My new tool measures one more way to see if the The V6 is getting healthier or not, and it costs only twenty dollars. It’s an infrared thermometer that gained real popularity during the Covid19 pandemic. This thermometer allows me to measure soil temperatures easily on different landscapes. I check if there is grass covering the soil surface and what its temperature is or if livestock have eaten the grass so short that my thermometer reads ten to thirty degrees hotter than a site where the soil surface is insulated from the Sun's Rays, by having a good stand of grass. My twenty dollar measuring stick says hotter dictates that more moisture will evaporate from the land so it’s going to take more rainfall to fill the soil tank when the next rainy season arrives. 

            I also have what is called a sounder that measures the depth to water in my well so I can tell when I’m overdrafting the aquifer beneath my feet. When I’m pumping water it’s nice to know that the water level is remaining static and for a real happy moment this happens when the sounder says “the past rainy season has your water table rising, a sure sign of doing something right.” 

        Another measurement that I feel is fairly accurate comes from our evening news channel 8 weatherman. But remember his forecast can only be trusted for one week at a time!!! 

           Throwing a one foot wooden square to the ground in different locations multiple times then I try to identify all that’s inside the square which gives me a pretty good idea of what kinds of life exists there. Now let’s cut and weigh the grass that’s in the square to determine pounds of grass per acre to give me a pretty good idea of how much grass is in a pasture that livestock can eat. Then I want to send a soil sample to a soils laboratory that will tell me all about what there’s plenty of and what’s lacking on the V6. But for me, organic matter expressed as a percentage of topsoil really tells me if I’m doing things right or wrong. The higher the percentage, the better the soil’s health is. Eight percent organic matter would be the epitome of doing a lot of things right. 

          What has become for me, in my constant search for facts that are reliable, says that if you can’t measure it don’t bet the ranch on it. But Jack so much of ranch decision making is subjective. Well, I guess what I’m saying is how do I take factual, measurable, thinking and turn it into subjective thinking that produces logical results? I think we all do this type of thinking to one degree or another but a lot of this process gets lost in translation. Like when a person quits measuring and using facts and starts replacing them with conspiracy theories, hearsay, lies, tradition and “We have always done it this way!” All this does is muddy the waters of truth. 

         I’ve just spent time walking down the main gravel street of our Little Cholame Creek observing all the goings on and it’s left me with a serious case of the “warm fuzzies.” Now that’s my kind of truth. 

                           See Ya, 

                            Jack