, and area environmental design planners and engineers, as well as into the future. The first edited draft of this document was written in December of 1997; and as of this writing (it is now fall 2005), the document is in its eighth draft.
Among the many selected elements of the model, GRAZING PASTURES, and perhaps more correctly TREATING PASTURES AS ANIMAL HOUSING SYSTEMS is by far the strongest “given priority”, and in my (Finger Lakes) region of Upstate New York, U.S.A. (I believe throughout much of the greater Great Lakes Watershed region of the US and Canada, perhaps other regions) when properly applied, it is often “the highest order, and best” of planned continual agricultural land use from an economic and environmental stance for both farmers and non- farmers alike; making for a truly marketable and valuable regional area asset of the highest order of development for all involved. I don’t mean to be a pundit, and I fully realize that over time the model may become modified and / or it’s direction (perhaps by so doing) may come to be 6
in conflict or ere, for I do not pretend to be an expert administrator in such matters; I do believe however the greater known and developed elements of principle concerning long term maximized use of properly grazed and fully functional pasture systems to be basically quite valid and sound; perhaps to have conceptual attributes beyond the pasture itself. Sincerely - Royal Anson Purdy , The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project
To my parents
They worked hard and sacrificed much
for their children,
Background: During Blueshift Instruments’ (a division of A. H. Tuttle and Company) research and development of a dairy (robotic adaptable) automation device called “TESS” technology between the years 1983 – 1989, it became obvious to me that pastures afforded as genuine a dairy automation technology delivery and staging platform as easily as any standard available confinement dairy housing sub-system; but it wasn’t until 1991 and latter when I was studying future expansion alternatives for the then “Purdy View Farms Registered Holsteins” dairy farm complex that I came to further assemble and put down to writing the realization that pasture systems held a genuine promise of a vast array of complete state of the art staging and implementation solutions to our dairy animal housing challenges regarding dynamic dairy enterprise expansions as well. These alternative future expansion methods where complied, scheduled, and intended to be submitted to my partners in 1991, but the plan and the limited number of system attributes where never to see disclosure or implementation.
In May of 1997 as I watched a pasture based dairy farmer move his dairy herd at midday from one paddock stay to the next, I observed (and came to fully realize) the ease at which he and other graziers accomplished tasks infield to the benefit of man and animal; It was only then I came to visualize the historic and future social-ecological status that pastured dairy farms would provide if exploited and used as a total housing medium. Pastures and grazing had come full circle with their historical past. Within six months of observing the pasture dairy farmer, I had begun reinstalling traditional pasture systems on my own farmland, and within another six months, was “learning the ropes” working fulltime
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installing high end engineered pasture fencing and high tensile systems all across New York State.
Objectives: The development of this The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project is not intended as a “How to” document. The intent of the project is however to discover and publicize utility methods and devices that will permit the broadest multi-use of pasture in a near sustainable manner across various needs; among these needs, to serve as a profitable alternative model for dairy-crop farms and also for those municipalities seeking to further legitimize and finance open spaces in the face of urban sprawl or open space mandates.
Description and Rationale: By design, huge dynamic, self evident environmental benefits often follow proper modern grazing techniques. These qualities are currently thought to be involving Soil Retention, Carbon, Nutrient, and Water (Hydraulic) Retention and their subsequent availability, Increased Soil Organic matter percentages, Effluent Odor Reduction, Profitable and Affordable Open Spaces Vista Maintenance, and Wildlife Habitat improvement as well as that of enhancing the holistic human spirit of graziers and the public at large.
Aside from common fencing methods, forage types, water delivery and animal laneway access support systems there is - or - it seems to be, a lack of focus on the development of further sustainable pasture and pasture cropping support sub-systems technologies. The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project focus is on those tangent theory elements that may serve to improve and broaden the scope of pasture and pasture cropping usage.
Relevance of the document is to Ontario County, New York State and appropriate regions within the temperate Northeastern United States, perhaps elsewhere: The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project is not intended for the faint at heart. Additionally, initially it promises to be extremely challenging, often difficult to manage, and carry some risks; and by this I mean, I believe many current conventional farming perceptions will need to be “untaught” to an exceeding mass of people, both agriculturalists and non-agricultural persons; it’s management is more suited to the artistically inclined, yet it requires much analytical thought as well.
Despite its many challenges, the project is however designed to be valid and consistent throughout many phases. It is also my belief and desire that this dairy intensive grazing pasture model work with any number of dairy cow equivalent animal units between 10 and 10,000 or more; If so, this model then could mimic or surpass in terms of profit value and opportunities that of a typical large modern dairy cattle confinement models’ and their own
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virtuous implied net cost lowering capabilities, with as much overall validity for sustainability if not more so.
The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project is not however limited to ruminate dairy cattle inputs and exploitation - as dairy heifers, beef, dairy and meat goats and sheep, veal, and non-ruminate Ostrich/rhea/emu, pigs, and chickens, etc. (or any combination of organic on farm feed, feed grains, production and / or processing of produce, grains, bread, cheese and meat, etc.) would work quite well within the model also. The model invites seasonal production, biological and pasture cropping and allows for, indeed embraces, sustainable, natural, or organic production methods as well.
Natural Farming originator Masanobu Fukuoka says, “With very determined observation, there is always a way”. As of this writing I believe he is still alive and forever will be a very highly respected natural organic farming theorist. Although his writings understandably often carry a tone slightly critical of technology, I encourage people to sample them, as his methods are omni-dimensional. It is up to us as both individual graziers and municipal land planners, to realize the total benefits of pasture grazing and make the most from natural and solar energies by doing less (a trimming effect), to the benefit of man, animal and nature.
Cause For the Development of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project
Some very important reasons for developing, utilizing and later choosing to openly publish the abbreviated utility elements of the model here for others, would be the personal heart felt desire and need to forward advise all dairyman landowners that, in part, I believe
A.) Many of the larger and expanding - traditional confinement dairy and other animal confinement systems, especially those involving any type of permanently enclosed animal containment sub-systems … not utilizing properly managed pasture to the fullest… regardless of date of design or establishment, eventually will risk failure socially, economically, and / or environmentally, absolutely, due to decisions based on existing inherently incomplete or flawed design elements and invalid considerations, some that have in the past, still are, and in the foreseeable future will continue to be promoted and indeed often mandated by our government services and private enterprise personal.
B.) I wish for the natural and holistic goals of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project utility methods and techniques to be further recognized by agriculturalists, municipal development and land use planners, developed to a usable format, deployed and promoted without unnecessary commercial or governmental entanglements. The results studied, the data recorded and viable content (if any) deliberately exposed to a ever wider audience of farmers and non-agriculturalists alike, as an added alternative means of animal and plant production and on a level playing field, promoted fairly
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and equal to any and all recognized legitimate BMP (Best Management Practices) practices, and indeed to be counted as such.
The continued absence of viable and widely used sustainable alternative agricultural production means, such as are presented in the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Model, only fuels the establishment of and (with time) often succumbs to, current, oft impudent conventional mainline agri-technologies, (and their traditional associated problems) such as suggested in the agri-commercial and domestic self promotion use of “balances” between and concerning synthetic fertilizers, agri-chemicals, primary tillage machinery, and unbridled seed and plant biotechnology. In turn and as a result, these relatively high cost, promoted, advertised and highly supplemented myopic conventional agri-technical, mimicking systems mistakenly endure as the only supposed available future means to render animal and plant production from solar and earth bound input energies and thus, ultimately, feed the world; while the truth is rather, that these “Elysian Fields and Pasture Project” type alternative systems’ suggested virtuous methods simply where never truly developed and widely recognized to contrast and compare to.
C.) My personal farming interests are based in Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region (U.S.A.). This area, for many reasons, is a modern challenge for all farmland owners, and on that very basis; for as actively and non-actively farming landowners, many are succumbing to supporting infrastructure loss and suburban sprawl pressures in various dynamic forms and on multiple area fronts; ….yet it is on this basis that the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Plan is actually designed to endure and expand. Large and Small tract farm retiring landowners, non-farmers, municipalities and land use planners, and lay person citizens are all looking for solutions to a common problem: What to do with formerly productive farmlands and other small and vast acreages that would now otherwise sit idle or succumb to various costly urban development sprawl pressures and standard dynamic development problems within a community without a viable prepared alternative solution presenting itself as an alternative to the myopic standards of conventional farming means.
I am a practiced Dairyman - Landowner. I currently make a living, in part, as a consultant, sales and service provider to vineyard, orchard farm and pasture landowners professional inquires regarding various high tensile wire (as well as Fence, Horse, Dairy, Sheep, Beef, Goat, Trellis, Pasture, and Post Driver device) sub-systems utility design applications and uses. A very common observation consistent among many of these various owners circumstance is the seemingly limited resolve to apply solutions readily available to them involving the exploitation of these various potentially profitable (i.e. pasture and pasture cropping) systems. Primary among the resulting misconception(s) and unknown to many, is that Pastures and Pasturing properly applied, is perhaps “the highest order, and best” of any land use, from Central Park in Manhattan NYC, to rural pastures statewide, and so I do in a commercial capacity- inform – or otherwise promote The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project to my client base and publicize the www.ahtuttle.com website and it’s contained discussions.
D.) I feel urban sprawl seems most often to breech strategic rural - suburban contact points and purge new territories based on traditional and reoccurring (but I think inaccurate) themes and assumptions involving farm profitability potentials, and to include human – animal interaction environmental voids, and land acquisition convenience. I believe that most of today’s farm and non-farm owner persons alike (that is to say, at least two sides of the issue) located on or near these reoccurring themes of “High Pressure” or land use “in transition” areas are wholly unaware of, and so (and within their rights to be) unprepared to take advantage of changes in the paradox of obtainable and potentially profitable total pasture paradigm shift that these pasture (Elysian Fields and Pasture Project) systems offer via land mass maintenance to all involved party interests. As a result it is too often assumed (and ignorance exploited) by many including observant interested 3rd parties that acquisitions of “nearby available farmlands” are inevitable or fodder for conflict and contradiction; and are also based mostly, if not solely, on the inaccurate premise of (or a lack of) current perceived low or non-existent net values of farmland profitability or serve the larger purpose via municipal attributes and development potentials.
See also: “The Potential of Dairy Grazing to Protect Agricultural Land Uses and Environmental Quality in Rural and Urban Settings” by Bryan T. Petrucci, American Farmland Trust, Email: [email protected],
Much of what is advocated by the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project from a municipal development standpoint is highlighted or mirrored in this one paper.
There is much valid argument to allowing Pasture and Pasture Cropping (in the “Elysian Fields and Pasture Project” style and methods) as a “Special Use” and even an “allowed use” within sub-urban areas Zoned Commercial and Residential within the entire Finger Lakes Region, if used for the purpose of creating and maintaining a viable Holistic goal of open spaces and maintained by a dedicated pasture based set of BMP’s.
It is clear from my personal study that the intent of Federal EPA and New York State DEC Environmental law invites and protects an environmental and social economic solution and subsequent proper legal implementation along the line of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project super system (ambient nomadic pasture and pasture cropping utilization among both urban housing and industrial zoned areas) methods and techniques.
The National NPDES (In New York State, administered by NYDEC, and referred to as the SPDES permit) program regulates the discharge of pollutants from point sources to waters of the United States. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are point sources, as defined by the
CWA [Section 502(14)]. To be considered a CAFO, a facility must first be defined as an Animal Feeding Operation (AFO).
Animal Feeding Operations (AFOs) are agricultural operations where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. AFOs generally congregate animals, feed, manure, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures. Animal waste and wastewater can enter water bodies from spills or breaks of waste storage structures (due to accidents or excessive rain), and non-agricultural application of manure to cropland. AFOs that meet the regulatory definition of a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) have the potential of being regulated under the NPDES permitting program.
An animal feeding operation (AFO) is a lot or facility (other than an aquatic animal production facility) where the following conditions are met:
• Animals have been, are, or will be stabled or confined and fed or maintained for a total of 45 days or more in any 12-month period, and
• Crops, vegetation, forage growth, or post-harvest residues are not sustained in the normal growing season over any portion of the lot or facility.
An operation must meet the definition of an AFO before it can be defined or designated as a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO). Previous EPA regulations based the definition of CAFOs on the number of "animal units" confined. EPA no longer uses the term "animal unit," but instead refers to the actual number of animals at the operation to define a CAFO.
Short Sighted Remedies When “Best Management Practices” fall short of intended goals “Best Management Practices” or “BMP’s” as defined by many government services (EPA, NRCS, etc.) are highly recognized technological designs and engineering methods developed in an effort to solve common repeating environmental problems and circumstance. Regardless of technological scope and intent, these systems often are, but are not always exacting long-term solutions; they do sometimes seemingly evolve into stopgap type measures, and often without proper monitoring and in hindsight, become misdirected or misapplied actions altogether. It can then be understood or assumed that they, (these BMP’s) can often with time, and a lack of careful foresight planning and or
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monitoring, fall far short of original purpose or oftentimes may convert a circumstance to be regarded as actually being harmful or otherwise “Not in the best interest” of a farm entity, and thus the environment, and so too the general public. Oftentimes involved parties would be wise to employ more dynamic and often less costly and more effective long-term sustainable methods from the start. Two recent cases in point:
(The Adams Poultry Case) Recently in a nearby agricultural district watershed, a longtime established poultry farmer experienced the significance of contradiction science firsthand in a most unpleasant way. USDA officials had in recent years advised this individual to develop a state of the art “modern” manure composting facility, and in the interim, spread that facilities’ current developing chicken manure effluent over a wider area of land to solve for the ever-growing presence of elemental phosphorus reflected in his traditional farm field’s soil tests as a direct result of repeated poultry manure applications on his farm over the many years. Fine; the manure in various grades of composted refinement was then spread over a larger local farm area to eventually include newly leased lands. Shortly there after however, a long period of rain and wet weather’s effects on the non-sod, tilled croplands prevented the usual protocol of heavy machine tillage that normally was used in this person’s enterprise to till under and bury any newly exposed (machine ) ground-applied or injected manure effluent. Subsequently manure odors (Environmental Air Pollution) and flies overwhelmed the situation and the now newly acquired neighbors of the effected leased lands followed through with knee-jerk logic, and complained to local authorities. The story reached (literally) the world press. What this farmers situation warns us of after the fact and advises us to take heed of, is that often we tend to solve for one environmental problem (in this case environmental soil pollution in the form of excess elements as measured by soil tests), only to contribute detrimentally and sometimes in unforeseen ways to other problems (his or her neighbors’ environmental air quality, as measured by their noses).
