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Back to the basics….
Edward Taylor of Vermont, who has become a frequent visitor to this blog, came across an article on rotational grazing that he (and we) think will be helpful to beginners in grass feeding their herd. The article is aimed at dairy farmers, who have even higher nutritional requirements for their animals than most of us, but the principles are the same. With due credit to Farming Magazine: http://www.farmingmagazine.com/article-9188.aspx Here at Thistle Hill we are somewhere between rotational and mob grazing. Most times we move our heifers daily…the cows every other day or every third day. We do still set stock our bulls.
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Saving the planet….
….not exactly a humble goal, but that’s what is at stake. The earth’s surface has been turning into a vast desert, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere every year than all the fossil fuel engines combined. This “browning” of the planet is the cause of all the hunger, suffering and war than we can possibly deal with. Strangely, while largely blamed for all our environmental woes, it is the lowly cow that holds the key to the problem. (I wanted to write: “our survival”) As pollyanish as it may sound, we do believe that grass fed beef is the answer. Good for your personal health, a grazing cow is good for the…
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Open for business….
….once again. We had to drag one of those big utility company trucks through two pastures (making a mess of several years of holistic work) but we finally have power. The crew from southern Kentucky made a truly heroic effort and we appreciate their work. They thought the whole thing was kind of fun….and all were taking pictures of their adventure. Unfortunately I left my camera at home. The cows took the foot of snow in stride. The yearling heifers, pictured here, did graze through the white stuff but the grass really wasn’t long enough and they were glad to see a bale of hay show up. The temperatures during…
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Still more on marketing grass fed beef….
….my recent post on the price disadvantage American producers face when competing against foreign grass fed beef (see below “Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef) needs some fine tuning. My point was that I pay almost four times as much for butchering as my competitor in Tasmania. And so foreign beef can absorb the shipping costs and still undersell American beef. But my good friend Bill Roberts of 12 Stones Grasslands Beef files a mild disagreement (that’s what friends are for, to tell you when you’re wrong. Mildly.) Bill says we’re not up against price competition alone. As I understand it, price is not the main issue in…
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A milestone (of sorts)….
….part of the main Thistle Hill herd making its final move of the winter. The stockpiled grass in what we call River Pasture is about 10 inches tall and we estimate this will take us to about the end of March. That could mean we have grazed the main herd through the winter for the first time in our history. For that we have to thank the lessons we learned in our sessions with Holistic Management International. The second thing that pleases us is that we had forecast to make this move on March 1st, and that was a forecast made last April. So we were off by just four…
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Don’t cut back….
…on the minerals. We’ve noticed in the past week or two that the cows have suddenly increased their intake of minerals. We’re assuming the bitterly cold temperatures have finally done-in the fescue grass, which is pretty good feed in the winter. But the cows (or in this case, the young bulls) know best. We’ve also begun to put a bale of hay in front of our growing animals—the bulls and heifers—and it is interesting that they know how to balance their intake between the alfalfa and regular hay. As the old saying goes, God taught the cow all it needs to know to be a perfect cow! Incidentally, our main herd…
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Gerrish visits Thistle Hill….
….Jim Gerrish, that is, the nation’s leading pasture expert. We’re fortunate to count Jim among our friends. He’s the one who convinced us eight years ago to “go red” before red was cool. More than that, Jim’s counsel on a wide range of grazing issues has been invaluable in both raising our Devon and finishing animals for meat. Above, he’s just great company and the world really won’t miss the few bottles of red we destroyed during his visit. After staying the night (and checking out some of our herd and pastures as the sun went down), Jim went on to star in a series of programs put on by…
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Upgrading two pastures….
….by adding all-weather water points. These non-freeze waterers (if there is such a word) will give us greater flexibility to move our herd around. Neighbor Herman Harlow is at the controls of the back hoe and I’m imitating a highway construction crew. Herman has done a lot of site work for us over the years and I’m always fascinated by how precisely he can maneuver that big claw. Even more amazing is how he can level the bottom of a deep hole from his perch in the back hoe. I used to check with a level but no more. After a good freeze, the nutritional value of our fescue…
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Nature is always right…
One of the lessons of farming is that you don’t fight nature….and it’s time for us to recognize that we ‘re in the summer dry spell. Maybe drought. Whatever. While the grass still looks good and there’s plenty of it, you can feel the dryness in the hardening ground. And you certainly see the water reduced to a trickle in our young bull pasture. In our area, the forecast is now for several days of more than 100 so we’re tanking our first steps. Not really our first. Earlier this year we did reduce the size of the herd slightly looking to future growth with our new English calves. So…
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Still another innovation at Thistle Hill….
We’re constantly experimenting here at Thistle Hill, looking for new and better ways to care for our farm and our cattle and, not incidentally, improve the quality of our meat. This tanker truck is spraying some test pastures with a mixture of microbes and fungi…one of several approaches we’re using to strengthen the root system and thicken the grasses in our pastures. The improved yield means better nutrition for the cows and also could enable us to increase the number of animals on the farm. But what we are particularly aiming for is a stronger, healthier stand of grass in the summer. Virginia’s hot, dry summers bring grass production almost…