June 25, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

The $10,000 Question

What can you buy for $10,000?

Julie and I drive a 10 year old Chrysler Town & Country. It is big enough that I can fit 4×8 sheets of plywood in it or a couple of 300 gallon tanks or, more simply, our 4 children with comfort. We paid $10,000 for our minivan a couple of years ago when we bought it used. Our previous van had been stolen (along with 5 dozen eggs, my favorite hat and my favorite knife)! $10,000 is about a third of the price of a similar 2014 van.

Our first house cost $30,000 and we had to put in $10,000 worth of improvements before we could move in including hooking on to city sewer and water, repairing the foundation, updating the wiring and replacing the furnace. $10,000 bought all of that…furnace, concrete, wiring and plumbing.

Now, I don’t know who you think I am. I don’t know what you really know about me. I’m not the kind of guy who keeps $10,000 just laying around. My pockets are only so deep. We had a couple of guys out to estimate a pond dam for us and they said $10,000…with more of a firm quote coming.

Sigh.

Can I afford that? I also need a loader tractor. The clutch needs to be replaced on our tractor. Julie wants to build a house…or at least put a roof on this house. I need to plant about a bazillion trees. I need to buy about a bazillion cows…well, maybe 5 or 10 more (easily $10k). There is no end of things I could spend money on…including replacing our minivan. I would love to buy Julie a new ring (lol). Can I really justify buying a 1-acre pond?

You know, I have found that I can justify just about anything. It’s just a matter of approaching the matter from the right angle. SO. Today I’m going to justify building a pond. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it but at least I’m going to lay out why I think it’s a good idea for us. First, here’s a rough-out of the pond from the top down thanks to Draft Logic.

My friend Steve says I will never regret having additional water on the farm. I suspect he’s right but this isn’t the pond he was rootin’ for. He wants me to make a single, larger pond instead of a series of small ponds over time (this is just the first). I would like to have it higher on the landscape than this but still, it’s pretty high. There is a lot of bottom ground I could irrigate from this pond if needed. Beyond the extra water, we will gain a dam we can drive across to get to the pasture beyond. The hills here are pretty steep…steep beyond what I would be comfortable mowing. The creek beds are washed out to the point that it’s hard to get a tractor across them too. The grazing on the steep south-facing slopes is sparse and the steep north-facing slopes are covered in moss. Not much grows here. A couple of thorny trees, a little scrap iron and some sparse grass that went to seed early. There are dry dams on two of the three valleys that feed into the pond area and a pond dam uphill from the other so the pond shouldn’t silt in any time soon. Here is the proposed pond area as it sits today. The dead tree to the left is around 18′ tall.

And here is my concept of what the pond will look like. I spent a whole 5 minutes with mspaint making this picture.

What we are talking about is a serious benefit to the water cycle, a benefit to the wildlife, a benefit to the livestock, a beautiful feature that will improve my farm’s value and something of lasting value for generations to come. I joked in a post called The Return of Surplus that we needed to bring resources back to the farm and this is a perfect example. Further, by making this investment now we will be able to increase biodiversity and, thus, compound our return over time. Just think of the fish, frogs and turtles. Think of the bald cypress I could plant. Think of the way it will moderate temperature. Think of fried catfish! But the water is illiquid. I will never get my money back without selling the land it is sitting on. Once that money is spent it is gone. That’s it. It’s either pond or loader tractor. Pond or cows.

But once the pond is built and stocked it’s here to stay. There will be nothing more to do for generations to come. Similar to the ponds grandpa built maybe 60 years ago, I’ll be leaving the farm better than I found it.

Can I justify it? Yes. Can I afford it? Ugh.

June 13, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Simplifying the Cow…Mr. Miyagi Style

Daniel LaRusso was an idiot. He was an immature, hot-headed show off and he should have known better than to repeatedly pick fights with the Cobra Kai. But as the movie progressed Daniel grew up a little because of Mr. Miyagi. What did Mr. Miyagi do? Well, most importantly, he filled an emotional and developmental need in Daniel’s life. But in terms of karate training, he focused on what was important…simple things: belts hold pants up, hard work pays off, stick with it to the end (or <squish> just like grape). Daniel [Spoiler Alert!] was “the best around (Nothing’s ever gonna keep you down!)” because Miyagi required and enabled mastery of a few simple things: block punches, block kicks, punch with balance and a use a special, secret move that “if do right, no can defense”.

