Farmer Focus: After drought California gets set for winter

As the hot summer days fade away and the fall weather blows in, we are increasingly thinking of preparing for winter.

We have faced a horrible four-year drought in California, and this year they are predicting an “El Nino”, or the worst winter in decades.

See also: Meet our new Farmer Focus writer Jessica McIsaac

For our family these days of fall mean we need to buckle down and get prepared.

On the dairy side of our farm we are busy moving manure. First we pump liquid and haul it to our closest fields. Next, we remove all solids from the pits and scrape our corrals for more dry manure and it is all mixed on our manure pad.

Once manure is dry enough, roughly 40% moisture or less, it is processed through a manure screener. This is our first year using a screener.

We remove rocks and sticks so the manure applied to our fields is much cleaner. Manure is then moved to one of four ranches, off site to be spread on fields.

We use all the manure that we have to fertilise our fields. It is hauled off site by a contract company.

I am also calculating our acreage and getting ready to place an order for seed. We will use roughly 20t of rye grass, clover, vetch and oats to seed 700 acres.

We use rye grass in our pastures and add clover if it is a milk cow pasture. A blend of vetch, oats and rye is used to seed silage fields at a much heavier rate. Because we use so much seed this is a tough job to make sure we don’t overspend.

We have three flocks of pasture hens on our farm that need winter preparation as well.

This means moving the mobile houses to high, packed ground with solid driving access.

We are planning to put a base of almond shells around the houses this year to help with the extra rain we are expecting.

I am hoping the almond shells will keep hens cleaner and improve egg cleanliness through a tough winter.

Manure run off, winter planting and product quality can be an issue, which is why we are making sure we enter winter prepared.

Jessica McIsaac milks 350 pedigree Holsteins in Petaluma, California, with her husband Neil. They sell organic milk and also have 6,000 organic laying hens