When I signed up for the slow life I didn't dream that it would be this slow. I can accept that a learning curve requires some experimentation to figure out. But when one is working with annual cycles, such as pasture management, that trial and error can mean it takes years to figure something out!
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| Luke in the buck pasture in September. |
One of our goals is to feed our livestock from our land. That sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? But learning to go from modern animal management practices to the simpler agrarian model has been extremely challenging. One of the things I have learned in our attempt is that humans are a whole lot better at complicating things than simplifying them!
Of course, trying to focus on too many goals at once makes a slower go of it. So once
the barn is done (our #1 priority), Dan's and I are going to turn our focus on our pasture and forage areas. This post will review our novice attempts to work toward that self-sufficiency goal, including what we've done right, what we've done wrong, and what we need to improve.
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| Same pasture in May of this year. |
One of my "mistakes" (quotes because it wasn't a wrong decision, just a decision that hasn't helped me work toward my long term goals) has been to plant annual pasture forage every fall and spring. I've done this because of local seed availability. My local perennial pasture choices are bermudagrass (wiregrass planted on purpose) and tall fescue (which has recently earned the label of "toxic fescue," because animals do so poorly on it). Rather than buy expensive mail order perennial pasture seed (shipping often doubles the cost), I've worked with more economical locally purchased annual.
Annual pasture and hay mixes (such as deer and turkey forage mixes) are available, economical, grow well and are tasty and nutritious. But since I often can't coordinate the planting and growing of warm and cool mixes, I'm often left with minimal forage in between the seasons, and bare spots where the annuals have died. No good because something always volunteers to grow in the bare spots and it usually isn't what my goats need and will eat. The weather is key too, of course, and our seasons are unpredictable. Our climate is supposedly mild, but it's the extremes we need to plan for. For example, we've had winters that were too cold and snowy for forage to grow. Some summers we get enough rain, but sometimes summer is too hot and dry for anything to grow.
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| Anna and Cinnamon in the doe pasture in June. |
Remineralizing, is something we've done right. Healthy forage needs the right balance of soil minerals to grow. Animals need minerals too, so it's much better in the long run for them to get their minerals from forage. Otherwise I'm constantly have to buy all their minerals. Detailed testing and purchasing organic amendments is expensive, so we've only tested and amended some of our forage areas. But this is an excellent investment in our land and heading us in the right direction.
Planting a variety of grasses, legumes, and forbs has been something else we've done right. Dan has been reading Joel Salatin's
Salad Bar Beef and I'm going to say it's a must-read for anyone who wants to pasture animals. Dan also found an video by Gabe Brown on this topic, "
Cover Crops for Grazing." Excellent! We're realizing we're on the right track, we just need to plant a greater variety with more perennials.
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| Doe pasture in August. |
Keeping the chickens from gobbling up newly seeded areas has been a huge fail, and it's an expensive way to feed chickens! I clip their wings and we keep them in their yard after seeding areas, but there are always one or two escapees anyway! One chicken can do a lot of damage on a newly seeded quarter acres.
The ducks have been bad about his too, and they are harder to contain.
Soil building is another badly needed goal. My
modified-Fukuoka method of planting has been encouraging, but it's slow going.
Rotating grazing livestock is another must for maintaining healthy forage plus animal parasite control. From my observations I've come to the conclusion that we need more paddocks and we need to rotate more frequently. We're looking into intensive rotational grazing, similar to what
Greg Judy describes in this blog post. That would address both rotation plus the soil building goals. Goats are a bit different than cattle though, so we have to keep that in mind as we fine tune any plans.
Because of all this, pasture improvement has been under much discussion and research for awhile now, and we are working on a specific plan, with specific steps to accomplish our goal, including moving some fences and gates (much of our fence is in need of repair anyway). As we get ready to make the shift from barn building to pasture renovation, I'll share specifics with you in a upcoming post or two, along with an updated
Master Plan. Stay tuned!
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It's true, the grass is always greener on the other side
of the fence (even though it's the exact same thing!) |
