Regenerative Grazing

[benkostka]

Well the C’s mentioned in the December session that the way to survive in the future will be to go back to the land. One the the best ways to grow food is regenerative grazing or holistic grazing, it’s a very simple method that improves literally everything in the environment. If done properly you get more water retention in soils, more water infiltration in soil to refill aquifers, the removal and recycling of dead organic matter to prevent fires. Additionally all the wild species of animals are benefitted as well, deer, turkey, raptors and many more species will return because of the positive changes to the environment from grazing. Cattle can also provide things like leather, which if made through vegetable tanning will last decades.

So here’s a video about doing this in Southern California. It’s simple stuff and probably worth knowing, as knowledge and skills like these certainly will help survive when food is scarce.

 

[zak]

It reminds me of my biology classes in college, on the ecosystem containing the biotope and the biocenosis.
Just as in the medical field, we need as a species to be able to return to a vision where everything is connected, which forms a precise whole with a goal.
This can be summed up simply by this sentence from Frank in the video:
"If you dont want to be sick
eat grass-fed beef."

 

[Chad]

I listened to a related podcast the other day, and one of the more interesting takeaways was the idea that farm animals will choose a selection of foods based on 'what they need', and in turn this makes them healthier and the nutrition of the meat better.

One of the studies mentioned was that, over a period of 2 months, one group of cattle were given a mixed feed bag, the others were given the same foods but separately. They noted that, in the seperated food group, no animal ate the same thing, nor the same quantity, everyday, nor did they overeat. The conclusion being something along the lines that, given the choice, animals will eat to optimise their health.

It also seems to reflect another point i've come across, which is that cattle in a field will avoid the plants that they know are toxic (probably because of their taste or what not) however when there's a scarcity of food sources, they're more likely to end up eating them.

They discussed how that at certain times of the year there was a certain plant the animals couldn't eat because it was so high in tannins, but as the plant matured the tannins reduced. However by restricting when the animals were in the field meant that during the period this food was edible, they weren't there to eat it, and then the area became dominated by this particular plant.

There were quite a few other interesting points and i'd recommend it to anyone interested in that kind of thing.

I guess the takeaway was to allow animals choice by providing them with enough land and diversity, as well demonstrating the intelligence of nature.

 

[Honzap]

The original idea about grazing aims at keeping the herd healthy. Animals unlike humans poop where they eat and drink, and since Mother Nature doesn`t like to waste anything, the small insects, bugs and bacteria zoom in on the feast on the ground. No big deal, as long as another animal doesn`t start eating the grass right next to it. Normally an animal will not eat its own poop, however the other animals in the heard might and sometimes do. Insects, bugs bacteria and the like will strategically position themselves on the vegetation, get eaten, find their way into the animal`s digestive tract, make home there infecting the animal and start populating...
Old shepherd adage says: The sheep shall not see 2 Sundays on the same pasture. It is just for this reason.

So for whoever wants to start pasturing their animals, cows, goats, sheep, hogs - the size of pasture determines the size of your herd.

 

[benkostka]

Here’s a guy who’s building some beautiful pasture in Missouri simply by moving his cattle twice a day. He’s brought back lots of wildlife on his farms, more turkeys, deer and other small critters. He’s also doing what was once called silvopasture, leaving a few trees in the grazing area for shade or extra nutrition for the animals. Two of the species he leaves are honey locust and persimmon, they both provide lots of extra food for wildlife and honey locust provides dappled shade and fixes nitrogen in the soil.

One thing I like about guys like Greg Judy is that he isn’t an academic, but he’s interested in science so he’s able to combine everything and he’s got a very good delivery. It takes a while to absorb what you can from his Youtube channel, but everything he’s doing here can be done if modern machinery and fossil fuels go away.

 

[Jones]

There's also Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. His family started out with a farm that had been depleted and overused - left with thin pastures and washout gullies - and they regenerated it using the natural behaviours of animals - cows, both meat and egg chickens, pigs, turkeys and rabbits.

I did some work on a farm once that was in a degraded condition after many years of farming pineapple and they used Salatins method to regenrate the farm using symbiotic relationships between cattle, sheep and pastured meat and egg chickens. Rotating animal species over the pasture also improves the hygiene of the pasture for all the animals.