A Postscript to the above story. The Adams Poultry Farm has since completed installing the large separate (at great expense and partially government subsidized) manure treatment (compost) facility designed to enhance the value of byproduct poultry manure by converting it into a compost type product meant for resale. In short excessive containment and commingling of manure is not always the complete solution.
(The Southview Dairy Case) Ground Water Contamination alleged.
http://www.nyenvlaw.com/southview.htm
The above problems are now notorious locally and classic among conflicts involving modern agricultural practices and can clearly be seen with casual observation to have been brought about mainly in these cases by the combined artificial acts of 1) commingling excess (or excessive) compound nutrients (year-round containment in the form of a
manure storage device that converts aerobic manure into an anaerobic slurry) and 2) trying unsuccessfully to use this commingled slurry effluent to supplement soil nutrients and crops plant seasonally peaked nutritional needs in an intense, relative short period of time, which resulted in a condition that perhaps temporarily, but predictably led to lowered surrounding air, ground, and water environmental quality. These scenarios will repeat themselves time and time again across the land. Each time risking that steps will be taken by the powers that be to reevaluate the rules governing rural farm systems and I fear the farm systems will likely suffer, perhaps from adverse rule making that erodes little by little farmers current rights, privileges and entitlements.
It has become difficult for government, extension or social entities to oversee every aspect of the above problem disciplines (although they try); no one agency governs, oversees, or administers advice to all disciplines (nor should they). We are burdened by a morass of government agencies that may still lack the resources to foresee all potential problems. Any form of BMP (containment) correcting measures can be reduced to a utilization theorem, but so can ambient pasture utilization. Properly and highly utilized pastures by themselves tend to solve and manage a broad array of environmental problems ambient; further as compared to conventional confinement systems, pastures change a great deal of the dynamics of potential problems to simpler or simply different arguments, thus they tend to lessen the focus of traditional agricultural environmental problem areas by taking the systems problem out of phase with the encroaching conflict. I leave it up to each reader to judge and decide which is the best, most efficient, and most sustainable environmental management practice to enhance or explore.
The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project recommends in part, a proactive approach based on the use of pasture cropping, ambient pasture housing stays and animal care-taking involving bedded pack loose housing and composting in-place. I do not pretend that the degree and type of pasture utilization (All Season Nomadic Housing Systems) proposed within the project to be an exclusive, eager or easier managerial system method; …or for that matter without risk. I suppose no dairy farm can be regarded as an “easy” or “risk free” chosen path in life.
Additionally, (and I can’t stress this enough) practitioners considering this path (especially in early stages of the process) need to use their best and clearest judgment as to the actual viability of each situation encountered by the model in balance with their own actual abilities and that of their resource base. The model from the start suggests or promises to be very management intensive. Only with continued practice and use will the methods become “clearer”, more routine and obvious and perhaps more importantly, the further validity of subtle contained attributes come to be realized; Still, envisioning free individuals working 365 days per year outside on pastureland, any one of 180 days of which in this region may be in the harshest elements of winter or cold wet muddy weather (or brutally hot and humid) to be found, do nothing to arouse early subscription to the models plan, even among the person who wrote the model. Yet, while in my (NYS) region of the country you may look rather foolish setup outdoors in February and March every year fighting a gambit of logistical elements; you do however look rather like a noble genius come May -
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June and the better part of the rest of the year… rewarded by your earlier endeavors and foresight.
I should interject here that one needs to look far beyond common pastures as simply being that of a seasonal (“intensive grazing”) feed source, as I believe there are many valuable resources to be found within the concept of pasture super-systems beyond the seasonal feed content alone. I do feel all dairy farms choosing to utilize pastures to the fullest ample extent possible to their own circumstance can continue to be as comfortable, profitable and competitive an agri-business and agri-cultural venture as any dairy farm enterprise ever has been, hostile summer heat, and winter cold and wet “mud” weather included; if not more so.
Getting beyond the above traumatic visions and nightmares; I believe the system can eliminate some traditional assumed costs associated with dairy and cropping enterprises’ and minimize or control some of the newly fixed and variable developed costs inherent with these technologies broader utilization. I believe also that current modern pasture dairy farm operations under pressure including that from of urban sprawl, but utilizing the presented Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Models’ precepts are capable of being (hugely) socially and environmentally rewarding for many. I believe the overall majority of farms near or in the path of municipal infrastructure development (transportation, industrial or residential, or services, etc.) can and will, if practicing and focusing on actual community holistic goals under this model early on in the planning effort, benefit their rural and sub-urban school tax base’s positively and mathematically, to possibly include added agri-tourism, community supported agriculture (CSA) and an ability to sustain and maintain scenic quality of life guises as do Kentucky’s Bluegrass Race horse farms, New York and California’s Vineyards’ Wine and Cheese Trials, Florida’s Orange growers grove’s and Vermont’s Maple Sugaring and Fall Foliage tours, etc..
Criticisms of these outdoors logistical housing methods and precepts abound. As rural, but non-farming populations continue to grow, we are forever changing and modifying our communal regional understanding and perceptions of animal behavior, our traditional agricultural food supply methods, and our tolerance - definition of acceptable humane husbandry parameters concerning food production derived from animals. For example, few if any dairy farmer would argue against well managed outdoor “Calf Hutch” use and housing technology; non-farmers however may not see this sub-system use as being desirable housing for man and animal alike. No animal should approach suffering, yet peoples attitudes of acceptable animal comfort and humanitarian care tolerances runs the gambit and will have to be constantly dealt with forever more; the contained projects’ sub-systems included. And this is an important point, I feel we need to turn a corner and interject large and small commercial ruminate animals presence back into our societies, and this is a excellent method to accomplish that task. As was stated above, the earlier on in community planning that this system project is planned and implemented, the better it will be understood and accepted by all involved, but even “too late” is better than not at all.
The bottom line is: In lay terms, if you sit down with paper and pen and make side by side comparisons of all positive and negative aspects of this chosen system’s goals; the plus
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(positive) column toll is constantly greater. Further and more importantly, when evaluating any super-systems such as conventional animal housing or conventional cropping techniques as compared to pasture as animal housing or pasture feed sources, the “minus’s” or true real world problems and challenges involved in the total pasture systems’ goals become much, much easier and far more economical to solve for successfully within the confines of these pasture sub-systems; often relying on resources already available within the super- system. Some people are seemingly surprised by this paradox and some less than open-minded, unchallenged, or perhaps ill informed persons have and will continue to totally reject it (the systems’ nomadic capabilities and style theory) for whatever reason, one can expect this; “Satisfactory result” is after all an arbitrary term. Further inquiry will often times reveal, however, an incomplete understanding or total ignorance regarding the full extent of the subject matter of modern agricultural pasture as housing potentials; or, as I have found more often than not, a hidden agenda exists.
The Elysian Fields Name
The “Elysian Fields” farm pasture project name is derived from Greek mythology. It involves a story of a mythical situation of final judgment and sentence at the approach to a divided road. The road to the left, an unfortunate choice, is the path toward everlasting torment and our visions of Hell; to the right lays the wise, ultimately well chosen path to a promised place of everlasting blessedness, everyone’s vision of Heaven; A beautiful place with gently rolling hills of green fields and pasture … that place is called the Elysian Fields.
To each according to this and many other legends and truly in reality, we make choices throughout our life as to which path we will ultimately be allowed to be lead down or follow on our journeys in life; …and based on this, we will all be judged.
The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project consists of the following sub-systems:
A. A Combined Hybrid of Andre’ Voisin, Type Pasture Theory; and Pasture as a Housing
Medium of Royal A. Purdy.
B. An individual farm effort to espouse to Masanobu Fukuoka style “Natural Farming” and F. Newman Turner style “Fertility Farming” Theory Solutions and Methods on a modern commercial farm basis.
C. Adaptation of “TRIZ” Problem Solving Techniques and Theory.
D. Sod Based Pasture Seeding and Seed-Pellets, Pasture Cropping, and Pasture Feed Storage.
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E. Nomadic Support Systems providing Total Access to pasture areas.
F. Holistic Environmental Planned Management and Evaluation of the above sub-systems.
The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project
The in-field observational elements contained within the written thesis of the project have been helped greatly by, and evolved for the most part from, personal study of supportive grazing type reading materials, pasture walks, and decades of in-field practice and witness. Grass and Pasture western based writers contrasted to worldly “third world economics” driven or oriental farming techniques combined with others practical works including Holistic Planning Management - Problem Solving Methods authored texts’, at first glance, seemingly unrelated insights toward enhancing the subject matter are what inspired me and have honed many of my ongoing attitudes and conclusions.
Without question, as I have spoken of many times before, short of my religion and family, of that which influences me, my goals and current understanding concerning sound economic and ecologically sustainable pastures and farming technique is laced heavily with, draws upon and is influenced greatly by, the various gleaned written study works by and about, only a small handful of worldly writer’s I consider to date of truly dynamic value; of those, one by the name of Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer and writer, and particularly a gleaning of his challenging “Natural Farming” disciplines, and revelations of the importance he placed on the spiritual aspects of farming are what inspire me foremost and I would include among the offerings, his book titles “The One-Straw Revolution”, “The Road Back To Nature”, and especially “The Natural Way of Farming” and the new but non-reviewed “Wara-ippon no Kakumei Soukatsuhen - Nendo Dango No Tabi”
And of a secondary reliance to Fukuoka for me, but having perhaps equal lasting dynamic influence and importance, being the greater “ Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”, “TRIZ” ( A Russian acronym for Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch, or a far less commonly used, but having the same meaning is the western language “TIPS” acronym ) created by the late Russian author Genrich Altshuller, a former Soviet Navy Patents examiner. Found is his book translated from Russian entitled “And Suddenly The Inventor Appeared” and also latter revealed in his many other documents and that of other colleagues who have written describing the ongoing development of the methodology of Genrich Altshuller’s works involving TRIZ ( pronounced “Treez”). Variant,
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yet relevant systematic forms of similar creativity study include ARIZ, and ASIT (Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking).
Additionally a minor (recommended) assumption is made that the reader is already familiar with the important pasture and grazing concepts within the scope of the text of Andre Voisin contained in his written work “Grass Productivity” and / or the excellent exploitation of that work done by William Murphy in the book titled “Greener Pastures on Your Side of the Fence”; or the variant grazing management planning works by Allan Savory and / or F. Newman Turner interpretations of Sir Albert Howard’s organic observations in the titles “Fertility Pastures”, “Fertility Farming”. I’m sure other popular pasture based writers will yield tactful, informative writings, and will infuse a wealth of practical advice for persons interested in their pastures from a “low-cost inputs” in-lined point of view, which is similar to the intent of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project.
Pasture inclusion and utilization of totally automated pasture milking systems beyond simple milking parlor technology is advocated and advanced within the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project but is not meant to dominate it in any way; the subject matters’ current status can be easily studied and monitored on the web, while low cost strawbale and alternative construction concepts, utilization and construction techniques can be studied and monitored on any one of the strawbale housing listserves available, “Builders Without Borders” and / or read about in a number of very good books on the subject.
The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project is designed to effect and build ambient soil organic matter, soil bacterial and Fungal profiles as Masanobu Fukuoka would suggest; however, Dr. Elaine Ingham and Gary F. Zimmer both do excellent work describing each in their own way their understanding of the individual roles of soil microorganism parameters in ongoing works “The Soil Foodweb” and “The Biological Farmer” respectively. Conveniently available and described at the Soil Foodweb website and Midwestern Bio-Ag website respectively. You may research other known sources, still readers would do well to fully understand the described scope of microorganism and mineralization roles and concepts, and in light of conventional farming aftermath effects, then be able to better evaluate a coarse of action toward transition for their own individual fields and crops.
Lastly, valuable evaluation and monitoring techniques of these Holistic Resource Management type grazing concepts can be found in a book (and References / Notes / Workbook(s)) by the author Allan Savory and his wife Jody Butterfield entitled “Holistic Management, A New Framework for Decision Making”. I am not trained in Holistic Management, but from what I have read, I think Savory’s work concerning his management planning methods and timing, “ties it all together” and combines well with the above subject matter; and I hope perhaps renders it much easier to understand and implement.
I feel important elements common to most all of the above authors (Fukuoka, Turner, Savory and the TRIZ methodology authors) are the common focus on trimming effects and also that all start with the end result in mind.
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Activities:
A Call for Dynamic Environmental Systems Change
So what promise does a fellow named Altshuller and his life-works messages have for farmers and pasture persons? Could a “Ideality” system be so designed and evolve to be utilized year round? Conducive to the Elysian Fields Pasture model is also the overlaying question of how to implement these developed rules with those of persons named Fukuoka, Turner and others as applied to the overall sustainable future of crop and pasture environments and municipality planning. I should think to be useful and correct, these or any rules should stand the test of time and be valid for both small and large producer alike. In an attempt to locate and eventually validate presented future pasture and crop farming solutions, it is predictable then that one should also be able (and willing) to look to valid solutions of the past and perhaps within other disciplines that may have inadvertently been cast aside in history. Fukuoka and Altshuller realized this and revealed to us the techniques to follow and use.
I have my Dutch “Uncle Al”, an engineer type person who taught me at a very young age in one of my previous careers, (and Altshuller writings too seem to support) the well known concept that most “inventions” are simply re-combinations of pre-existing systems. When I suggest to an individual farmer that he house his entire dairy herd outdoors in enhanced housing totally on pasture, or boldly suggest to municipal planners and governing boards that future residential housing should be developed within a inter-connected pasture based network or lattice system, I better have some inventive solutions in mind, or a very good historical reference. Supporting ideas by first considering any historic solutions for obtaining that persons’ or municipalities ultimate goal. I believe TRIZ suggests that Pastures,..with careful thought, study and action, can be made “ideal”, or perhaps have been very close to “ideal” in the past; and so it is logical to assume (technically) there must be (perhaps historic) methods available or obtainable to accomplish (perhaps regain) that sought after element of “ideality” within patterns of predictability.
