Some Seed With Your Tea?

Chores are done.  I need to get on the road.  I am stalling though.  My mom has requested my presence for caulking and squirting of foam insulation from a can.  I will drive for 45 minutes to do a 45 minute job, then drive 45 minutes to get back home.  I will wait a bit, before I leave, then I will stop at the Alco store in Leon on the way down and buy the bluegrass seed that I have been coveting.  It is my farm purchase for the month.  I am already feeling giddy with anticipation.  I am already feeling the guilt over the expenditure.

I have been pouring over how far I can make a five pound bag go.  The seed needs to start grass in the two pastures behind the house.  The middle pasture and the back wooded pasture.  On top of that, I should get some out on the yard.  On the break of the hill in front of the house.  If I were exceedingly decadent, I would buy two bags.  Fourteen dollars per bag.  Each bag is five pounds.  Delicious temptation.

I will also soon be feeding the soil.  I looked into the barrel of the manure tea this morning.  I had been kicking myself for not getting it out on the hay field already, but something interesting has happened.  The tea has evolved.  At the beginning, when I constructed my set up, there didn't seem to be much change.  Day one didn't even give me much as far as color change, so I decided that I would put more holes in the bucket holding the manure.  Second day was enough color change that I could easily make out the water line through the white vinyl barrel.  Day three I had something that was definitely "tea" looking.  I pulled out the manure bucket after two weeks.  The tea was very dark brown and that was when I started to tell myself that I needed to start getting it out on the soil.  I kicked around different ideas.  None of them seemed good.  How I wished I had some basic equipment!

The other day I noticed that the tea had a green cast to it.  I assumed it was just a tint from the grass that the horses had eaten and didn't think much more about it.... other then, I really need to get the manure tea out on the hayfield.  But today.... today I looked again.  Inside the barrel is GREEN!  It is a bubbling morass.  IT'S ALIVE!!  I kind of feel like Dr. Frankenstein.  Now it really is time to get the tea on the soil.  First I will get the molasses stirred in to feed and accelerate those yeasty cultures.  They will become the mycorrizae  (which I can't spell) that will allow plants to take up nutrients from the soil.  Without it even nitrogen fixing plants can't fix nitrogen.  I will get it out there even if I have to just carry it out by the bucket full.

That will be my task tomorrow.  Bringing life back to the little farm.  Hopefully, after that, I will lay out my little barn, too.  Where there is life, there's hope.  Where there is manure tea, there's life.

Louie