Introduction
I would assume that if someone were buying a farm to grow crops, it would be obvious to them to have a soil test done before considering buying any property. However, since we were buying a horse farm, this didn't occur to us. But now that we've owned this farm for a couple seasons, it becomes more obvious to me that the quality of the soil should be an important consideration for "livestock" farms too (and probably is for people who grew up on livestock farms).In retrospect, I can think of at least two good reasons for doing a soil analysis before purchasing a horse farm: grass quality, and for working with and on the soil.
Grass Quality
The quality of the grass on a livestock farm is quite an important consideration! I like to ironically refer to myself not as a horse farmer, but rather as a grass farmer! (However, with all the recent things going on with the legalization of grass, this joke doesn't usually have the meaning I would like it to have.) The reason is: I personally spend more time maintaining the grass and soil of the property, than I personally do directly taking care of the horses. (Which isn't to say the horses aren't very well taken care of by other people!) If the soil is properly taken care of and well maintained, the grass will be of a better quality, which will lead to happier, healthier horses.Getting a soil test done is quite easy and fairly cheap. But we stumbled into it backwards.
We had noticed that there were some (small) areas of our paddocks that wouldn't grow actual grass; the only thing that grew in some areas were weedy, crabby (albeit green) garbage plants that the horses wouldn't eat. Plus, we also noticed some buttercups growing here and there. As it turns out, the presence of certain plants gives a good indication of soil type! With the right knowledge (which I don't claim to posses) it should be possible to evaluate a soil's condition with just a visual inspection. Pretty though they are, the presence of buttercup is an indicator of acidic, poorly-draining soil.
When we discovered this, we decided to get some fertilizer to remedy the situation. If we had gone to our local, big-box, hardware-type store, we would have simply found the fertilizer isle, read a couple descriptions, then bought whatever sounded and costed the most favourable. However, we were lucky to have visited, instead, our local feed mill. Since he carried a couple different formulas, the first thing Steve asked was: "what blend would you like?". We had no idea, so he directed us to the local co-op. We visited the co-op, they asked the same question. We said we had no idea what we needed. So they gave us a little tool, a bag, and instructions on how to go about getting a good soil sample. Having obtained the sample, the co-op sent the soil out for analysis. If I remember correctly, I think it cost somewhere in the ballpark of $40. With the actual analysis in-hand of our soil, and having told them the rough size of the area we wanted to fertilize, the co-op then created a batch of fertilizer perfectly matched in formula and quantity for our exact soil's needs.
One of my biggest concerns with fertilizing, is getting the coverage (or density) right. More often than not, over-fertilizing can be more of a problem than under-fertilizing. Having the co-op give us the right formula and the right quantity meant that we were in a much better position to get the coverage right. For the first pass we simply made sure to under-guess the spreading rate. When we were done the first pass we noticed we were only about half-way through the quantity they had given us. Meaning all we had to do was repeat what we had just done and we could be reasonably sure of having got the coverage right.
As it turns out, it's highly unlikely our soil had been fertilized in a long time, if ever. Decades of being a horse farm caused the soil in all our paddocks to be very acidic, most likely as a result of all the urine. When the analysis of the soil and the recommended fertilizer formula came back from the lab, the people at the co-op had a good laugh. They had never seen such a bizarre formula; most likely because they usually deal with farmers who regularly fertilize their fields and whose soils are probably not so out-of-balance.
We've fertilized our paddocks once, and already we've seen results. There's no doubt we'll be doing a couple more rounds of analysis, formulation, and spreading again!
Working With And On The Soil
One frustrating thing that we very quickly discovered after working on the farm shortly after moving in, is the fact that so much of our soil is heavily clay-based, despite the fact that most of our neighbours have sandy soils. I think it's because we're in a bit of a hollow that our soils are predominantly, and very thickly, clay-based.Working a farm with a clay soil is just yucky.
Clay doesn't drain very well at all, so all surface water (rain run-off, melting snow) has to be directed by, and into, swells, drains, and ditches. That means you'd better make sure whatever tractor you buy has a good backhoe attachment! Otherwise you'll be paying someone an arm-and-a-leg to make your water courses. Plus, even well-made surface drainage has a tendency to "fill up" over time, so just because you might have good water flow now, doesn't mean those structures won't need maintenance every couple of years.
But to add insult to injury, trying to dig in clay-based soils is outright nasty! Unlike regular mud or a sandy soil, clay will stick to your shovel and bucket, making it all that much harder to do any digging. You'll scoop a full bucket of clay, lift it out of the hole, flip it over... and nothing comes out. All the clay you just dug is now stuck in your bucket! So for every bucket you dig, you'll have to spend 3 minutes trying to shake it out. At worse, you'll have to get off your tractor and try to dislodge each bucket-full by hand with a shovel! Also, once you have clay on the surface, every time you try to walk around, the clay will stick to your boots making them extra heavy! And wet clay can be almost as slippery as ice! The short of it is: working in clay is just downright greasy!
Having a lot of clay also means the grassy areas will stay muddy for a lot longer in the Spring, and after a heavy rain, than they should. So while everyone else is out riding in their grass fields come May, you'll be lucky to be riding on your grass by the end of June! It's a fact that all paddock gate areas are prone to being muddy, but on a clay-soiled farm the gate areas will be even muddier.
In an effort to off-set all this muddiness, we ended up trying out a product called Eco-Raster in some of our muddier paddocks and at some of our muddier gate areas. That's a topic for another post, but the purposes of this post, Eco-Raster isn't cheap. So it adds to the financial and maintenance costs of the farm.
Finally, the extra softness of the grassy areas means that getting around will be more problematic. Trying to drive a pick-up or tractor to someplace on the property to do some work will be more challenging. If the soil is too soft you'll get stuck, or at the very least you'll leave nasty tire tracks everywhere you go.
Redeeming Qualities
On the flip side, clay soils aren't entirely without benefits.A couple summers ago we had a lengthy drought where it didn't rain for nearly 2 months. While everyone else's paddocks were hard mud from one end to the other, we continued to have lush, green, grassy paddocks. Many farmers in our area had to resort to buying rounds for their fields in the middle of summer since all their grass was gone. We didn't.
Secondly, it is claimed that the frost doesn't penetrate anywhere near as deeply in soils that have a lot of clay. Meaning underground water lines are safer and don't have to be buried nearly as deep in clay soils as they do in, say, rocky or sandy soils.
In Conclusion
The point is: if you're looking at a couple farms to buy, a strong deciding factor might be to have soil samples done on each of them so you'll have a better idea of what you'll be getting yourself into, even if you're not just doing crop farming. Plus, at $40 a pop, the cost of a soil analysis is virtually nothing compared to the cost of the farm.It might change your idea of what tires to buy for your tractor. Or it might tell you to get a backhoe attachment. In any case: forewarned is forearmed!
