The following article below, was written about our Protectacow's own Rasala (Ralph)!
" Grass Farmer" is the leading authority for publicizing and promoting the simplest, and most effective type of farming for grazing animals, especially cows. And since Ralph is "the World's leading authority on intensive grazing techniques for protected cows", of course he would have an article written on his glorious activities and accomplishments over the years.
All Glories to Prabhupada,
Sri Krsna Dasa
A Story about how I met the author of this article, Roger Wentling by Ralph Laurino
Winter 1985
The Iskcon Gita-nagari Farm was collapsing around me.
The false leaders of the society had thrown Prabhupada's Movement into great turmoil. Many of the qualified leaders were driven out of the movement because they would not submit to the false guru regime.
In, what they hoped would be the last round of the purge, Gita-nagari and cow protection were targeted. The false leadership had determined cow protection was a burden and an obstacle to their consolidation of power.
In a private meeting with Rabindra Svarupa (head of the GBC and chief architect of Iskcon's fake reform which saw the number of "gurus" grow from 12 to 65) he informed me the fate of Gita-nagari was sealed. The cows were to be sent "down south", the farm was to be sold. I was shocked and saddened. When I pressed him for more information he revealed the true purpose of planning an uncertain future for the cows and the farm. The farm was to be sold, the money would be used to build a yoga retreat center and his personal headquarters close to Philadelphia Pa. This would allow his "disciples" to more "conveniently worship him". Then, the final insult to injury, he blurted out grinning and laughing, and in a demonic voice said, "What's the big deal !!!".
Shocked by his words and countenance I decided to play it cool and not reveal my true intentions ; to use any power that I had, and that God would grant me, to stop this devious plan to sell off Prabhupada's beloved Gita-nagari. In his 1956 Gita-nagari prophecy Prabhupada revealed his true intentions for Gita-nagari. "The Geeta Nagari will therefore be the main preaching centre of the Supreme Authority of Sree Krishna the Personality of Godhead. It shall be proclaimed from that place that Sree Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the Absolute Enjoyer of all benefits derived from all kinds of work, sacrifice, cultivation of knowledge; that He is the Absolute Proprietor of all the manifested universes and that He is the unalloyed friend and philosopher of all living entities namely the gods or rulers, the general people, the beasts, the birds, the reptiles, the plants and trees or the aquatic animals residing in every nook and corner of the great universe. When such knowledge will be fostered from the vantage of Sree Geeta Nagari, at that time only, real peace and prosperity will usher in the world so anxiously awaited by all kinds of people." Back To Godhead Magazine Volume 3, Part 6, May 20, 1956 VOLUME III PART VI.
I knew sending the cows "down south" was a euphemism for abusing and neglecting them as this had occurred at other Iskcon farm's. As a matter of fact, Gita-nagari was started in 1975 as a reaction to Kirtananada's history of callous treatment of the cows at New Vrindavan, of which I had already heard eye witness testimony.
After this shocking and disturbing meeting, as I walked home, I knew I needed a plan. I thought "Well...Krsna grazes the cows and takes them to the pasturing grounds in all circumstances, so therefore, this must be the line of thought I should follow"
I started gathering as much information as I could about grazing management and started to implement them as best I could. However this was difficult because on the plea of economic hardship people were mass exiting the farm, including the people taking care of the 200 cows that now resided there. The staff for the cows would now be reduced from 10 to 3 (my spouse, stalwart Gudakesha, and myself). Also the budget would be cut from $50,000 a year, to $10,000 a year. I new grazing was the answer to meet our labor and money shortages, but I needed to take a leap forward in order to prevent the oncoming sale of the farm by proving the cows could, and would, be well taken care of for all to see. This would demonstrate to the devotee community the farm need not be sold, as they had come to believe through lies and deceit. The situation was not hopeless but the clock was running.
That leap forward took place on a summer day in 1986 when I visited Ag Progress Days at State College, Pa. This was the de facto State fair for Pennsylvania. Thousands of farmers from around the state yearly migrate to this fair to share information, examine new equipment, show animals, and relax with their families. As I entered the fair ground, the first exhibit was new equipment on display. Thousands of people and farmers were swarming in every direction. Out of the crowd I saw a man about 50 yards away, he looked like the other farmers, with ball cap, t-shirt, and jeans. I turned to my spouse and exclaimed "That is the person that is going to help me !". She said " How do you know?". I responded "I don't know, but we better go find out !". I walked up to him and introduced myself, It was Roger Wentling. I didn't know this at that moment, but Krsna had put me in touch with the foremost expert and fighter for grazing management in the USA.
