Organic Hay Production in the North?

 

Hey Folks:

I'm trying to find anything I can about growing grass hay with organic
methods in the far north. If any of you stumble across something, please
holler. Our fertilizer prices went from $400/ton to $1060/ton in one
year. We don't have the dough. Our wages didn't go up any. We need 15
ton.

We can't use fishmeal on a perennial crop. We'd draw every grizzly bear
in the neighborhood. Our neighbor who composts dead fishes and peat
draws so many bears that he's become a roadside attraction. He's
chumimng the bears into our neighborhood, and we're not really happy
about it.

Is anyone in Canada doing organic grass hay???

   Thanks,

   Jan in Alaska
   beef cattle rancher
   59N, 151W.

 

snowshoe@xyz.net says...


My wife suggested contacting:

Laura Telford the director of Canadian Organic Growers office@cog.ca

The Rodale Institute

Mother Earth News.

COG will probably be your best bet to network into people who are
already doing it. With any luck, you'll find someone nearer your
latitude.

If there's an equivalent organic growers association where you are (and
you may have already tried and found them lacking in useful info.)
that's the place to ask your question too.

...and I don't know about anyone else, but my wife and I will be very
interested in how you do with this. --It never occurred to me that
people put fertilizer on hay. (...second generation city kid, me. My
granparents were farm kids who moved to the city.)