The pasture nearest the golf course continues to be the best field on the farm. This is despite the traffic generated by feeding the pigs.
Driving the tractor over there every day has severely compacted the path we use. Combined with the area the cows lounge in that is now devoid of grass and we have our work cut out for us along that narrow strip. The rest of the pasture looks awesome though. Topsoil continues to build and is now reaching about 2.5 – 3″ of rich topsoil.
Pre-grazing grass. About 14″ tall.This picture is well into October and the grass has begun to go dormant but there is still lots of grass available.
Post grazing, 4-6″ grass remaining
Because this was the last grazing, we grazed this area more than normal.
The area where we drive the tractor has begun getting treated with large amounts of wood chips. I’ve given up on recovering the grass that we had. Instead I’m focusing on absorbing the water that is being trapped and adding organic matter to break down and help with the compaction. We also added a new trailer to our plan which allows us to only make one trip vs. 4-5 each day. This really cuts down on the traffic.
When it’s time to recover this area, it will be very rich with broken down chips, heavy with topsoil, and prime for turning back into grass. We also expect dirt to come from a jobsite in Garner, 26,000 yards of it. We’ll use it to shape our swales and get the water to go where we want it. We’ll also raise the areas where we drive so they no longer hold water.
This is a picture of one of our ponds. The past few years, I’d noticed that a green algae had started growing on it. This started after we’d fenced out the cows, a requirement of Wake County Soil and Water. I figured something green growing was progress, so whatever. Plus after at least 80 years of cows dipping in the pond daily for a bath, the pond was due to cycle through a few versions of itself before it settled down.
This year, the green algae was back in force and again, I didn’t pay it that much mind. But then this summer, I noticed the algae had developed some depth, or better said, some height. While on a tour I took a closer look at it and was shocked to see that grass had taken root and was growing on the algae, floating on the pond. Now I’m all in favor of growing grass, and Lord knows it was a great year for grass, but floating grass?! I’ve never heard of grass growing on water.
The grass has spent the last 60 days merrily floating about, drifting from one end of the pond to the other, riding its algae life raft. It hasn’t gotten very tall but it has certainly stayed green and vibrant.
I guess I need to start looking for some Jesus cows so they can graze it.
If you aren’t a farming, grazing, soil building dirt nerd, probably better check out now. If you want to know how we put the sustainable in sustainable farming, this is a post for you.
Back in 2013, we identified some major problems in our operation. We had poor grass coverage, nearly non-existent top soil, and poor animal performance on our forage. We also had some serious erosion issues which were the result of over grazing and over stocking.
The worst of the eroded area, near the pond.
Above you can see a ditch that has formed over 30 years from water flowing across our pasture. Having water on your farm in awesome. The more the merrier. However having it create what amounted to the Grand Canyon across the middle of our pasture wasn’t so welcome.
I’d actually had to call Progress Energy to have them redo their backstay on this power pole because so much of it had been exposed from erosion I was worried the pole would topple over.
We contacted the Wake County Soil and Water Conservation group and they began working with us on a plan to repair this erosion. But just fixing the erosion wasn’t enough. We needed to keep it from happening again.
The tree in the middle of our pasture, with erosion all around.
To keep the erosion from coming back, we had to fix the drainage, but we also had to improve our grass coverage, which at that time was about 40%.
55 dump truck loads of dirt later. In the distance you can just see the tree that marks the previous pictures.
We adopted new management techniques, mainly changing the way we graze our cows, and also composting directly onto the fields with produce, chips, or whatever else we could get with as little effort/cost as possible.
We did seed the area above just after this picture was taken, but mainly the seed didn’t take. The fill dirt was basically useless and wouldn’t grow weeds, much less grass. After 2013, we began spot treating the worst areas with compost to help control erosion and also to improve the soil.
Produce spread out on the fields
Here is an example of how we’d treat an area. You can see some red in the lower left. All the area covered with beans was exposed, red dirt. No topsoil, no organic matter, no grass. By controlling our grazing, and treating the problem areas over the following years, we’ve taken these problem areas from what you see above to this.