It seems important that many of the above author’s subject matter seem to validate and compliment each other with reoccurring themes. In short, each stress and / or are disciplined to seek out and remove that which can be done without. Each of these authors cited strives to achieve “ideality” by making final use of only what is necessary within any given system (in my case pasture based dairy systems, if only and at least on a individual farmer and or individual field by field basis); all reveal the relative truths within a given system or super system and all reject that within a system which impedes ideality, even at the expense of being intolerant of “modern day” and “conventional” agricultural norms and inputs; thus, oftentimes perhaps reverting to older and historic ways of doing things. And this is my point; not much of what we do today in my region of the world regarding agricultural production (dairy farming included) is honed down to the bare essentials. In the end, this costs you and I, and makes any product produced more expensive and less competitive. Current systems are rather often times in place simply to attempt to validate
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the current oft chosen technology path, no matter it seems the degree of continuing err of these long-standing or established approaches.
I also wish to dispense and do away with the perception of dairy pasture farm work as that of a necessarily unskilled labor entrapment, prone to drudgery, toil and environmental hazard. Skills necessary to achieve the means here-in intended are acquired and develop along the lines as that of an artisan, encompassing both skilled and unskilled labor. Walking, observing, and maintaining natures pastures systems is or can be both pleasant and challenging work. It is on that basis then that both men and women will be engaged.
Within the more intensely designed neighborhoods, basic utilities such as water - electric and proper access laneway systems should be brought to pasture land-plots from the nearby municipal infrastructures and thus provide for a broader utilization of them to the use of all. We should store well-made, high quality seasonal excess feedstuffs within the pasture interior systems and not wastefully transport them first out of, and then back into, the immediate pasture area; this only helps to facilitate a concept of suburban pasture usage.
Accounting to their location, municipal housing sewer systems and utilities can easily be diverted if need be to these nearby pasture systems in a cooperative manner. This and with the necessary periodic presence of animals (perhaps) in (residential and industrial) districts not accustomed to observing them, might stem and perhaps may even help reverse the tide suffered due to agricultures’ lack of exposure and experience to all bordering districts proposed effected by these hybrid systems.
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Part 2
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Figure A-1) The authors’ father George R. Purdy and a neighbors bull, while touring a local farm
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Natural Farming
Masanobu Fukuoka and “Natural Farming” (Masanobu Fukuoka born in the year 1914, lives in Matsuyama, Island of Shikoku, Japan.)
I first sampled the written works of Masanobu Fukuoka in the spring of 1980 in a book ( The One Straw Revolution ) that was given to my wife by a college friend and (perhaps thus) I fairly ignored it. A few years later, upon revisiting this written work, I came to believe that although he (Fukuoka) did not portray himself particularly a “pasture person” per se (in his book “ The Natural Way of Farming” Fukuoka speaks of the perversion of monoculture pastures), and I myself am NOT a “vegan”, I had by that point in time come to find his works on what he calls “Do-nothing” type crop propagation, his caparisons of natural and scientific farming philosophies, his natural sustainable farming techniques and finally the implied capabilities of their individually modified applications and adaptations over time, however abstract to casual interpretation, where then and still are absolutely intriguing if no small challenge in the literal technical sense to apply to modern day western type agricultural expectations; I believe also they (these implied capabilities) have, for all, a valid and respectable place in our considerations for lower cost sustainable natural farming production methods and our modern “next generation” pasture based model goals.
(Note: I feel Fukuoka’s pasture precepts where somewhat flawed in his book “The Natural Way of Farming” and so too I believe his and other theorists generalized negative perception and conclusions of pasture systems as that of a necessarily doomed monoculture; I feel they where oddly but commonly ill-informed against animal inputs on a macro scale). As I, Fukuoka writings are critical of Viniculture (Grape growing) also, however I feel the prior (Pastures) can be utilized to correct the shortcomings of the latter (Viniculture) within his own disciplines, and so on that he and I can agree. Fukuoka developed several main system techniques of farming due to his belief that: “the ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings” (Fukuoka 1978). Pastures, I feel given the correct information, are totally inline with this, his (Fukuoka) concepts.
I have used random Natural Farming seeding techniques in small garden test settings for well over twenty years; and I have utilized Natural Farming testing plots in Pasture settings designed for commercial application since 1997. It is very important to take time to note here that I personally feel the Elysian Fields and Pasture Projects full methods are or will be more of a holistic apogeal goal for many individual agricultural and pasture systems and often will require a transition phase(s) of perhaps month’s or years of time and careful thought and testing before being implemented fully.
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Though generally regarded as a pillar of modern “organic farming” and gardening type practices, seldom will he (Fukuoka or I, within this Elysian Fields pasture cropping model) use the term “organic” in reference to endeavors concerning Fukuoka’s methods; rather he himself very often and perhaps more correctly refers to his working techniques as that of “natural farming”, rather than organic. I do believe that Natural Farming techniques can with a very little bureaucratic, effort meet any of the various official NOP organic standards. MOA or “Nature Farming” is a similar but different theory along this same type popular farming theme and there are others.
At no time does Fukuoka imply or demand a practices standard; his four “rules” are rather, simply truer demanding goals. Fukuoka implies in his writing it must always be assumed that after any type human intervention, true natural forms (of full Natural Farming) are often some time in returning; for instance, Practitioners are encouraged to transition through Bio-DynamicType Farming”( or others ) to achieve a stable Fukuoka type “Natural Farming”.
Many current practitioners of Fukuoka’s methods practice only a degree of his four or five principles. Many more farmers world-wide have tried the methods, and in time given up for lack of understanding or success and returned to prior methods of “conventional farming”; of these farmers, many say they would return again to practice the theology if and when the proper Natural Farming methods are developed and better known or understood to their own circumstance. Natural Farming “rules” being his master, Fukuoka realized failed attempts at natural farming would initially often be the case even on his own farm and that variations and degrees of application do often occur; he mentions that the act of returning fully to true nature after human interactions can continue evolving over 100 years or more. I’ve read that same time requirement sediment statement from various written authors to include F. Newman Turner, Gary F. Zimmer and Andre Voisin.
Criticisms of “organic” techniques, outside of the “certified” bureaucracy abound too, but most of the organic plans cited by critics from all corners are seldom if ever making use of true Fukuoka type “Natural Farming” techniques or methods to obtain organic management; and also on reflection often make gravis mistakes concerning those systems’ natural form status. For example, I have many times read of organic gardening failures presented something like this: “We planted our garden and the entire broccoli crop was ruined by a something bug; or a massive weed infestation”. They include the fact they started with deep tilled soils, planted an otherwise mono flora crop and expended fruitless conventional type farming energies during cultivation to the point of their choice to abandon the “organic” project, never coming close to the understanding or realization that the err of their methods was the true cause of their failure.
Fukuoka’s Four Principals
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Fukuoka’s life thesis ( From the 1978 book “The One Straw Revolution”, first published, “Shizen noho wara ippon no kakumei” in Japanese, in 1975; And the latter, “The Natural Way of Farming”, 1985) utilize four basic goal principles worth our further study regarding sustainable pastures and cost evaluations in pasture farming and pasture cropping. In the
later written work, Fukuoka added a not to be ignored fifth rule that mainly concerns pruning and the natural form of fruit bearing tree growth. Note: I find it interesting that the common practice of grass clipping is relevant to most photosynthesis management within pasture growth forms and grazing animal rejection, and so Fukuoka’s fifth rule may find relevant application also at sometime in that guise.
Fukuoka’s four main basic principle goals:
The first: NO CULTIVATION. No plowing or turning of the soil. The earth cultivates itself naturally by means of the penetration of pasture sod by plant roots and the activity of microorganisms, small animals, and earthworms. At most shallow plowing, rotary or hoe tillage is all that is necessary in seedbed preparation, but even this is seen as undisciplined. Fukuoka’s first rule makes use of unique seed pellet cropping techniques (explained latter within the model) that have been successfully used for decades throughout the world and in most climates, totally without tillage. Essential Soil / Seed contact is derived by means of these seed pellets, an attribute of their manufacture method. Microorganisms’ laden (soil) flora, etc. may need to be reintroduced to soil from like fields afar or propagated from other near or on farm areas and incorporated into the pellets compound during manufacture.
The second: NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PREPARED COMPOST. If left to itself, and / or a valid regimen is followed after conventional farming technique intervention, soil flora eventually regains and maintains its fertility unending and naturally, over time in accordance with the orderly cycle of plant and animal life. Leguminous green manures (Clovers and Grass’s, etc.) are grown as a basic cover crop in certain situations. Observation and soil test evaluations perhaps identify and help select for management methods most appropriate for a given soil type(s). With undisciplined use of commercial chemical fertilizers (which many folks believe is in part a grand organic matter and humus destroying hoax placed upon western agriculture, and currently survives somewhat unmolested under the guise of a “green revolution”), influences on some plant crops historically may have selectively weakened their genomes growth sustainability without their select use. If these statements should be seen or viewed as a wholesale condemnation of synthetic fertilizers use or soil testing it is not! However, it is a condemning question as to the extent of the current and continued degree of use and methodology direction of the same in light of the subject matter. Again as above, farm produced soil amenities (ambient compost piles) in lew of commercial fertilizers may be recognized as the most useful during future transition phases. Perhaps a prolonged transition via degrees in Biological farming methods use is in order.
The third: NO WEEDING BY TILLAGE OR HERBICIDES. As a fundamental principle, weeds should be purposely controlled by various degrees of challenge type management, but not eliminated. Fukuoka asks, “What is a weed?” As a rule in cropping situations, the more dense, vegetative and complex the flora, (I feel as pasture sod is) the less likely that any one “weed” will dominate. I personally feel a weed is anything a grazing animal will not eat. As I’m sure this rule at first sight is presently “intolerable” for most farming folk’s experiences in weed free corn, grain,
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vegetable, and many other production cropping situations and for harvesting of these same crops, so too am I sure that it poses no serious threat to most pasture grower’s management style concerning pasture sods’ ability to convert solar energy to feed. One fact is very clear; tillage of any type is an open invitation to grow a weed. Further, residue such as straw is returned to the field as much as possible without machine soil surface interdiction; Simple passive compost (long straw) is often used as a cover material, but as a protocol rule, in most circumstances there is no need to make special use of this or any other “prepared compost”.
The fourth: NO DEPENDENCE ON CHEMICALS. Nature, left alone, is in perfect balance. Harmful pests in the form of insects, plants and diseases are always present, but do not occur in nature to an extent, which requires the use of costly poisonous chemicals or interdiction biotech’s. It seems Fukuoka did in fact use plant agents’ pyrethrum and tobacco (organic pesticide tea’s?), and light Mineral oil emulsions in his garden settings. On a grander commercial scale he also mentions a “Pesticide Compounding Chart” which made utility of relatively non-foreign and more natural occurring, less hazardous (yet technically poisonous) compounds such as Light Phosphorus Agents, Lime – Sulfur mixtures, Sodium Bicarbonate, Hydrogen Peroxide, and Copper – Zinc solutions (and perhaps other methods) in a type of integrated pest management usage against specific diseases and pests. In light of this; again I think valid use of effective locally acquired microorganisms during a phase transition time period on select soil types to hasten the return to a more natural state is often called for. Largely, I think too this rule speaks ( directly or indirectly ) of his avoidance of that involving monoculture-cropping techniques and that method’s inherent consequential evolving “pests”. In many situations pastures can be maintained in a dynamic but stable climax of complex species variations, reflecting the relevant management effects of the many present plant types, and over time, are not often a simple monoculture flora.
To my knowledge, perhaps after a sufficient transition phase time-period, grazing pastures alone need not violate any of the above principles. I suggest as graziers we consider passive Natural Farming techniques on our pastures first. When considering pasture ( and perhaps in time other pasture cropping techniques ), it is within the concept of this project that overall one should not be concerned with that which he or she has little or no control. A dairyperson or farmer may choose to use increasingly less fertilizer and pesticide ( to the economical and environmental point of using little or none at all ) and perhaps increase reliance of ambient conditions, for the period necessary to reach a maximized limit factor and stable productivity on select soil types without having to add either.
In the next chapter is examined the seemly odd “seed pellet”, perhaps one of the most powerful and important element or sub-systems of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project. Normally associated with arid and brittle climate challenges of crop propagation in dry desert climates visited by Fukuoka; I continue to address a need for examining this little seed pellet in greater depth and for its possible use as a economic pasture, feed – pasture
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cropping, and later a production cropping tool. Utilizing adapted use of broadcast fertilizer spreading vehicles that are very common and available already on many farms; these implements are one of the lowest cost pieces of equipment to own and operate; they also can and do make excellent “planting” machinery when used upon “properly arranged or prepared” seedbeds, but not necessarily cultivated seedbeds. Seed pellets you will learn can eliminate any further need for manipulated soil seed contact via tillage, as they ( these seed pellets ) insure their own soil composite contact, and so according to this systems theory, with management, renders primary and secondary tillage increasingly obsolete. The challenge before us in Ontario County (where I live ) as I see it, is to design protocol dairy-farming cropping techniques and methods for intended use on our pastures’ perpetual sods so that excellent establishment or reestablishment of high-grade pasture or rotational pasture cropping or other crops of choice prevail and are maintained without tillage. I believe seed pellets afford us a tool toward that goal.
Problem Statement #1: Farmers periodically need to sow or otherwise plant seeds in order to establish crops; they also desire to maintain the lowest costs relevant to those needs. Any establishment protocol that can be eliminated or trimmed (such as primary or secondary tillage and seedbed preparations, costing fuel, perishable components, and depreciation) from conventional farming means will lower costs.
