This product is sprayed on in liquid form and doesn’t have the leaching of the commonly applied nitrogen or the detrimental affect to the living micro-organisms or earthworms.

We are also reading a lot of what Vaughan Jones has to say on his website www.grazinginfo.com where he advocates applying lime and enhancing soil quality rather than thumping the pasture with elements to get the perfect soil test, which doesn’t always mean good things for the soil and pasture health.

Like many farmers, we just aren’t seeing the growth that we used to and are now pondering the thought “Is the quick, chemically enhanced fertilisers really best for the worm population, soil health and pasture growth and quality?”

What we are constantly becoming aware of is that it can’t be. We have high levels of Phosphate on our block which we have owned for decades, and worm population is very low, yet the 74 acres we purchased three seasons ago doesn’t have the phosphate level as the farmer who owned it and ran it by old school principles always used lime and when digging a hole on that block, the soil is alive with worms.

We haven’t applied phosphate for years now on either block and won’t be if we can help it.

People around our area always said that the newer block mentioned was a wet farm with its peat, surrounding drains, high water table and so forth. However, in paddocks which we have managed to clear the drains adequately, they are free-draining and have healthy, lush pasture growth.

With that said, we have a few new natural products we will be trialling and I will let you know how they stand up.

We are well over half way through calving and I haven’t lost feeling in my fingers in the mornings at all this winter, it has been quite mild and tolerable. A few years back, we always had a bucket of warm water at the end of the milking pit to thaw our hands in every so often but it hasn’t made an appearance this season. Apart from being quite wet, the winter temperatures in our part of the country certainly haven’t shown the temperature drop we are used to.

Now that I’ve said that, we are more than likely to have six frosty mornings in a row to teach me to shut my big mouth.

The next big expense is the effluent holding pond with a weeping wall. Fonterra is holding a local meeting in a few weeks so that should shed more light on what we are in for there.