"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.

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.


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.

Gordon