"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

Poorbuthappy said:

I've asked a local engineer to make me a Greg Judy style bale unroller.

Bale Unrollers

Click here if you’d like to get emails when we schedule schools, workshops, sales, and more. We are now making our own Greg Judy Bale Unroller designed to work with a 4-wheeler and do exactly…

greenpasturesfarm.net

Have toyed with tractor unroller in the past but it didn't really tick the right boxes.
Now I'm not concerned about "wasting" grass/ hay I'm happy to give this a go, and hopefully use it to improve some poor areas, as well as extend the grazing season.
In the past I've wrecked various bits of fields feeding in a ring feeder before housing. I'm hoping by continuing the grazing round and feeding like this they can stay out longer, and improve the ground in the process.

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Built for me by a neighbour for about 500.00$

Crofter64 said:

Built for me by a neighbour for about 500.00$View attachment 824829View attachment 824830

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That looks quite a soft bale. Does it roll out evenly?

Crofter64 said:

Built for me by a neighbour for about 500.00$View attachment 824829View attachment 824830

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I really ought to be making it myself but either it won't get done in time or other equally important jobs will be neglected.
Can't do everything, but I think it's going to cost me a fair bit more than yours.

From Farmers Weekly New Zealand:

The Interim Climate Change Committee recently ruled out using soil to store carbon on farms because the science doesn’t support it. But, as Colin Williscroft discovered, research is under way to see how that might change in the future.

At least 60% of New Zealand’s high-producing grasslands – those on less than a 20-degree slope – have some potential to store carbon and help cut greenhouse gas emissions, research shows.

Plant and Food Research science group leader Dr Mike Beare, who is working on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre-funded soil carbon programme, said increasing the amount of carbon stored in soils could reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and partially offset the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

There have been a number of different strands of work over the past four or five years looking at how that might be achieved.

“Developing soil management practices that lead to increases in soil carbon stocks depends on identifying soils that have the capacity to store more carbon,” Beare said.

“In general, soils with a high clay content and a high mineral surface area have the greatest capacity to store carbon.

“Our recent research found that soils with a high mineral surface area are better able to protect new plant carbon inputs from decomposition, which helps to explain why these soils have a greater potential to stabilise carbon.”

Though about 60% of high-producing grasslands have some potential to store more carbon in the topsoil many of those are near carbon saturation point.

The greater potential for carbon storage is in the subsoils, those deeper than 15cm, which have a considerably lower carbon concentration so researchers have used the same method used to predict topsoil carbon storage to make similar predictions for subsoil.

It’s hoped those soils might be able store much more carbon if management practices can be developed to expose them to greater carbon inputs.

“These management practices may include the sowing of pasture species with large, deep-penetrating root systems that deposit more carbon deep in the soil profile,” Beare said.

No pasture species with root systems that penetrate deep enough have been identified yet.

Another approach being investigated is the use of full-inversion tillage (FIT) during pasture renewal to bury topsoil carbon and bring low-carbon subsoil to the surface where it can be exposed to high carbon inputs through the growth of new pasture.

That research is being done at five sites – two at Massey University, a commercial farm near Whanganui and two places in the South Island.

Massey agriculture and environment research officer Roberto Calvelo Pereira said while ploughing is usually associated with carbon losses that is because that type of ploughing is done frequently at shallower depths than the approach the research is taking.

Instead of ploughing to a depth of about 15cm the depth is set at 25cm to 30cm. It would also done far less frequently, about once every 20 to 30 years. Any other soil renewal would need to be done without tillage.

The FIT research started in 2017 and at this stage it has funding till 2020.

Earlier this year Massey hosted a field day at its No. 4 dairy farm to share the results from the research and see how a plough is set up for the type of tillage being investigated.

Indications are the practice shows potential to maintain crop and pasture yields while reducing net greenhouse gas emissions from grazed pastures.

However, it’s not a practice that will work in all scenarios and on all soils and one of the reasons for the research is to work out where it could best be applied.

The potential benefits and trade-offs of pasture renewal using FIT are being investigated by scientists here and their peers in Ireland and Germany in a separate research programme supported by the Global Research Alliance for Agricultural Greenhouse Gases.

While research into the potential for soil to store carbon is showing promising it is still early days, Beare said.

Work is continuing, including looking at some of the practical implications for farmers and effects on pasture management and grazing.

“There are some important practical implications of this research for increasing soil carbon storage in New Zealand’s pasture soils.

“First, the development of management practices to enhance soil carbon storage should target those soils that have a relatively high mineral surface area.

“Second, they should focus on exposing low-carbon subsoils, 15-30cm deep, to higher inputs of carbon from plants or perhaps manure, particularly where the subsoil carbon concentrations are less than half that of the surface (0-15cm) soils.”



