[newbeatfarm]

I went to a info session on the Cornell Soil Health test you speak of a few years ago. It seems like a good test to periodiaclly pair with a soil test to get a better idea of what nutrients are actually avaialbe to your crops in the field and how they respond to them. May times soil test just give you data on the amount of certain nutirents in the soil and not the amount of these nutrients that are actually available to the plants. I might be most apt to take one of these test once the soil had warmed up late spring when the microbial life in the soil would be more active. As far as standard soil tests, I am not familiar with the soil testing company Brookside you referred to Erika, but would suggest Lancaster Agriculture Products http://www.lancasterag.com/Testing.html. Their analysis gives you information on what is actually available to your plants. Along with that, their prices on soil amendments are terrific and they will make custom blends for you. I ship pallets all the way from them up to Maine and it is still more affordable than my local supplier who does notmake custom blends. Great to hear all of this discussion on soil health. -Adrienne

[newbeatfarm]

Wow! Thanks for all the ideas and information. Still pondering myself if this job will be best done with our horses or if we should hire it out to a local farmer with a tractor. Ultimately a tractor with a couple of deep subsoiler shanks might be the only thing to help get deep in the ground in these fields that have been so long compacted by larger tractor machinery. It would be a one time job and then we would rely on cover cropping with crops like mammoth red clover, forage radish etc. which have deep tap roots for further work in the soil but like Erika said:
“If one is dealing with soil that has been compacted for years due to growing conventional corn, sub-soiling can be a quick way to fracture the hardpan”
We don’t have years to break up this hard pan by covercropping alone, using a subsoiler really makes the most sense for our system. I do think it will be worth building a single shank sub soiler/yoemans plow to use to rejuvinate pastures and help manage water flow in certain areas on the farm which also have a long history of being hayed with heavy machinery.
Thanks for all the useful advise and insite everyone. -Adrienne

[newbeatfarm]

Hi Donn and everyone,
I came accross this thread while looking to find some information on HD subsoilers or chisel plows. I know this is an old tread but was curious if you did in fact end up building a subsoiler out of an old truck plow like you said you might Donn, and if so how it went.
Also thought I’d take the chance to introduce myself since this is the first post I have replied to, even though I have been enjoying reading these forums for a while. My partner Ken and I (Adrienne) have a horse powered vegetable opperation in Knox, Maine. We grow about 4 acres of mixed organic produce and currently have a couple of belgain mares and a percheron gelding who do any field work that we don’t do by hand. We’ve been working horses for about four years now, so are still pretty new at it and think the information on this site is super helpful and inspiring. We are on a relativly new piece of land, great soil but some of the ground had been in corn silage for at least 30 years before we got here. These old corn fields need a lot of work to bring them back to “living soils” again and we feel like getting in there with a subsoiler or yoemans plow would be hugely beneficial. Even with the dry spring we have had thus far in Maine we still have standing water in these fields.
We would love some advise on fashioning one of these subsoilers or a heads up if you see one for sale anywhere. We figure with our three horses one shank will be all they can handle easily. Hoping to find one of the old John Deer models if possible.

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