Roger helped me in many ways. He recommended I read Grass Productivity by Andre Voison which became my bible. He regularly visited Gita-nagari to help me scheme and design our grazing management system, which went on to be recognized as the most advanced in the North Eastern United States. This ultimately led to Gita-nagari and the cows being rescued from the demoniac clutches of Ravindra Svarupa et al. As a result, the cow protection program continued at the highest standard, and most natural way in the history of Real Gita-nagari. Roger's article is a partial story of the agricultural, cow protection, and spiritual advancements made at this time. Please notice at the end of the article Roger states "All glories to Prabhupada" as he came to appreciate His Divine Grace's mission and purpose of the Geeta Nagari prophecy ; "When such knowledge will be fostered from the vantage of Sree Geeta Nagari, at that time only, real peace and prosperity will usher in the world so anxiously awaited by all kinds of people."
All of Prabhupada's Prophecies will come true.
Gita nagari prophecy-original document with Prabhupada's handwritten notes 1956
Humbly Submitted,
Ralph Laurino
Founder, Protect a Cow Farm Sanctuary
Excerpt:
"The bottom line of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness Farm for me is that cows and grass, even when they provide nothing but yoke power and manure, are allowing people who care about the planet to stay on the land"
Hare Krishna Farmers Plant Eclectic Pastures in Pennsylvania
by Roger Wentling
Reprinted from the Stockman Grass Farmer, August 1990.
Every now and then I come across a farm family with a unique approach to making the maximum net profit from grass and grazing. Ralph and Sita Laurino of Port Royal, PA are such an example. They are the farm managers of Iskcon Farm.
Iskcon is a Hare Krishna farm. The Hare Krishna believe that cows are sacred and should not be killed for human consumption. The farm has 200 Brown Swiss cows and oxen that are used today solely as work animals.
However, in 1984 the farm had the highest butterfat average in Pennsylvania when it was being managed as a communal dairy.
In the drought year of 1988, Ralph told me that is was only through intensive grazing management that he and his wife were able to keep the farm going.
With intensive grazing management, he said their pasture yield had gone up four times and the quality was better as well.
This year they started grazing 42 cows and 12 oxen on April 9th. By the first of May 150 cows were grazing. Their primary grazing is 70 acres of bluegrass and white clover stocked with 80 cows.
Another 50 cows rotationally graze woodlands and Ralph uses them on the intensively grazed pastures when the grass growth gets ahead of the cows on the bluegrass and white clover.
This year he is also planning to graze standing corn in November. These corn paddocks will have previously been interseeded with broadcast winter cereal rye and yellow sweet clover.
They figure to get six grazings of alfalfa/timothy this year from an eight acre former hayfield. They make alfalfa/timothy hay, pure alfalfa hay, and alfalfa/ryegrass hay (with oxen). All corn silage production has been discontinued as too expensive.
Confident that intensive rotational grazing has given new life to the farm, Ralph and Sita have committed their limited resources to new seedings of forage plants that are probably among the most sophisticated in the Northeastern United States.
Ralph said he read British dairyman Newman Turner's book, "Fertility Pasture and Cover Crops" and decided to try some of Turner's eclectic pasture mixes of deep rooted herbs and legumes.
Turner's theory was that different plants concentrated different trace elements from the soil and by planting a temporary pasture (ley) of these plants and strip-grazing them off or cutting them for silage and then letting the cows eat their way through the silage stack the soil's fertility could be increased and the animals health and production improved.
It must have worked because Turner had the highest producing herd of Jerseys in Britain in the 1960s. Ralph said he purchased his main herbal pasture mix from Bountiful Gardens/Ecology Action, 5798 Ridgewood Road, Willits CA 95490, who imports the seeds from Great Britain. The fertility pasture mixture consists of ryegrass, chicory, yarrow, burnet, sheep's parsley, red and white clover.
Ralph has planted this at a rate of 20 pounds of seed per acres on a 5.3 acre paddock.
He also has planted a 7.5 acre paddock with an alfalfa based mix that consists of alfalfa, red clover, timothy, tall fescue, chicory, and white clover. It is also seeded at 20 pounds per acre along with 5 to 6 pounds of white clover. Wana is not as upright as common orchardgrass and creeps low to the ground which makes it an excellent companion for white clover.
On another 6 acre paddock he has planted six acres of bird's-foot trefoil and reed canary grass at 7 pounds per acre of each. All of the seedlings were made into ground that had been plowed, disced and harrowed (with oxen). The grain drill used had grass boxes and the ground was cultipacked after seeding.
