10.01.09

Soil Conservation

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:50 pm by Administrator

We, as organic farmers and ranchers, think, almost constantly of ways to improve the soil by planting late season crops such as; oats, crimson clover, rye, or Austrian Winter peas, to be plowed under in the early Spring. This allows for regeneration of the soil’s nutrients (much the same way that God regenerates his fields by freeze killing Summer grasses, then flattening them with the weight of heavy, wet, snows and strong winds, so that they will come in full contact with the soil to be eaten by micro-organisms and worms, returning and replenishing nutrition to the soil, by rotting and decomposing them back into the organic matter that made them.
I noticed this morning, it was cloudy and rather dark still by 7:40am. My family had left for school already; my wife to college, my kids to grade school and to high school. I also noticed that nearly every light in the house was still on; for the seasons are changing and the days are shortening to the point that it is no longer light enough to see in the early morning when they are getting around.
I was raised in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter, era. President Carter started a great movement to conserve energy. I remember the orange stickers that were issued to cover the school light switches, that read,

“Turn off the Lights when leaving the room”.

Shouldn’t we, as conservation wary farmers, be aware also, that we are becoming very slack in our conservation of energy?
I turn the lights off all over the house, almost every day. Sometimes I miss turning off the outside lights until I see them burning in the middle of the afternoon when I come back from the fields. I try to drill into my family’s conscience that we have an electric bill that is eating our lunch and popping the bag, but they don’t seem to really take heed that a penny saved by not wasting energy, can be spent on better things. I would wager that the pennies saved in a year could buy a new couch. The Bible says, “It’s the little foxes that spoil the grapes”. Little things like, ‘not turning off the lights’, will slowly, but surely take a toll on your families income. Living conservatively is good for the Planet, good for society, and good for our children. If we are not good stewards of the land and not good stewards of our households that are small things, then why should God trust us with the big things?
I think we are all good stewards in our hearts, but maybe we need to make our minds aware of it. If we think collectively to make a conscious effort to conserve, our Planet will be a better place because of it.

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