Changing our DIRT into SOIL on the farm without chemicals!

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm it's a beautiful day here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and it's a little bit on the cloudy side so today we're gonna be talking a little bit about using old hay you can see grass growing on the top of this hay bale that's important so come along today we're going to talk about using old hay to build your land and I kind of led into this video if you look out on this hillside up here you'll see a lot of hay bales rolled out we're gonna talk a little bit about it we're going to talk about what I've done and we're going to show you the results that I did from a couple years back so come along today is we teach you a little bit about scoring a good deal on some old hay and using it to build your soil on your farm all right [Music] all right guys this is your first time to the Stoney Ridge farm welcome to the farm welcome to the YouTube channel please pound that like button jump in here and subscribe if you want to learn if you want to enjoy the farm life with me if you just enjoy seeing pretty scenery jump in here subscribe to the channel and pound the like button so what we have behind us right here is hey old hey what I did I went on Facebook marketplace and Craigslist and went all over and I went looking for inexpensive hey that someone would deliver right here to our farm so we're able to get round bales of hay and this is some spring cut some fall cut hay so it's got grass seed in it and it's got carbon in it and it's got feed in it so we have nine cows over here in this pasture and we're rolling the hay out for the cows to eat I'm letting the hay sit up on the top of the hill until it's time for the cows to go up there and they'll eat it and they'll but it and the next thing you know the hay rolls down the hill what we're talking about today is building soil so the whole goal with this spreading manure green manure as in hay rolling hay out or just mowing our land and feeding that back to the land and stimulating that grass growth so there's a whole lot of thought that needs to go into growing new pastures I guess new pastures new longness can apply to a place that's a third of an acre or it can apply to a place that's a thousand acres you're always going to have problem spots and the best thing to do is to help your soil grow and build soil get those earthworms back and we're using carbonaceous material like hay and manure to grow our grass so come along we're going to go up on the top of the hill here we're going to talk a little bit about the bare areas and we're going to show you some technology so we're going to show you the technology we're using on the computer that satellite maps out the problem spots on our farm it's really really cool I think you'll enjoy that part and then we're gonna go over and I'll show you where we rolled out hay about two years ago and you can just see green stripes just a green stripe down through the pasture and slowly that green stripe will go away and it'll work its way into the land but this is the way this is how you build your soils instead of buying a bag of chemical fertilizer and dumping it on the land watching it just go away we're putting something here that's permanent we're putting carbon back in the soil let's go up top so we're looking at one hundred and fifty dollars worth of hay bales on a piece of land that is scrubby so this is the worst spot currently on the farm and it's wash and you can see there is a little gully right there and up here by this hay bale it's just red dirt what we're doing again is mapping this out on line seeing the problem areas and rolling out carbon on here now we set these hay bales out in the worst possible places to slow water down and to help water absorb into the land so what the entire goal of building carbonaceous material on your soil is is to retain moisture so that you don't get that gullies gullies that wash out this hay bale is positioned where it is for a reason the cows will come over here they'll start eating it they'll but it it'll roll right down through that gully fill it in slow the water down and no more gully that's what it's all about controlling erosion no more gully and building this dirt into soil so do you need livestock to do this no you don't need livestock to do this if you're trying to build your soil and build your land and build your yard you can still get hay or straw or whatever I like hey you know why I like hey this was cut out of a pasture it probably used to be a pasture it's loaded with grass seed it's local it's loaded with local grass seed it might have a little bit of weed seed in it but that's okay there may be some weeds that come up that's okay we're trying to build carbonaceous material on the soil and that is a big bag of fertilizer a big bag of manure and a big bag of grass seed so that's what it's all about guys let's go over and we'll take a look at the computer setup and we'll show you guys the aerial shot here I'm going to fly the drone over and get you some cool footage there and then we're going to go right over the hill here and I'll show you where we rolled out some other hay all right guys so we've got some pretty cool stuff going on right here this is our farm right here so starting right here you can see the little mouse right there and this is the field that we're looking at and we're looking at this area so we're going to our big field over here and this is e OS crop monitoring you can check it out at iOS comm and I'll post a link down the video description for you so if you see this is our big field and here's our problem area you're getting ready to see the colors change so red means it doesn't have a lot of foliage so see right here that's our problem area we also have a problem area right there this is the pond right here so there's obviously no foliage right there this is kind of the fence line or the line of the woods that was right here and you can see there's still some sparse areas and this is an area we'll be working up very soon in the video we've got a cedar come in to work that up and we're going to