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

pear · Nov 7, 2019

Rob Garrett said:
Are you feeding those bales to housed cattle or cattle outwintered on your arable stubble? I like the molasses idea.

Bales are currently fed to cattle at grass. Grass is perm pasture and short term leys. The hay bales are second cut grass, so I had harvested the winter barley, so the barley fields were clear so I could put the hay bales on there. Cattle will start coming in over the next couple of weeks so the bales will be fed to them housed. I’m lucky that the bulk of my farm is ring fenced so moving bales around to stubble fields is usually pretty easy. The arable fields around the farm yard are cereal/grass ley rotation- easy to move/walk cattle about when they graze the grass.

ShooTa · Nov 7, 2019

I really hope i dont have a daughter named amy running around - it'd be a hell of a suprise if i did .. i wonder which of the pretty girls it would belong to?

Inky · Nov 7, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
Corrected My age getting the better of me [emoji38]

He's a seriously interesting bloke to chat to and very enthusiastic. I can think of many uses for his services.

I did the 3 day fundamentals last week and met Bruce and thought the same thing about his services. Having recently installed several mains water supplys to take the pressure off ponds / bomb craters there's more that can be done to hold more water on the land, but it needs someone with experience and knowledge as those changes could have negative impacts to the current flora and trees.

onesiedale · Nov 7, 2019

JohnGalway said:
Heading off to this Tuesday & Wednesday

@JohnGalway
Hope your 2 days away were good. What were your thoughts? And what was the biggest thing you learnt?

Samcowman · Nov 7, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
Corrected My age getting the better of me

He's a seriously interesting bloke to chat to and very enthusiastic. I can think of many uses for his services.

Did Bruce show you his coffee papers of the degradation of soils in just a few years really amazing. Can’t remember what the process was called? Need laura to remind me!!

Cece · Nov 7, 2019

How would bales grazed (lying round side butt facing top to bottom) work on a hill? It's about 22 degree slope and is open to the prevailing wind.

Would that kind of incline just get really destroyed?

pear · Nov 7, 2019

Samcowman said:
Did Bruce show you his coffee papers of the degradation of soils in just a few years really amazing. Can’t remember what the process was called? Need laura to remind me!!

Chromatography??

holwellcourtfarm · Nov 7, 2019

Samcowman said:
Did Bruce show you his coffee papers of the degradation of soils in just a few years really amazing. Can’t remember what the process was called? Need laura to remind me!!

Sheila mentioned them so he did briefly talk us through. He did say that special solvents were used so it's a precise process. Interesting though.

Have you got the handbook yet?

pear · Nov 7, 2019

Samcowman said:
Did Bruce show you his coffee papers of the degradation of soils in just a few years really amazing. Can’t remember what the process was called? Need laura to remind me!!

I’ll let you explain the photo!

holwellcourtfarm · Nov 7, 2019

pear said:
I’ll let you explain the photo!

IIRC he takes a representative soil sample, dries it to a powder, adds water then places some drops onto a filter paper pre-treated with compounds that react to certain elements with colour changes.

The 3 papers were of soil from a site cleared from native forest to grow soya beans. The left hand was straight after felling. The centre one was after the first crop was planted and the right hand one was after 3 crops.

He described the feathering between the outer ring and the dark brown ring as showing diversity. The "hardness" of the inner circle reveals the compaction.

Fenwick · Nov 7, 2019

Kiwi Pete said:
With keyline, it's feasible that rips could start and finish at hedges/walls as long as they keep following the key line - chances are that these will be situated in suitable places as the old farmers weren't as blind to what they had in front of them?
Many fencelines are on ridges so that's not going to be a problem for you?

What are you planning to plant?

We'll have to have a good think about the keyline design.

For the silvopasture we have decided on a mix of about 40 native tree and shrubs species along the field perimeters.

Within the field itself Apples, Pears and Walnuts as a saleable product.
Robinia pseudoacacia and Alnus glutinosa as supporting nitrogen fixers.
Paulownia and Morus alba as an experimentation into tree fodder.
Also Salix and Populus in the riparian zones.

We will also be using Robinia, Eucalyptus and Paulownia as support trees for all the long term plantations where appropriate.

Aiming to plant around 1000 trees/year.

I would dearly like to plant Hazels but we dont have support in the area for harvest and processing.... yet.

Samcowman · Nov 7, 2019

pear said:
I’ll let you explain the photo!

Pretty sure left hand one was first year conversion to soya from rotationally grazed pasture and the yearly degradation. The lines dragging outwards was the mycorrhizal fungi!!!

hendrebc · Nov 7, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
Can you still get silage bags like we used before blown film? You could pop one over each hay bale then and just take them off without cutting them.

Yes but what an awful job!

