Taking Care of the Environment
As a dairyman and a farmer, it’s actually in our best interest to be caretakers of not only our cows, but the environment as well. It’s our job to be good stewards of the environment and we take pride in taking care of the environment around us. The above picture is one of our hay fields.
Many people do not recognize that taking care of the environment is in our best interest, but it actually is. If we are careless towards the environment, it’s not like we can just up and move our farm. We have to take care of the environment because it’s where our family lives.
Dairymen and farmers are often on the forefront of new technologies that can lessen the impact we have on the natural environment. One great example of how our dairy farm is cutting our impact is by using new farming technologies. Better tractor equipment has been developed to allow for more efficient plowing.
No-till Farming
No-till and strip-till technology allows us to lessen the amount of work to till or plow the soil. Before, the soil would be worked many times by tractors in order to break up the soil. Now we barely work the soil to plant our crops and it keeps our air cleaner.
No-till and strip-till farming allows the reduction of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, noting that plants store CO2 in the ground. Working the ground releases the CO2 into the atmosphere. Now that we have implemented no-till and strip-till into our farming practices, we are essentially cutting back on the amount of CO2 that is released into the atmosphere during farming. Then when we grow our crops, more CO2 is pulled into the ground. Our fields are in fact air purifiers!
By implementing this technology into our farming practices, we also cut back on our tractor and fuel usage. Using less fuel definitely helps cut our carbon footprint, and we are definitely using much less fuel on our dairy farm!
As a caretaker of the environment, implementing these new practices into our farm was a logical and easy decision. Using no-till and strip till farming practices on our farm has allowed us to cut back our overall footprint on the environment in order to make for a brighter future for future generations. And we are proud of this fact!
We recently cut our winter crop back in May, and just finished planting our corn in early June. The corn is now starting to come up. We will harvest the corn later this year.
Note the picture below, you can see the remaining roots and stubble from our crop that we harvested last month in May (the brown). Then you can see the corn coming up in the rows! You can see there has been very little plowing or tillage done. Only a small slot so the corn could be planted and take root.