The ditch as it looks now in 2016.
This is basically the same view as the fourth picture. All this growth is not from seeds we planted. It’s also not been left fallow. It has been grazed every single rotation of the cattle since 2013. We now stock at a very dense level, less than one acre per cow (the standard is 3 acres per cow). This was after destocking in 2013 to about 12 cows total on our farm. We now have about 50 to put that in perspective.
The latest area to recover with grass
Here you can see our heavily traveled critical area. We put boards down to create a more solid footing. We also limit our movements to crossing in this area on the boards
. The grass you see here that is so tall was bare dirt this spring. I believe it’s actually the area covered in beans I showed you two pictures back. Again, we planted no seeds. We applied no chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc. All we did was manage our cows, and manage the organic matter in the soil. Easy right? So why doesn’t everyone do it? What’s the catch?
It took us three years to get this spot to this growth. That’s three years of an area not producing grass for our animals. In our modern world of quarterly returns and high production, this is simply too long to be acceptable. Better to apply fertilizers, seeds, and get grass to growing. Then spray for weeds when they come up, because they will. For me, I’ll move on to the next area and leave this area alone. It won’t generate weeds because it’s rich in organic matter and the grass is now dominant. I’ll just graze it and mow it like I do everywhere else and the soil will continue to improve. As the soil improves, so will the grass. That’s what sustainable is, making things better as you go through your normal system, not applying band-aids to the problems instead of fixing the root cause.
The first of August we moved our finish herd into the paddock near the pond and near the road where we keep our NRCS grazing stick.
Prior to grazing, wide shot.
The paddock had received plenty of rain and was doing well with the summer heat. We’ve had very few truly hot days this summer and plenty of rain and all the pastures show it. This paddock had been accidentally grazed about a month prior so this was actually a regrowth. The grass was about 8-10″ tall as it’s base layer, with the shoots running up to 14-16 inches.
Close up shot of the grass and the grazing stick
We pulled the cows off after a couple of days. We were combining herds (the new red angus cows arrived) and we needed the cows behind solid fencing while we got everyone used to hot wires and each other.
Post grazing, grass is about 3-5″ tall.
After grazing, there was a lot of trampled grass and plenty of material to build thatch and soil.
Post grazing close up
Leaving the cows on the paddock longer didn’t seem to have any negatives but we are sticking with our daily moves as our overall plan. However when the need arises, I don’t think I’ll be as quick to move them as I would have been.
For 2015, we once again did not graze our back pasture at the bottom of our property. The grass is very sparse and thin, with not a lot of quality. It needs organic material added to improve the soil, something we’ll try to address in 2016.
The grass in some areas did get up to 20″ or so in height but it wasn’t worth grazing for 2015.
The pond near this pasture has a clogged stand pipe and the water going over the spillway is flowing into this pasture keeping it wet causing further issues.
Here is a short video on just a few things to know on how to manage grazing. This would be a 100,000 foot view of things, just the bare basics.
As you can see, managing grazing is a science unto itself. Properly and successfully finishing cows on grass rather than finishing on corn is like having a masters in grazing.
Finishing without seeding annuals, like we do, is really just masochistic but what fun would life be if everything was easy.
On August 20th we moved 38 cows to the McKoy land to begin grazing there. We moved cows, calves, and bulls all in one herd. They stayed there open grazing between the two paddocks until we moved them to the new farm, the Adams farm.
The cows are finishing up their latest rotation on the farm and will be moving to the neighbors next week to start grazing his grass. When they get back, it will be well into fall and the cows will be eating fescue instead of the warm season grasses they’ve just finished. What you see pictured above is the next to the last paddock they have moved into. The paddock behind the wooden fence in the background will be their last paddock for this week, then it’s onto the trailer and to, literally, greener pastures.