This will be Ralph's third year of grazing standing corn while it is in the milk stage. Standing corn is a good insurance policy against summer heat and drought in areas with predominately cool-season pastures. Ralph said the cows vary the technique they use to graze the corn. Some will eat the ear of corn first, others will strip the leaves and start munching the plant from the top down. This year he is also planning to graze standing corn in November. These corn paddocks will have previously been interseeded with broadcast winter cereal rye and yellow sweet clover.
He also has 10 acres in an oats/Rangi rape double crop. The cows provide the manure for compost and the tillage power for the farm's acres. The two primary [commercial] crops on the farm are German Status and Staw Flowers. These are sold as dried flowers. The net form these unusual crops is around $5000 per acre.
A unique machine on the farm is an oxen-powered sawmill. The oxen walk in a circle and with the use of a big gear from the back of a cement truck and other smaller gears to provide torque they are able to run the saw. Ralph said some Amish in Kentucky showed them how to set up this type of mill.
The saw mill produced 100 cords of salable firewood last year for the farm. With this same gear arrangement, Ralph plans to add a wood chipper to the end of the power train to provide a low cost carbon source for the compost manure.
Ralph is thinking of using the deep treading method used by Joel Stalatin in Virginia and described by him in previous issues of SGF.
Sita is in charge of making compost and the spraying of Bio-Dynamic preparations on the crops. Bio-Dynamics is a new, and controversial, approach to agronomy and one that I ll explain in more detail in a subsequent issue.
The bottom line of ISKCON Farm for me is that cows and grass, even when they provide nothing but yoke power and manure, are allowing people who care about the planet to stay on the land.
All glories to Prabhupada,
Roger Wentling
Elegy for a Giraffe
Roger Wentling stuck his neck out so farmers could reap the benefits of rotational grazing.
By Ruth B. Tonachel
On July 1, 1997, Roger H. Wentling Jr. was pronounced dead in his Berlin, Pa. home. The story of Roger H. Wentling Jr. is one of dramatic success in impacting Pennsylvania agriculture, yet it is also a tragic story of a man destroyed by a bureaucracy that has a mission of supporting agriculture yet couldn't allow Wentling's brilliance to shine.
Born Oct. 27, 1940 in Pennsburg, Pa., he was the son of Dorothy and Roger H. Wentling Sr. and the stepson of Esther (Trumbore) Wentling. He was raised primarily by his grandparents in East Greenville. His mother died when he was 5 and all of his other immediate family has been dead for many years.
Wentling was a 1958 graduate of Upper Perkiomen High School and served 4 years in the Navy. He graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1966 and then entered the U.S. Foreign Service as a cryptographer in Haiti. Later, he joined the Peace Corps and served as an agricultural extension worker in Paraguay, South America where, he said, "the farmers taught me more than I taught them." Upon his return, he worked as a Peace Corps recruiter based in Atlanta, Ga. Somewhere along the line, he also taught school in Pennsylvania and Florida and managed a plantation in South Carolina for the Lipton Tea Company.
In 1978, at the age of 38, Wentling returned to his home area to get a degree in Horticulture from Delaware Valley College. He did this in order to work for the USDA Soil Conservation Service. He believed that he had profited from his time and training in the Navy and the Peace Corps, and he wanted to give something back in return for the tax dollars that had been invested in him.
It was the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) that proved to be his ruin -- despite his unparalleled success in promoting soil conservation.
In 1981, Roger began working full time as an agronomist in Westmoreland County, Pa. In 1983, he was transferred to Somerset County. Sometime in the early 80's he began studying the works of Andre Voisin, a French plant scientist who developed a number of theories about intensive grazing of livestock and forage plant productivity. Voisin made sense to Roger and he was convinced that intensive grazing would not only work in Somerset County but would help make farms profitable. He was right. By 1985, approximately fifty farms had adopted the practice, largely because of Roger's enthusiasm. Some, like dairyman Larry Lohr, tried it "to prove it wouldn't work," but soon found out otherwise.
In 1990, in an article slated for The New Farm but never published, Ward Sinclair wrote, "Somerset County quickly became a showcase, drawing visitors from all over, and testimonials to the success of intensive grazing and Wentling's efforts abound. ... Wentling may be a hero to farmers in Somerset County, but he is in deep trouble with the government agency that pays him $26,000 per year to be all that he can be, as the Army would put it."
Stockman Grass Farmer
In the fall of 1987, Wentling was transferred ("exiled," he used to say) to Bradford County, Pa. The reasons for this transfer appear to be varied: SCS wanted to take the credit for Rogers' success in Somerset; a questionable complaint from a local feed mill that experienced a drop in demand due to farmers use of grazing and local "divisions" on the concept of grazing.
