The grass continues to look great. Here you can see today’s paddock on the left, yesterday’s on the right. Its obvious where the cows have grazed as it’s very brown vs todays paddock which is as green as spring grass. In fact the poop from the cows is getting somewhat runny like it does in the spring which is interesting since there is a fall flush of grass much like there is a spring flush. I read about the fall flush but with our old grazing methods you never saw it. One more thing that is working just like the grazing experts said it would. The brown would be bad in your suburban yard (homeowners associations would be unhappy) but for our pastures its gold. This is dried organic matter which is matting down and decomposing. This brown grass will be next years healthy soil.
Today we are meeting Ryan with NW Poole Well company to redrill an old well that was out of service when we moved on the farm. We are going to hopefully hit good water and then combine this well with a solar based pump that will now water all of our cows from solar pumped water from a separate well than our main farm well. As we grow our herd they are going to drink more and more water so we are planning ahead for that growth. An adult cow can drink as much as 30 gallons of water per day and lactating cows can double that need. Since we have a lot of lactating cows we have pretty sizeable water needs that will only grow. Thank goodness the cows don’t take showers. 🙂
This project is in partnership again with Wake County Soil and Water and Teresa Hice from that office who continues to help us on the farm. I met Teresa at a Keeping the Farm” workshop some years ago and she has been working with us ever since helping with our erosion issues, land retention, etc. The next keeping the farm workshop is January 29th and if you farm or want to farm I highly recommend you attending. It’s well worth the day.