Rain

 We did get rain about a week ago now.  Four and one-half inches at home here and three and a half on the Eagle Lake pastures.  Virtually nothing ran off.  The situation was not good before the rain and we will see how much good comes of it for this year.  It does bring up an interesting comparison though, which consists of impressions only as the inch and seven tenths the pastures got in June that the home farm didn't plus the stark differences in soil and slope make it impossible to reach much in the way of a logical conclusion.

Obviously, every thing is green now.  We had to restart the lawnmower.  The pastures are slow to fire up though, clearly demonstrating the usefulness of schemes to leave a certain level of grass behind at each move.  The grass finds it slow and hard to begin booming again from a start of not much more than an inch or two.  Poor management here.  We resisted destocking the entire summer hoping for rain, and consequently grazed too hard. 

Also noticeable is the difference between the impacts on heavy use areas between the two locations.  Here at home the area right around the drinker being used during the rainfall-which stretched over about two days-is crusted and compacted, surface pugged and very difficult to walk over.  At the east pastures, twenty five miles distant, it is difficult to see any particular impact at all in the paddock where the cattle were during the rain.  It did rain an inch more at home, but I think the major difference is that the soil here is very predominately clay and on the east location it is heavily sand.  

The damage to the soil surface of a heavy rain and cattle impact on a clay soil will have to be taken into account if we are to succeed in grazing these soils, which are so much more productive than the sand based soils on the glacial til that runs across the state, and on which our east pastures are located.  Sand holds up better under heavy use and rain, but clay produces much more if we can avoid compacting it.