LAND TREATMENT PLANNING SERVICES FOR FARMERS

I set out on a cool, crisp morning with grey clouds threatening rain. I didn’t mind getting a little wet because I knew that this day was going to be an enjoyable day observing some great conservation farming. Besides, walking fields is an improvement over sitting in front of a computer.

      On this particular morning, I was walking the fields of the North Williston Cattle Company. This dairy operation is owned and operated by brothers Lorenzo and Onan Whitcomb, who recently received the Winooski District’s Conservation Farm of the Year award due to their above average conservation practices.

      I knew that I was going to be covering and observing about 630 acres of land, most of which borders the Winooski River; therefore, it would be important to make observations in regards to water quality. Walking along these fields however, I knew I didn’t have much to worry about because the Whitcombs have already installed harvestable buffers of perennial vegetation, in this case alfalfa, along the river. Having adequate buffers along all surface waters is an important thing that I look for when I visit a farm. The buffers must be 25 feet wide in order to meet the State’s Medium Farm Operation (MFO) regulations. An MFO is a dairy farm that has between 200 and 700 mature cows. The Whitcombs dairy herd consists of 277 milking cows.

       Another part of the Land Treatment Plan is to develop a rotation or management practice that reduces the amount of erosion of a particular field under the tolerable soil loss level (T). While I walked along the fields, looking lost and disoriented, I gathered the different slopes and slope lengths needed to calculate the soil loss for each field. The erosion calculations require measuring the slopes in percentages with my trusty, hand-held instrument called a clinometer. Fortunately, the landscape along the Winooski River is fairly flat, which made my job easy, considering in the past I had measured many hilly farms that required recording many slopes that then had to be averaged to get one value for that field.

      Another thing I looked for while wandering aimlessly through the Whitcombs field, was the evidence of erosion from surface water runoff. Rain water, flooding, and snow melt, along with the type of crop planted, the direction the crop was planted, the soil type, and the amount of cover on the land all play an integral role in determining how much or how little the land is eroding. While out on a field visit, I always observe if the field is planted with corn, tilled, or in sod (grass). Water can cut channels through a field which will take soil away. A farmer’s soil is important in growing his/her crops; we do not want to lose one of the farm’s most valuable resources. The other thing that farmers, as well as government agencies, do not want to lose are the nutrients in soil, especially phosphorous.

      On a lighter note and probably the most enjoyable part of my day was observing all the wildlife. Most of the wildlife I saw, believe it or not, was in the town of Essex on the Whitcombs old home farm. The fields there are big and, like the rest of their land, lay nestled against the Winooski River. I was walking along one of the small streams leading to the river when I scared up maybe a dozen ducks. I thought this was great and enjoyed watching them fly away from me. I continued to walk down the field and scared up another dozen. Well, this continued throughout the whole length of the small stream, and I began to wonder if this was a never-ending flock of ducks.

      Then on my last field to record slopes (by this time it started raining harder and I was getting a little damp), I walked up a small knoll and saw three deer. One was lying down and the other two were grazing. I walked a little closer and noticed that there were more behind those deer. By then I didn’t care how wet I was getting. By the way, I couldn’t tell if any of them had antlers, they were pretty far off. In total I counted eight white-tailed deer in that field. My day was complete. I knew after that, heading back to the office wouldn’t seem bad.

      A long day in the field is only one step of a Land Treatment Plan. The complete plan will have all the assessments, rotations, maps, field inventory, soils information, and conservation plan. Hopefully the Whitcombs will find it useful because they are already on their way to having a Nutrient Management Plan by getting the Land Treatment Plan out of the way. I highly recommend getting a Land Treatment Plan if you are a Medium Farm Operation, Large Farm Operation, or even a farm with less than 200 cows. My services are available for free to help any farmers that want to reduce soil loss and help protect Vermont’s waters. Besides, don’t you want to laugh at me when I’m wandering around your fields looking lost?