Preparing for our farm future:

Certainly we are facing a very difficult future as us humans have not reduced our use of fossil fuels, nor have we stopped using excess nitrogen in the farming of our crops. What will be very necessary in the not too distant future is learning to farm without fossil fuels.

This entails farming without tractors which for some who grow veggies will be easily possible but it is the transportation of food to cities that will be very difficult.

For us having draft horses this is still going to be difficult as one can see in my writing

http://matsfineoils.com/Fossil%20free%20farm.html

We have been growing rye, spelt, oats, sunflowers and camelina but just as important has been our growing of many cover crops which helps improve our soil health.. Everything we do may require disturbing the soil every third year usually after a crop we have a pasture, then replant the pasture and then plow it and plant a food crop.

I started growing cover crops back in 2015 in an effort to increase our soil health. Each year I learn more and although little improvement in the soil tests there certainly is a difference in the fields and the crops.

When I planted the rye for crimping this fall of 2022 I added crimson clover, red clover and white clover to the rye. The rye was about 125 lbs to the acre and the clovers about 4-6 lbs per acre and peas about 4 lbs to the acre. I'm not sure about the aleopathic properties or rye but most feel the rye will have an adverse effect of small seeds. As I look our over the field about two months after planting on august 29 the peas are certainly growing well. My plan is that the rye grows to about 6 ft, I crimp it and then plant my sunflowers. The clovers do come up through the crimped rye and give me a nice mat of clover which becomes a pasture after I harvest the sunflowers. The horses especially enjoy the clovers but the white clover withstands more with the horses walking around in it..

We have been experimenting with a no till planter planting into crimped cereal rye which requires a tractor ( runs on sunflower oil which we produce on the farm) which we have that uses the front three point hitch for the crimper and the no till planter attaches ion the rear. This makes it very easy as there is no need to mark where the rows are. If the rye is still standing you just crimp it and the planter does the rest spacing the rows where I set them which matches the combine.

The Future we need to head towards with no fossil fuels.

My future is going to be short since I am 74 years old in 2022 so we can still use sunflower oil as diesel fuel for the next 10 years.

We need a community grows its own our own food and transported by bicycle or horse to close by communities. I'm not sure what will happen in the major cities but those parking lots will haveto be turned into vegetable gardens.. At the farm we will compost all of our food and crop residues, save all of our seeds which includes the cover crops as well as the grains and vegetables. Harvesting these will be a difficult challenge since I am not sure how to harvest rye, oats and spelt with the horses. My Amish friends bind the grains, stoop them to let them dry then use a thrashing machine but that uses a diesel motor which we could also do with the sunflower oil as fuel. That being the case I guess we use the combine fuelled by sunflower oil.

Eventually all farms will have to figure out how to farm without fossil fuels and deal with more drought, storms, hurricanes and flooding. This does not look good for the long term.