Hi Everyone! We are so excited to be back and practicing our soil skills. We had our first field day earlier this September at Chuck Clanton’s farm, a former UMN BBE professor and advocate for sustainable farming practices. He dug us two pits along a hillslope in SE MN, and we practiced describing the soil pits while simulating competition timing, completing one pit as individuals and one in teams. We had a delicious team lunch with food
brought by our head coach, Nic, and learned more about the history of the farm and sustainable agricultural management from Chuck.
The farm uses a 10-year rotation method, with corn and soybeans planted each year between perennial ground cover. This helps restore organic matter and fertility (including planting nitrogen-fixing legumes) in the soil, while reducing resources and inputs needed for the annual crops. These soils were so much fun to look at because we saw some really cool features! The dark circles pictured are crotovinas, where animals have dug into and mixed organic material deeper into the soil (like gophers!). We also saw beautiful mollisols (soils with a thick and dark top horizon).
Our second field day was at Jake Olson’s house (soil judging co-captain!), whose dad dug us a pit at their family farm west of the Twin Cities. We completed this pit in teams in the same competition style to practice completing a card in the time allotted for a competition, which is one hour. We got to see another gorgeous mollisol (these types cover a large area of Minnesota) with some calcium carbonate deposits, showing where calcium carbonates had leached down over time to create visible white streaks. The best part about finding these is watching them fizz when you pour weak hydrochloric acid over them. A bonus of being on Jake’s farm was seeing their resident peacocks and raiding their apple trees!