So, for the sake of my growing children, let’s break this farm thing down to simple things without secrets so if do right, no can go broke. It’s going to take me more than 90 minutes to teach my children these lessons – lessons I am still learning – but we will begin at the beginning. What is the essence of cow? More simply: What is cow? More simply: Cow?

It’s not about breed. It’s not about color. We are looking to add value to captured sunshine and enable future sunshine to be captured even more efficiently. We use cows. We can make fat cows. We can multiply our cows. We can multiply our cows and make the multiples fat. The cow is a leather-bound sunshine assimilation unit that tastes great with onions and mushrooms. That is cow.

I have seen unhappy cows. Hunched up, head down, shaggy, covered in mud and manure, ears drooping. Sometimes because of mismanagement, sometimes because they got a bad start in life, sometimes…who knows. I have one of those and she’s heading to the meat cutter. This is not cow. It just looks like cow.

A happy cow is clean, her coat is laying neatly (though may be a little fuzzy in winter), her eyes are clear, she is not hunched up and ears are not drooping (unless she’s a brahman). If she is not grazing she is laying down in a dry, clean place chewing her cud. This is cow.

It takes grass to make cow and we want to make cow with grass…not with diesel fuel. Grass makes cow. [I could be saying “beef” but saying “cow” seems more Myiagi and keeps the lame analogy going.] If you don’t have grass you can’t make cow. You only need sunlight and rain to make grass but having cow helps you make more grass and do it more quickly. And more grass means more cow…and more grass, if do right, means no can go broke. Quality forage is a science of its own but let’s keep things simple. How much grass does it take to make cow? It takes enough grass to fill this hole behind the rib and in front of the pelvis on the cow’s left…and keep it filled every day. How do you measure each day’s pasture? You offer enough pasture to fill that hole, little enough that the majority of what is left gets trampled and manure is scattered about. We line up a couple of parallel fence lines and move the cows throughout the day until they are full (there are more advanced and seasonal fencing techniques but let’s keep it simple today). If we are on the ball they will have enough fresh pasture overnight that they still look full in the morning when we come to move them. It’s no big deal. Fill that rumen. If it’s not full, give more pasture. If you miss today, do better tomorrow. Easy peasy.

Let’s add a little complexity. Cows need more than full bellies. They need a balance of protein, energy and fiber. It is good to look at the side of the cow. It is better to look behind the cow. Look at the cow pat. Does it look like a stack of cookies? The cows need more protein. Does it spray out from the cow when she coughs? She needs more fiber…or she needs wormed (sell her). If it’s nicely piled up with a dip in the center the cow is getting what she needs. There are times when the grass is too lush and you will need to fill the cows up with dry matter (hay). There are times when the pasture just doesn’t have the protein the cows need and you will have to provide some level of supplementation but we’re getting away from simplicity. Graze tall, diverse swards a little at a time and things should be fine here in Illinois…especially if they can reach the lower limbs of trees.

There are a few other things cows need like shade (hugely important when it is above 80 degrees!) and salt but that’s a good start. We will spend the rest of our lives learning about cattle and grass but if you only learn a few things, know how to keep them full and how to read manure. Understand what we have them for. They are pretty, yes, but that’s not why. They are fun too but that’s still not why. We have cows because we have grass…and because we want more grass. We are grass farmers. Cows fertilize, cultivate and harvest our fields.

Look at the rumen, look at the manure, buy a belt to hold your pants up and face down adversity. You’re the best around. Nothing’s gonna ever keep you down.

For another look at cow simplification, Hubert Karreman listed 5 (6) preventative measures for animal health in a recent Agricultural Insights Podcast:

Don’t exceed the land’s biological carrying capacity
Offer high-forage diets (75-80%)
Offer good Grazing
Ensure fresh Air
Provide dry Bedding
Give access to sunshine

At this point you’ll have to subscribe to hear that podcast but I think it’s worth it. I haven’t read Mr. Karreman’s books. If you have, let me know what you thought.

June 11, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Walking the Farm in a Spring Rainstorm

According to the very expensive, precise and scientific bucket that was left sitting out, we got a total of 5 inches of rain yesterday, 3 inches in the first hour. When that kind of rain hits the farm I like to put on my raincoat and spend time looking around. I want to know where the rain is soaking in and where it is running off. Is there any soil washing out? Did any lids blow off of chicken tractors? Are the ducks teaching the chickens how to swim? We’ll start at our broken old bridge to nowhere.

