"Gordon Couger" wrote in message
news:3edbddd2_3@newsfeed...

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

Our water is so hard it is barley fit for live stock on some places. A
mile
from my home place you can't drink it because of the magnesium
content.
It
is an excellent laxative.

Interestingly enough I suspect most cattle in the UK drink mains water,
the
same as the rest of the population. The environmentalists are not keen
on
cattle having access to rivers and the water authorities aren't either.

This is just becoming a concern in the US. I proably pays in the long run
in
paristite control as well as stream bed protection. In the west it is not
the problem it is in high rain fall areas because of the low stocking
rates.


the main wet land parasite problem we have is liver fluke, and on this
particular farm I don't normally treat for it, just waiting until the vet
tells us it is a very bad year. Ticks can be a problem on some fell farms,
these have bracken, heather and high land.

Of coures you well water situation is different than ours. The ground and
everyting under it belongs to the land owner in the US and in the UK the
owner only has surface rights. The least productive farm we have pays well
becaues for leases for oil and gas rights for 3 to 5 year periods while
they
try to get up a deal to drill a well. It will be intersting if they ever
around to drilling a well but 60 bucks an acre every 3 years is better
than
a shap stick in the eye.

mineral rights are held separate to other rights. Remember under English law
you don't really own land, you own a collection of rights to it, right to
farm it, right of access, etc. The mineral rights tended to be kept by the
lords of the manor when the other manorial rights were bought out in the
late 1920s early 1930s.
So the Duke of Buccleugh owns the minerals under here. He got them because
the farm was on Abbey land which Henry VIII made a royal manor with the
dissolution of the monasteries. After the civil war and the restoration a
Grateful Charles II gave the manor of plain Furness to General Monk who had
successfully engineered his return.
General Monk married into the Montagues who in turn married into the
Buccleughs who are the current lords of the Manor. My Grandfather bought out
the manorial rights other than mineral rights which they wouldn't sell, for
about £30 (we still have the receipt somewhere on file) as up until then we
had paid 18 shillings a year rent (a rent which had not changed since 1400
that we know of.


The soil on my home place can be pasture rain or shine on grass or
wheat
pasture. If you provide enough nitrogen the grazing over the years has
no
effect on the yield. Some years it hurts it a little some year is help
it
a
little and every once in while it make a lot of difference. Usually
the
difference is positive because it prevents freeze damage to the
jointing
wheat.

Up in the northern part of the county getting close to the Wichita
mountains
in more conventional soils the soils are more varied. Gong form soil
that
won't make a puddle if you up end a 5 gallon bucket full of water on
it
to
gumbo in 20 feet.


three of four miles north of me they have limestone pavement sticking
through the soil, a couple of miles the other way they have pretty well
bottomless peat on running sand. Ours has been a busy area :-))

Back in the 1840s a lot of this land would grow cereals, from the old
tithe
maps anywhere from a third to a half of this farm would be grain. With
the
coming of the railway and the opening up of the USA they went over to
more
dairy cows, shipping milk by train into the big cities.

Milk is a lot higher value product than grain. One of Oklahoma's problems
is
wheat is one of our main products and at today price it completive with
propane for heating to burn wheat in a wood pellet stove much of the time.

I designed a heating system to use cotton gin trash to make heat a house.
I
could get it for 12 dollars a truck load any time but where I was going to
build I could get if free by taking it in wet weather. I was 2 miles from
the gin and had a place they couldn't get stuck. I was going to use a
forced
siphon to precool and preheat outside air. I had 62 degree f at 20 feet.


there has been some discussion on uba about use of wheat etc as fuel for
burning and one of the guys has done some work on it (he does work in timber
as well) so there is quite a lot of interest over here in burning wheat.

Jim Webster