Mineralizing your farm soil is something many permaculturalists like to do frequently. Various minerals are mixed with a pollard and fed to the farm animals. The manure that the animals produce is gathered and returned to the garden once bacteria and micro-organisms have reprocessed the minerals in a form that can be absorbed by the plants.

The end result is a nutritionally “dense food” that is better for you.

Your pasture has a great mix of minerals enabling a diverse number of plants and grasses to grow, your farm animals are happier, your vegetables are more nutritious and wholesome and more importantly – the life in your soil – the microorganisms are charged with robust vitality.

Here’s a recipe that Geoff Lawton uses on his farm to feed to the farm animals. This dosage is per milking cow.

We’ve dubbed it:

    The Geoff Lawton Mineral Mix

    • In a small bucket add 2 cups of boiling water
    • To the boiled water add Half a teaspoon of Copper Sulphate and stir to dissolve. Copper Sulphate is a poison but it helps worm the cows and keeps them parasite free.
    • Add 1 tablespoon of Dolomite which is quite alkaline
    • Add 1 tablespoon of Sulfur which is quite acid. Your mix will now be neutral
    • Add 2 tablespoon of RockDust and stir. Rock Dust is a ground mineral. This is food for the organisms in the Soil but it must go through your animals digestive system first before the mineral nutrients become available to the plants.
    • Add 2 tablespoon of Ocean Kelp which contains all the minerals from the Sea.
    • Add half a cup of organic apple cider vinegar to give the mix some natural acidity and act as a tonic for your farm animal.
    • Add 3 tablespoons of organic molasses to sweeten the whole mixture and make it taste good. Molasses also stimulates bacteria into a frenzy of activity.

    Minerals Mixed with Pollard and Cut Forage Material

    The brew is now ready to be fed to your farm animal. To enable the mixture to adhere, Geoff Lawton adds half a bucket of fine Pollard to absorb all the moisture. Pollard is a ground corn and wheat flour mixture.
    All these ingredients are usually available at any rural farm feed stock supplier.

    Geoff then adds this Pollard Mineral mixture to half a big bucket of fresh green forage that been hand cut on an old chaff cutter into bite sized pieces. Forage is a leafy plant material (mainly plant leaves and stems) eaten by grazing livestock.

    The whole mix is then fed to his cow.

    Geoff is certain of the health benefits. “We could do a mix like this and put it into the dog food or the poultry food.” he says, “The minerals go through the animal, out through the manure and cycle through our system.”

    “It gets distributed evenly out through the farm.”

    Cow eating the mineral mixture

    “We can manage that mixture.” he says “to come through our compost, to come through our worm farm.”

    “It will come through our food. It will come through our compost toilet and cycle back through our system.”
    “Its not a lot of minerals, but it is the full compliment of minerals – so they are all available.”

    “And that’s whats important.” he adds.

    How to mineralise your soil will be shown in full on Geoff Lawton’s Permaculture Soils DVD available in 2010.