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

Poorbuthappy · Mar 15, 2019

ShooTa said:
Lovely lass from hull uni doing a doctorate came for the interview - 6 odd students are investigating systems based thinking/holistic in relation to water management and shes specifically looking at grazing's role. shes looking for a few more examples so if anyones actually begun grazing and is interested shoot me a pm and ill foward your details to her.....
its working with welsh govt for future descision making and funding...

Sounds interesting ShooTa.
My 2nd daughter wants to go farming and we have encouraged her to keep the uni option door open. However she is not keen and with my ever increasing interest in the holistic approach I'm thinking a normal ag degree is not going to benefit her much. (She is also "environmentally minded" for want of a better way of putting it and is taking an interest too.)
So I'm left wondering what options she (perhaps I should say we) has (have) in growing practical and technical knowledge on this?
Perhaps I should start a separate thread, but your post about students looking into holistic grazing caught my eye as we're (or she's) chewing on options for her.

awkward · Mar 15, 2019

Poorbuthappy said:
Sounds interesting ShooTa.
My 2nd daughter wants to go farming and we have encouraged her to keep the uni option door open. However she is not keen and with my ever increasing interest in the holistic approach I'm thinking a normal ag degree is not going to benefit her much. (She is also "environmentally minded" for want of a better way of putting it and is taking an interest too.)
So I'm left wondering what options she (perhaps I should say we) has (have) in growing practical and technical knowledge on this?
Perhaps I should start a separate thread, but your post about students looking into holistic grazing caught my eye as we're (or she's) chewing on options for her.

@Sheila Cooke may point u in right direction. @holwellcourtfarm

Poorbuthappy · Mar 15, 2019

awkward said:
@Sheila Cooke may point u in right direction. @holwellcourtfarm

Yes intending to speak to Sheila

Hoping to glean some info at Groundswell though sadly daughter isn't able to come and could do with getting organised before then.

ShooTa · Mar 15, 2019

@Poorbuthappy i was listening to the pasture pod and there was a chap on their that went in country business management at ag collage - was good for on farm AND off farm. and a totally transferrable skill.

holwellcourtfarm · Mar 15, 2019

ShooTa said:
Lovely lass from hull uni doing a doctorate came for the interview - 6 odd students are investigating systems based thinking/holistic in relation to water management and shes specifically looking at grazing's role. shes looking for a few more examples so if anyones actually begun grazing and is interested shoot me a pm and ill foward your details to her.....
its working with welsh govt for future descision making and funding...

VERY interesting. I'm trying to get various watery peeps I know interested in studying the potential of regenerative arable and livestock farming to fix our broken water cycle at landscape scale in the UK. It has the potential to both hugely reduce flood frequency and increase water availability at low cost. If that isn't one of Gove's "Public goods" I don't know what is!

Poorbuthappy · Mar 15, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
VERYinteresting. I'm trying to get various watery peeps I know interested in studying the potential of regenerative arrange and livestock farming to fix our broken water cycle at landscape scale in the UK. It has the potential to both hugely reduce flood frequency and increase water availability at low cost. If that isn't one of Gove's "Public goods" I don't know what is!

A like is not enough for this. I was talking to some catchment sensitive farming bods about it. They seemed vaguely aware.
Am I right in thinking you worked for rivers authority or was that someone else?

holwellcourtfarm · Mar 15, 2019

Poorbuthappy said:
A like is not enough for this. I was talking to some catchment sensitive farming bods about it. They seemed vaguely aware.
Am I right in thinking you worked for rivers authority or was that someone else?

23 years managing Flood Risk work for the EA.

Karliboy · Mar 15, 2019

Any pics off your silage ground yet @Kiwi Pete
I know it’s been dry for you but but just interested in how it’s taking off with you diverse mix.

onesiedale · Mar 15, 2019

holwellcourtfarm said:
VERY interesting. I'm trying to get various watery peeps I know interested in studying the potential of regenerative arable and livestock farming to fix our broken water cycle at landscape scale in the UK. It has the potential to both hugely reduce flood frequency and increase water availability at low cost. If that isn't one of Gove's "Public goods" I don't know what is!

We used to host an annual ''training' day for EA staff in the West Midlands, the guy that facilitated it for them has since retired, but he was really enthusiastic about cover crops, no till and holistic management of livestock. It all went over my head back then, but I wish I could have him back here now, even if only to say , "I understand you now"

Kiwi Pete · Mar 15, 2019

Karliboy said:
Any pics off your silage ground yet @Kiwi Pete
I know it’s been dry for you but but just interested in how it’s taking off with you diverse mix.

It's not pretty, that's for sure.

This is what raping your cover does if it doesn't rain - I think I'll be importing silage from now on....

where there's moisture the cover is better.
3 months plant recovery with 35mm rain.

Little plants, little roots

Samcowman · Mar 15, 2019

Kiwi Pete said:
It's not pretty, that's for sure.View attachment 777092
This is what raping your cover does if it doesn't rain - I think I'll be importing silage from now on....View attachment 777094where there's moisture the cover is better.
3 months plant recovery with 35mm rain.

