On the topic of utter permacultural coolness, while at Tooleys Trees in Truchas, Gordon Tooley showed me his Yeomans Plow. The Yeomans plow was initially developed in Australia, where they overgrazed semi-arid land to the point where it was pretty well trashed. Yes, it is a situation quite similar to what we have here in northern New Mexico. The Yeomans plow is used for keyline plowing. Without going on a dissertation, imagine the lines on a contour map. Now, imagine you have sloped land on your farm, and you plow as if you were following those countour lines. At any given point, the line plowed is perpendicular to slope, and this means that runoff generated by the slope runs right into these plowed lines and sinks into the earth. The blades on the Yeomans plow are designed to produce minimal disruption at the surface, and a great deal of soil disruption about eighteen inches subsurface, greatly increasing the amount of water that can be absorbed subsurface and making that water much more available to plant roots. A seed spreader is typically added to the plow, and distributes the seeds of native grasses, nitrogen fixers, native wildflowers, etc. The result is both massive improvement of the lands hydrology and an explosion of fertility, carbon sequestration and topsoil formation. The effect is further enhanced when combined with intensive rotational grazing. Gordon Tooley will keyline plow land for $130 an hour plus travel. If you have some significant acreage, this actually gets pretty cheap on a per-acre basis. This can be a godsend for our area, if only we can persuade farmers and ranchers to try something new!
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:06:26 +0000
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