This is the summer of measurement at Nelson Grass Farm

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure” Peter Drucker

This is the summer of measurement at Nelson Grass Farm.  Attending conferences this winter sparked thoughts and ideas, making us realize that some areas we want to improve require more measurement.  For us this will manifest itself in several different ways measurement, recording, and analysis. 

New areas of measurement we are going to undertake this summer starts in the brooder.  We are going to take different measurements of temperature and air quality.  This will allow us to better correlate the conditions in the brooder to the quality of the chick.  I have come to understand that the most of the success of a batch of chickens is determined in the brooder. We have noticed that as we have gotten better at brooding chickens the quality of the chickens has improved. With different handheld monitors I will track carbon dioxide, ammonia, temperature, humidity, and wind velocity in different areas of the brooder.  Beyond monitoring chick health, we are also turning our attention to soil health.  Next, we will expand our measurements to the pastures.

As I have learned more about how different farms are using new types of soil test to better understand what is going on.  We are going to use soil test similar to a Haney test.  The Haney test uses unique soil extracts in the lab to determine what quantity of soil nutrients are available to soil microbes.  This test also evaluates soil health indicators such as soil respiration (Solvita CO2 burst test), water-soluble organic carbon and organic nitrogen and their ratio.  These results indicate the amount of food that is readily available to soil microbes and is sensitive to measuring root exudates and decomposed organic material.  These numbers should be used as a comparison over time to determine progress in improving soil health. These tests used in conjunction with, a penetrometer to test for the level of soil compaction and water infiltration testing, will give me a good baseline of the soil and microbe health.  And will allow us to see how our management practices improve the soil over time. 

We are going to implement the “wall of clipboard” system that we first saw at our visit at Alexandre Kids Eggs in Cresent City, California.  While clipboards seem quite antiquated compared to the supercomputer that fits in your pocket these days, there is some benefit to a visual reminder hanging there telling you to actually do the recording.  It will also give you actual tactical feedback about some of the things you need to measure and then you would rely less on your intuition about how things are going or waiting until its too late to be able to make change.

Measuring and recording are valuable only if we analyze the data and let it guide our decisions.  The trouble we have found is that its much easier to keep yourself occupied with other work and not do the less exciting office work.  The fact is that not all jobs are fun or easy but they need to be done and we have to hold ourselves accountable and get the analysis job done.  We need that information to be able to meet our goals and produce the best nutrient dense food we can while improving the land it is done on.