There is normally a trickle of water flowing through here. The kids crawl through the tunnel and hunt up crawdads or pretend it is a fort. Today it is roaring as water flows through. I’m glad to see that there is not more water flowing through. This tunnel is fed by the overflow from the pond (not much is overflowing yet thankfully), the runoff from the alfalfa field (again, just a trickle) and the runoff from the corn field and feedlot and the ditch across the road (the majority of the water you see). It looks like most of my water is either soaking in or being delayed in reaching the branch. I love it when a plan comes together. But the pond is receiving quite a bit of water and topsoil from the neighbor’s field and then there is that feedlot. Well, not much I can do about that. Following the water downstream I’m concerned the branch will flood the bottom…where the chickens are currently.

The water was about a foot from coming out of the banks. Too much water for me to cross so I can’t go any further to the North. Within an hour the creek was already receding so I slept soundly believing the chickens to be high and dry…until I heard it raining again about 2:00 in the morning. (Skip to the end: chickens are fine). No choice but to go east. Cows are out in the open east of the yellow house. I’m taking advantage of the cool weather to graze open areas right now. The cooler weather will end this weekend so we’re watching the clock. The cows are so full they are a little hard to move. I’m giving them larger areas right now to get back to the trees in time. We will have a big, square cutout in the pasture that will remain ungrazed until fall. That’s how it goes I guess.

Further east the little wash is flooded and we are just about to lose our fence. I stop to adjust the insulator a little bit.

This water is either overflow from the neighbor’s new pond or runoff from the eastern half of the alfalfa field. There is a dry dam on the alfalfa field that is making a huge sucking noise as the water rushes through the pipe. It was too dark in the woods to get a good picture but a dead tree was against the drainpipe and it was spraying water in two directions. There was a huge pool of water there. I’ll need to take some corrective measures to heal that forest floor. When I say “corrective measures” think cow hooves. Most of the green you see is poison ivy so it won’t be milk cow hooves.

Finally I stopped by a mulberry tree for a snack, something I try to do a couple of times each day. Mmmmm, freshly washed fruit. I’ll get tired of eating mulberries in a few weeks…about the time I run out of berries I can reach. Mulberry trees will grow anywhere a bird can poop. They are tough plants, will take serious pruning, will grow from cuttings and make good firewood. They are all over the farm and I try to visit each one regularly. There are some deep in the woods that aren’t ripening yet extending the harvest season.

Let me know if you got any of this rain too or if you have any ideas for preserving mulberries. I don’t care for them frozen and we don’t tend to make jelly. Wine maybe?

One additional note:

The chickens are a long way from the cows and have been for about 2 weeks. The chickens are currently housed in our portable layer houses. That design has worked well for the last year but has its limitations. We will be re-purposing those structures or the components. One severe limitation is the lack of portability over distance. We are moving to a new design on a wagon running gear so we can close it up and head down the road (cause we can’t cross the broken bridge). I have been delayed getting that project finished. Look for pictures soon.

June 10, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Reap Your Wild Oats

I have had quite a bit of offline discussion about dealing with fescue in our pastures. I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about fescue – in fact, I only know a little about my own pastures – but I do have some observations. I can’t bend the landscape to my will for any length of time. The best I can do is to observe, learn and play along as well as I can. I measure my success by increased drought resistance, healthier cattle and increased plant species diversity over time. But it takes time.

Let’s start with a paraphrase of what I have read concerning fescue.

If your cows graze fescue the tips of their tails will fall off and their hooves will rot off…it’s basically a starvation diet. Spray all of your fescue and replant to more desirable species immediately.

Yup. So. That’s what I’ve read. Other advice seems a little more reasonable.

Broadcast 5 pounds of red clover and one pound of white clover per acre in February to dilute the effects of fescue on your livestock.

That second paraphrase is much less alarming than the first but we don’t really do that either. There is clover out there already. There are other grasses too. The thing is, the only grass that has been allowed to grow to maturity inside the fence in the last X years has been fescue…because the cows eat everything else down to the dirt. Our strategy has been this: we don’t let the cows eat everything all at once. It’s amazing the grasses that are coming out of nowhere because of this crazy idea.

Salatin jokes that “cows always eat their ice cream first” meaning they walk the whole farm eating favorite plants first. If you just open the gates to the pasture and allow the cows to graze continuously they will deposit their manure mainly in favorite loafing areas. You’ll have cow paths everywhere on your property. Cows will walk acres and acres to find just that one delicious, favorite plant and will nip it off as fast as it will regrow. You can see it in my east 40. For years the cows would travel single file between the feed bunk, the pond (where they eroded the dam) and the stands of trees beyond. They would graze only favorite plants, leaving the others to dominate the pasture. There is a fair amount of white clover in our pastures. We took pictures of it last summer hugging the ground for protection from grazing animals. Red clover, as you can see in the picture above, is almost nonexistent. The only saplings that survive are the ones that are too thorny to eat.