Problem Statement #2: Crop seeds establish better if soil contact is maintained during germination, normally requiring a prior and exacting seedbed for establishment; but new competing “weeds” receive a natural “signal” to germinate and grow when the soil is tilled to remove undesirable existing weeds; typically this requires the added function and cost of added pesticides and / or repeated cultivation. Again as above, any establishment protocol that can be eliminated or trimmed (such as weed cultivation tilling or pesticide applications, costing fuel, perishable components, and depreciation) will lower costs.
Elements available: Soil, Seed, Pasture, Cows
Elements available in the Immediate Environment: Pasture, Cows, Farm Machinery
Solution Statement: Create and distribute (sown) “soil” seed pellets with composite seed and soil inoculants built inside them, thus to be distributed outside the growth pattern and elements of the “weed” plants on green manured soils – and “Pugged” in by animal hooves pressure; thus establishing the necessary “Soil seed contact”, but not actually disrupting sub-soil for tillage and weeding purposes, thus minimizing both costs and some of the (mostly new growth) weeds germination stimulus and subsequent germination and growth.
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Seed Pellets One of many important applications of Fukuoka’s written theories of sustainable agriculture in part involves the practice of “on farm” manufacture and use of what I believe he referred to as “Seed pellets” or Pelleting; what some third parties later called “Seed ball” technology. - Simply put, these are the wide-ranging methods of encapsulation, generally in a compound mix of red clay, discriminated site specific - farmer acquired - local ambient microbe inoculated soil, perhaps other mixed selected organic matter, and of various seed(s) according to ones cropping needs. By various methods this compounded mix is then moistened and via hand or automation, formed into seed laden clay pellets, which are then allowed to dry. Later, the now hardened finished pellet is broadcast seeded (by hand or machine) or sown over zero to minimally prepared crop ground as you would a frost seeding of clover, but without the absolute need for a frost – warmth – frost, induced repetitive heaving action. This broadcast seeding or sowing method (Mechanical or by hand) remains one of the lowest cost infield functions on a farm. The sometimes necessary (mandated) additional required husbandry acts involving a long cut straw mulch where weed elimination desires, micro-climate or erosion control, etc. in crops are sometimes concerned, utilized by Fukuoka can have several proactive effects on seed use and crop establishment costs. Further I believe with determination and further development, it is a method adaptable to most any sown seeded crop.
The Seed-pellet sowing methods can eliminate in many cases the need for primary and secondary tillage and can with effort be manufactured to achieve a timed germination (an ambient soil moisture dependent trigger effect) and thus affect ones propagation success over that of typical broadcast planting (such as frost seeding) results alone. By virtue of their existence, Seed pellets provide soil to seed contact as a pre-condition. They eliminate the reliance of the soil heaving action utilized by more commonly known frost seeding procedures to produce essential soil seed contact, seed pellets thus broaden the seasonal time frame allowed to using broadcast-seeding methods successfully.
According to Fukuoka encapsulation in this compounded clay slip coating has been shown to render the contained seeds fungicidal and anti-pestiferous (bird, rodent, insect, etc.) properties. Also, due to this type containment, seed-pellets convert all type of seeds in a compounded mixture of seeds otherwise having differing size and weight, to have a consistent shared relative seed mass density. For aerodynamic and ballistic purposes this means that when used for broadcast seeding purposes, a light grass seed would have the same ballistic (as in coverage pattern form) density as a clover or small grain seed of various kinds. Knowing this, a broadcast seeder (SPBD, Seed Pellet Broadcast Delivery, pronounced “Speed”) or ones own bare hand alone is used for planting crops with no discernable difference in coverage patterns; and is thus a critical technical attribute.
Seed Pellets then lay dormant on the soil surface surrounded by the compounding matter until which time as there is sufficient ambient soil moisture and conditions to release the polymerization bonds of the clay compound (a form of triggering mechanism and an added blessing in dry years). Only at this desired, predictable moisture state and period in time will germination be triggered and begin in a properly designed seed pellet. Perhaps most
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importantly, and again, because of the seed pellet’s precondition (encapsulation in clay), vital soil - seed contact is virtually assured, and can be enhanced further by compounding the clay from added modifiers such as farm specific soil organisms, soil inoculants, biological auger feed for early survival of rhizobia and other additives to achieve, direct or assisted desired seed germination results.
Again these methods may not be for everyone. Further testing needs to be done. Graziers should go slow, experiment in their own way and perhaps decide whether or not to exploit this novel but promising model method. I believe Fukuoka’s methods individually and perhaps regionally modified, have merit as an alternative seeding method in most all our pasture seeding as well as cropping applications. With adaptation perhaps one day it will replace traditional tillage and crop tooling methods.
And a good place to start reading and learning of the overall production methods for making seed pellets is to read Fukuoka’s books.
In my personal life’s endeavors, I am trained, licensed and nationally involved in the commercial design, research and development, and deployment of aerial display type pyrotechnics and explosives (Aerial Display Fireworks). The process, automation, and production of clay-encapsulated seeds (seed pellets) is very similar and often identical to, and on my farmland, utilizes the same land space and hardware resources as that of pyrotechnic “star” manufacture. Since 1989 I’ve worked with and studied various methods of enlargement of clay-seed pellets, all pertaining to that of Fukuoka’s principles of incorporating seed into hard and soft round clay pellets utilizing methods and techniques I assume he borrowed from the older established oriental pyrotechnics industry. These so called “rolling”, “pumping”, and “cutting” techniques involved in large scale clay seed pellet production on farms are for most, all easily and successfully self-taught.
Preparation of Seed-Pellets
Some of the simplest methods in preparing the seed laden clay pellets on a lab basis is to mix the desired seeds (compounding more than one type of seed in the same seed pellet capsule if desired) in at least a five to ten fold quantity of well-crushed or powdered red clay and / or locally obtained clay slip, local soil humus (Source of local effective microorganisms) and select local soil, add water to the consistency of wet dough, form into a loaf or brick shape and dice it with a knife into cubes or further hand roll into pellets; Or, knead the compound to pass through a half-inch mesh screen and drop on a paper sheet to dry for a half-day. One precaution to mention, it is reported Ultraviolet rays within direct sunlight exposure of this prepared compound may be harmful to some of the rhizobia contained on it’s surface and perhaps within; so mixing, drying and storage of pellet compounds should be done in a shaded area and do not prolong surfaces exposure to direct sunlight. Again, at this point if a more uniform pellet is needed, then simply shape
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mixture into rounded pellets by rolling by hand or for large-scale manufacture in a drum mixer so designed.
Or, a more commercial and controlled scale construction technique is to place water moistened hard shell seed in a large rounded pan or drum mixer of the desired scale. Continue spraying the seed with a (light atomized) coating of surface moisture while maintaining a rolling and flowing motion of the “wake” of rolling seeds. If the mass clings to the sides of the vessel it is too wet and more dry matter and seed must be added. In alternate applications sprinkle this rolling seed mass with red clay powder while maintaining alternate spraying water mist onto the mixture with a fluid atomizer, all the while remembering to keep the seeds moving with a rolling motion. The seeds will become coated with clay and will grow in size. In time the pellets can be enlarged adding any intended pasture seed, soil or other organic matter to the compound powder. Avoid too much organic matter in this mix however, as pellets can become too soft, and perhaps crumble prematurely or allow rodents or other pests to consume the seed. You require a hard uniform pellet formula if a mechanical broadcast seeder is to be used behind a tractor or other. These examples are not all encompassing, as there are no doubt other considerations, methods, techniques and formula of contributing ingredients worth investigating as well. The time has come to demand of ourselves a proven “new” experimental approach and the utensils needed to accomplish this goal involving these simple planting methods. Again, experiment.
Successes Using Seed Pellets in a Pasture Sod Cropping Environment
Limited on-farm tests have revealed excellent results from pasture cropping in the past using a seed-pellet cropping method. These test plots mainly used common variety grass-seed or clovers. Many people have tried or are familiar with frost seeding as a method of establishing hay crops and pasture, but they lament the fact that the frost seeding method is limited to actual areas and climates that actually offer freeze-thaw cycle conditions and the associated daytime – nighttime thermal soil expansion contraction cycle that produces the soil agitation action necessary to achieve success involving seed – soil contact. This is where seed-pellets have a distinct advantage over common sown or broadcast seeding methods as seed –soil contact is made to be in a manner of a “TRIZ” methodology term called a “prior action”. Also, when conventional farming practitioners first examine seed-pellet cropping methods they almost always quickly come to realize, question (and discount as taxing) the practicality of the additional prior measures necessary; that of on –or- off farm seed-pellet manufacture. However here in lies the disclosure of the true hidden advantage of the prior action and further reveals apparent attributes in that the chore of manufacturing seed-
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pellets can be achieved on farm at ones own leisure; perhaps in the winter season or during wet periods. Comparing These Two Methods Conventional Farming Technique Primary Cultivation (Plowing) Secondary (Disking, Harrowing Rolling, etc.) Planting (Time, soil condition restricted), (Perhaps Synthetic Fertilizing, Pesticides, Herbicides), Harvest
Natural Farming Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Seed Pellet Manufacture (A TRIZ type “Prior Action”, with minimum time constraints) Seeding (Can be converted to Prior Action, Double Cropping, if desired) Fertilizing (animal manures or compost) Harvest (Animal –or- Infield Storage)
Indeed the entire seeding - crop planting process can be shifted to a (prior season) prior action without regard to first achieving critical soil temperature or confining field moisture conditions appropriate to seeding as both can become shifted to prior actions. Thus you enlarge the potential “Planting” season window of opportunity to an enormous almost endless access range; much further than conventional farming or weather induced restraints. A further attribute to seed pellet technology is that seed-pellet clay and soil medium required to manufacture pellets is best when acquired, entirely or in part, from on the local farm itself. Double cropping with seed pellets in one pass over a field is as simple as alternate seed pellet formulation itself. Seed pellets are an “engineered” prior condition. Substrate ingredients and compounded pellet mediums are chosen so as to control the delivery functions (and thus survivability) desired. These attributes can simply be customized, often to very tight parameters, to influence time of emergence or add soil amendments. I predict, in time, this will aid in the commercialization of the technology. Seed –pellets require testing to further ascertain many current (unimportant) unknowns. The following are a sampling of some of the questions that remain:
- What are the best germination parameters, seeding rates, and application techniques of this medium per chosen seed type?
- What are the best management techniques?; in double cropping? - Can larger seed types such as soybean or corn, etc. also be seeded via this method? - Will conventional harvest machinery and methods tolerate random seeding patterns?
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At this time I cannot intelligently speak of the economic payback in any situation if this technique is used, as individual parameters and results will vary from farm to farm and field to field, but it does appear to be an avenue to exploit if personal farm, university or commercial scale experimentation shows it to be of continued value on a competitive cost of production basis as compared to more common conventional sowing and cropping systems. As indicated elsewhere, broadcast type field operations are among the lowest cost in agriculture. I am nearly positive that seed pellet technology could be exploited as a conservation friendly seeding method and perhaps thus correctly argued to have social value as well. I can speak however only of the ease to which the manufacture of these seed pellets could be scaled up and these methods brought to commercial type volumes at home on one’s own farm or in local commerce at minimal expense of both time and money. One important note: I interpret Masanobu Fukuoka as not one to be against any size of standard agricultural equipment utensil, in fact he seems to point out the very utility and efficiency of size and scale often enough. Large-scale farm use of seed pellet technology will perhaps require powered machine implements as well, so as to be adaptable on the broadest scales of commercial agricultural enterprise.
In reading his works, Fukuoka is very quick to point out too it seems that the degree to which we will bend to unquestionably utilize our most invasive of farm equipment and more traditional conventional farming techniques is beyond insanity. In many cases it, (the technology need) I believe (depending on the item or intended use), is a manifestation of the commercial equipment salesman and equipment dealers, going back nearly 100 years or sometimes more. When we compare then these two systems, it seems to me that we are close to the twilight of conventional systems as we currently know them, and we are watching the dawn of an evolving seed pellet agri-technological norm.
Whether one is running power machinery harvesting crops or tilling the soil by primary and secondary machine method, the molecular silica compounds present in grass and earth are chemically and molecularly abrasive, and thus destructive to (dull plow points, mold boards, blades and knifes) and harder than the perishable metal utensil contact appendage surfaces of most all standard machinery systems and so wear them down and destroy them in short order and at high fixed and variable costs.
Excessive horsepower is another variable expense we endure. I personally ask, why are we (or.. who is) continuing to design and market our agricultural (tillage, planting, and harvest) sub-systems to rely so heavily on increased horsepower, heavy primary and secondary tillage methods? The time has come again for Graziers and other pasture crop producers to demand access to lower cost, lower horsepower, non-or less intrusive utensils and methods if they are to be used at all.
As an example – (i.e. instead of the pesticide effect of mowing, spraying, or cultivating to remove weeds, might we first consider perhaps re-evaluating what constitutes our list of
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“weeds”, applying intense cover crops, green manures, hoof pressure, more dynamic multi-species grazing, less monoculture design, specific complimenting or competing plants or strategically timed manipulation of weeds as a control), first choosing to remove, via management the element that the “weed” survives and thrives in; remembering here that Fukuoka relies on minimizing rather than eliminating “weeds”.
We have all seen where a vehicle wheel track has encroached repetitively on a single infield pathway, whereby many of the trodden flora within the path stops growing. Can we design our crop and pasture stands renovation protocols for this limiting stress function? Following further, Fukuoka’s written books and his four main tenets, we might think to first reexamine and maximize available double cropping techniques and developing a few of our own unique local pasture systems native ambient flora, while further challenging ourselves to resist ever displacing our pasture sod; a primary goal of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project. We cannot expect to change a given soil type to a higher type order; a desert or ancient lake bottom type sand may never covert itself to a Silt or Clay Loam soil; but pasture sod, properly maintained with animals grazing and hoof action should be allowed and should be expected logically to grow in an increasingly complex desirable organic matter and humus; forever increasing in a given soil type to maximized effective efficiency, converting what is laid and maintained upon its soils surface. This then I believe too, in part, is a form of the ambient “composting” that with careful thought, doesn’t require a need for extra work that Fukuoka wrote of.