Recommending deep ploughing of pasture to store more carbon! Only a reductionist scientist could come up with that gem

holwellcourtfarm said:

No pasture species with root systems that penetrate deep enough have been identified yet.

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Really?
My little poster from Cotswold seeds (from Groundswell) shows some species going down to 3m. Plenty of photos of similar depths from grasslands of USA.
How deep do they want to go?!

Poorbuthappy said:

Really?
My little poster from Cotswold seeds (from Groundswell) shows some species going down to 3m. Plenty of photos of similar depths from grasslands of USA.
How deep do they want to go?!

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Exactly! You'd think they'd do a quick look around before concluding that.

holwellcourtfarm said:

That looks quite a soft bale. Does it roll out evenly?

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I took that photo last autumn, I was pulling the bale from break to break to give the sheep something to nibble on if they felt like it. When I use it to unroll bales it works fine . The bottom of the bales rests on the ground and it unrolls like toilet paper. Sometimes it needs a bit of a hand to start but then is fine. The slowest part is backing up, pinning the bale and cranking it up- but since I only do this once a year its not such a big deal. Bafore I had a tractor I also transported bales with this tool.

Poorbuthappy said:

I really ought to be making it myself but either it won't get done in time or other equally important jobs will be neglected.
Can't do everything, but I think it's going to cost me a fair bit more than yours.

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Mine was built about 15 years ago. I’m sure it would cost more now.

ShooTa said:

@TexelBen yeah - the farm is afaik suspended/paused due to her friend/husband (cant rem) who was killed in a tractor accident.
the link to posts about it is...

#villagefarmuk on Instagram | Hashtags

329 posts - Discover photos and videos that include hashtag "villagefarmuk"

www.instagram.com

and

Village Farm (@villagefarm_uk) • Instagram photos and videos

905 Followers, 8 Following, 59 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Village Farm (@villagefarm_uk)

www.instagram.com

photos like this are fab

http://instagr.am/p/BMMYnRBgqLT/ http://instagr.am/p/7fEBNhjndY/

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Thank you [emoji1360][emoji1360][emoji1360]

re the double digging (as it used to be called ) - it was a method used in victorian kitchen gardens for reefreshing tired soil - and it does work for rejuvenation - but at the expense of the soil food web and ... release of the "low carbon......" jebus,.

Kiwi Pete said:

And (here we go again) what about the weeds?
We've a root depth here of about 1- 1.5 metres, and that's just old fashioned grass, meadowgrasses and dogstail and stuff.

What they're basing their extrapolations on is that every farmer in the country is using ryegrass (false) and keeping the grass manicured (false) and applying all the fertiliser they can (also false).

If you want shallow roots, that's the recipe, keep hurting your plants and stressing your soil in various ways (chemical, physical etc) and you end up with a hydroponic system where all the action is shallow.
Ie, the lowland areas where it's convenient to nip out of the lab and have a few digs.

Sometimes "research" consists of forming a hypothesis and then designing an experiment that confirms it - I feel that's our current war to fight, in NZ.

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Fancy becoming Farmers Weekly New Zealand's least popular columnist?

Great In Grass said:

Harrowing hardened muck pats is pointless. They are a breeding ground for meadow grass that germinates beneath them which then grow due to photosynthesising as they are dragged around a field.

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I see that. I have horses and the stallions do it in one place to form a pile and it takes months to go away even on a daily move. I thought it might be better to spread it around.

Kiwi Pete said:

It is, but the ecosystem will do it for you if you give it time.
That's really all we are doing with "work", using our energy to alter the timeframes.

I guess it depends on your vision, too, or your "pasture goals" - not everyone out there is as comfortable with a heap of species they didn't plan on having, as me!

I have chain-harrowed to help break hardpack dung before, but mainly to see how my "new" old tractor went (Dad's old Nuffield, sentimental fool that I am) rather than a serious attempt at the dung.

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Nart wrong with a bit of sentimentality

Kiwi Pete said:

It is, but the ecosystem will do it for you if you give it time.
That's really all we are doing with "work", using our energy to alter the timeframes.

I guess it depends on your vision, too, or your "pasture goals" - not everyone out there is as comfortable with a heap of species they didn't plan on having, as me!

I have chain-harrowed to help break hardpack dung before, but mainly to see how my "new" old tractor went (Dad's old Nuffield, sentimental fool that I am) rather than a serious attempt at the dung.

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I guess thats why ants can carry it around so well. You're right I figured that it would be quicker to move it around. Years of horses munching on my grass has led to the classic well manured areas that grow well but they won't eat and lawn areas where they will eat, but which don't grow.

Pete you wanted to see photos of our latest trampled spots? Well since I only have the horse here and she’s usually doing her lawn mowing around bins job, I don’t have much getting trampled. But she did a good job on the little section at the gate and barn!



She obviously has no interest in my second tallest patch of pigweed though