- Karl North
One of the most dramatic failures of the organic movement to date has been its inability to integrate animals with vegetable and fruit farming, despite the counsel of virtually all the leaders in the field. And this failure is often mirrored on organic livestock farms, where the primary, soil-building function of animals gets lower priority than it should. Albert Howard, a seminal writer on organic matters, concluded after much practice in both tropical and temperate climates, that healthy farming had to be a chain (holism before its time) with four essential links: people, animals, plants, and soil. More recently, putting a sharper point on the issue, Allan Savory and others have been reminding us that there are large urban populations to be fed; that this demands intensive, soil-depleting agriculture; that the only system capable of cycling carbon back to the soil fast enough involves livestock and pulsed grazing; and that as long as organic agriculture remains in denial about this we will be no more sustainable than chemical-industrial farming as its petrochemical quick fixes fade in the twilight of the oil era.
It might put a more positive spin on the current situation in organic agriculture to admit that we are all only somewhere on the road to sustainability, working things out as best we can, given the difficulties of operating an organic farm in a hostile political economy. This article will attempt to locate our farm on that road and describe some of the practices that have advanced us along it. But it needs to be restated at the outset that one of the main goals at the end of that road is a high organic matter soil. All the exciting recent advances in organics, for example, in biological pesticides and biological fertility agents, can be only adjuncts to a soil well stocked in organic matter. An excellent case in point is the drive in Cuba to mass produce a bacteria that unlocks phosphorus that is plentiful but unavailable in many soils. Those of us who toured the Cuban organic revolution last year (see THE NATURAL FARMER, _____1996) learned that the bacteria was reapplied before every crop, a sensible practice in soils that, despite serious composting efforts, often showed the effects of decades of chemical farming. But what if the soil and, therefore the bacteria, were well-fed? Would re-application be necessary? Or any application at all? I thought of our farmstead vegetable garden, which like the rest of our farm, tested initially very low in phosphorus. After several years of pampering with sheep bedding compost, organic matter in the garden tested at l2%, and phosphorus levels were now very high, without any significant input of phosphorus to the farm. This would be just the first of several happy surprises that occurred by themselves on the farm as we progressed in rebuilding a worn-out soil, mainly with ground limestone and sheep bedding compost. I have described the general process and rationale of soil-building with pulsed grazing before in these pages (See “The Grass-Ruminant Complex”, Fall 1994). Here I will describe how we apply it on our sheep dairy, along with other practices intended to keep the operation showing a profit.
Pros and Cons of Milking Sheep
It should no longer need arguing that the most sustainable way to make milk is from grass. In some ways sheep are well suited to this sort of dairy farming. They both graze and spread their manure more evenly than cows. Milking parlor and other handling machinery is economical because of their small size. All of ours is farm-built. A lactation of less than six months mirrors the grass season length in this climate, making seasonal dairying a natural. We time lambing for the beginning of grass in May; the lactation ends in early fall, and the flock finishes stockpiled pasture by the end of December.
Manure handling to retain nutrients in the winter is critical to rebuilding soil. Unlike many cow dairies, sheep farms have generally continued the excellent old tradition of bedding animals in deep litter at this time of year, on a growing manure pack, under cover, where nutrient retention is maximized, animals are kept warm and dry, and the proper carbon/nitrogen ratio is created for later composting. Rock powders needed for soil mineral balance, like limestone and rock phosphate are easy to add gradually during the course of the winter, right in the barn, and only make the bedding drier and more sanitary for the animals.
We compost manure to maximize its soil building potential. Recycling raw manure in any quantity not only damages the soil micro-community, it wastes the opportunity to stabilize its mineral nutrients and incorporate the large quantities carbonaceous material that a manure-based compost process can digest. Recycling carbon achieves two goals of sustainable systems: carbon sequestration, or removing it from the atmosphere, and providing energy to fuel the soil community. Compost, unlike raw manure, is a complete soil rebuilding material.