When the owners sister, who had a sheep farm in SA saw the improvement, she added pastured chickens to her operation.

The family that I worked for also had a permaculture fruit and vege garden and while that worked well for supplying their own needs, it isn't very efficient to harvest the fruit and veges for market so last I heard they were going to look into alternate ways of organic gardening.

Edited to add: Salatin makes an interesting point in the above video that one could potentially team up with a grazier and use their land to run a pastured chicken operation. There's a benefit for each in that the grazier would get improved pastures and the chicken farmer wouldn't necessarily need to own land to get started.

 

[Olivierlejardinier]

Just as in the medical field, we need as a species to be able to return to a vision where everything is connected, which forms a precise whole with a goal.

On this subject , I think there is some knowledge in the work of Rudolph Steiner and those who are working/researching according to the principles resulting from this work, e.g. Biodynamic agriculture. From wiki:

"It treats soil fertility, plant growth, and livestock care as ecologically interrelated tasks, emphasizing spiritual and mystical perspectives."

The basis of all his teachings regarding agriculture can be found in this book : "Agriculture Course: The Birth of the Biodynamic Method" , from amazon description:

"However, the agriculture Steiner speaks of here is much more than organic―it involves working with the cosmos, with the earth, and with spiritual beings."

I' ve read this book and it helped me assimilate the complex relations possibly existing between plants/trees and insects, soil/minerals and animals/humans. All this based on how the spiritual/unseen world manages to manifest before our eyes. For clarity, I'm not telling that Steiner got the whole banana spiritually speaking here , but he brings up some challenging views on the natural processes really hapening in our 3D world.

 

[benkostka]

On this subject , I think there is some knowledge in the work of Rudolph Steiner and those who are working/researching according to the principles resulting from this work, e.g. Biodynamic agriculture. From wiki:

"It treats soil fertility, plant growth, and livestock care as ecologically interrelated tasks, emphasizing spiritual and mystical perspectives."

The basis of all his teachings regarding agriculture can be found in this book : "Agriculture Course: The Birth of the Biodynamic Method" , from amazon description:

"However, the agriculture Steiner speaks of here is much more than organic―it involves working with the cosmos, with the earth, and with spiritual beings."

I' ve read this book and it helped me assimilate the complex relations possibly existing between plants/trees and insects, soil/minerals and animals/humans. All this based on how the spiritual/unseen world manages to manifest before our eyes. For clarity, I'm not telling that Steiner got the whole banana spiritually speaking here , but he brings up some challenging views on the natural processes really hapening in our 3D world.

I’ve read a little bit of Steiner, the Findhorn Garden and then you could also take Paul Gautschi’s experience with his Back to Eden wood chip method and my only comment on it all is that they want to relate it all to some sort of high spiritual principles….

The best people I’ve found are the pragmatic farmers who just love Nature and work with their animals every day. If you listen to a guy like Ian Mitchell-Innes, he presents a very very grounded view of things. It’s just basic lessons, from an energy perspective we can raise livestock, they eat grass, are easy to move around and done properly it provides benefits for the entire ecosystem. Farming crops can’t, it requires more energy to produce those crops than they give and the only reason we can grow them now is because of fossil fuels, fertilizers and pesticides. It’s a doomed system not to mention all the other negative aspects.

I tried it myself, built a bunch of garden beds, shredded leaves, grass clippings and woodchips ect and grew a decent amount of vegetables, but it was exhausting. Now I’d rather just look at nature, perhaps plant a few apple or persimmons in a silvopasture where I can graze cattle or sheep and then easily harvest a few deer that come to eat the fruit. It’s the most efficient way to grow food.

 

[Honzap]

Agreed with all of the above. There is definitely something deeply satisfying about seeing your animals grow and prosper.

Specifically for the winter time.
Barn or a shed with roof and walls that will block the elements is a must.
Next is grains, hay, silage or anything with caloric and nutritional value that will keep the herd fed and warm. Grass on the pasture is usually of low quality during this time or generaly not available.

