It is all about the soil. I see it everywhere, Soil Workshops in Lincoln and featured in the Audubon magazine. A knowledgeable customer sent me an 18 minute film which is on Youtube. (Dead zones: how chemical pollution is suffocating the sea). It shows how tilling agricultural fields in Minnesota helps cause the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. Some seasons this area is the size of Massachusetts.

This really hit home when I participated in the Cornell Soil Health Program, attended by farmers from around the world. Cornell promotes no till and zone till solutions to minimize damage and improve the soil. Much of the farmland in the mid-west is used for animal feed. We grow corn for animals that should be eating grass and destroy the soil and the ocean at the same time. A pasture is a sustainable habitat that improves the soil and makes for happy cattle. Obviously, I’ve been ruminating on this for a while.

In an organic program, it is important to mow the grass as high as possible and leave the clippings. The only way to get deep roots is to provide the plant with plenty of leaf surface to capture sunlight and manufacture food through photosynthesis. If the spring cleanup has not been done and you would like us to go back, that’s not a problem.