Sheep milk, mild and unpretentious as mammary products go, nonetheless possesses qualities that become obvious in the processing. The yoghurt is thicker and smoother than the cow or goat variety, without additives. Cheeses do not need the extra butter fat of double and triple creme to come out rich and smooth. Thick milk and fine fat globules are an advantage in fudge-making too. Cooking down, a mix of half maple syrup and half sheep milk becomes a velvety confection.
Now for the disadvantages. Although sheep milk has about twice the solids of cow or goat milk (less useless water to transport all over the country), this hardly compensates for the low yield per milking ewe. Dairy sheep breeds can average 3 quarts a day or more over a 5-month lactation, but like the high production Holstein, force the farm into a high input mode in order to serve their special feed, shelter, and medical needs. We began with ordinary meat sheep, all that were available at the time. After 12 years of genetic selection both for a rustic, pasture-based life and for milk yield, the latter has doubled, but still averages only 1.6 quarts/ewe/day, and that only at the peak of their lactation. The upside of this equation is our success in maintaining our goal for an extremely low input operation. We are currently experimenting with various degrees of cross-breeding with the East Friesian, a dairy sheep of long pedigree in Northern Europe. Our goal is to discover what percentage of Friesian will add to milk yield without upsetting our low input system. The Cubans showed us just such a hybrid cow which they claimed performed to their satisfaction entirely on grass. They said it was the result of 15 years of crossbreeding the imported Holstein with a native tropical breed.
The second main disadvantage of sheep, whether for milk or meat, is the damage internal parasites can do to the health and growth of lambs. Here as elsewhere in farming there is a management solution to replace the chemical quick fix. But it takes a level of organization and development of the forage acreage of the farm that we have attained only in the last two years. First the main forage fields of the farm must be fenced, supplied with water, cleared of trees and rocks to permit haying, and all producing a quality of forage suitable for either hay or pasture, and for either empty, dry stock or lactating ewes and growing lambs. Then a three-year rotation can be devised that always puts the weaned lambs on parasite-free pasture, by grazing them on fields used only for hay the year before. The main forage fields are divided into three sections and the rotation proceeds as a given field is used for hay, then weaned lambs, then ewes (with lambs until weaned). Plans for the future are to add enough animal units of another hardy pasture species, like a few Highland cattle, along with our team of Haflinger draft horses, to balance the dairy ewe and lamb flocks, and provide the annual alternation of stock that we need for sustainable pest control in the sheep.
Lastly, although the sheep dairy industry in the United States has barely begun, there are already signs that wholesaling sheep milk may be dogged by the same profitability problems that have plagued cow dairies: forcing unwanted expansion, the use of high production (but also high maintenance) dairy breeds, debt, and a downward spiral of quality of life for the whole farm ecosystem (people, animals, plants, and soil). To avoid this we planned for on-farm artisanal quality cheese-making, and direct marketing of most of our products in a local farmers market. It was an easy decision, for when we started farming in New York we had just come from years of homesteading in France, where just this sort of small, vertically integrated dairy farm, and weekly local farmers markets as well, are old traditions. Still, the sale of cheese, lamb, yarn and tanned skins from a base flock of only 50 ewes barely provides a livable income, and then only because we enjoy considerable self-sufficiency in food (vegetables, meat, and dairy), energy (solar, wood heat, and draft horses), and of course fertilizer. A younger couple (we are pushing 60) could operate the farm with 100 ewes and bring in a net cash income of close to $20,000 without a great deal more capital investment. But the quality of life is excellent; we are free of much of the cost/price squeeze and resultant debt that is destroying family-scale dairy farming, and we enjoy the diversity of work: milking, processing, marketing, haying and logging mostly with draft horses, sheep and horse husbandry, composting and spreading, sheep dog training, gardening, and building and repairing simple structures and equipment with simple tools. Work gives way to semi-vacation when the grass season ends.