Compost Ambient
Masanobu Fukuoka instills methods to import organic matter in subtle ways. The next chapter is influenced by writer F. Newman Turner, who in his books has revealed a method of building compost piles that allows them to degrade naturally without turning.hhh
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FERTILITY FARMING
F. Newman Turner and “Fertility Farming” The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project having staked a claim in Natural Farming type methods also sought to have a more conventional Dairy Farming tool method at its disposal; to do that, the project chose, in part, to make use of cropping and dairy animal feeding methods outlined by the F. Newman Turner’s interpretive study of Sir Albert Howard’s Organic farming recognition and also that of Sir R. George Stapledon’s and others, turn of the last century work as it concerns “Laying Down Land to Grass” and deep rooted ley cropping techniques; these men’s work being written in the method of the period, first person observation and largely antidotal. Traditional “Fertility Farming” utilizes standard shallow till farm utensils to accomplish tasks and more closely resembles current day conventional biological farming methods and not the exoteric methods of Natural Farming. As Natural Farming seed pellet technology was unknown to F. Newman Turner at the time of his writings, I choose to apply a hybrid combination of the two methods.
I acknowledge Newman Turners’ study and writings are dated from another era and the past levels of production associated with them (amounting to about a third of today’s DMI standard) are considered obsolete on many current benchmark levels. However, with these methods I choose to provide for a baseline herd pasture feeding and input method profile, and only then provide for additional variable management - production level inputs above this as the need arises.
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Clear seeded stands of Perennial grasses for instance are often promoted on a basis of their uniform growth effects on total sward density; sward density becomes an important key factor when grazing dairy animals as dense growth promotes highest dry matter intakes per bite, all other variables being the same. The standard Ley swards envisioned here however are slightly compromised to the previous function in as much as they provide a much more diverse plant population – composition with varying plant growth and maturity dates, and so presumably, much variable or even a less desirable lesser sward density exists. The compromise is however justifiable when accounting for the various plant compositions available to the physiological and sociological dairy animal being needs and needs of the soil. It is thought that the animal actually prefers the variation in diet and thus consumes nearly as much total dry matter of a more complex type and deeper root strata source than in a typical monoculture flora.
HAY TRELLIS PICTURE
Fertility Farming, Fertility Pastures and Weather Proof Haymaking and Harvesting As a continuance of reoccurring trimming techniques common to TRIZ, Natural Farming and Fertility Farming I recognize and utilize a prior known sub-system referred to by F. Newman Turner as “Weather Proof Hay Harvesting” via infield Hay Trellis devices. Hay Trellis removes the need to relocate machine harvested forages to hay or forage storage devices or barns. Under this system, forages stored in the form of dry forages are retained infield and without further need of removal. Observant persons soon realize that current large round type bailing systems (both plastic sealed and bare net wrap) are capable of this infield storage function also and question any unique quality of the system on this basis. However still closer observation revels hay trellis based fodders are able to be harvested much sooner after cutting than common dry bails, resulting in lessened leaf loss; plus they continue to dry down - where as compressive type bailing stops any continued drying of harvested forages. We continue to observe that the hay trellis system does this without added cost for plastic wrap on an annual basis. The Hay Trellis system does utilize HD plastic covers, however these are designed to be reused continuously with the system, year after year and only replaced or repaired as may be needed by damage.
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The Hay Trellis system has three sub-types: a circular design, and linear or fence line type design, and an oval type design. Practitioners will need a buck rake type solution for forage harvest handling.
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TRIZ
Genrich Altshuller / TRIZ Technology Concerning the subject of problem solving TRIZ type theory (and ARIZ, the algorithm methods used to solve and thus automate Inventive Problems), both developed and written about in part by Genrich Altshuller, I am not an authority; however for me it was being exposed to and studying these, what I have deemed, fascinating subject matter that helped shed new and revealing light on the many approach’s and prior solutions available to the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project model. Ideal products that otherwise may have remained unknown and gone unrealized for lack of a recognized solution in the many fields acted on in the endeavors of everyday modern pasture dairy and other type farming; Quite often TRIZ science enables one to unlock hidden value and gain insight from resources already present within the given system, often referred to here as “the closed world system”.
TRIZ is also the recognition that technical systems evolve towards an increase of ideality by overcoming contradictions and can be implemented with minimum introduction of outside resources and without any drawbacks.
Perhaps most relative to the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project is the “pasture as housing” title that tends to create pasture sub-systems by substituting conventional system challenges with unconventional systems via solutions derived from the pasture system itself. It is driven from the following TRIZ formula concerning “ideality”.
Ideality = (Benefits / (Costs + Harms)) Systematic Problem Solving as addressed by TRIZ methods have been applied and are directly applicable to a wide array of disciplines including chemical and mechanical engineering design, education, environmental resources, strategic municipal resources and political planning. Its application is still expanding.
Triz methodology does not result in confrontation but rather derives results that are based from contradiction inputs that ultimately result in forming disciplined end solutions that are very often not based on compromise, but are astonishingly enough found uniquely suitable to all.
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Pasture Problem Standard Problem Standard Solution Pasture Solution
For me, the continuing study of the inventive science of TRIZ is fundamentally different than the other types of problem solving methods available, as they do exist. Many of the popular historic and written industrial development methods on bestseller’s lists today, rely on “brainstorming” types of thought processes. Triz on the other-hand starts with the end result in mind. Briefly what this science reveals and reflects is:
1) Most if not all known historical proprietary and intellectual property science falls within the scope of a very few (40) enumerated basic principles of prior knowledge.
2) Problems and their solutions were often repeated across industries and sciences
3) This pattern of prior knowledge across industries and sciences involves predictable “S curves” of evolutionary development.
4) Most if not all true new “innovations” use industrial and scientific effects from outside the field of study where they were developed.
Altshuller (TRIZ) proceeds to define five levels of inventive problem solutions:
Level One, Apparent or Conventional Solution, solutions that can be derived by anyone within that existing industry, expertise, or specialty. They compromise 32% of all solutions.
Level Two, Small Invention, reflects improvement of an existing system, usually at a compromise of the system. They compromise 45% of all solutions.
Level Three, Substantial inventive Invention or Improvement inside technology or existing system. They compromise 18% of all solutions.
Level Four, Invention Outside of technology. Involves generation of design using science not technology. They compromise 4% of all solutions.
Level Five, True Discovery and major science advances. They compromise 1% of all solutions.
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THE 39 TRIZ PARAMETERS
Altshuller had TRIZ draw from the State of these 39 parameters:
1. Weight of Moving Object
2. Weight of Non-Moving Object
3. Length of Moving Object
4. Length of Moving Non-Object
5. Area of Moving Object
6. Area of Non-Moving Object
7. Volume of Moving Object
8. Volume of Non-Moving Object
9. Speed
10. Force
11. Tension/Pressure
12. Shape
13. Stability of Object
14. Strength
15. Durability of Moving Object
16. Durability of Non-Moving Object
17. Temperature
18. Brightness
19. Energy Spent by Moving Object
20. Energy Spent by Non-Moving Object
21. Power
22. Waste of Energy
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23. Waste of Substance
24. Loss of Information
25. Waste of Time
26. Amount of Substance
27. Reliability
28. Accuracy of Measurement
29. Accuracy of Manufacturing
30. Harmful Factors Acting on an Object
31. Harmful Side Effects
32. Ease of Manufacture
33. Ease of Use
34. Ease of Repair
35. Adaptability
36. Complexity of Device
37. Complexity of Control
38. Level of Automation
39. Productivity
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THE 40 TRIZ PRINCIPLES
Altshuller had TRIZ draw from these 40 principles:
1. Segmentation Example: Portable but separate Milk House, Utility Room devices, or a Modular parlor; designed to be expandable from single six cow to double six to double twelve, etc. as dairy herd grows; and segmented pasture into smaller individual paddocks.
2. Extraction or Taking out Example: Manure compounded compositions are composted prior to spreading field applications, thus eliminating much odor, water, etc..
3. Local Quality Example: Strawbale walls effecting a high R value windbreak covered with a lime based “white wash” to be reused later as a soil amendment when its function as a structural wall or wind break is finished.
4. Asymmetry Example: Hoop buildings (Strong Arch) as temporary structures in nomadic housing situations such as calf hutches.
5. Combining or Merging (Integration) Example: Electrified High Tensile electric fence wires providing both a physical and psychological barrier.
6. Universality Example: Heat exchanger used to remove Heat from fluid Milk to pre-heat water piped to water heater during milking times when rate of water use is highest.
7. Nesting Examples: Wooden Modular parlor design to contain vital utility systems within their inner structure core and out of the way of a hazardous environment;
8. Counterweight or Anti-weight Example: Overhead film plastic tube ventilators in cattle barns adds support to itself when inflated.
9. Prior counteraction or Preliminary anti-action Examples: Properly designed bracing system in a fence; Sodium Bicarbonate buffers used in water or feed rations.
10. Prior action or Preliminary action Example: Arrange a fence line trellis to store excess harvested pasture feedstuffs (Hay, Oats or Corn fodder) and function as both a fence and a feed-out feeder at a latter date; Clay coated Seed Pellets insure soil – seed contact without needing to be placed “in” the ground.
11. Cushion in advance or beforehand Example: Set out feeding or watering delivery stations or hydrants and septic tanks or sewage sumps at predictable pasture locations.
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12. Equipotentiality Example: Ramp standing milk cows to an elevated level convenient to persons standing at a lower level in stall barn or milking parlor.
13. Inversion or “The other way around” Examples: Mobile-milking platforms move to cow herd instead of cows walking to stationary facilities; Bring the mountain to Mohammed.
14. Spheroidality or Curvature Example: Semi circular shaped cattle holding pens and curved loading shoots instead of linear or right angle rectangles as an aid to cattle traffic and to reduce stress in animals.
15. Dynamicity Example: Mobile structures can be strategically positioned to take seasonal advantage of optimum cooling summer breezes or winter warming sunlight.
16. Partial, overdone, or excessive action Example: Milk Receiver Jar Pumping station fills completely with milk prior to discharge to make less use of the systems electrical powered components.
17. Moving to another or new dimension Example: Plot a planned path that a mobile milking system complex takes around a mapped pasture field system to minimize or maximize the total area utilized as the desire warrants.
18. Mechanical vibration Example: To stimulate milk flow prior to letdown, increase milking machine pulsation rate to ultra high frequency for a short interval during milking claw attachment.
19. Periodic action Example: A light activated or proximity sensitive switch is used to turn off lights when the sun rises or when people or cows are not in an area; Pulse strong electrical shock of high tensile wire animal fence to 0.0003 of a second.
20. Continuity of useful action Example: Endless pasture rotations, but at various variable intervals from 12 to 40 days.
21. Rushing through or Skipping Example: Increase speed of pasture grazing rotation, while following up with another group of (dry) dairy cow , Flash grazing or skipping a paddock altogether. Baling Hay at a lower bale density without using wire or string and loading compressed forage in a covered in pasture storage Hay-trellis.
22. Convert harm to benefit Examples: Winter dairy animals desired hoof action or “pugging” on a sacrifice paddock used the following spring to renovate plant pasture crops or deep winter snow cover protects pasture seeding below from undesired pugging effects; “Turn Lemons into Lemonade”
23. Feedback Example: Inserting a flow or pressure-sensing device in a pasture water line to inform manager when leaks may be accruing within the pasture water system.
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24. Mediator or Intermediary Example: Electrically charge a temporary sub-dividing fence by attaching to and taking power off of a permanent perimeter fence system.
25. Self-service Example: Arrange spent or used bedded manure pack areas to correspond to mapped soil test areas needing added fertilization, organic matter or pasture renovation; Haymaking Hay trellis infield feed out.
26. Copying Example: Make watering stations and pasture divisions standard within the super-system grid so that utility such as portable fence and watering devices can be made lighter and variations in form can be minimized.
27. An inexpensive or cheap short-life instead of an expensive durable one Example: “TESS” system uses individual inexpensive bio-degradable throwaway prophylactic udder protection devices instead of a slower sanitation routine involving regimented personnel assignments or costly computer controlled cleansing routine and chemicals.
28. Replacement or Substitution of a mechanical system Example: Harvest and store feedstuffs in pasture locations near to where they where first grown and where they will be fed come feed-out in non-growing seasons (stockpiled), and thus eliminating the need of costly machinery to re-handle feedstuffs at feed-out time.
29. Use pneumatic or hydraulic construction Examples: Provide two layers in a hoop barn plastic cover to contain air as an insulation and friction / noise damper; Ride a circular milking parlor on water or tire wheel bearings.
30. Flexible film, shells or thin membranes Example: A worn “TESS” system uses a prophylactic membrane to protect a cow’s udder from foreign matter contamination environments; Latex gloves.
31. Use a porous material Example: Seed pellets used in the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project to seed both pasture and crops are composite pellets of clay, seed, and ambient soil amendments designed to be both hard and durable to survive mechanical distribution sowing methods and soft and porous enough to retain or utilize ambient ground moisture conditions needed to activate seed germination.
32. Changing the color Example: Have light colored buildings in summer and dark colored exposed water delivery pipes to retain heat in winter.
33. Homogeneity Examples: Fenced off buffer strips near pasture open waterways can be safely pastured for short durations under ideal conditions when they present themselves; solid select pasture species of grass and or legume may be chosen to maximize a feeding rotation relative to each species’ optimum growing traits.
34. Rejecting, discarding and regenerating parts Example: Utilizing in field regenerative bedded pack(s) on lime stabilized soil instead of permanent concrete flooring systems.
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35. Transformation of physical parameter and chemical states of an object Examples: With time, convert a bedded pack area into a compost pile; Render whitewashed strawbale walls into vital and useable soil amendments (lime and ash); Use movable rubber mats as animal walking and / or feeding surfaces.
