Taking a frolic in a pasture at
Wolf Creek Farm.
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Hay Field
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Grazing
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Scrub Land
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Scenting the Breeze
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Wolf Creek and Wetlands
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Wolf Creek
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Overview:
- Wolf Creek Farm is a
total of 35 acres. 17
acres are upland and 16 acres are creek bottom and scrub wetland.
- The farm usually
fluctuates between 6 and 9 horses
with most being boarded horses or in for training.
- The horses are a mix of
Warmbloods, Thoroughbreds,
Arabs, and Quarter Horses that are used for a variety of
disciplines. Most of the horses are used for eventing, dressage,
and trail riding.
- Mary Mitchell, who owns
the farm with her husband,
does the training, and gives lessons at the farm, has a background in
wildlife management.
Management Practices:
- Mary has a permit to
have a boarding facility and has
a manure management plan that goes along with this. She explained
that in Rice County, if you have a boarding facility or large farm, you
have to get such a permit and do a manure management plan. Many
Counties do not have such permits or required plans.
- Their manure management
plan consists of spreading
manure on their hay field 3 or 4 times a summer. Their horses do
not graze in this field so that do not have to worry about parasites in
this way. Manure gets put in a pile until they are ready to
spread it.
- They test their hay
field regularly to make sure that
is doing well in nutrients and growth cycles. As a result of one
of these tests they put pot ash on the field recently which helps
provide potassium.
- They have gravel pit
soil, which is not that great
for fertility compared to clay soil.
- Pastures are not
rotated, but horses are not kept on
them continuously and Mary watches them to make sure they are not being
overgrazed.
- The pastures get mowed
to keep the weeds down.
- They also drag the
pastures to break up the manure,
which helps to fertilize the pasture more evenly as well as helps to
control parasites.
- In they spring they
usually re-seed the pastures
with an annual rye and some clover.
- For parasite control,
they pick up manure often or
drag the pastures.
- The Mitchell's have
tried insects in the manure pile,
but it didn't seem to make much of a difference.
- They also keep horses on
a strict worming schedule
because there are many horses that come and go for training, lessons,
and boarding.
Bedding:
- Mary uses pine shavings in the stalls because it is
the easiest to handle and to break down.
- She has tried recycled newspaper and found it not
ascetically pleasing, hard to clean up, and was concerned about the ink.
- She has also tried straw, which she found to be hard
to clean and hard to spread in the manure spreader.
- Mary had not heard of hemp bedding.
Surface Water and
Wetlands:
- Wolf Creek runs through the property, along with a
seep area, springs, and shrub wetland area.
- The Mitchell's make sure to keep the horses well back
from Wolf Creek to make sure no manure or other pollutants get into the
creek.
- They had their ground water tested four years ago,
and nothing was abnormal. They have a deep well.
Environmental Considerations:
- Mary told me that she
had been very conscious about
environmental considerations when setting up her farm and management
practices. Mary was especially conscious about keeping the horses
off the wetlands.
- Her biggest
environmental challenges are weed
control because she does not want to use any chemicals and has to
battle with horalsym and rag weed.
- The Mitchell's have
notice a lot of changes in their
land since they moved in. When they bought their property, it was
heavily farmed right up to Wolf Creek with plowed corn fields and a lot
of chemicals. So with planting a hay field and pastures, there is
a lot less erosion and the condition of the land has improved.
- They have also
experienced a lot of suburbanization
since they moved in.
- The part of Wolf Creek
that runs through their
property is in its natural state and is one of the only pieces still in
this state.
- Mary sees the
environmental implications of keeping
horses in the Cannon River region to be mostly erosion and wetland
issues. She sees some horse owners keeping horses on steep grades
which compounds erosion as well as horses being kept right in wetlands
and up to the edges of open water.
- Her suggestions were to
keep horses off steep grades,
keep horses off wetlands, have as much grass cover as possible, and
more education on these areas.
- In the future, Mary
thinks that suburbanization will
be the next big issue for horse owners in this area. In the five
years they have been on their farm, they have see a lot of growth in
Dundas as well as Northfield and she can see the possibility of clashes
as horse farms get encompassed in new developments. The
importance of good management practices will increase in the
future.
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