I have always leaned toward a grazing practice based upon the idea of using animals to harvest what nature wants to grow on soil I pretty much take for granted. Lately I am seeing some holes in the usefulness of that attitude.
For one thing, the soil can never be taken for granted. It must be cared for in use and that truth is as real for a farmer who harvests by grazing as it is for one who is reliant on tractors and tillage. Cows in wet times can compact the soil. Careless grazing opens too much of it to the wind and water. Care with haying must be taken not to transport too many nutrients away.
Attitudes must exhibit some flexibility.
So now we have about 25 or 30 acres needing attention due either to our drainage installation in the wettest area of the pasture a year ago or our practice of winter feeding of hay on pasture. There is too much bare soil out there and a certain amount of leftover hay mixed with manure in about six paddocks. Plans are to reseed two of these pads to a hay and grazing mix of perennial forage plants and use the other four to grow a single season grazing crop which will finish early enough for us to reseed pastures then, hopefully without much in the way of tillage.
Plans are to use Japanese Millet for hay or grazing in three of the four pads that will grow an annual crop with the other one planted to an oats/rape mixture which should be ready for grazing a bit sooner than the millet.
There is another damaged paddock of about four acres adjacent to these which we will leave to its own devices, to see if there really has been any benefit to all this running about with tractors and tools causing extra use of fuel. I am cheering for the left alone paddock to prove to me that a pasture managed correctly can fix itself!
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