Countryboy, Thats a sound plan.

Soil testing is important. Spend more, and test the minerals as well as the big three. My really big wish is to run a subsoiler through the fields. The problem is that a subsoiler takes a lot of HP and going over 80+ acres making 1 or 2 2" runs at a time is a huge expenditure in time and diesel. Breaking up the hard pan though is a main component of soil improvement and so important if droughts are becoming the norm.

Mix one gal of raw milk to 17 gal of water. You can use a higher concentration but test results have shown 1:17 is the best use of the milk. I am also going to mix a microbial tea from my farm's soil and manure along with the milk and a few other things like molasses depending upon the results of the testing this year. I suspect I am going to need to do some liming as well. I have set up pig pastures over the worst thistle patches for this summer as well.

thanks all, no we don't have any dairy just alpaca, horses and chickens, we have been thinking about getting some cows though, i like the milk idea though sounds very natural and a healthy way to go instead of chemical fertilizers, do you do any before and after tests? let us know how it goes, also we've never really had an issues with droughts below the topsoil is mostly sandy/gravel loom, if anything i've got a excissive water problem with alot of what we call swamp grass growing, hopefuly some more correctly done ditching will help properly drain the feilds, the previous land owner just had ditches going every where, most were just trapping water. all our pasture is at the bottom of our "mountain" (not really a mountain only climbs about a 700ft in 1 km) so we get alot of year round run off, most is fed into ponds for storage but it still creates a problem in some areas. i spend 12hrs a day, 6 days a week, 8 months a year in a excavator so last year i bought a backhoe for my own use and have been able to fix alot of problem areas, just got lots more to do...