freeze

 I worked several weeks in the summer of 2019 to get the supply lines from the pasture underground water system to the watering tanks sufficiently covered with gravel and soil that we could maintain a grazing rotation well after Thanksgiving.  So far it has not panned out, since we have had for the last two seasons a serious and lengthy cold snap in most of November.  Last year I broke through six inches of surface ice in one cattle tank before I gave it up for the year.  This year, because of the dry conditions, the grass gave out before the water froze.

We will see what next year brings.  For now, we do winter cattle feeding along with the other getting ready for winter things, like getting bedding bales home, getting the livestock buildings in winter order, putting away tools and so forth.  The farmer proposes, God(in the form of weather) disposes.  So it goes.

Jim

land

 "Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do.  They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides.  But they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it." Aldo Leopold

thistles

 I have long thought that patches of Canada thistle are there because the soil, probably compacted, needs their tap roots.  Now I hear Klaas Martins say that there seems to be a built-in control in the process.  Evidently the symbiosis between root and soil life requires that the tap root growth be in anaerobic conditions.  So that is why after persisting and thickening several seasons, the thistle patch fades and disappears.  Those roots have worked themselves out of a job as they made the compacted layers of the soil more permeable and thus more aerobic.

It is easier to observe this in a pasture than under crop conditions with the continuous tillage and/or chemical interventions.