be drilling down seed there and this is an area we're also going to be working up so you can see the luscious green spots and we'll get a good aerial view of this but I'm going to show you again this is iOS crop monitoring and you can see this is April 18th well if we go back to say December 30th you're gonna see a lot of red because the foliage isn't growing quite as much okay so check this out that time of year the foliage isn't growing that much but you can see what gets lighter and lighter so we'll go to like March 29th right here really cool technology guys I've never seen anything like this until I got online and found iOS crop monitoring so you can see we're starting to get some greens some growth and you can go back year after year and check your crops and check so we're growing pasture here so our crop is pasture or hay and you can see how good it looks right there looks very good now down here down below you can see the root zone moisture and the surface moisture you can see all this information on these charts right here it's really really cool we can go down and we can also select temperature precipitation cold stress so this is really cool the precipitation you can see when we've had huge rainstorms right there boom look at that precipitation 9.6 inches that day unbelievable so you can go back and see when you have those really heavy rainstorms all through this chart right here so much information that you can really look at you can the heat stress like july-august there's just so much right here and then also we had a little heat stress and in March right here it looks like eighty six point seven yeah we got almost a ninety degrees that day so you can see that too so much information in here that you can look at you can select what crop you've planted you can look back year after year day after day and see what's going on you get a weather report of today and it's just a really cool little piece of information that you can use now will get the drone and will fly over this area and then we're going to kind of zip across the field and this is a spot where I rolled out hay and we'll kind of look over here at this area in this area now you can see there's the hay bales at the bottom of the screen there cows up here munching away and you can see the red dirt so if you don't have a drone you don't want to spend 1,200 bucks for a drone you can check out the EOS crop monitoring and you can find the trouble spots in your field without flying over with the drone the drones are really really handy piece of equipment for the farm especially if we're looking for a cow or something like that so if you're cruising over the field we're gonna go right over the center area and you can see where there's some old terraces were in the field directly at the top of the screen and you can see some problem areas right there to the right center of the screen you can also see right in the middle of the screen where the fence line is there's a stretch of green right through there and that's where we're gonna go next we'll show you that from the ground it looks a lot better from the ground than it does from the sky but you can also see some more problem areas that we have and you could see those on the EOS crop monitoring software also so we'll cruise on over here and to the right is an area that we just had cleared last year and we're gonna be seeding that pretty soon too I'm waiting on my cedar to get here so that we can get to drill and we'll drill down seed so please jump in subscribe the channel you're gonna have some fun here we'll teach you some awesome stuff on building pasture every bit of this green that you see was all bare land three years ago pretty cool well guys I hope you enjoyed that drone footage so we're over here I have an audience now I've got an audience full of awesome cows we're gonna be hanging out with the cows for a minute but if you look out through the field here you can see green specks green spots all over the place I hope you enjoyed that drone footage by the way and that little fly over and you can kind of see the area that we're talking about now so if you look you see green that's green there's like a green stripe going straight down through there it's not as green here and it's not as green well it's way green over there because the cows haven't been in there but this was a gully this was a mess and we rolled out hay on it and it started out just like up here let me show you the cows are really helping us restore our pasture land here and all this was pushed off this was all bare dirt three and a half years ago so this is what it looked like before and then I can still see some residual hay if you look straight out through there it's just beautiful luscious and green I tell you what building soil is something that I really pride myself in we want our earthworms back we want our microbes back we want to build our soil so that our animals build muscle so that we can enjoy life with our animals here on the farm and everything has a symbiotic relationship so guys thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge farm today I hope you enjoyed this little video I hope it gives you I guess a thought process that you need to have for building soil and for building your land this is the thought process bring carbon in put carbon down get these guys to put out that good but fertilizer and your pastures will grow and be awesome I cannot wait to move my cows over onto this section of pasture right here the grass is almost waist high it's going to be super duper cool guys thanks a lot found that like button jump in here subscribe the channel I just wanted to share a little tidbit of information with you and talk about a little technology we're using here on the farm all right see you next time bring-bring here in sweet that's way suppose Denise don't agree guys before we go you can learn a lot about your pastures by kicking over our cow pie just kick one over check this out open up the Christmas present look at that bagel fatty earthworm nice that's what we want guys that's what we're looking for right there cover that guy back up a myriad of cow pies out here awesome