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Producer Profiles
Cam Tabb
Kearneysville, West Virginia
Despite one of the hottest, driest summers on record,
West Virginia dairy farmer Cam Tabb yielded his typical harvest
of 120 bushels of corn per acre, an enviable amount to those who
watched their crops wither in the fields. Neighbors wondered whether
Tabb enjoyed some kind of miraculous microclimate to soar through
the drought of 1999 a severe dry spell lasting from April to September
in the mid-Atlantic region with seemingly little impact.
"I get blamed for getting more water than they
got because the corn looks better," laughs Tabb, who raises
170 dairy cows and grows small grains and corn for grain and silage
on 1,040 acres near Charles Town, W.V. Instead, Tabb credits his
strong yields to eight years of applying composted dairy manure
to his fields.
"I get a healthier plant with a better root system
because my soil structure is better," he says. "So the
rain that you do get really sinks in."
Tabb's compost treatments, combined with annual soil
tests and rotations, have stood the test of time. Not only have
his practices improved his soil and crop yields, but weather extremes
like the drought of 1999 have less of an impact on his farm than
those of other farmers who do not treat the soil with such care.
Tabb has come a long way since he used to pile his
dairy manure on hard-packed ground and watch it ice over in the
winter. After hearing a West Virginia University researcher talk
about backyard composting at a town meeting, Tabb realized he needed
to add a carbon source and turn the piles to encourage aeration.
Once he began mixing in sawdust from horse stalls and turning the
piles, he was on his way to becoming a master composter.
Now, after years of fine-tuning his operation, Tabb
can talk about compost for hours. He says amending soil with compost
in the spring leads to healthy plants for the rest of the season.
Moreover here he gets especially animated composting reduces his
volume of manure by half.
"The crop response and the reduction of manure
volume is what keeps me doing this," he says.
Over the last few years, Tabb has worked with scientists
to research the advantages of using compost in his grain fields.
One scientist compared an acre of corn grown in soil amended with
Tabb's compost against an acre of unamended soil on his farm. The
difference in yields was extraordinary: up to 123 bushels of corn
in the compost plot versus between 6 and 42 bushels in the conventional
tract.
In another experiment, Tabb mixed 10,000 pounds of
fish into his piles for a scientist who needed to dispose of fish
that turned up with a bacterial disease during an aquaculture experiment.
Contrary to what a visitor might expect, the compost turned out
to be rich and odorless. Tabb says the Native Americans who taught
early Pilgrims to drop a dead fish into their soil before planting
were on to something.
"I built a windrow 60 feet long and 15 feet high,"
he recalls. "A month later, I would never have known the fish
were there."
Tabb grazes his herd on ryegrass pastures between
March and July. When the cows are in the barn the remainder of the
year, he collects the manure and composts it. He applies between
18 and 24 tons of compost to his crop fields, depending on soil
test results, just once every three years. That way, he reduces
the number of tractor trips and therefore, soil compaction and still
supplies all of the necessary nutrients, except extra nitrogen.
Measurements show his compost supplies about 9 pounds of nitrogen,
12 pounds of phosphorus and 15 pounds of potash per ton.
"I use all I produce," says Tabb, whose
many piles of compost stretch across a portion of his farm. The
nutrient-supplying power of compost more than compensates for the
time Tabb spends making his black gold. He uses a mix of dairy manure,
leaves, grass, wood shavings, sawdust and horse manure, then turns
the pile three to four times. He monitors pile temperatures and
turns when it gets up to about 150 degrees, but doesn't follow any
strict rules.
"I do it the lazy way," he says. "I
turn when I get good and ready. It's not an extra hard operation."
Turning, which Tabb does with a front-end loader, pays for itself
by reducing the pile.
Those extreme temperatures in the piles, which reach
as high as 150 degrees, kill both pathogens and weed seeds. In the
spring, Tabb spreads a thin layer of compost on part of his fields
and plants through it. When the soil is compacted, Tabb works the
compost into the ground to help loosen it.
Tabb sees other benefits, too. He is especially proud
of his up to 7-percent organic matter, pushed to such levels from
eight years of using compost. The soil takes on a more spongy feel;
Tabb says he sees little to no runoff from his compost-treated fields.
It also attracts worms. In a study comparing two, one-acre blocks,
researchers found 23 worms per square foot in compost-treated soil
versus less than one worm per square foot in untreated soil on Tabb's
farm.
While Tabb reduces pesticide use thanks to compost
and a small grain-beans-corn-cover crop rotation, he continues to
spot-treat with a herbicide to control weeds. He plants using no-till
strategies, often through cover crop residue and compost.
Not only has Tabb changed his mind about compost,
but his neighbors are starting to take notice. "People really
thought I had lost my mind on this project," he says. Recently,
however, a neighbor asked him for compost for his wife's garden.
"Before I handled the manure as a waste, not
a resource," he says. "Now, everything just grows better."
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