by Rich Vander Ziel

Rich Vander Ziel
RR 1, Box 133
Chandler, MN 56122
507-879-3541

"Cooperative Manure Composting Demonstration and Experiment," 1990 to 1993. Rich and four other farmers studied the feasibility of composting for the average farmer including estimating the time, energy and economic inputs necessary for composting.

Before I get too involved in relating recent developments on Crazy Acres, I would like to say a big hello to all those people in the sustainable agriculture movement that I have had the privilege of communicating with in some form or other. I realize that in some ways I have dropped out of the loop. I apologize that I have not made many significant public contributions to the effort lately. This is not because I lack conviction in the cause nor because I did not enjoy working with the movement. Rather, it is more due to geographical/time limitations. I had to fulfill my (economic) responsibilities to my family. The constraints of a low-input operation combined with the fact that I have never been able to make money easily resulted in being tied down to a rather labor-intensive dairy operation being run by one man-myself. I am not complaining-I only wish I could have remained more involved.

While the years may not have been the easiest, they have not been completely without some degree of success. With only a very few minor exceptions, I have farmed organically now for over 20 years. Even without participating in many of the premiums of the organic markets, I have been able to remain just as economically viable as my colleagues using conventional agriculture methods. We do market as many of our fed cattle privately as we can. We get about 10% premium over regular markets on these. But out here on the plains there are a lot of cattle and not many people who are interested in organics.

We are experiencing better markets for our chickens that are grazed in Joe Salatin style portable pens. This year my daughters will raise 200 of them in three pens.

Most of my crops still are consumed by the dairy and beef operation. I milk about 40 cows all year long now, and we are going into the third summer of intensive rotational grazing of the lactating herd on what used to be crop land-in fact, the research plots for the Cooperative Composting Project are now under intensive grazing management. I like it; but I find that our grazing season here on the wind-swept Buffalo Ridge is quite short. The cold winds in early spring and late fall are just too dangerous for milking Holsteins to be out in (frostbite is one of my major causes of culling).

My biggest expansion has been in the area of backgrounding steers on native pasture. We purchased another quarter section four years ago. That has 30 acres of fenced pasture with another 15 acres of unfenced, very native prairie. I rented two more native pastures this spring-so now I graze a total of 230 acres of native pasture. Besides the steers I raise, I purchase beef steers each winter.

After grazing them through the summer, I sell all the purchased steers in the fall as "heavy" feeder cattle; usually they are about 900 pounds. I really would like to team up with someone who would like to have their cattle backgrounded by an organic grazier.

Do I still compost? Yes, I do; at times more extensively than at others. In the spring of 1998, I hauled about 200 tons of compost to the newly purchased quarter about three miles away. That farm seriously needed some help. I got a fair crop of corn there last year, but what is amazing is the crop of barley that is growing on that field now. Time after time, I have seen the same advantages from compost - weed control, concentrated nutrients that make longer hauls more profitable, and a slower release of nutrients with soil conditioning qualities that result in a multi-year response at the application site.

Do I compost all my manure? No, I do not. More of my manure is a slurry now. That does not compost easily. My biggest limiting factor on this farm is lack of manpower. A serious lack of manpower. Composting does take time. I am quite sure that if one could always think longterm, it would actually be time saving or time netural when you factor in the reduced weed control needed and the reduced hauling once your material is composted. But, especially when you operate by yourself, you do not always have the luxury of thinking longterm. But I will be making two large windrows again this year for composting.

The composting project taught me some very obvious things about manure management, soil fertility and weed control. For instance, I am often reminded of the weed counts I did on Steve Gleis' plot comparing liquid slurry and compost. There was such a difference between them in terms of broadleaf competition. Just last week, a neighbor approached me with a problem. He had allowed a dairy operation to spread liquid pit manure on his land and now he has a terrible broadleaf population.

But there were some other things that I learned, too. One that continues to impress me is the power of the microbial world. Agriculture is a matrix of so many different disciplines where all of the modalities of creation intertwine. One of the most hidden but also most powerful is the world of microbiology. I wish I was better schooled in the technical aspects of that discipline; I have come to realize that understanding and managing bacteria, fungi, enzymes, yeasts and viruses is far more important than knowing how to drive a tractor or build a building. In some ways, it is rather ironic that it is things that we cannot see that play such a crucial role in the welfare of our farms. But then it is also the things that we cannot see that determine what a person is or what a (people) will become.

My concerns for the future of agriculture, especially sustainable agriculture is probably much the same as those of most "thinking" people. How do we preserve some sense of individual opportunity in a world that is rushing towards corporate agriculture? How do we maintain some diversity in a monoculture world? How do we teach an ethical value structure to an agriculture that is obsessed with production?

I don't think that it is hopeless. The diversity, the individuals, and the value structures are there. We need to keep up the effort and fight that battle.