Using Livestock to Fertilize the Market Garden (An 8-Year Study!)

Too much propaganda on gases being released. We need to get over the whole OMG the gases, the climate change etc... CO2 is less than 0.04%. Get real on this mis-information. Time to think for yourself and stop regurgitating the crap the Bill Gates, Al Gore's, and liberal Socialist college's etc. who only want to make money on the people unwilling to think for themselves. Covid just another plandemic they pulled over on the people who blindly follow what the elite tells them. Time to learn to decern!. Follow the money, who benefits? Think.

Cows are superior, manure type and urine, however they do require a minimum grazing land to tree forest density.

Sounds like your behind on biochar

A Goldoni E20 with wide tyres would be a great bit of equipment to help out. I have one and it’s awesome for the smallest and narrow pathways maintenance .
🙂✨☮️🇦🇺

I'm so looking forward to more videos filmed here!

Thanks a lot this is great data, would donkeys work?

Vermicomposting and black soldier flies seem like great additions to the system, would love to see some experiments with those.

Amazing!

You guys should check out Dowdle family farm. They do grazing pigs as their main thing, and at least according to them, grazing pigs IS possible without degrading the land.

It seems to be mostly about a tight and timely plot rotation, not letting the pigs stay long enough that they exhaust the surface fodder and start rooting around too much. Your system might not be big enough, or you had too many pigs for the space you have.

Check them out, I think there is a lot of potential synergy.

What about rabbits? pros, cons?

Sheep and poultry all the way

With all due respect, I like the video very much but what is the difference or major innovation compared to the three-field system introduced in the 13th century in Europe which already integrated production/parture/fallow rotation?

Any thoughts on using a smaller breed like Dexters? They're still significantly bigger than sheep.

I'm so glad you mention not everyone being able to handle a walk behind tractor. I'm a middle aged woman and I highly doubt I'd be able to use one effectively without throwing out my back.

Also I have geese and they do a fantastic job for micro grazing. They don't escape like chickens do, you don't have to worry about hawks, they truly graze unlike other poultry, and you can herd them like sheep.

I’m wondering if using a smaller size cattle breed followed by daily pasture moves of the cattle could help lower compaction due to them not being on the same ground day after day.

I still think that the ultimate solution to raised bed fertility? Would be to have rabbit hutches that you could put on top of the rows. Its a cold manure and you can plant right into it. And funny enough Rabbit was a staple in the human diet for millennia. Its the one protein source that our bodies are actually capable of absorbing 100% of the energy from. They also breed as the saying goes "Like Rabbits" Humanity was handed a grave disservice when the folks at Hallmark decided to turn Easter into a corporate cash cow.

Folk will be giving us lessons on what a wheei is soon lol its some of the most ancient knowledge we have and farmers stopped using all the knowledge and hard work and sold us out for volume and profits using pesticides and salts.. Then later when the land is all dead they tell us what wonderful ideas they have to stop destroying life.

I'm a regenerative agriculture enthusiast and Cincinnatian.
The hills here are covered in greenery, mostly invasive honeysuckle.
It is not good for much, but it does make good biochar.
Their production and use of low nitrogen compost is in line with some s of the no-till growers I've heard on this podcast network, who have turned to high carbon mulches , rather nitrogen rich composts for weed suppression.
I am looking forward to finding out more about their composting set up.

Need to do more desert growing videos

I run a herd of sows with a small flock of sheep. The sows keep predators out, the sows dont root as much as younger pigs, and the sheep eat more of the leafy vegetation to mow down a pasture faster and keep the animals moving. You must remove the pigs when the sheep are getting close to giving birth.

Goats are about as good as sheep plus many varieties of goats (Nubians) produce great milk and if you are trying to open wooded pasture for cattle goats will clean it up from 3 inches high to 6 to 8 feet high. They are, however, very smart and at least as tricky as hens are at keeping them out of the produce.

Should have tried Guinea pigs too, love them in my garden

I find learning about what didnt work so well equally interesting as what did work well. And please do a follow up video in a year so we can learn how the sheep did.

I have for many years used laying hens in symbiosis with gardens,greenhouses and orchard stock. My set up has been 3-1500’ greenhouses each with a 1500’ garden between them. Across the back I built a building to house chickens. I used 35 chickens for a week or two in each growing space before and after cropping. My system also included crops that were direct sown, or mulched with hay and leaves or black plastic. I simply open a door to put the girls in the appropriate space and they go to work eating bugs and bug eggs, weed and weed seeds, and crop residue. I plant a garden with crops that will all finish at the same time. When it’s done I send the chickens in for a week and then plant again. My rotation is heavy organic mulch with a crop that likes that like brassicas followed by chickens. Then a crop with black plastic applied over the mulch with no tillage. The plastic I used is called Lumite which is a woven material used I commercial greenhouses for walk paths. It is extremely tough and photo-resistant. I have been using the same material for 30 years, it’s pretty bulletproof. You must not cut it with the a knife but rather use a propane touch so it doesn’t shred. As I have gotten older I began cutting the Lumite into 12x12 foot sections so it is easier to apply and remove. I screw 1x3” strapping to opposing sides to keep the wind from blowing it around. After the plastic mulch season I again run the chickens through. If to organic mulch I had left below the plastic is rotted away enough I rake the surface clean and plant a direct sow crop. If there is still a lot of hay there I would just grow another crop with the Lumite. I used to use a rototiller but I switched to a broad fork. You don’t really want the chickens in for too long as it will accumulate salts. Think like compost:30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen and you will be ok. I like the bio char idea and started using it in the henhouse sprinkling a bit on top of the dirty bedding just before I add another layer of clean shavings. In the peak of summer I like to put the chickens in a hen house on a trailer and graze them in my little home use orchard or my acre of asparagus.