36. Phase transition Example: Feedstuffs such as cut pasture hay harvested and then stored on trellised infield storage devices (Haymaking Hay trellis) are allowed to obtain a proper moisture content over a longer period of time resulting in a shorter or perhaps more opportune overall harvest handling time period allotment for the farmer.
37. Thermal expansion Examples: High Tensile wire has tensioning springs placed in-line to compensate for seasonal thermal expansion and contraction; Traditionally frost seeded grasses and legumes need the soil thermal expansion - contraction cycle present only in springtime freeze - thaw conditions to self plant themselves.
38. Use strong oxidizers Example: The use of ozone generators to sanitize cow drinking water of a suspected substandard quality; Pasture grain ration formulated from rolled barley and Oats (a more available form and source of grain).
39. Inert environment Example: Bedded packs are allowed to compost in place, with proper added amendments, the resulting product is no longer an odor problem at distribution time such as is encountered with seasonal stored manure spreading or lagoons.
40. Composite materials Example: Mobile milking facilities are composite made to be strong and save weight and thus makes moving and cleaning them easier.
S Curves of Development Altshullers’ TRIZ methods suggests all we have discovered in our world history of inventive and technological systems and sub-systems (and that would inherently include pasture and cropping systems and sub-systems) can be defined and stated as a contradiction of two or more conditions; and all these properly stated contradictions will have predictable evolutionary outcomes based on drawing from a bank of prior knowledge of historic solutions until such time as that system becomes “ideal” and reaches a state of “Ideality”. In other words, all technical systems will evolve along ”S” curves of developmental changes until such time beyond this final state, at which time the system becomes something else, another newer (if different) system develops; and the start of another “S” curve of development begins, or (as I understand it) it becomes ideally trimmed to the point of becoming “nothing at all” while still performing its intended function.
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See also: Organic TRIZ on the Farm by John Terninko, Responsible Management, Inc.; The TRIZ Journal is a wonderful website to read more of the subject matter.
- See also – www.triz-journal.com for a comprehensive overview of TRIZ.
ASIT TRIZ technology has been successfully taught to every age group from primary school on up. Dr. Ron Horowitz’s simplified but powerful teaching method called ASIT (Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking). ASIT utilizes the following six reduced (consolidated) TRIZ techniques: Sacrifice, Parasite Product, Unification, Multiplication, Division, and Breaking Symmetry. This simplified and entertaining system is an excellent starting point for any age student to gain an insight into systematic innovation and I highly recommend it to any and all grade levels and adults. Some people say that ASIT is MORE powerful than the more involved TRIZ technology, and this could very well be true, due to the fact that TRIZ is so much more technically complex.
More on ASIT can be found at: www.start2think.com I encourage persons to inform themselves and / or their children of the ASIT methods available there.
In the discipline of Elysian Fields and Pasture Project systems pasture utilization, we choose to apply TRIZ and ASIT techniques in an effort to change the farm super system dynamics significantly by removing as much of permanent conventional systems as we can in a given situation so that we can take full advantage of the “Closed World” of the pasture system; by doing so, we tend also to remove most all that was associated and problematic with that prior (conventional) type system (including costs) in an attempt to achieve (pasture based) ideality. Paradoxically, the more restricted and confined we are in our “Closed World” condition, the more creative will be our solutions.
Here is a short sample of how ASIT might be used to think about how to solve an end of season grass shortage. The actual technique is not unique or new. It is a common current method used among graziers to extend pastures, and shown here as an antidotal example only.
Sample ASIT Technique (Seasonal Shortage of Pasture)
Problem Statement #1: Pastures supply varying volumes of pasture forage based on various dynamic grazing pressures, growth patterns per type of forage, weather conditions, etc.
Problem Statement #2: Graziers need to feed animals 365 days per year, whereas pasture only grows (on average) 180 days per year in our region.
Elements available: Pasture (Growth), Pasture or Crop Land (Stubble).
Environmental Elements Available: Cattle Fence.
Solution Statement: Create a crop / double companion crop circumstance (such as Winter wheat and Clover Hay); and harvest the Wheat crop at a stubble height that can latter be used to preserve the hay crop that will be deposited on it, thereby keeping it (the Clover Hay) suspended above ground until feed-out. Allocate this pasture forage (Strip graze) with a divisional fence during the winter months. Common Stockpiling techniques use the circumstance of Stubble and the “closed world” effect to become the infield solution without adding anything new.
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Evaluation of the System Solutions via Holistic Management
Holistic Management* in part involving testing methods involving a series of self-revealing questions much like automated TRIZ problem solving software that cause you to systematically evaluate the “problem conditions” whether they be social, financial, or environmental aspects of each of the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project elements as they effect your own circumstance, be it a sub-system or super system decision.
These evaluation methods drive a scoring system to help you decide whether a proposed action takes you toward or away from your own farms holistic goal*.
Assigned to each of the questions is a weighed fixed value. Take a few seconds for each answer, and then tally up the total. If one course of action passes considerably more tests than the alternative(s), according to the method, that's probably the one you want to adhere to.
Sometimes you'll need to go ahead with an action that fails a given test. In this type circumstance you know there may be a problem, and you can plan to re-evaluate when appropriate another time. Testing questions involve the evaluation of: Cause and effect, Sustainability, Weak link Social, Biological, Financial, Energy/money source & use, Society & culture.
To get the best results, you must have a holistic goal* to test actions on. The goal makes sure you consider the short and long term, the needs of other people and yourself, the health of your community and the landscape that supports it, plus the welfare of future generations. That's a lot to keep in your head, but once you have a written goal, it's easy to do.”
Results: Further Pasture Sub-systems, Interpretations and Elements employed
“…the Elysian Fields and Pasture Projects’ most enduring value..” Royal A. Purdy
Since first being transcribed from private documents in late 1997 and the early months of 1998, the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project - Pasture Model continues to front its share of challenges regarding the involved theoretical sub-systems optimism success outlook and that of their intended uses. I am not a professional writer, nor a consultant to the environment per se; I am simply an individual expressing my thoughts regarding future pasture systems development and on what I had, at the time of that first writing, developed and considered to be an ideal suggested direction for development and further study based on thirty plus years of experience in the dairy field; it is perhaps the result of my families historic heritage element (my maternal grandparents where in the “Quaker’s -Friend’s Society”) or roots and due in part to my own proprietary discretions that the projects work remains largely unpublicized to date; my views on the subject elements merits respectfully remain, however, fundamentally unchanged.
For the production of meat and milk derived from solar energies via pasture, true economy and versatility may never be fully utilized in our lives until we are willing to continually combine the conventional and non-conventional elements currently and historically available to us in complete, valid and complimenting ways. We need also to be willing to cast off that which does not meet these newer criteria or challenges. To facilitate this, in part and in most cases, this model attempts to treat pasture as a year round housing medium as well as a year round high quality fresh and / or stored feed source and animal husbandry staging platform.
Quality High Tensile Wire Fence and Installation Devices Early in the development of the Project I decided to learn all I could about High Tensile wire medium fencing methods and proper installation technique. I went to work for a large Northeastern United States Wholesale and fencing installation company for several seasons over three years time; the un-expected consequents of this was my manufactures representative company’s acquisition of an entire line of heavy duty industrial post driver and development of a installation and consultant company servicing the industry. High Tensile Wire Fencing is a terribly forgiving technology. Many installations both professional and layperson installed do, with time, gravitate to the expertise employed in
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their initial installation and the quality of materials used. This can sometimes give HT fencing a shadow of being labeled “expensive” or “problematic” but in truth, the system technology, when properly applied, is most often very economical and correct, capable of solving many technical problems very economically. To facilitate proper installation of the type of systems we employ and at the heart of the systems technology, is the modern heavy-duty post-driving device.
Bio-Mass Grid Fast growing Willow (or comparable compatible selected bio-mass) trees grown in predetermined gridline patterns on pastures to facilitate manmade windbreak hedges and a local farm source of biomass for use in prolonging the sequestering of carbon via a manure effluent retaining medium used in bedded pack construction. Expect some total ambient pasture solar exposure and square footage space loss derived by this practice; however pasture nutrient cycles encompass and are derived from further deep within the ambient root zone of trees; and expected predatory bird pressure on ambient insect populations are desirable. These systems would benefit if the trees were fast growing but non-evasive. This lends itself further to the need to rapidly “rotate” the tree line or otherwise provide to prevent areas near the trees from acquiring too many soil nutrients. One management method would be to expect system growth about the perimeter of a given closed system and plant tree populations in areas anticipating growth three years from now. KEYLINE Type techniques??? STRAWBALE STRUCTURE UTILIZATION IN CONJUNCTION WITH BEDDED PACKS.
One hundred years ago, as settlers came to find their Westward migration had brought them to the what would become the wheat fields of Midwest United States there came to occur a shortage of home building materials, ample time and money enough to build a standard wooden frame or log home while at the same time establish ones family in a new land with oftentimes hostile weather elements. These people then employed various building techniques imported from Europe that meet their immediate needs. Sod houses and strawbale building methods still bear witness those very structures everlasting attributes of insulation and structural value. Combined cost factors present then and now, prevail even today; that method is still going strong today and referred to as straw-bale construction. I am not an advocate of removing straw (elemental carbon) far or permanently from the host field, so I do not support the current straw bale home or housing trend, but I do see merit in any “on farm” utility use of the same strawbale construction technologies.
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Now days, in Europe and Asia, and all across the United States and Canada, primarily among the southwestern states here in the U.S., there is a rising number of individuals intent on using Strawbale construction for housing construction, and as they (sometimes alone) envision a process of “sustainability”. I happen to disagree with many modern day straw-bale home builders and theorists, the notion that large amounts of organic matter should or can be carted off any land plot and later referred to as being particularly nearing environmentally sustainable in the long-term; however I can and do advocate strawbale use where and when it (the elemental carbon fibers) can be produced and later retained by a given or near by land-plot such as in a situation of a dairy pasture utility alone or with a crop rotation. Outdoors windbreaks and enclosure structures can be designed, built and used successfully in many areas as alternatives to other type animal housing and dairy utility buildings, resulting in a farm-produced asset.
Perhaps the most utilitarian of these designs is the simple bedded pack. A proper stable design of contents such as manure, straw, wood chips, and saw dust will in time yield a rich controllable substrate. It is perhaps wisest to design this sub-system so that the in pasture bedded pack may lay fenced off and dormant for a time while the compounds are composted in place; this actually adds to the availability of the nutrients utilization (as a function of available moisture). This practice would be expected also however to assist significantly in lowering potential manure odors.
See also: U. S. Composting Council Compost Discussion List
http//mailman.cloudnet.com/mailman/listinfo/compost (see “Compost Archives”)
Problem Statement #1: Farmers Infrastructure Costs
(Note: A common ASIT technique used to render ideal solutions is to inventory what components you have within a system and then “Take Out” what is not “Needed” or is perhaps duplicated by two different sub-systems.
Elements available: Entire Farm Complex Inventory; as follows, to include Stall Barn, Dairy Milking Center, Animal Housing, Feed Storage and Feed-out Area, Pasture Fence, etc.
Solution Statement: Create a list of current Farm Complex elements and eliminate or re-distribute to combine the standard use of each separate element; thus: Create a “barn” or other protective device such as a windbreak from stored feed and / or bedding materials (both used and un-used), Make a Milking center “move” like a grazing cow or feeding calf, Feed animals in the field by stockpiling pasture itself - Feed animals using the sub
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divisional “Fence” as a forage feed storage device, animal treatment device and feed-out manger device, etc.
Strawbale Designs and Pasture as Housing
In an attempt to provide alternatives within the physical plant design protocol elements of the dairy portion of our local Elysian Fields and Pasture Project, the model includes extensive use of such things that tend to lower the overall cost of production by allowing the element of mobility. Nomadic mobility methods, it is thought, have the advantage of releasing one from the often un-realized constraints of permanent farm structures and buildings; of these methods, farm produced “straw-bale fabrication” is one most favored method considered. It can be argued that there happen to be many low cost sustainable building material mediums available to choose from with similar qualities to strawbale fabrication; but I can think of no other sidewall mediums that are derived “on the farm” to the same recyclable degree as is strawbale technology. Traditional straw bale from grain crops normally undergo seasonal storage prior to use and during the duration of need. Added managed utilization of straw ( bales ) in a useable utility prior to their normal destructive demise as a bedding material is a somewhat unique phenomena.
Straw-bale construction basically consists of stacking straw on a foundation (or not) as you would bricks and then pinning them together with one of several methods, such as with a fiber post or rod rammed downward through the top of each coarse of bales or wire ties, and forming a low cost structure or enclosure unit. For more permanent weather tolerant sidewall structures, building methods may require a plastering of cement or better yet lime – sand or clay mixes, forming when dry a composite yet in-field recyclable “skin” that double as traditional soil attribute amendments.
Manifesting as one or more of the following instrument forms, chosen straw-bale structures can be as simple and effective as: Solar and sunlight shielding walls providing shade, located on the paddock ground currently utilized by rotated animal herds in summer months, “temporary housing” directed at specific pasture areas needing concentrated manure enhancement or a well planned desirable solar collecting area, wind break and/or all weather protection location in winter months.
A family member recently ordered a nationally recognized brand agri-building be built on his farm property. He has paid a goodly sum of cash for it and forever more will be taxed based on a conventional non-movable structure; don’t worry, he is a rich man. I am a cheap man, but … I like nice things. If he had asked I would have steered him toward the following technique: if stationary is your thing - build and pay taxes forevermore on a barn consisting exactly of one good solid regionally appropriate designed roof with ample
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overhangs, consisting moreover of one or two roof planes and nothing more; then use strawbales as structural in-fill to make up the side walls when seasonally appropriate. A hoop or green house structure could be made to utilize these type infill straw walls in a similar fashion; the upper scale semi-permanent type buildings are not that much cheaper to buy initially, but they could perhaps be moved from one locale and relocated to the next substantially cheaper than a solid metal roofed structure and with less labor and technical problems.
Straw is essentially fibrous rock.. Pile a large stack of strawbales outdoors and invite the local U.S. armored division to park an Abrams Tank size military vehicle atop it all; the ground beneath the stack will begin to yield far in advance of and long before you completely crush the straw. Additionally strawbale walls are measured as to have a thermal insulation rating in upwards of R40.