By switching from continuous grazing to planned rotational grazing we are allowing plant species to recover. In fact, that’s the point of the planning…to plan for recovery of desirable species. Better than that, we are allowing a wide variety of species to go to seed…seeds the cows will spread as they move on to the next grazing area. It won’t take long and we’ll see red clover coming up in more of the pasture as the cows move the seeds around. The long recovery windows are allowing species we have never seen to emerge, survive and spread. I had never seen wild oat go to seed in the east pastures (not that wild oat is all that great but it’s better than fescue!)

I had never noticed orchard grass either but it’s showing up in big clumps.

And that’s not the end of it. In fact, the end isn’t the end of it either. It’s the beginning. That perfect cow pat shows that the cows are getting a balanced diet and are in good health. The cows don’t get a balanced diet from fescue alone. There has to be enough energy and protein. Looks like we’re doing good (maybe a little extra protein but…)

The fescue is the dominant plant in our pastures. No doubt. But as we decrease the amount of time animals spend grazing each bit of ground and increase the recovery between grazings we see an explosion of legumes…not to mention weeds. It happens over time. Gradually. Slowly. No diesel fuel required. I don’t need to buy seed. I don’t need to spray chemical death. I just need to manage for the resources I want.

And I think that last sentence is important. I’m managing FOR not managing AGAINST. Feel free to apply that to any part of life. Maybe there are better ways to get the kids to wash the dishes than to make yourself an adversary. Sorry to say, it’s the same with training animals. Manage for the positive. I want more than fescue? I don’t go killing fescue. I start allowing other species to compete…to go to seed. I allow the cattle to graze somewhat selectively, trampling what they don’t want.

The progression would happen faster if I had more hooves and mouths and higher density. We’ll get there. The cows are knocking down most of what they don’t eat currently. We will do better in time but this is a start.

June 7, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

This Week in Grazing

Maybe I should start a podcast with that title. (in my ample free time…lol)

It’s tough grazing out there to the east. The soil is dry and hard…not signs of health…not conducive to plant health or cow health. So the fescue grows a few inches tall and throws up a tall seed head and white clover grows where it can. There is a little red clover too but there is a lot of exposed dirt and moss. I need the hooves and claws (do chickens have large talons?) to break up the moss and manure and plant material to cover the soil with a protective blanket. Future grass will grow better and be sweeter.

You can see how much pasture the cows are just walking past in the picture above. The cows have grazed out the yummy bits in the left center of the picture, trampled quite a bit more and left the rest. I’m not running them at a high enough density to really impact the pasture at this time, I’m focusing on speeding them along about half as fast as when we were last here in April..55 days ago. I want the cows to get all the energy they can, leaving manure behind. At the current pace it will take me 120 days to cover the entire farm. That will be October 1. I can live with that.

But there are large sections of my pasture where there is no shade. I’ll just skip those until fall, waiting for cooler weather. What I really need to do is add to my tree inventory. And paint that old barn. More on trees in a minute.

There is a fence of questionable quality keeping the cows separate from the alfalfa field. I don’t particularly want an alfalfa field but you play the cards you were dealt. Complaining about the alfalfa field is a little like complaining about eating ice cream. Where the fence lies the cows can’t trample and manure so we have a nice forest of thistle. I could spray the thistle out. I could chop. I could do any of several things but I would prefer to move the fence north or south by about 10 feet and let animals do the work. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much I can do. If it would stop raining for a couple of days we could cut hay…but there I go complaining about ice cream again. Soon I’ll be wishing for rain…

It has been hot out this week [Note: this post was written a week before it was published]. Not August hot but regularly above 90 with humidity above 70%. Some of our cows do ok with that, some pant and drool because they still have a winter coat. Those cows need to leave the farm. We have enough trees that I can section off a portion of a tree lot to give the cows a one-day loafing area in the heat. Then we open up new pasture for the cows morning and evening. The cows reminded me how important this is yesterday when it was 85 out and they were standing in full sun panting. I have to do better. On weekends I subdivide further but it’s not fair for me to ask Julie to roll up fence wire with all the other stuff she has to do during the week so we try to keep things simple.