Here is the grains dilemma. You can either grow your own and this way make it nice self-sufficient venue. With a TON of extra work that is. Or you can go buy feed in the store. In today`s prices you`ll find out soon enough to buy only what you cannot grow.

Local Tractor supply used to sell chicken scratch 50 pound bags for 11 bucks only 2 years ago. Lo and behold today - 20 bucks. Let`s say you have 15 hens and a rooster. That 50 pound bag will last you about one week for free range birds. Less for inside chicken. How many weeks before ground unfreezes and grass starts growing? It gets expensive in a minute.
Rabbit food 50 pound bags went from 20 to 30 bucks. Sheep food, horse oats, pig mixes? Do not even let me start on that.
So this winter is the last one we are buying grains. Growing your own becomes priority.

Interestingly enough, our ancestors only 2 generations back knew all this. And were homesteading/farming full scale because the stores were simply not an option back then.

 

[benkostka]

Specifically for the winter time.
Barn or a shed with roof and walls that will block the elements is a must.
Next is grains, hay, silage or anything with caloric and nutritional value that will keep the herd fed and warm. Grass on the pasture is usually of low quality during this time or generaly not available.

I think we can all see that grains are essentially going to go away in the future, once fossil fuel prices and fertilizer prices skyrocket it’s finished…. So with that being said, hay can be stored for a very long time if harvested and dried properly and that can be done by hand with scythes, hay rakes and hay racks.

Maybe you grow a small patch of corn/sorghum or something just to have a bunch to feed geese/chickens in case it freezes, but it’s super small scale. That grain will store essentially forever in a 55 gallon drum with a locking lid, safe from vermin.

Forage like grass can be put up for the winter as stockpile and animals rotated through. Also feeding hay on the land as opposed to in a barn just adds the fertility directly where you want it. Otherwise you’ve gotta return that manure to the fields in spring which is tough work.

I like Joel Salatin’s idea of a mobile shade structure for cattle, you can place it where there’s a lack of fertility and after the cows do their business there for a day you’ll end up with 5 years of extra growth, according to him. But it’s a smart solution as opposed to bucketing manure out there.

There’s other stuff to consider, for instance our wonder drug Ivermectin is essentially hugely detrimental to the environment. It’ll kill all the dung beetles and their larva, and the life cycle of those beetles is at least a year as opposed to the flies they suppress which breed in weeks. Regardless, all of those drugs are going away so we should start thinking about homepathic solutions. I’ve got a small stainless distiller that can make hydrosols/oils on a small scale and essentially could last forever.

The C’s have said help is on the way. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I figure it’ll be easier if we already know how to support ourselves with simple means.

 

[Honzap]

Maybe you grow a small patch of corn/sorghum or something just to have a bunch to feed geese/chickens in case it freezes, but it’s super small scale. That grain will store essentially forever in a 55 gallon drum with a locking lid, safe from vermin.

That`s the way to do it. Add alfalfa, clover and maybe amaranth for the protein value and all is set.

I like Joel Salatin’s idea of a mobile shade structure for cattle, you can place it where there’s a lack of fertility and after the cows do their business there for a day you’ll end up with 5 years of extra growth, according to him. But it’s a smart solution as opposed to bucketing manure out there.

Yep, that`s what we do with sheep. Best done with combination of goats because those moody critters will eat anything from grass to thorny shrubs for breakfast. Almost no need for clearing the area.

The C’s have said help is on the way. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I figure it’ll be easier if we already know how to support ourselves with simple means.

I was wondering about the same thing. My so far interpretation is that if a catastrofic event happens and there are survivors, they might not have anything resembling fertile land as a result. Books like Andy Weir`s The Martian come to mind where the main character was growing crops using his own dung in hostile conditions of planet Mars.

Oh, one more thing for potential farmers.
Forget about holidays, forget about you feeling sick, weak, or just simply not up to anything that day. Your animals need to be tended to every day whether its week day or Christmas. and even if you evolve to mostly automatic feeding and watering system, they still need to see you and feel your presence.

 

[eightyfour]

I think we can all see that grains are essentially going to go away in the future, once fossil fuel prices and fertilizer prices skyrocket it’s finished…. So with that being said, hay can be stored for a very long time if harvested and dried properly and that can be done by hand with scythes, hay rakes and hay racks.