ShooTa · Nov 7, 2019

i did some research on bale size and degradation/spoilage - if you get the largest poossible size then your % lost in ground contact and external water is much smaller than a standard or smaller sized round bale... also tightly wrapped...

im planning on bale grazing a filed but havnt put them out yet as i missed my window and now its just pee wet through.. so am rethinking - as its roughly only 30 bales - which *should* last 2 days each and possibly stretch to 3. theyre 6wrapped atm but likely going to store them on their flat end in the field as ive been told thats the most plastic.

Jungle Bill · Nov 7, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
Woohoo! Course complete. I'm a trained Holistic practitioner.

View attachment 842442

Also graduating were Amy, @Poorbuthappy 's daughter and Bruce Kirk of https://www.greencurvesdesign.com/ , a Keyline landscape designer. His short introduction to the application of the keyline scale of permanence to farm landscape layout was fascinating.

Congratulations to everyone, but be warned it can get addictive!
I trained with 3LM 2 years ago which was great but left me wanting to know more so have just spent most of the last year travelling and training in all things holistic and regenerative, leading to becoming accredited as a Certified Educator by the Savory Institute earlier this year.
I’m home now and intend to set up a demonstration site here next year. We’ve also at last got decent internet here so should be able to take part in these discussions more.

holwellcourtfarm · Nov 8, 2019

Jungle Bill said:
Congratulations to everyone, but be warned it can get addictive!
I trained with 3LM 2 years ago which was great but left me wanting to know more so have just spent most of the last year travelling and training in all things holistic and regenerative, leading to becoming accredited as a Certified Educator by the Savory Institute earlier this year.
I’m home now and intend to set up a demonstration site here next year. We’ve also at last got decent internet here so should be able to take part in these discussions more.

Great. How do you plan on going forward?

We aim to move then spend time getting the land right first. I wouldn't want to be showing others what we were doing before there are clear benefits to see.

Jungle Bill · Nov 8, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
Great. How do you plan on going forward?

We aim to move then spend time getting the land right first. I wouldn't want to be showing others what we were doing before there are clear benefits to see.

My first priority is to sort out a grazing partner, I don’t want to do this on my own and don’t think current seasonal grazers would want to mix their sheep and cattle with other peoples’ and I think a flerd would suit our ground well.

One thing I’ve been impressed with in my travels is how open the regenerative community is about their mistakes and problems and how much I learned from this. I no longer worry about making a fool of myself and think the constant monitoring and replanning should stop any disasters.

I could have done some sorting this year but want to start and record the change from zero, so hope to start when the grass is ready in the spring and, as always, assume I’ve got it wrong until I see positive signs of change and hope that this helps others understand the process and thinking needed.

JohnGalway · Nov 8, 2019

onesiedale said:
@JohnGalway
Hope your 2 days away were good. What were your thoughts? And what was the biggest thing you learnt?

Thanks, they were excellent to be honest. Easily the best investment I've made in myself (in work terms) thus far. One notable thing about the event itself, there was no sniping or snobbery regarding ones system whether conventional or organic, it was widely recognised within the delegates as an educational event and the atmosphere was fun, warm, and most agreeable. Everyone I met was happy to share information.

I've been following this thread a long while, watching YT, reading. This event, the speakers and delegates who practice organic and regen ag, drove home just how powerful pasture diversity, soil microbes, our management, and taking a holistic approach can be in real world terms. We have so much potential on all our farms if we would for a moment step back, learn about it, stop or at least reduce how we are harming it and let it work for us.

I've been typing and deleting to help sort my thoughts on your last question. The biggest thing I learned and I was on the journey I guess anyway, the most important thing to change is the few inches between my ears. After that, everything else follows.

SilliamWhale · Nov 8, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
Woohoo! Course complete. I'm a trained Holistic practitioner.

View attachment 842442

Also graduating were Amy, @Poorbuthappy 's daughter and Bruce Kirk of https://www.greencurvesdesign.com/ , a Keyline landscape designer. His short introduction to the application of the keyline scale of permanence to farm landscape layout was fascinating.

Well done!

hendrebc · Nov 8, 2019

Ok grass question time. At our conventional rotational grazing group last week we were talking about setting up the farm ready for spring by grazing really low to about 1400kg/DM/ha to clean up all the crap out of the fields to give a fresh clean start ready for spring. They would be getting well over 100 days rest to recover ready for grazing from 1st of march roughly if left now.
I had planned to eat it all down in 2 rounds one taking the top off and another in a month or so eating it down taking me up till Christmas and giving me an extra couple of weeks grazing because I'm still getting some regrowth. But grazing it down in one round makes sense to give it the maximum time to recover for an early spring start. Still not too late to do either yet. Thoughts?

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