Designed for lowered cost yet versatile building of year-round modifiable structural, (concept includes both Green-house or hoop type structures, etc.) and movable (non-structural) open-air walls, hot and cold weather microclimate shelters and all-weather windbreaks, straw-bale is farm-sourced carbon and returns to the soil as such in time. Affording all that is needed structurally while in use, and at the end of service, the dismantled (now spent) so designed temporary straw-bale walls or fixtures become compost or as a second use, an absorbent animal bedding and with a natural mineral lime-based protective plaster, (if used) eventually returns its fiber and acquired mineral content attributes entirely and harmlessly back to the surrounding nearby soil strata.
With extensive use of both high tensile perimeter and portable wire fence and portable water- feed delivery systems, a dynamic inertia of technologies begins building and coming into play by making nomadic mobility designs an achievable asset. Seasonal or year-round designed animal housing sub-systems would provide more versatile mid to low-cost inputs for big conventional type systems net output results. I see well-designed models as profitable sustainable attributes to animals so acclimated to what would otherwise be semi-harsh open year round environments. No longer should an animal’s ability to walk a given distance (back and forth) to an area within pasture via lain-ways to a milking station or water be a limiting factor; the milking station and most, if not all, utility attributes should move with the animals, and / or to within a few hundred feet of them at all times. Properly applied sub-systems will only enhance existing dairy facilities if used. Of coarse this understandably plays very well on negotiations regarding rented land-plots also.
Also, the current (I believe with time, increasingly invalid) time constrained practice and high cost of having to first contain (as in manure piles and lagoons) and then handle and perhaps re-handle the manure nutrients (spreading, injecting or spraying manure) from the flooring surfaces of all permanent structures as in conventional barn manure handling systems becomes minimized or obsolete regardless of current and future Local, State and Federal Certified Nutrient Management Plans, CAFO regulatory architecture and too seasonal nutrient ( manure ground application techniques ) amendment rules. Make no mistake that a true non-destructive nutrient containment medium system can be designed for. The proposed systems, (mimicking nature) maximizing a versatile “mobile” building
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unit space or open field area containing manure (nutrient) and other high retention elements such as a bedded pack of sawdust, wood chips, willow bio-crop, waste paper products, or straw, etc. (carbon) that the animals utilize in predetermined and managed allocations on Lime Stabilized Soil staging areas, and then relocating this housing to new pasture or new near-pasture ground staging areas and repeating the stay, replace conventional containment and permanent animal housing systems. Individual intentions need never be so absolutely nomadic, however it opens new opportunities parallel to the degree that one can be so versatile, if only for a short seasonal or other temporary period of time.
For its part, in conventional barn systems for large numbers of animals, a well-maintained bedded straw pack would most often be my first choice (after pasture itself and absolutely over free-stall based housing) for a confinement type-housing medium of all age of dairy animals including both during lactation and dry cow rest periods. While being used directly on pasture, such packs could be timely inoculated with whatever soil enhancement additives (such as rock dust, lime or other mineral) that are known to be deficient (due to soil tests) in the immediate vicinity of the area of stay. As the herd moves away from this area for the last time in a seasonal rational grazing environment, any structural and cover materials are removed, the bedded pack and the contained ambient enhancements are, at an appropriate time, simply raked or otherwise distributed over the immediate area with a light harrow or other means until distributed completely; or if not too deep a deposit, seeded down and left alone to stabilize and compost in place. An excellent concept in areas where stored animal manure odors may be a problem. Adhering closely to Fukuoka’s written philosophy here, he states, one can naturally make common sense use of compost, however one need not and should not work hard to achieve it. Compost should be created ambient by animals on the areas where that compost intends to be used. Professional Composting Firms take exception to the ability to produce proper compost ambient, but they seldom have the practiced exposure to high straw content manures with excellent carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratios that are commonly found in bedded pack manures. Perhaps this is a model for new broader type agricultural equipment, dairy facility design, and (BMP) Best Management Practice.
If in ones circumstance she needs to be thinking of new low cost agricultural housing alternatives, such as during dairy facility expansions or acquisitions, please consider first straw-bale construction design as growing in favor. Well-designed exterior walls as have been stated provide excellent insulation in both warm and cold climates and can be made to withstand (milk house, utility room, office or other etc.) wet and hostile environmental conditions as easily (perhaps on a “as designed” temporary basis) as any alternative conventional construction, most times, if designed properly, at a fraction of the cost. Addressing perceived fire hazards; It is widely recognized that when subjected to flame, properly made strawbale structures do not burn as such, but rather slowly scorch, due in most part to the lack of oxygen to sustain flame within the bale core itself and too the bales inherent ability to insulate against heat transfer. A straw-bale structure will burn, but it takes hours to consume itself by flame and the fire code survivability ratings are among the highest known.
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Pasture Infield Harvesting Apparatus, Trellis Hay Forage Curing, Feed Storage, and Feed out For hundreds of year’s man haymaking technologies have utilized “haystacks”, “Swedish Hay Trellis”, “Norwegian Hay Trellis”, “Racks”, “Haycocks”, “Tripods”, “Stooks” or other so named arranged piles of field dried, bundled or loose hay, fodder and grass for feed purposes. The often times mature cut grass hay or simple feed stuffs where pitch forked onto trellis’ infield for the purpose of drying. Then, once dry the hay was loaded by pitchfork or mechanically so, onto wagons and brought to the barn facility for re-handling, storage, and still later, handled again to be fed out as required. While acknowledging that the periodic harvesting (as many as five times) of surpluses of forages within a pasture or other hay forage based system is recognized as often essential to maintain the highest quality value of dry and high moisture hay forages within that pasture or any other haying system, I (and most all graziers) reject the thesis that it must always be conducted utilizing conventional dry or high moisture storage techniques and / or conventional high horsepower machine based harvesting systems as we currently know them regardless of current feed preservation technology and attitudes. To see clearly the evolutional future in pasture harvesting and feeding designs, I think we need to look back it time and again consider leaving the bulk of forages within the pasture system that produced them; this model suggests cost savings by bringing the animals to the feed year-round, just as we do when we seasonally graze.
Design our pasture hay harvesting to deposit dry hay forages in-mass and infield on an elevated, so designed roofed or open trellis system (Hay trellis) consisting of a pasture located lattice made of common tall fence posts and a matrix of high tensile wire on which the forage mass would be placed by means of current dump wagon and forage pickup head technology or common fork loader tractor. The systems potential begs for a dedicated commercial designed harvest trellis-loading device.
Then feeding dairy animals directly from these forage trellises year-round. While observing the valid solutions of the past in Andre’ Viosins book, one can see pictures of small wooden “A” frame field trellises’ used to facilitate in field feed storage or forage drying. We might expect then to perhaps design a similar more enduring in field hay drying and storage system. A minor challenge as I see it is to design the system so that natural air-drying is maximized, while harvest horsepower requirements are minimized.
Criteria for developing an in-field Hay Trellis system:
Would handle the function of drying field Hay and Pasture crops. Would facilitate long term storage of same Would facilitate feeding out the stored Forages. 54
Criteria for developing newer type Forages and Grain Handling system: Modular or Component in function, (containing unit (weight) must be handled by a “Buck Rake’ type loader) Could handle High and Low moisture Forages Could handle High and Low moisture Grains Must facilitate Feeding of the above criteria Feedstock’s at a second location or for commercial resale Must be durable in design and function for 25+ years. The following is a Proforma Dairy Field operations planning chart. It is accurate enough for planning purposes, however it may be noted that some of the Hayfields would be winter pastured and some of the pastures would be sacrificed at other times, delayed grazed in the spring, and perhaps stock piled at other times; these functions are note always noted within the planning forecast.
Key
Milestone marker- start
Milestone marker - end
Grazing Winter Stockpile
Grazing Winter with Stock-p iled Hay Trellis Access
Parlor Fowl Weather Standby
Mobi le Par lor Useage
Ele me nts
January Fe bruary March
Wee k 1 Wee k 2 Wee k 3 Week 4 We ek1 Wee k 2 Wee k 3 Wee k 4 Wee k 1 Week 2 Wee k 3 Wee k 4
Graze Winter Stockpiled Pasture #P 001
Graze Winter Stockpiled Pasture # P002
Hay Trellis Stockpiled Hay Field #HF003
Pasture Modular Milking Parlor System#MP001
Pasture Modular Milking Parlor System#MP002
Modular Milking Parlor System Barn
- JANUARY - FEBRUARY- MARCH, TIME LINE DAIRY FIELD OPERATIONS
Planned Ke y Date s1/1 Graze Pasture #P001 3/1 Planned Milking System Barn Online
1/1 Using Mobile Milking Parlor#MMP001
1/1 Modular Barn Parlor on FowlWeather Standby
1/14 Using Mobile Milking Parlor#MMP002
2/1 Graze Pasture #P002
2/1 Using Mobile Milking Parlor#MP001
3/1 Graze Hay Field #HF003
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Key
Milestone marker- start
Milestone marker - end
Grazing Winter with Stock-piled Hay TrellisAccess
Grazing Growing Pastures
Grazing Growing Pasture with Hay TrellisAccess
Fowl Weather Standby
Hay Harvest To Trellis
ElementsApril May June
Wee k 1 We e k 2 We e k 3 We e k 4 Week 1 We e k 2 We e k 3 We e k 4 We ek1 We e k 2 We e k 3 We ek 4
Graze Pasture #P 005
Graze Pasture #P 006
Graze Pasture #P 007
Pasture Modular Milking Parlor System#MP001
Pasture Modular Milking Parlor System#MP002
Standby Modular Milking Parlor System Barn
Sowing - Planting Annual Pastures
Hay Harvest To Hay Trellis #HF003
- APRIL - MAY - JUNE, TIME LINE DAIRY FIELD OPERATIONS
Planne d Ke y Dates
4/1 Graze Pasture #P005 6/1 Graze Pasture #P007
4/1 Using Mobile Milking Parlor #MMP001 6/1 Using Mobile Milking Parlor #MMP001
4/1 Modular Barn Parlor on Fowl WeatherStandby
4/14 Using Mobile Milking Parlor #MMP002
5/1 Graze Pasture #P006
5/1 Using Mobile Milking Parlor #MMP001
5/14 Using Mobile Milking Parlor #MMP002
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PASTURE MOBILE MILKING PARLOR and MILK HANDLEING UTILILITIES.
To better assist facilitation of the above, I offer the little used but known concept of milking in mobile mass within the pasture system. In the seventies a neighbor in our town installed and utilized a nearly all-wooden, prefabricated stationary milking parlor with a large degree of success. Site preparations at the time simply consisted of installation and hookup to buried utilities, and the deposit of some crushed # 1 or pea size stone utilized as a floating slab type foundation. The unit was designed to be assembled in individual sections, and actually was very mobile with moved with a forklift. Additionally, and at about the same time, a major milking equipment systems company (Germania ®) offered dairyman purchasing permanent dairy parlor systems from them and undergoing disruptive renovations to their existing milking facilities space, much the same type temporary wooden and relatively mobile prefab milking parlor. All manner of Milk House, Milk Tank Bulkhead Room, Utility Room, and Dairy or Slaughter facility could be built this way. Study the PMO and health rules in your area.
For use within the Elysian Fields Dairy Model there is a design for an identical yet affordable farmer fabricated, milking parlor that could be built for any and all type (Cow, Goat, and Sheep) dairy animal; epoxy-covered plywood over a wooden frame in construction and modular component in design, these units are moved with common forklift or loader-tractor fork attachments. This milking parlor unit component design can begin as a single sided unit, expand to a double sided swing-over, and later be expanded again to a diamond paragon or made smaller if or as the desire or need arises; The units can be seasonally allotted from, and in time, back to a permanent conventional free-stall or milking plant facility. So low in cost are these units, a dairyman not wanting to bother moving them could simply have several of these units strategically placed among his pastures nearest permanent underground utilities, interchanging only the higher cost milk contact surfaces and handling device units (milking claws, receiver jar(s) and pipelines) and putting all milking hardware support utensils (vacuum pump, water heater and conditioning, etc.) hardware in a devoted mobile “utilities” vehicle in combination with a temporary bulk milk transfer tank handling - refrigeration unit, and taking it all along with the rotation groups as needed.
For the “techno deprived”, through-put oriented dairy-person, regardless if he or she intends to move a dairy apparatus or not, this all weather and “low cost mobility” condition in turn lends itself well to temporary facilities use and equity building for young couples on a rented farmland. Mobile “machine” milking parlor systems theory ( perhaps in combination with a low cost greenhouse type enclosures ), and yes, presently “field or pasture robotics” comes to be inclusive in the model and is a useful consideration as a natural technological progression.
Problem Statement #1: Dairy Farmers grow their dairy livestock herds mindful of herd size and time necessary to accomplish the task of milking production as being a limiting factor in many cases.
Problem Statement #2: With few variations growing dairy herds eventually present a problem concerning facilities management. Increasing variables include available barn floor space, Bedding requirements, distance traveled verses time spent traveling and not grazing to produce milk, etc.
Elements available: Cows, Pasture.
Solution Statement: Create a pasture environment whereby perhaps only a portion of the herd is milked manually and the other portion of the dairy herd would be milked automatically infield. This could be accomplished simultaneously as in milking of the high production animals in one herd while automated systems saw to the rest of the herd or milking none of the animals a times seasonally and totally by automation.
By this time this device had evolved to take on a versatile low cost form character attribute of being an added Interface unit appendage between dairy animal and machine, containing prophylactic properties, a pronounced payload capacity, and because the bulk portion of the system was actually worn by the animals themselves (attached with bio type adhesives
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to hair follicles of the cow’s udder), an attached retention or survivability performance rating of over six months was observed.
The device was however a proprietary prototype, lacked investment and to date has never seen beta development in the intended total automated forms. (A spin-off medical delivery epidermal patch system was also developed and tested / utilized) Further, it (the TESS unit) was felt at the time (1989) to be too far ahead of the robotic technology it sought to enhance to be accepted and marketed.