Maybe you grow a small patch of corn/sorghum or something just to have a bunch to feed geese/chickens in case it freezes, but it’s super small scale. That grain will store essentially forever in a 55 gallon drum with a locking lid, safe from vermin.

Forage like grass can be put up for the winter as stockpile and animals rotated through. Also feeding hay on the land as opposed to in a barn just adds the fertility directly where you want it. Otherwise you’ve gotta return that manure to the fields in spring which is tough work.

I like Joel Salatin’s idea of a mobile shade structure for cattle, you can place it where there’s a lack of fertility and after the cows do their business there for a day you’ll end up with 5 years of extra growth, according to him. But it’s a smart solution as opposed to bucketing manure out there.

There’s other stuff to consider, for instance our wonder drug Ivermectin is essentially hugely detrimental to the environment. It’ll kill all the dung beetles and their larva, and the life cycle of those beetles is at least a year as opposed to the flies they suppress which breed in weeks. Regardless, all of those drugs are going away so we should start thinking about homepathic solutions. I’ve got a small stainless distiller that can make hydrosols/oils on a small scale and essentially could last forever.

The C’s have said help is on the way. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I figure it’ll be easier if we already know how to support ourselves with simple means.

Before tractors their was horses a lot of grain and hay was produced with horses (farms were more self sufficient then horses reproduce and can survive on grass alone if need be). The Photo is in Australia in the 1930s and the YouTube video is the Palouse region in Washington USA

This regenerative agriculture thing with grazing alone is a bit of marketing hype. The rotational system the English had is about the best system for arable land. Unpalatable weeds (thistles for example) get out of hand with grazing alone.

 

[benkostka]

This regenerative agriculture thing with grazing alone is a bit of marketing hype. The rotational system the English had is about the best system for arable land.

I don’t know who’s actually marketing regenerative agriculture, there’s been some small documentaries produced but by and large it’s suppressed by big Ag.

You can’t use the English system worldwide, that’s the issue and if 2/3 of the earth is located on a brittle environment which essentially means that there’s no rain for 6 months of the year, well planting grain won’t work. Springs dry up, water doesn’t infiltrate the soil ect, you will create more desert. The English system works in England because it’s always wet there.

Besides, if the system collapses…. There’s no way you’ll be able to service those horse drawn combines or produce replacement parts. But a hand scythe can be sharpened for decades and it’s within a person’s means to fashion another blade by blacksmithing.

Plowing the soil has only produced widespread ecological devastation, whether with horses and oxen or now with modern farming equipment. Not to mention the negative impacts consuming grains have on just about all types of life.

 

[dennis]

Dragging pastures breaks up and disperses manure piles as well as aggravating the fire ants. It also aerates the soil if you use something with tines on it. In the past we've used old bed springs from the landfill with logs tied on, an array of used tires or just pull a log around.

Mowing (bush-hogging at about 6 inch height) at the right time prevents unwanted weeds from seeding and promotes growth of forage. Rotational grazing is great if you have the set up for it. Soil testing can ID deficiencies or need for lime.

There is no work-around to drought, and in the case of society breaking down sooner or later necessary supplies and parts not being available will render even the most resourceful in poor circumstances.

Homemade pasture drag

We want to drag two of our four pastures for soon, one is about 10 acres and the other is about 15. We don't have a traditional pasture drag but do have a 4x8 (ft) chain link fence gate. It's in good solid condition--what can I do to it make it our drag? I guess it just needs to be heavier or...

www.cattletoday.com

 

[benkostka]

There is no work-around to drought, and in the case of society breaking down sooner or later necessary supplies and parts not being available will render even the most resourceful in poor circumstances.

I agree that long term drought will cause problems for even the most resourceful people. However, regenerative grazing which places organic matter back into the soil and allows perennial grasses to grow out their root systems will replenish aquifers. It’s the only system I’ve seen that does this…. Not only that, but the soil is ready to absorb the water as soon as it rains. There’s a guy in Texas who filled a huge bunch of limestone caverns and brought springs back that had been dry for decades.