Anywhere I stand on my farm I am surrounded by trees. Honey locust, black locust, a variety of oaks (shingle, white, burr, red, pin), shagbark and pignut hickory, hackberry, wild cherry, osage orange, redbud, walnut, cottonwood, black willow, sassafras, elm, mulberry, sycamore, sugar and silver maple, sumac, even a few pines and junipers, maybe a persimmon or pawpaw…all of these are valuable both for shade and as forage and many make great firewood and posts. The leaves are high in protein and tannin and the cows eat every leaf they can reach. The trees mine nutrients and water (I repeat myself) and contribute greatly to the available organic material in the soil. You would think I live on the prairie but there is a lot of forest in the river hills. Our goal is to maintain open savanna under a healthy canopy, not allow an overgrown tangle of fallen limbs, multi-flora rose and poison ivy to rule the forest. This requires managed disturbance (including chainsaw disturbance). The cows get in there, eat the good stuff, trample the rest and add a dose of bacteria to an otherwise fungal environment. Adding more trees to the open spaces and in greater variety will only make our farm more productive and help keep our cows happy.

This week in grazing I’m dealing with heat, rain, pasture health and tree planning. I know the time is coming when the heat will worsen and the rain will cease. I need to plant about 10,000 trees. That’s going to take a while…even if I could plant 1,600 trees in a day. But I have to be serious about increasing my tree numbers as my herd numbers grow.

May 8, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Everything the Pasture Needs

This post is the direct result of a conversation with my father. In a way, dad encouraged me to clarify my thinking on pasture fertility and my strategy for moving it forward. If this post is too long for you allow me to summarize. You could simply feed the plants nitrogen and they would be tall and green (though high in protein but low in soluble carbohydrates). But the better long-term investment is to feed the microbes that feed the plants. The idea is that healthy soil grows healthy plants, healthy cows and healthy people. Like teaching fishing rather than giving a fish…except dirt doesn’t go fishing. You know what I mean.

Remember the breakfast scene in The Matrix? The group are eating breakfast and complaining about it a little bit. Complaining…as in they don’t like it. The scene wraps up with an exchange between Dozer and Mouse:

Dozer: It’s a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.

Mouse: It doesn’t have everything the body needs.

Mouse is right. Nobody would fuss if it had everything they needed. From here, Mouse begins to promote his digital escort service but that is not the direction I want to go. All of the dialogue leading up to that comment has already proven Mouse’s point. Nobody wants to eat a bowl of runny snot. What does the pasture need? Depends on who you ask. The plants are commonly boiled down to N, P and K. Just add 10-10-10 to your lawn and it will be green. No problem. And don’t forget Brawndo. It has electrolytes. It’s what plants crave! If you are familiar with that movie you know the electrolytes were killing the plants and the solution was to take water (like…from the toilet) to the fields to flush the salts out of the soil. (Click with caution if the kids are around.)

What does a healthy plant look like? …taste like? Can you taste the difference between a tomato that was grown from artificial N, P and K and a tomato that was grown in compost? Does it have a weak flavor? Can a cow taste the difference between grass grown from NPK and grass grown from worm castings? N is N, right? When I look at the dark green stripe in my pasture where the chicken tractor has been, all I’m seeing is N, right? Well, no. I’m seeing a whole slew of things. But let’s start with what I’m not seeing. I’m not seeing dark green in most of the pasture. Why is that? Because there isn’t enough N in the soil. <sarc>No kidding</sarc>. Cattle have been grazing here for years. Why isn’t there enough N in the soil? (Flip your screen to see the answer below.) What’s a farmer to do? Clearly my pasture is suffering from a lack of Nitrogen. Should I order a tank of liquid nitrogen? Well, that would certainly make it green. But I think that’s like giving the pasture a bowl of runny snot for breakfast. It doesn’t have everything the body needs. What happens over the years if I just keep throwing fertilizer at a hay field and hauling the hay off? That is essentially what has happened with the cattle moving nutrients from the open area to the shade. I’m not just trying to grow a large volume of green grass this season, I’m trying to build deep root systems and healthy soil ecosystems so my grass grows earlier in the spring and later into the fall for years and years. I am trying to make my farm better for next year…for the next farmer.