Are both of those pictures the same recovery time?

Kiwi Pete · Mar 15, 2019

Samcowman said:
Are both of those pictures the same recovery time?

Yep, same paddock Sam

Mowers create droughts from dry spells.

It's actually dry enough, if the grass was longer, they'd pull the whole plant out of the ground.... a bit fooked!!

Samcowman · Mar 15, 2019

Kiwi Pete said:
Yep, same paddock Sam

Mowers create droughts from dry spells

Good work. Also buying in feed will be buying in a nice bit of fertility and worm food.
Talking about grazing and silage got with senior management this week. Apparently you want to save as much ground as you can for silaging and cut as much silage as possible.
Where we are you cant get away from needing to silage due to being on clay. But extending the grazing season waiter end should be a target.

Crofter64 · Mar 15, 2019

Kiwi Pete said:
940mm average, 740 last year.
We're on a silty clay here so it is really susceptible to really being wrecked by inattention - to borrow from HCF "baseline reset syndrome" - many just accept that winter means mud and crack on with the abuse!
I guess it's just one of those things, people accept that sheep need drenched or grass needs fert, cereals need fungicides, etc without examining the "why is that???" too closely.
And usually the "why" with mud or poaching is twofold - no litter, too much time.

But the rate varies everywhere, for eg Roy can have carbon sitting around til the sun melts it because of the lack of moisture there.
My soils eat the stuff, literally, for breakfast because the moisture is compatible with the decomposers. So it's quite a task to maintain enough litter through the wet bit. Cold soil slows the rate.
Where Blaithin is, the snow will have an effect.

I think my task is to graze twice over winter: start with as much cover as we can muster, take the top half on the first graze and much of the remainder on the second graze.
There's the visible trampled summer stems, but under that again there's more cushionView attachment 776870
This is about 3cm thick, before you start actually finding worm casts, and the proper soil is under that. The other 3-4cm has been pulled away in this pic.

Isn’t that trampled grass called thatch? and weren’t we told to use a dethatcher cause in keeps the grass from growing?

Kiwi Pete · Mar 15, 2019

Samcowman said:
Good work. Also buying in feed will be buying in a nice bit of fertility and worm food.
Talking about grazing and silage got with senior management this week. Apparently you want to save as much ground as you can for silaging and cut as much silage as possible.
Where we are you can get away from needing to silage due to being on clay. But extending the grazing season waiter end should be a target.

I don't think this pic shows very clearly but there's about 5-6 inches height difference between the paddock, and where the fence protects the soil. Quite staggering!!

There's hidden degeneration... and the obvious forms. I'm making the outside cells slightly smaller as the stock can harvest this and move it to the centre of the field, like a "cow plough" by way of fertility transfer - won't achieve much, but it never pays to stop thinking about things.

Kiwi Pete · Mar 15, 2019

Crofter64 said:
Isn’t that trampled grass called thatch? and weren’t we told to use a dethatcher cause in keeps the grass from growing?

Yes!

By seed and machinery salepeople

What that does, is make the plants look bigger, like shaving pubic hair makes the penis look bigger.

But it wouldn't be there for no reason, would it?

...oh, and lime salespeople... "let your carbon oxidise, buy our carbonate"

... oh, and shed builders, they probably agree you need to put animals indoors so getting rid of litter is great for them too.

But we must bed our stock on fresh straw every day........ what's this, then?

Turning out to be more like Mythbusters all the time!

Kiwi Pete · Mar 15, 2019

Samcowman said:
Good work. Also buying in feed will be buying in a nice bit of fertility and worm food.
Talking about grazing and silage got with senior management this week. Apparently you want to save as much ground as you can for silaging and cut as much silage as possible.
Where we are you can get away from needing to silage due to being on clay. But extending the grazing season waiter end should be a target.

Here's what happens when the forager misses the trailer.

Carbon.

Samcowman · Mar 15, 2019

Kiwi Pete said:
Here's what happens when the forager misses the trailer.View attachment 777126
Carbon.

What a waste!!!!!
Bet if you dig down the worms will have migrated under the waste and there will be more there than in the surrounding area.

Kiwi Pete · Mar 15, 2019

Samcowman said:
What a waste!!!!!
Bet if you dig down the worms will have migrated under the waste and there will be more there than in the surrounding area.

Yeah, silage is a waste, isn't it.
Great if it comes from somewhere away, but all that nutrient is doing nothing for the soil foodweb, while it's parked in a stack!

And it's much harder to make stock pay if we deviate from grazing for long, I'm hoping to house for a month in spring but graze right thru winter unless we can really get some stock numbers ahead of us, then I'll dig into it

ShooTa · Mar 15, 2019

one of the reasons i fed our silage in our silage field this year... and once i finally get round to wroiting my new plan for the growing seaon (waiting on 2 outside sources) then ill be resting that heavily in the period it would normally be cut.

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

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