Was talking to family recently and they talked about collars that tell cattle where a boundary is so they can move without being stressed. You could possibly use the same technology on the sheep so remove the need for fencing etc.

End agriculture. Wild bison and strict hunting carnivory is how humans are meant to be.

Meat over charcoal.

BTW, I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true.

I always wonder why everyone is always doing trials and research on gardening. Humans have been gardening since the dawn of civilization. Don't you think we should have it figured out by now?

May i ask you a question...
Im 57 years old and want to stay home a grow food to make a living.
What would you grow and how much land would I need to make $100,000 profit every year, but working the farm by myself?
Thank you

Love all of your videos ❤

What about using geese as a grazer instead of sheep

I've never seen rabbits in a large scale. If someone was able to make a system to this scale using rabbits I bet it'd be revolutionary. I think the main problem is they dig so if you used a chicken tractor model, theyd get out. I've seen those spikes you border coops with to keep predators out. Maybe a large tractor, moved once a week rather than daily, using those spikes (easy to put in and take out) could work???

"Brought compost into the system" - does this mean they bought it / are buying it? What would be the point of that seeing that you are mining someone else's fertility to enhance yours (by buying compost)? Thanks!

I love videos like this that help me learn about this growing field ( hehe) and what farmers are doing to live and doing things more sustainably and help generate fertile land, which seems to be lacking around the world. (*cough cough* the UK). As someone in Michigan who doesn't really have any land or know anyone that are doing anything like this locally, I would be really interested in finding connections to learn how to do these thing, and eventually one day be able to have a farm like this of my own. Does anyone happen to know how to find these connection?

Very interesting until you mentioned gasses, re climate…. Seriously? Nonsense.

Try a smaller breed of cattle. Corriente type graze like sheep. About 60% of the weight of angus plus they are lean meat. I have a few just out of curiosity. I raise beef cattle (angus) and I’ve done no till for 15 years on my hay fields.

ever tried horses, they feed off your greens next to your walkways ... you can use them as a "towing machine" .. and they deliver a carbon rich manure, that is so full of organic material it will condition your loamy hard soils to a fluffy delight

Do biochar studies calculate the carbon released to create the biochar to begin with???? Biochar has never made sense to me for that one reason. FWIW great video by the way 😂

Im in NC and will be planting a clover/catgrass/vetch cover crop over the garden by October and moving our 4 layer hens into it in December. Should I be worried they’ll dig all the soil up and burn it from their high-N manure?

You can definitely do a no till with pigs. I took soil from 2% organic matter to 5% in 6 months with pigs.

gorgeous sweet potatoes

Wow this is great information! I can't wait to find out the results from the biochar bed.

Great video. Thanks.

I'm curious as to whether or not Ian has done any research into mob grazing. It sounds in some ways as though he's working his way around to reinventing the wheel, so to speak, and I find it curious that he doesn't speak as though he has the mob grazing reference point when it's kind of an obvious thing for what they're doing?

I am quite lucky to have enough land to have 4 steers (cattle) at the beginning we started with young calves the land had been "let go" once excellent grazing land hadn't had animals on it for several years, the calves when I put them in the paddock basically disappeared into this regenerating jungle after one year we now have productive pasture. we have removed several truckloads of rubbish and produced Biochar for our gardens from the wood waste. I love cattle for this purpose and you get a gorgeous steak or two at the end.

Chickens though are the most productive animal on our place by a country mile. We keep our flock stationary in one of 2 large coops 1000 square feet in size vegetable garden for 1 year chicken coop the next rotating, the only addition being lime and mulch when gardened fertility is off the charts. Wee started with the intention of feeding our family and ended up donating literally trailer loads of excess to our local food bank. We live on the edge of a small village of economically constrained people who bring all their food scraps over and collect the eggs we don't need.

Maybe not the most optimized farming but pretty good I believe.

Wonder if they've considered just scything a cover crop field?

Maybe also try adding some goats to your sheep. They eat some plant that sheep don't like. And sheep eat closer to the ground but goats like to eat leaves of bushes and flowers. We have 17 sheep and 12 goats and they do great job of grazing the hills. They are also very picky eaters and if you put them in a pasture that is to big they will not eat less desirable plants only good grasses and clover. You have to put them in small pastures and rotate them every week or two. The saying goes "sheep must wait the grass in the spring" which means that the grass shouldn't be big and old. In theory it should be around 10cm tall and when they come back in the same pasture it should grow again to 10cm. It also helps with worm management

Goat or rabbit

I kept pigs, but indoors, and the veg that did not sell went to the pigs along with carrot tops, cabbage outer leaves turnip tops, anything you would put in the compost, when it went through the pigs and was then composted it was better than just compost for the ground.

They need to check out ducks if possible.

Has anyone done any studies with rat or other rodent manure for gardening? I know this may sound like an odd concept for some, but there are facilities as well as small household operations out there which produce hundreds up through the tens of thousands of rodents per month to feed other animal groups like falcons, reptiles and whole prey diets for felines and canines. That many rodents does of course, create a notable amount of poop. A question I have always wondered about this is, what to do with the waste the rodents produce? Can it be used like chicken or rabbit waste to fertilize land, and if so, how does it compare to other animals' waste like cows, sheep, chickens, etc?