So a little over a month ago, we cleaned out a good part of our farm, then planted rye, so that it would grow up and protect our soil from water and wind erosion, add organic matter to the soil, and absorb nitrogen and other nutrients to stop them from leaching: But actually, the picture is from just a week ago. After planting, we didn't get any rain for like a month, and now it's too late to grow much. So we have a big area of our farm that was going to be all green and protected, and now its just bare.
We're thinking about our cover crops and rotation system, and how we can prepare for and be resilient against unexpected weather like occurred with this cover crop. We'd like to be able to have a system that can deal with such things, but it is difficult to put such a system into place. Anyway, next Friday, November 19, we'll be talking about cover crops and diversity and resilience and such as part of a more general discussion about agroecology with Matt Liebman, a proffessor of agronomy at Iowa State. (see post below this one)