Nitrogen doesn’t have to come out of a sprayer. Nitrogen is fixed by living, breathing, dying organisms in the soil. What I need isn’t a sprayer unit. What I need is soil health…built over time. I have nothing to compare my farm with except my own farm. Fortunately, I have run livestock on the 20 acres around my house for several years. The cows, goats, pigs and chickens trampled and dunged on every square inch of it every few months for the past few years and have left enough plant residue behind to keep the soil warm, moist and well fed. The east 40 was all cows but had very little manure (the cows pooped in the shade) and zero plant residue (they ate it all because of continuous grazing). Let’s do this with pictures. I have done this for several years: All that muck and manure and all of those hooves and all of those plant stems pressed into contact with the soil have, over time, built up a layer of organic material covering the soil like a blanket, holding things together during periods of heavy rain, limiting evaporation during periods of drought and keeping the soil life fat and happy. Everything from bacteria to grubs to earthworms have plenty to do and a safe, moist place to do it. Compare that to the condition my east pastures have been kept in: Every time the grass grows a little it is nipped off. Goldenrod is ignored by the cattle so it dominates the landscape…and shades out future grass growth. Since the cows are allowed to spread out over a large area they don’t trample in the weeds, stomp the saplings or cover the pasture evenly with manure. In fact, all of the manure gets concentrated in the shade…which is why there are so many dead trees…and the remaining trees are bushy, thorny monsters. The difference between the pastures is obvious but it does take a little time. That’s why you have to increase stocking density (animal units per grazing area) before you can increase stocking rate (animal units on the farm). You need to build pasture health before you can expect it to grow more forage. Bunch the cows up. Shorten grazing periods and extend rest periods. Things will start to change. I think it is worth celebrating the little bit of life we have breathed into the pasture while also adding a little to the farm cash flow. The broilers, like the cattle, are tightly bunched up, grazing, trampling and manuring a small area. Sure, they put down N, P and K as they pass but they put down much, much more. And don’t overlook the value of the trampling action. It’s not just manure being fed to the soil, it’s grass stems. Not to mention the bugs, worms, etc that get eaten, adding value and nutrition to the pasture and not accounted for in the NCSU link above.

So, yeah N = N but N != Chicken Manure. The N certainly makes it obvious where the chicken manure went a few months ago. But in years to come we will still see the benefits to the soil biology. And that is worth crowing about…even if we work to blend the stripe in with pig bedding, cow manure and horse manure…a balanced, varied diet…everything the pasture needs.

May 6, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

30 Days Into the Grazing Season

We are a month into our grazing plan. In some places I am disappointed by the pasture. In other places I’m amazed. I still haven’t covered the farm but that’s good news because the starting point still hasn’t recovered. I need to encourage and allow those grasses to tiller and develop root systems to grow taller, capture more nutrients and cover bare places. I talked about this in a recent post because of the difference in forage where my chicken tractors covered the ground.

I can’t return to this pasture yet. But the good news I don’t have to because I still have a large portion of the farm that I have not grazed, not to mention field edges that I prefer to graze before we cut hay. Remember the plan for the month of April? It worked out pretty much as planned but we haven’t grazed the pasture south or east of the house. We also grazed a little here and there in unmarked areas. Things work out differently in real life. Plans becomes guidelines.

So now what? Well, now it’s time to plan for winter again. It is also calving time. I have to increase by grazing density and slow down the herd. So in the image, our house is on the left of the map next to Rockbridge Rd., not in the center of the map. There is a block by the cemetery marked with a 1 that needs to become a larger number. In fact, every marked number should be multiplied by at least 3…maybe as much as 5. We have covered the farm in 30 days. Now I need to cover the farm in 120 or more days. The cows should not return to the pasture around the cemetery until September.

Most important to me is to cover those four formerly 3-day fields far to the east before July 1. There is very little shade out there and about half of that area is south-facing. I like to have my cows near shade when summer turns hot and dry and I want to graze and stomp and manure all over that area before the rains stop. And if we multiply the grazing areas by 4 we have 48 days of grazing out there. That’s a tough row to hoe for a couple of reasons. There are places that remain ungrazed that I want to graze before I return to the start…in part because the ground needs to be managed, in part because my starting point hasn’t recovered yet. But 48 days before July 1 is May 15th.

BTW, In SQL Server that is SELECT DATEADD(d,-48,‘2014-JUL-01’). Isn’t it nice that SQL server streamlines code inside of built-in functions? You don’t want to know what it takes to calculate date in DOS.

OK. May 15th. 10 days from today.

Well, it sounds like a nice plan. I’m sure I have enough remaining pasture to delay for 10 days but will I get enough growth on my pasture in the next 10 days to allow the required density? I dunno. Maybe I can kill some time on field edges then go a little faster on that pasture. I was hoping to have the cows trample in a little warm season annual seed just to fix more biomass out there but I may not get the density to allow that. So. I don’t know.

