THE BENEFITS OF HEALTHY SOIL: FLOOD CONTROL AND DROUGHT RESISTANCE
Good soil reduces irrigation costs and haying costs for Foxhollow Farm of Crestwood, Kentucky.
A conversation with Maggie Keith, fourth generation Steward of Foxhollow Farm.
HART HAGAN: Healthy, carbon rich soils are positive in every way, in terms of nutrition, flood control and climate. I've seen reports that say for every 1% increase in soil carbon, the soil can hold more than 20,000 gallons of additional water per acre. What is the soil like at Foxhollow Farm, and how has it improved over the years?
MAGGIE KEITH: We have great soil. We had great soil before. That's why it was great cropland, too. We have a ton of underwater natural springs and so our soil is naturally loamy and loose. It's not clay like at all. We just went through a drought. We have such deep roots and so many pathways in our soil where water can go that while the drought was hard, it didn't destroy us.
We did not have to irrigate. We did not have to feed hay, which some people with grass-fed animals had to do during this latest drought. Our soil is incredibly rich, incredibly diverse, with lots of humus. I attribute that to some of our biodynamic preparations and just being in Kentucky, where we are, there are great grass seed banks in our soil. So we have great grasses for pasture animals.
HART HAGAN: When you have good soil, there's so much of what I call plant available water. The soil is like a sponge that soaks up the water and keeps it for a long time even through the worst droughts.
MAGGIE KEITH: That's what we're working towards.
How did Foxhollow Farm get good soil? Maybe by attending to Gabe Brown’s five principles of soil health:
1. Avoid disturbance due to tillage, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
2. Always keep living roots in the ground.
3. Keep the ground covered with plants and/or organic matter.
4. Build diversity, in your ecosystems, above ground and below ground.
5. Integrate animals.
When we practice these principles, we build soil health year after year. Not everyone can integrate animals like Gabe Brown or Foxhollow Farm. But we can all nurture healthy soils by avoiding disturbance, keeping living roots in the ground, keeping the ground covered and building diversity.
If we do this, we will have soil that is capable of delivering maximum nutrition to the plants, making them resilient to disease and drought and making our soil like a sponge that soaks up rainwater and holds onto it during dry spells.