What do you think it would take to make your farm self sufficient from doing manure runs? How many horses, how many acres of pasture? 135 buckets of manure is a lot. It has clearly made a difference in your harvest. The goats help some and cover crops have filled in the gap. Can't forget your humanure. Hope this doesn't give Anna too much to think about or too much math to tinkering with.

Anonymous --- We're getting a lot closer to manure independence. For the last year, actually, we've been on only homegrown manure. I've had to skimp a bit, though, and yields have been a bit lower. But we're awfully close.....

The advantage of "importing" manure is that brings in nutrients from someone else's fields, resulting in a net gain for yours. If you raise your own animals on your own grass, you're only returning the same nutrients they took out of the soil--with considerable net loss of nitrogen from out-gassing of urine.