Upon arrival in the Towanda, Pa., area, Wentling's supervisor forbid Roger from even discussing grazing with farmers -- on the job or off. Soon after, he was prohibited from writing a very popular column he had penned for no pay under a pseudonym for the Stockman Grass Farmer. In time, he was suspended, reprimanded and harassed in innumerable ways by the agency charged with saving soils.
The details of Roger's battles with SCS are appalling and tedious. He could not fathom that there was not a place for him in the agency, and he would not not be silenced in his promotion of grazing. When he criticized the government's "golden cow," the Chesapeake Bay Program, for its promotion of manure storage structures and its use of tax dollars to build them on farms all over Bradford County and the rest of eastern Pennsylvania, Roger had gone too far for SCS. Essentially, he was told that if he couldn't spout the party line, he needed to find other employment.
Nevertheless, after he left Somerset County, Roger helped at least 100 more farmers set up grazing systems and spoke to innumerable gatherings and meetings. Even in Bradford County, despite the gag order, farmers like Garry & Linda VanDeWeert, Dean Madigan and many others worked with Wentling and give credit to him today for their use of grazing. He was a storehouse of information and his zeal for grazing was infectious.
In 1989, Roger was given a Giraffe Project Award for "sticking his neck out for the common good." The Giraffe Foundation recognizes people around the world who have made efforts for the common good and have been persecuted in one way or another for doing so.
In February 1990, Roger Wentling left SCS and went to work as an agronomist/landscaper at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. Even there, he continued to do research on his own heirloom seeds and some tomato seeds that the military had shot into space, in addition to his outside consulting work on grazing.
When he took early retirement in 1995, he moved to a small farm in Somerset County. Soon after his return, he applied for a job with the conservation district which Bob Russo, a District Director, says was railroaded away from Roger. Russo is convinced that Roger was the best qualified candidate but the other directors were afraid to hire him due to the legacy of the SCS vendetta.
Wentling continued to write, to talk to farmers and to study the agricultural topics that so fascinated him. His health declined and he became somewhat reclusive. His dog "Tri" became his closest companion and was with him when he died. According to the Somerset County Coroner, he died approximately 12 to 18 hours before he was found by a neighbor.
Pennsylvania should be proud to call Roger Wentling a native son. His accomplishments in agriculture were enormous at the level it counts most -- on working farms. Intensive grazing has become the most mainstream of "alternative" agricultural practices, according to several recent studies.
Roger's life is also a testament to the reasons we should be leery of bureaucracy - a reminder that visionaries are often not tolerated yet are sometimes more important to progress than institutions. His life and work is also a testament to the wisdom of farmers. Roger looked to working farmers to formulate questions and to test theories. If grazing were not practical and profitable for farmers, it would not have spread with the speed it has.
Roger Wentling believed implicitly in nature and the need to work in balance with it. He knew and communicated an agro-ecology ethic in terms that made sense to farmers. He was a leader in the development of sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania and the world.
By Ruth B. Tonachel
"Roger got a lot of us started
in grazing. My husband wanted
to prove Roger wrong but we
probably wouldn't be in farming
today if we hadn't gone this way."
--Gloria Lohr
Somerset Co., Pa. dairy farmer
"If I had questions about eco-
agriculture, Roger always had
the answer. He was a great
source of information. He was
ahead of his time by 10 to 12
years. He had so much to offer.
I don't know who I'll ask now."
--Bob Russo
Somerset Co., Pa. sheep farmer
"When we were starting out,
Roger was forbidden to talk
about grazing. He used to
come up and park the SCS
truck behind the machine
shed so no-one would see it
when he came to our farm in
Rome. If it wasn't for him, we
would have made many, many
more mistakes. ... As young
farmers, he was invaluable in
making us able to hold our
heads up this long."
--Linda VanDeWeert
Grassroots Farm,
Bradford Co., Pa.
"The majority of the ecological
problems agriculture is faced
with stem from tillage and the
confinement of animals. Inten-
sive grazing solves both of
these problems, so why the big
fuss? Why persecute a man
who is creating real lasting
solutions? The brave people,
like Roger, who stick their
necks out to work with us to
actually solve farmers' prob-
lems deserve our utmost
respect, words of support
and appreciation."
--H. Allan Nation, Oct. 1989,
Stockman Grass Farmer
"Somerset County has proven
that you don't have to grow
corn on hills to make a living
in farming. ... U.S. Soil Conser-
vation worker, Roger Wentling,
one of the most successful
champions of grassland farming,
lost his job because he was too
successful and refused to knuckle
under the bureaucracy.
--Gene Logsdon, writer and
farmer in a 1991 letter
"Roger always said
that his favorite
sound in the world
was the sound of
cows grazing."
--Rita Groff, Roger's oldest living relative.
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