Strange as it may seem, this device also became one of the first reasons for my greater interest and involvement in pasture studies and utilization. It occurred at this time in 1989, after studying the potential utilization of the “TESS” milking device and connected systems that Blueshift Instruments was able to foresee and declare different methods that the technology would be utilized, and decided Pasture Systems utilization would be demanding a major role in the ultimate future use and location of that device. Blueshift Instruments still believes this devices’ further development could lower the cost and increase the performance of all levels of automated milking parlor and robotic milking technology for all breed of Cow, Goat, and Sheep to a more palatable level and in so doing, render low-cost pasture systems or field robotics systems a much more viable automated future.
Additionally however, some people see field milking parlors and field robotics as a threat to “down home” family farms, an assumption that I cannot agree with. In evaluating the inclusion of this technology I’m compelled to assume that it would maintain as many persons or more within the scope of “family farms” as it does invite exploitation by commercial interests and the so called “industrial agriculture or factory farm” type venues. I use however the land as my judge and the best practice’s upon the land as a qualifier and while including technology where appropriate, surmised that this feature would be included in the future of truly sustainable family farm systems large and small. Good soil and pasture management often relies on very brief but intense animal pressure, especially in dry brittle environments. I feel we all must modernize to an appropriate level (sometimes intensely so) within that parameter, so that we can attract and maintain as needed, the high caliber individuals we need to grow into and maintain profitable agricultural dairy and farming systems in the future, family systems included.
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I believe pastures and robotics where made for each other. Envisioned (now for sometime), in the very near future are self-contained automated milking units orbiting paddocks “where the pastures are”, away from the milk-houses maintaining the fixed primary bulk milk-tank and other ( if ) necessarily fixed utilities and services. Very soon you may find yourself seasonally milking only a third of your animals ( or none at all ) on a given day, with a pasture field robotic capable milking unit having sought to the rest. These same units could also be programmed to be the automated gateway by which animals are cut and sorted or rotated to advance to new pasture paddock stays or breeding pens, sick bays and the like. In those systems where bulk milk hauling trucks cannot access the current pasture system stay, milk may have to be “picked up” or under difficult situations, harvested from pasture and handled perhaps twice as often by specialized milk hauling equipment, but the inconvenience for bulk milk haulers on farms with properly maintained laneways could be minimized. The Elysian Fields Pasture model invites and allows for both science and nature; between that which may be ideal, or the more typical and conventional of systems. The idea being that this model would levitate to the capability of the farmer’s situation and circumstance.
PASTURE SLAUGHTER FACILITIES AND COMPOST:
In the interest of sustainability, versatility, and viability it quickly becomes apparent that under the application of the above systems that the utilities needed to accomplish home meat processing of dairy slaughter animals (Steers, bulls, and cows), pastured poultry, pastured pigs, and too beef slaughter plants etc. utilizing mobile units such as the described dairy units above. Pastured Poultry and other meat animals are increasingly accepted in the marketplace. These units would leave a trail of well-designed and maintained tankage in field composting areas, cycling opposite the dairy or other facility. These apparatus can consist of a Blueshift Instruments built facility.
IN SOD STEP-IN TOMBSTONE FEED BUNKS, COMFORT STALLS AND STANCIONS: MOBILE BUNK-LINE FEEDER: Wagon gears so designed providing mobile in-line bunk space in a train of wheeled devices, towed from one field locale to the next to eliminate the need to grain and TMR mixes on bare ground as a method of enhancing consumption of feed while moving manure targeted deposit areas. This method differs from a bunk wagon, where the animals have full access to all sides of the wagon for feed. The feed-line concept assists in animal control by allowing access to only one side of the feeding device while a typical TMR mixer wagon feed system uses the other as usual. Used tractor tires are a good temporary feeding apparatus with a similar function also.
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A simple pasture based in-field stall or stanchion barn can also be made as easily as the in-field milking parlor. Where ever utilities ( water, electric ) and a suitable tarp and hoop structure on high and dry ground can be provided, so too can a dairyperson have a temporary stall barn. In this design the brisket board is stake pinned to the ground and the stalls, headboards, water supply, feeding surfaces, etc. are themselves pinned at ground points and / or attached to the brisket board system. Takes an hour or so to set-up and another hour to teardown and move to the next desired locale. Again, this can be directed to areas needing manure, cattle hoof pressure, etc.
INVISIABLE SUB-PERIMETER FENCE FOR PASTURED COWS:
True Story – Municipal Costs compensate Agricultural Profits
Problem Statement #1: Farmers periodically have late season harvest of standing corn crops near or parallel to municipal roadways. Late season crop harvesting costs are typically high (making for a low or zero income crop in those areas) due to snow and mud effecting operating efficiencies.
Problem Statement #2: Municipal Road crews need to seasonally install Snow Fence in farm fields to assist in minimizing snow removal plowing and snow drift hazards. This costs revenue and time to establish this fence in strategic areas.
Elements available: Established rotated late season Corn Fields near strategic municipal road areas needing Snow Fence.
Solution Statement: Create and plan on a farmer paid basis, corn field rotations along highways needing snow fence by virtue of planned fields crop rotations and harvest schedules designed to distribute the effects of standing field corn for purposes of snow fence replacement, thus minimizing both costs for all parties.
We are all familiar with the yard and lawn pet dog retention system that relies on a shallow buried perimeter wire and radio dog collar. A simple variant can provide paddock sub-divides. The TESS device devised by Blueshift Instruments in the early eighties had ample payload capacity to accomplish this task or a radio collar system as would be worn as a cow identification system would serve the purpose as well. Addressing mobility again, one
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can see how easy it would be to deposit a control wire on the surface of or below the ground between the points you desire a divisional paddock barrier to be located; and how much more easily it will be to adjust and move this surface laid wire time and time again as you move animals across the pasture paddock sward than even a conventional step-in fiber-post and wire system. At most it may periodically need to be “pinned” at the ends to maintain a straight line or such other intentional maneuver around obstacles.
IN-FIELD WATER - AIRCONDITIONING: Mobile unit Atomized or Mist Water Spray and Drip Systems used for saturating cows and providing then for a non-solar limiting natural heat relief during the hottest weather. I recommend a pasture only station system design be supplied where (as F. W. Owen says) grazing cows can walk through freely on a pasture walking rotation cycle of drinking, grazing, cooling,. This system may double as a pasture irrigation system for it deposits a tremendous amount of water via mist. It can quickly create mudded areas, and so must be managed and moved often as needed. If you try to provide sun blocking at this pasture station, I don’t think you will be able to maintain correct traffic patterns; the cows will bunch up here and stay all day long and you limit your pastures total solar gain.
Precondition of laneways and Utility Systems
Problem Statement #1:
Problem Statement #2:
Elements available:
Solution Statement:.
PASTURE LANEWAYS, LIME STABILIZED STAGING AREAS
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To facilitate access to total pastures and future expansions, many dairypersons will need to solve for at least a minimum amount of pasture access via laneways; and once the herd is positioned, their stay must be maintained adequately - easily as well as environmentally.
Persons choosing construction materials often turn to concrete or asphalt, but an older and perhaps more cost effective material base may be found in lime stabilized soils.
Sighting of the staging area is accomplished by various means and considerations including maximizing the function of the site (i.e. making as remote an area as practical and serving as wide an area as possible); while at the same time minimizing its existence (i.e. maintaining existing pasture).
WATER AND SEWER SYSTEMS
Standard or Hybrid water and sewer system infrastructure
Sewer systems located in pre-planned area applications.
These should be the highest affordable quality available as water and access are second to none in importance. Graziers should be as willing and prepared to facilitate animal husbandry, feeding and physical milk plant services, via laneways and lime stabilized staging area infrastructures.
Water delivery outside of pipeline delivery systems if need be with as sophisticated a vehicle or apparatus as chemical spray applicator providers deliver their liquid based chemicals delivery systems infield. High floatation tires, all- wheel drive vehicles, water wagons and the like to create the type of access we will need.
Most systems are arranged as the spokes of a wheel; central utilities (water, electric, access, etc.)
Some will say, “Well now, you are recreating the very sub-systems you intended to eliminate”, but no; these new systems’ duties will be solved on different levels on different farms as is appropriate to those farms; some with common available materials and some with high tech or new solutions. Either way most important is the driving force and the dynamics of the super system have been changed such that problem matrix will have been changed; It will no longer align with standard conventional system downfalls, the single farm demographics will have been changed away from the standard model and its pitfalls, thus a much healthier and stronger agri-super system appears.
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Part 4
Financials:
Proforma Pasture Super System Financials Income Statement Balance Sheet Side by Side Comparisons Pasture Grazing and Pasture Cropping Plans
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Part 5
Conclusions:
Initiatives in Future Pasture Super System Design “…..animal units between 10 and 10,000 or more…..”
A Sustainable Municipal Solution, Available To All:
I happen to live in the Upstate, Finger Lakes Region of New York State ( Farmington, N.Y., USA ) and this application is presently solely formulated and intent for this immediate locale and / or the greater Great Lakes Region ( Northeast ) Corridor of the U.S.A.. My immediate concern is that of current suburban sprawl. People are ever increasingly unaware of the on goings of everyday agriculture activities around them. My home farmlands where I grew up are threatened by this paradox element. My family farm partners have acquired 12 separate farms over time. We long ago lost most of our rural or farm oriented political base in my area, in part, via our own successful expansions and land acquisitions which in turn left fewer principles involved in the succession of a given farm land, political, and tax base. What farm base is left operating seems currently to be desperately politically geared toward dizzily maintaining myopic conventional agri-systems only. These same individuals (an aging population) are often tapped to advise the remaining non-farm political base, on both county and state levels and too often joined by the ever growing non- farming public, as to the parameters on which to proceed on questions concerning local agricultural based circumstances that they too now know very little about; as a result this same advice (and so the resulting decisions) are often incorrectly tainted toward older concepts of conventional farming techniques with all its inherent costs, at the expense of nurturing and marketing progressive sustainable ones.
As I have said, in this ( my ) area, I do believe that Pasture Based Agriculture is the highest order land use for much of the land. Of that order, near organic sod based (natural farming) production standards are perhaps the ultimate of such use. It helps to know that the Elysian Fields and Pasture Project Model answers the call for suggested attribute solutions with the ability to conform and be utilized in the smallest, to largest ( and sometimes temporarily rented ) of appropriate land-plots. But, for this to happen in my region, local perception of the valued intent of this type sustainable farming project needs 65
to be thoroughly understood by the political agriculturalists and non-farmers alike, and if accepted, nurtured and garnered by local government development ( by means of local laws effecting interpretations of agricultural building and zoning codes and farmland and farm animal political solace ) embracing newer next generation sustainable farming language and methods. Municipal planners need to utilize pastures as a means to service the maintenance and budget requirements of their regions open space quotas or other building code mandates.
Finally I want to remind readers that this model is based on and intended to be of commercial value to all agricultural industries involved (both suppliers and users) but remain free of excessive entanglements of the same via user defined reduction techniques and simplicity of design. We recommend to all clients that they acquaint themselves with and consider the basic next generation elements of “Pasture as Housing” ideals advocated by “The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project” model and it’s methods’
Footnotes 2003 - 2006 Elements Update: 2006 finds the original partnership transitioning further toward the senior partner member looking toward retiring and the other former partner and myself carrying on the family farms under individual ownership rather than jointly, as this was the plan since the partnership began in 1977. I have been a landowner for over twenty years now, and I anticipate expanding via The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project by several hundred more acres.
From the written project itself, longtime readers will notice more of the actual open source documents’ “elements’ have been added to each new edition of the e-book you see presented here before you. 66
Thank you. Be safe. Sincerely,
Royal A. Purdy
Resources and Suggested Reading
- Pasture Improvement and Management, 1938, D. B. Johnstone-Wallace - Grass Productivity, 1959, Andre’ Voisin - The Biological Farmer, 2000, Gary F. Zimmer - Holistic Management, 1999, Allen Savory, with Jody Butterfield - Fertility Farming, 1952; Fertility Pastures, 1955, F. Newman Turner - The Clifton Park System of Farming, 1904, Robert H. Elliot - Systematic Innovation, 1998, John Terninko, Alla Zusman, Boris Zlotin - And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared, 1994, (H. Altov), Genrich Altshuller
The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project e-group is an ongoing discussion of this open resource architecture Experimental Agricultural Pasture Model involving the use of Fukuoka Style “Natural
Farming” and Methods, F. Newman Turner “Fertility Farming”, TRIZ Problem Solving, and Pasture and Sod Based Cropping Technologies. Available @ www.ahtuttle.com
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Keywords: ASIT, TRIZ, TESS, BMP, SPBD, SPDES, CNMP, AFO, CAFO, Best Management Practice, Alternative Farming System, Biological Farming, Gary F. Zimmer, Genrich Altshuller, Heuristics, Pasture, Sod Based Cropping, Sustainable, Natural Farming, Masanobu Fukuoka, Seed-Pellets, Seed Pelleting, Grazing Management, Andre’ Voisin, Sir Albert Howard, Robotic Milking, Straw-bale, Pasture, The Elysian Fields and Pasture Project, Pasture as Housing, Bedded Pack, Compost, Pastoral Resources, Dairy, Sward, Sprawl, Agritourism, Environmental Stewardship, Municipal Planning, Open Space Planning, Green Space, Royal A. Purdy, Pasture Cropping, Sow Seeding, Herbal Ley, Ley, Ley Farming, Fertility Pasture, Pasture Walk, Out-wintering, Lime-Stabilized Soil, Fodder, Norwegian - Swedish Hay trellis, Indore Process, A. J. Hosier, Hosier’s Farming System, Fence, Fencing, High Tensile, Hay Rack, Hay Trellis, Proctor's Tripod System, Buck Rake, Loose Hay, Weatherproof Haymaking, Fertility Farming, F. Newman Turner, Nomadic, Post Driver, Canandaigua, Farmington, Ontario County, Rochester, Western New York, Finger Lakes, New York,