Why Holism
Holism is a view of the world, and a way of managing our existence in it, that is gradually being forced on us by the increasing damage over-specialized applied science is doing to the biological systems that sustain us. That we farm in a way that does not simply maximize production or short run profit, but also looks to the good health of the ecosystem that is the farm’s resource base, is, or should be, part of organic orthodoxy. My tendency to see the world in terms of complex wholes whose health ultimately affects the success or failure of what we do, may come in part from formal education in ecology and anthropology, disciplines that are more holistic than most. But even before that the generalist path - learning a little about a lot of things and trying to make the all-important connections - seemed more appealing than learning more and more about less and less - the path of specialization. More recently training in Holistic Resource Management has helped to sharpen our awareness of the wholes we need to take into consideration in daily decision-making on the farm. The soil population and its ecosystem, the sheep as whole organism, not just milk factory, the farm family, the neighboring community and its economy, and the larger society and the global economy, are obvious examples of the wholes we must work within, but often neglect, in agricultural decision-making.
How some of our farm practices mentioned earlier reflect holistic perspective may not be obvious. Organic farmers value hedgerows for their multiple functions: shade, unique eco-niche with the forage and other biodiversity complements of its edge effect, windbreak, spraydrift stopper, esthetic boundary. In the same way our rationale for milking sheep, a rather low output dairy animal, depends on the way their multiple functions (soil builder, efficient forage harvester, brush hog, producer of meat, milk, wool, and skins) enhance the farm ecosystem and economy. Similarly the decision to breed dairy animals for low input rather than high output, makes sense when the multiple impacts on the farm are considered: low feed and vet bills, no need for soil-depleting tillage and its expensive equipment, and more options as to the kinds of soils and terrain that can be successfully farmed. This appreciation of multiple impacts depends on looking at farming decisions in the larger context of the whole systems we are operating in. We need to strive to see the kinship that exists among all things, however mysterious the linkage.
The kind of multidimensional thinking holism represents can be as simple as putting sheep and apple trees together and trying to manage the whole for the benefit of both. After several years of pasturing our once-abandoned orchard is again free of briar, thorn and other brush, and is starting to look like fine green parkland, but I believe most of the potential in the relationship is yet to be obtained, or even understood. Another example is the live legume tree fence post, which we were shown in Cuba. We have begun to plant root sprout cuttings from the small stand of native black locusts on the farm; dare we dream of fence posts guaranteed for life that also produce soil nitrogen, legume browse, and shade? The Cuban organic farming revolution also showed us the synergistic potential of rows of legume trees carefully planned to integrate with intensive hay/pasture systems: ideas for future projects on our farm, to build toward full use of its biodiversity capacity.
The base soils on our hills are probably as poor as any in the state outside the Adirondacks, and previous farming had left the topsoil so badly mined that whenever subsoil was brought up by accident and mixed in, plants grew better. Under these conditions, the twelve years of rebuilding we have attempted with sheep, intensive rotational grazing, and composting can only be a bare beginning on a long road. Yet the results so far are surprising and gratifying. The first field to undergo renovation once produced only 80 bales of first cutting hay; today that field gives 250 bales on the first cutting. Yields still may not match conventionally grown alfalfa/ timothy on neighboring farms that are plowed for corn every two or three years as the alfalfa disappears, but quality is superior. Along with trefoil and Puna chicory obtained by overseeding, a permanent and very palatable pasture salad and several higher yielding hay species have appeared on their own in response to grazing management and soil improvement. As far as we can tell this diversity is permanent and will never require tillage. Probably the significant improvements in forage quality we have obtained (at very low cost) are as much responsible for our steadily increasing milk yields as all our attempts at genetic selection.
Our cheese-making, like the soil-building, we see as a work in progress, taking European recipes and ideas, adapting them to North American conditions, and creating something a little different in the process. We enjoy being part of a growing group of cheese-makers in this country who are introducing European notions of quality to consumers who have long been content with the green, unripened cheeses that are standard in American supermarkets. Of these, probably the most lacking in character is the one our society seems to take the most pride in, calling it American Cheese. Perhaps if the colonists whose puritanism was for several centuries a dominant, defining element in our culture, had not been so quick to jettison the good along with the decadent in their ancestral European culture, we would be better able as a society, to recognize quality when we see it. Most of our educational effort occurs at the farmers market or over the phone, and is bearing fruit as our cheese sales continue to increase. All in all, running an organic sheep dairy provides us, if not a sumptuous living, much of the satisfaction and challenge of the good life.