But we have a plan. And we can afford to be flexible. I have 10 cows and 30 acres. It almost doesn’t matter what condition my pastures are in. What matters is that I work to increase stocking density now so I can increase stocking rate later.

Stay tuned. It ought to work.

April 30, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Where Chickens Dare

The pasture east of the yellow house should be some of our very best pasture. It’s up on the flat, it’s easy to access and it’s a good soil type. But it just doesn’t grow grass. What grows there is sparse and there is quite a bit of moss, especially on the north-facing slopes. I don’t mind a weedy mess but I do mind the bare spaces. And as I walk the field there are lots of bare spaces.

Seven days from now the cows are scheduled to return here for calving. That’s the plan. But the forage didn’t read the plan. Fortunately the chickens did. Where chicken tractors covered the ground there are distinct stripes of darker green and taller forage. And, yes, I spend a lot of time comparing shades of the color green.

So my theory is that the cows, over the years, have grazed this open ground in the cool of the morning then lounged and manured under the trees (mainly in the creek!) in the heat of the day…translocating the nutrients down hill (!!!) and leaving too little behind for the soil biology. One little pass with chicken manure woke the soil up in three narrow bands.

It’s a difference of 4-6 inches of forage and a massive increase in leaf area and density. But it’s not just chickens that are capable of this magic. On a whim I put a load of horse manure in the pasture shortly after the cows crossed this ground 3 weeks ago. If anything it was even more magical.

But if you need further evidence I don’t know what to say. The hills closer to our house have been grazed for the last few years by goats, chickens, pigs, turkeys and cows. I honestly can’t tell you that everything is better off for it because there are two places in particular that I didn’t manage the pigs well enough but I can tell you that you can see the difference in the variety, volume and density of forage grown over the entire season. Those grasses now wake up at least 10 days before the rest of the farm and grow fast. These grasses are a foot tall in spite of the fact they have been grazed by cattle and by the layer flock in the last 6 weeks…the layer flock that came out of the greenhouse and ate everything in sight. All this growth in spite of apparent abuse and it’s only April 30th!

So I have to get the pasture east of the yellow house on an even footing. After the cows cross that field again in a few weeks I plan to come back through with the manure spreader and a couple of loads of composted hog bedding, though I would rather apply compost in June when we begin our forage slump. I also have several loads of cow manure my tenant left in the barn…and thank God. Beyond that, I need to make my layer flock more portable so I can put them to work scratching, working and helping add fertility over a greater area. And I have to put more birds in chicken tractors. What a difference they make!

We could accomplish this feat with cattle alone but we can speed biological time by using multiple species while, also, building additional profit centers for our farm business. If there is a crash in the cattle market, pigs and chickens could carry us through. The book The Farming Ladder drives this home over and over. Mr. Henderson would add that we should raise wheat and corn(maize) to more fully diversify the farm. But, to stay on point with the post, he would seek to heavily stock the farm. The increase in sheep, pigs and chickens would allow the farm to carry more cattle. I think we have illustrated his point nicely.

April 29, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Reading Condition in the Herd

Hoo boy. Matron, who knows her beans, put up a picture of Jane in a blog post Monday. Jane is a good-looking cow. She is, apparently, not an easy keeper but she looks great. That is a testament to Matron’s abilities and to the condition of her soils…after ~~years~~ decades of management. I highly encourage you to take a look.

My pastures haven’t been well managed. I still have a lot to learn about grazing. My herd genetics are not what we hope they someday will be. And it is still early in the season so the cows haven’t slicked out the way I hope they will. But some cows just don’t shed their coat well. And those are the ones that didn’t breed last year. But 111 is a fertile, short, fat tank and she is losing her winter coat. But beyond that, Matron always points out that if the cows are properly mineralized they won’t look shaggy…scruffy. I have a couple of cows that are nothing short of scruffy. I think I’m on the right track with our mineral program but I have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do.

She really is the future of the herd. I try to look at every cow every day at least once. That’s easy since there are so few. But it’s not just a glance. I look for gut fill by standing at the cow’s left and looking at the gap between the last rib and the pelvis. If there’s a triangular depression there, the cow hasn’t had enough to eat. If it’s full (even slightly bulging) I have done my job. If it has expanded and looks inflated, we need to stop what we are doing and deal with bloat immediately. Short of suggesting you make sure the cows have access to something brown and dry when the pastures are growing fast I’m not going to spend any time on bloat today.

