Manure or Monsanto

Yesterday was all about compost and preparations (in the pouring rain). Today was all about cow sh*t. Remember the 500 we made last September and dug up in March, and how wet it was? It is still wet, so today we took it out of the jar and put it on a board in the sheep barn to dry out (it still smells). We also cut nettles and buried them.

First thing after breakfast we took 2 wheel barrows all the way to the top of the farm, where the cows needed to be moved from, and collected as much cow sh*t as we could. This was then taken back down to (Blue) Peter's garden and deposited in a brick lined pit (here's one I made earlier). This was prepped with compost preps and Hey pre(p)sto, cow pat pit preparation. We covered with wood and will revisit every month or so to stir and add preps.

David instigated this as we do not have enough compost for all the fields. Which seems odd as the farm feels intensive from a livestock perspective so one would expect there to be enough compost. We don't produce all our own feed (buying in field beans [23t last May] and chicken feed). So a few imbalances to the farm organism .

Attached article from FT (click on title) is one of the better written giving the proGM argument. It is still blatantly corporate hype and all the sources are industry sponsored bodies. It gives no conclusive arguments and again, much of it is jam tomorrow (8-10yrs for GM wheat, thank goodness).

And what of herbicides? Check this out from The Observer for a great organic PR exercise by Dow Chemicals.