Valley farmers gathered in Rockingham County on Friday for a demonstration of agricultural practices that build soil health and improve water quality. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[wind blowing, tractor running]
About 30 farmers and conservationists got together on Mike Phillips' farm outside Broadway for a "demonstration field day" presented by the Smith Creek Watershed Partnership. Phillips raises cattle, corn, and other crops on land that's been in his family for more than 130 years. It sits up against War Branch, one of the tributaries of Smith Creek that runs north along Massanutten Mountain. Phillips uses practices such as composting, cover crops, and rotational grazing that benefit his output and the health of the soil and water around his farm.
First, we loaded up into the back of a tractor-drawn wagon, and rode up to the compost piles, where that brown gold lay decomposing in long rows about four feet high.
MIKE PHILLILPS: You know, I used to always take the bedpack out of the barn and spread it right on the field, and I thought that was the best way. It's faster, I will say – it's a lot faster. But then when I started looking at putting it in the compost … and I'm seeing a whole lot of difference.
Phillips was joined by Richard Fitzgerald, a local agronomist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
RICHARD FITZGERALD: Composting is soil health above ground. When you try to put a lot of carbon material, like you see here behind us –
He gestured to a field of pale, yellow switchgrass.
FITZGERALD: You try to spread that out on the land, you get a lot of negative consequences with nutrient immobilization, not enough microbial activity. And if you bring it up here and put it in this compost pile, Bill, what happens at about 12 weeks? … This temperature went to 150 degrees pretty quickly. And that's really how you tell how things are moving along.
These field days aim to show farmers practices that are both good for their bottom line and the local watershed. For example, a farm that reduces its fertilizer dependence because it has good compost to boost crops. The “Bill” whom Fitzgerald was referring to there is Bill Patterson, a grazing specialist who's retired from the NRCS. He said composting doesn't have to be an exact science. Just mix up and pile the resources you have, and give it time.
BILL PATTERSON: Every farm that I know of, and I've been on virtually all the farms in the Shenandoah Valley, has waste hay, old piles of chips that the Department of Highway dumped in there, trees that they cut down that rotted over in the woods, or something – something that will rot, and virtually everybody, since we're in the livestock part of Virginia, we've got livestock so that means we've got manure. … So we've got the two ingredients. You need carbon and you need nitrogen. And the other stuff will come.
The NRCS established the Smith Creek Watershed Partnership in 2010. Caitlin Worsham coordinates the project, which is housed under the Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley.
CAITLIN WORSHAM: It was a showcase watershed, and the USDA came up with that program to really show how, if you concentrate on a smaller watershed, how it can improve the overall goals for improving the Chesapeake Bay. And so that's why they're implementing best management practices like rotational grazing, cover crops, things like that, that do benefit the soil but it also helps with the water quality.
Friday's attendees also discussed methods of rotating cattle on pastures so they don't overgraze them. Kristen Ulmer, whose family has about 100 acres in Rockingham County where they raise cattle and hay, was interested in what other farmers feed during calving season.
KRISTEN ULMER: The potential to use stockpiled fescue has always been a question.
This is when a farmer grows a crop of fescue grass but keeps the cows off of it for a season, in effect stockpiling it right in the ground. Then they can fence off small pastures to rotate the cattle through, controlling how far down that section of grass gets eaten.
The partnership has funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for local farmers who want to try these practices – hopefully, to both their benefit and that of our streams and rivers all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. To learn more and get in touch, check out their website at smithcreekwatershed.com.
Editor's note, Mar. 27 — the article was updated to include the funding source for the agricultural projects.