This particular picture shows a bunch of the weeds that are growing in this paddock but the grass in there is just as tall as what you see. Miguel and I were on the way to go select pigs to go to the processor the following week and I just snapped this picture as I went by because I thought it gave a good idea of how tall everything is at the end of the rotation. If you look closely, you can see a bit of cow here or there poking her head above the greenery. Now that’s tall grass.
After the cows move out of this paddock, we’ll take the mower in there and mow things closely. Then we’ll take the disc harrow in and lightly disc the ground. At that point we’ll be broadcasting seed for a pollinator habitat that will allow our bees, and wild bees of course, to have a great nectar flow going into fall. Hopefully the seed we have will reseed itself and we’ll keep this little section of the farm in pollinator habitat. With that and some other things we are working on, hopefully we’ll have some honey for sale in our store before too long which I know a number of you have been waiting for.
When I was growing up here, we had grass that was about 2-4 inches tall. It covered about 50-60% of the ground. In the spring and fall, we had fescue, and in the summer we had coastal Bermuda and crab grass. Besides that, we had weeds. When we started managing our animals to maximize our soil fertility, we saw the grass explode not only with health but with variety. Some of that variety was always there, we just couldn’t see it due to it being eaten down so low. Some of the variety has been small pockets of preferred grass expanding its hold as we manage.
What you see pictured above is one such example. I’d never seen Johnson grass grow above 4″ before. I’m sure there was a patch of it here or there but it was kept short like everything else. That first year I was amazed to see it get as tall as me during the summer. When I turned the cows into the paddock where it was growing, I found out why we never saw it before. Most grass the cows eat the top 1/3 and move on. So if the grass starts at 10″ tall, they clip off the top 3″ and move on. Only by keeping them in the paddock longer will they eat the grass lower, which is why we move them. With Johnson grass, they eat it right to the ground immediately. I pointed this out to my contact at Wake County Soil and Water and told her how much I liked the Johnson grass since they like it so much. She said that I was lucky, because it’s the bane of row crop farmers, something they struggle to get rid of. That’s when it occurred to me where I’d seen it growing before and it was indeed in fields of planted crops. I wondered what kind of fertilizer they used to cause grass to grow so tall. Turns out it wasn’t the fertilizer but the grass itself.
14″ tall regular grass, and 3-4′ tall Johnson grass.
Rather than kill it, we are trying to grow more of it and this year I’m finding more patches of it than ever before. It’s not getting a chance to be quite so tall as that first year as we are moving the cows around the pasture faster than before so they are mowing it down. But it’s healthy and vibrant and a welcome sight when I’m cruising the pasture.
It’s so much more fun to see what nature grows for you rather than spray, till, plant, and see if your grass comes up.
This update is for the paddock near our ponds, by Old Stage Road.
Pre grazing, early June 2015.
The grass was fairly decent prior to grazing on June 7th. The fescue seed heads were over the grazing stake, probably about 30″. The grass itself was 13″ or so tall. The grass thickness was about 80% ground coverage with some patches of ground visible here and there. Where there was open ground, there was a relatively thin layer of thatch buildup which was an improvement over our last grazing report where there was effectively no thatch. Thatch is what builds our soil so getting it thicker is our number one concern. It’s been dry lately so the grass isn’t exactly jumping and it’s been warm enough to cause the fescue to begin going dormant.
Pre grazing, the grass is about 13″ tall on average
We turned the cows into this paddock on June 8th and took them off June 10th. This is not our normal rotation but we had to leave them on two days because the cows had to move to the neighbors and we needed the timing to work out so we could take them on Monday rather than on Sunday.
Post grazing
Lots of trample, lots eaten. This area had some decent amount of thistle at this time last year and we have exactly zero thistle this year. It looks like the management is having a positive affect on at least this part of the farm. We certainly didn’t spray for thistle.
Post grazing, NRCS stake
The grass is about 4-6″ tall at this point and relatively evenly grazed. Overall, considering the lack of rain, the grass looks pretty good.
