reseeding

 I just finished seeding about eight acres in the pasture that was standing in ragweed.  I used a bushel of oats with six lb of a good forage rape from Barenbrug.  We had winter fed hay there in 2021 and expected to see a return to good grass this year.  But this is often enough not the case on our farm.  I don't want to back off of pasture feeding due to the wonderful efficiencies-no manure to haul, minimize tractor use in winter, and so forth. But it is becoming apparent that it is very easy to damage a poorly drained highly clay soil such as ours with heavy traffic even in winter.  There really is no such thing as standard one size fits all grazing advice.

It may be good for us to regard that winter feeding area as an opportunity to produce a good annual crop of forage, followed by a return to perennials the following spring.  This would involve some heavy tillage, which is not great, but it may be just the thing for this problem.  Of course, a good annual crop of forage assumes that it is going to be planted well before the end of August.

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. 

drought

 Climate change is expanding the western drought into western Minnesota.  The USDA climate hub reports for us rainfall at about 50% of average for the month of July.   This follows a moisture short period in June as well.  Additionally, our temperatures are running several degrees above average, humidity readings are on the low side and the winds are pretty constant.  These factors cause plants to use extra soil moisture to cool themselves, thus exacerbating the dry conditions, and adding to the problem.

Planning for a diversified livestock farm must take all this into account and a judgment must be made about whether this is a one or two year event, or an ongoing trend.  We are thinking this will be an ongoing reality for us.  So first, we will likely see a need for shade for the herd periodically, to which we never paid much attention.  Fortunately, we have the farmstead grove of trees which can be used and also two maturing field windbreaks which we can set up for cattle to be moved into on hot afternoons.

Additionally, we may need to work toward a different pasture sward.  Currently we have three or four cool season grasses and some clover for them to graze.  But cool season grasses do not do well in the heat, so we may need to work toward more alfalfa, chicory, plantain and so forth, all of which are tap rooted to some depth.  Intermediate wheat grass, used extensively west of here, is worth a thought too, as it develops a tremendous ball of roots, some of which extend quite a depth.

The pigs require a different approach.  Unlike cattle, pigs will cool themselves nicely if they have access to standing water or can get to a mist sprayer.  The only time this does not work as well is when the humidity is very high and even then, it helps quite a bit. They do need shade, but this is pretty available to them as the housing provides a good bit of it.

It might be helpful to change the pig feeding over to a timed event, rather than simply having feed available all the time.  An animal with a full stomach-especially a simple stomached beast like a pig suffers from a full stomach when the weather is hot.  It may be possible and certainly worth looking at, to devise ways to encourage them to do more of their eating overnight and in the early morning hours.  The technology to accomplish this is quite inexpensive and easy to adapt.

And in the future, we may need to adjust our cropping pattern.  Corn, our major hog feed, requires a great deal of precipitation to grow and may become more of a problem.

To get through the remainder of this season we must sort down the grazing herd, and sell some animals we did not want to market.  This must be done as a first move to get the cattle appetite in line with the available grass.  We hope it rains, and soon! 

We all do need to pressure those with agency to change our economy so that we stop putting so much carbon into the air.  Politicians, of course will never do anything unless their feet are held to the fire. 

lead

 Getting cattle into a forage based diet, including pastures, has tended to get me away from herding and chasing them.  They want to see what I am up to when I come and they come to investigate.  They hope I will open the gate leading to fresh grass.  This gets learned and soon I can lead them pretty much wherever I want them rather than driving them.  One of the perks of planned grazing.

heat

 The low humidity levels the last week or so took the edge off the extreme high temperatures. The pigs have come through the heat without damage and the cattle only needed to be run under the trees one day.  The soil life suffered.  Bare soil heats up toward 150 degrees F at the surface and the soil microbes begin to die.  These microbes serve as a pathway between the soil fertility and the plants, especially in an organic system. We can see the need to develop systems for growing our organic crops with the soil covered right from the start.  The pastures fare better in this way.

We cut and baled the first crop of hay last week, and also began the tillage and cultivation of the corn.  The oats look nice.  We will keep you posted on what happens with that field as we get into the summer.  We hope for rain.

f

warming

 It is easy and tempting to think that a warm spell in May compensates for the cold April we experienced.  But warm days warm the air, not the primarily the earth, which responds more like any body of water, taking time to warm in spring.  This is critical for farming.  The lilacs that will probably not be in full bloom by Memorial Day as they generally are, the corn seeds that will not grow vigorously and the grass that stands still rather than booming in response to the seventy degree days are exhibiting the same stress.  The earth is not yet warm enough.  It will be the rest of the season, including the time available before first frost in the fall that will now determine the success or failure of the season.

climate

 For two months we have repeated the same weather pattern, all of it at temps ten to fifteen degrees below average.  We will have a warmer day, then the wind switches to south and picks up.  Temps drop for two days, then we will get a little rain or usually snow.  Then it warms enough to melt the snow and the pattern repeats, all within about a week.  We have been windy, even for us on the prairie for most of the winter.  Difficult to think about planting anything.  The pastures do not even green up.

This is El Nino, or it is climate change, or perhaps both.  In any case, we now pretty much know, seeing the disasters that some others face, that climate change may well appear as a cooling, high winds, drought, floods and etc.  Our climate system is distressed and disrupted.  We need to start admitting that so we can deal with it.  Farms have a lot to do in response and real opportunity to make some positive change.