I also walk around behind every cow. Every cow. Every day. How do things look back here? Round? Plump? Are the cows gaining weight from day to day? Are their rumps and tails covered in loose, wet manure? Some of them are. That early spring grass is pretty rich so I’m making it a real point to have a little dry grass hay available to them…even if they ignore it.

The dairy cows are a little thin for my liking. The beef cows are a little hairy. Some are a little loose. They all get looked over every 12 hours as we move them. That really is the best part of my day. Just listening to the frogs, looking for snakes. Listening to the quiet rhythm of the cows grazing; tongue, rip, breathe…tongue, rip, breathe.

In the video above 41 came into fresh pasture with a full rumen but she went right to work. Cows will always eat a little more…cause if they don’t, another cow will. The grass is fairly dense here, mixed with young plantain and lots of dandelion but not much clover. It wasn’t long before they were all laying comfortably on the fresh ground taking naps and chewing cud. You can see a clear line between the morning’s grazing area and this new, fresh ground. That’s why we keep moving…and keep moving fast. An acre a day…so fast I have a hard time keeping the mineral feeder fenced in with them. That rate would translate to 500 acres/day if I had 5,000 cows. I’ll have to figure something out before we get there…lol.

I hope your grazing adventures are as fun as ours. Or if our grazing adventures are your grazing adventures, I hope I’m capturing it in a way that is helpful to your vicarious farming dream. It’s not all grass and manure. There is a lot of rolling up fence, pulling fence posts, pounding them back in and carrying heavy things around too. So if you are farming vicariously, go out in the rain and pick up something heavy. Be sure to splash a mud puddle in your boot so every other step sloshes.

April 28, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Playing Farmer With the Old Man

Dad and I got to play farmer Sunday. We aired up the tires on the old disc and pulled it out to the corn field to do some real farm work while dodging raindrops. We are in for a week of hard rains so it was important that we got this done…though it wasn’t on my list of chores for Sunday. I was focused on cutting firewood and cleaning up around the farm. We are also plugging away at removing fences that have been stomped into the soil. Not easy work. So dad rode the tractor all day to plant 9 acres of pasture while the kids and I kept busy elsewhere. I may have also taken a nap at some point.

Now, I feel that I have to justify ripping soil since I’m normally against it. First, this wasn’t my idea…it was all dad. But he’s not wrong. I have cows to cycle nutrients, shape the soil and spread seeds (speeding biological time). I have chickens to clean up behind the cows and speed up biological time. I have pigs to speed up biological time. We used the disc yesterday to speed up biological time. There is plenty of green growing out there but these are pioneer species…not dense, high-quality forages. In a few years, with a little help from the cows, we would have a nice, diverse stand of forages covering this field but by doing this work now we’ll have a diverse stand this year. And time is important to poor, hungry cows.

We just skimmed the surface of the soil with the disk, in most cases going only an inch into the soil. This allowed us to cut up the corn residue and expose additional soil, bringing seeds to the surface for quick germination. This also made a good bed for seeds of our own choosing.

This was enough of a cut to expose a few worms and grubs but as I looked around I was pleasantly surprised by the good condition of the worms I was finding…what few worms there were. But there weren’t enough worms. At all. That will be another way we can measure our success at increasing soil health over time. Healthy soil has lots of worms. This soil has very few. Few grubs too.

We broadcast a pasture mix of clovers, vernal alfalfa and a few grasses…but mostly clovers with the old seed spreader. The wind was blowing pretty hard so seeds scattered about a bit but the important work was done. The stalks are chopped, the soil is exposed to the coming rain and seeds are in place. It would have been nice if we could have used a drill but we didn’t happen to have a drill handy. We had an antique box with an electric motor to broadcast seeds.

So, yes. I ripped soil on 9 acres. It would have been better, I think, to have planned ahead and asked my neighbor to do this for us while he was tilling his field next door for a small fee. But we didn’t do that. Better yet would have been to feed seedy hay to the cows over the whole field little by little over the winter but his cows were on the corn stubble all winter. So we didn’t do that. So now, on April 27, hours in advance of a week of monsoon season, we gently ripped and seeded the field. Maybe for the last time.

The kids were along. I treasure moments like this, knowing it won’t last much longer. The kids working and playing nearby, helping when they can, wanting to be close.

While we were helping grandpa keep the seeder filled the younger boy found a baby snapping turtle in the stream. It was about the size of a half-dollar. It’s not all work on the farm but it is full-time learning.

Now to remove those pesky, unwanted interior fence lines.

Chism Heritage Farm

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Pasture Management