[soilforwater] introduction

[Mary Tucker]

Erik Tucker from Ordway Co

My wife and I bought a small ranch 4 miles west of Ordway and lease another small ranch 1 mile north of Ordway Colo. Both places are degraded formerly irrigated farm ground growing lots of “weeds”. This soil tends to be very bacterial and not much of a fungal presents. With high stock density planned grazing  we have been able to start the change and see more grasses coming in and as the soil improves the grass will increase. Bare ground has started to decrease and other forbs are taking those places up, having  mostly Kochia, knapweed, Russian thistle and some bindweed we can use them all for grazing and get good value from them.  Also we are learning more about soils and working to learn more about what the different plants mean and what I could do to move to higher potential grasses.  Moving toward the use of compost and compost extracts to build soil health faster along side of better grazing.
Stockmanship and proper marketing are a great benefit to what we are doing here. Cattle are a great tool and we have in the past worked with sheep and goats and planning to have them back in the future. 
I am a soil health enthusiast and want help people who would like to become more aware of the great things for soil and livestock and how it might all work together. We are using Holistic management for making our decisions as it pertains to our goals and we keep on track.  Looking forward to working with others who would like to do more to get more soil health on there property’s. This area has some specific challenges and I have decided to take them all on. With Low rain fall 9 to 11 inches with some snow in the winter it can be very brittle at times, with poor soil structure not much can be planted with out an above average rain fall. Due in part to a very low microbial population, getting something to germinate is very difficult. We have done some cover cropping not very good results, have seen some benefit however just not that encouraging.  So we are looking deeper in to what could become the tipping point and that is the life in the soil and how can we do more to provide for them and to make more life.
My goal is to restore this ranch to perennial grassland and learn all I can in the process. 

Erik and MaryBeth Tucker
14060 rd G Ordway Co 81063
719-980-3745

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

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