Flax blooms on a hot, July day near Carpio. North Dakota produces about 90 percent of the nation's flax supply.
Composting
This is a form of recycling plant materials. It is the practice of mixing numerous types of vegetation together in a container of some kind and allowing microbes to break it down into a rich, slow-release, natural fertilizer.
Nature's Fertilizer
Lawn clippings, autumn leaves, cereal grain straw and other items such as kitchen vegetable scraps are used to help develop compost that can be used as fertilizer on next year’s garden or farm field. Some people also make compost tea; a liquid that has all the nutrients of solid compost but is delivered to the crop in a spray or drip form.
Manure
Livestock manure, mainly from cattle and hogs, is also used on fields to enhance crops, but in a sustainable and safe system, manure must be completely composted to be effective.
Green Manure
This is another form of composting, which is often used as a fertilizer in certified organic crop rotations. Crops such as buckwheat, rye, clover, switch grass and others are grown during the off season and plowed under in the spring to help more fragile seeds germinate and sprout.
Recycling
Each form of "recycling," including common trash, newspaper, motor oil and other items, is effective and saves hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on an annual basis that can be used to enhance our farm and the environment.
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Recycling 
