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

[Kiwi Pete]

But have they? They've certianly made us all spend our time worrying about which one to use, how much of it, when to apply it, which sprayer to use, how to stay qualified, what records to keep etc quite apart form the time actualy doing the spraying. The same applies in many other areas of farming now.

You made the point earlier that you now have time to watch the cows graze and are noticing new things because of it. Well when 20 cows was a big herd the cowman would have spent quite a bit of time with the cows in the field and may have noticed those things anyway. We are now increasingly taught that our time should be spent in the office or applying the bought inputs that supposedly make the farm productive.....

I think that chemicals are where the resilience went

Everything I used to believe was needed was actually losing us the ability to "hunker down" because there was a cost involved.

Even topping, eh @Farmer Roy

]...And big herds... yeah, well I used to feed 4500 hinds in a morning, lots of bales, lots of slides in the Cruiser.. used to feed 750 hungry Jerseys on a multiple-shift high density system, but my pay-day-maker was too scared to let me put them in one big herd...[

Now that things have moved on and I actually get to sit on my pet plastic lid (I needed to put some wire in one of the fences that's been a wee bit tight and annoyed me for a year, so I took my 'pet lid' and be reflective and observant, I got present to just how much that there just wasn't time to see when my time was consumed by "getting it done"

things like

the gurus say we should waste grass to help keep the ground covered up, but then they also said we should grow upright grasses which don't give the groundcover that a diverse old pasture intrinsically has about it - so there's a cost and another cost because if you sit and just watch the cows then you see that they waste grass all on their own - drops out of their muzzle, they tread on it all, they go straight in and crap and then leave all around that, in more open grazing they lie on it and then get up and crap on some more before they eat

so there is no need to listen to gurus unless they tell you to do it they way nature designed it all to unfold.
Those wild herds wouldn't do a lap of Africa in 25 days if they were starving, so what are we thinking?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

On a completely different note, this just popped up as an ad on the Metaverse

be a handy thing if you needed a handy thing, like putting water from one IBC to another for a mob outback

 

[som farmer]

here we go again, thank goodness for plantain and clover, the top photo, on our exposed dry hill, cows came out 10 days ago, second, is same hill, but less exposed, cows out 12 days, amazing what a bit of shelter can do, there isn't much grass left on the exposed bit. That's why we like herbs, they grow where grass doesn't.
The wheat, is about 75m below the first photo, and, apart from the thistle, not so exposed ! looks really good, our main conc for the winter,
the last one, our late sown maize, May 24th, loving this heat, this is on some of our best soils, down by the farm. Sown min-til, and romping away.

 

[Uggman]

I was kidding really,
If we want to avoid more carbon in the atmosphere caused by people burning fossil fuel then the way to stop it is to stop it not to pay someone else that happens to be taking some out of the atmosphere anyway, the question is do we really want to stop it after all its a perfectly natural thing to do or is it just another excuse for a few to get rich ?
personally I think most of it is a load of rubbish but would probably still take a bit of cash as I am rather partial to a bit of cash.
perhaps one day the stack of useless rubbish that that mankind's world seems to be based on will come tumbling down, till then I spose we are all stuck on the ride so best make the best of it while the leaches climb to the top

Isn’t that the same in many respects though. If I’m feeling my beef stock are ‘underperforming’ but the cost going into them is so minimal it doesn’t really matter. The same could be said about dairy stock, if for example, and I’m no expert on dairying, but OAD milking reducing costs and workload. Or replacement costs reduced because the cows aren’t being pushed to maximum yield and therefore only lasting a couple of lactations. Heard here recently that average dairy cow lactation is 2.5yrs. Thats in a supposed grass based country although NI is different to RoI and not as grass focused. Thats a crazy stat! Cow health surely can be improved by not having them producing too much?? A friend who makes cattle crushes told me of a couple guys in england who run a mobile milking parlour OAD milking and no supplementation save for a little incentive meal in the parlour maybe. Grazing herbal leys or cover crops and making good money with very little capital. I know thats on the extreme side but i did think how class that was.

There used to be dozens of mobile milking parlours mainly just milking 30 -40 cows mainly British freisan all over the the somerset levels now just a couple left maybe but more cows 80+

 

[Henarar]

There used to be dozens of mobile milking parlours mainly just milking 30 -40 cows mainly British freisan all over the the somerset levels now just a couple left maybe but more cows 80+

our parlor or Somerset milking bale was a mobile one but it never went anywhere until we stopped milking and I pulled it out of the yard, now it stops the sheep getting out of the yard, one day when I get round to it I am going to cut the stall work out of it and use it for a shed but we only stopped milking 23 years ago and these jobs shouldn't be rushed

 

[som farmer]

there wasn't a lot there, when we cut the rest for silage, a fortnight ago, cut for hay, today, certainly bulked up now, about the slowest bit of pp we farm, all it needed, was a little bit more time.

 

[som farmer]

There used to be dozens of mobile milking parlours mainly just milking 30 -40 cows mainly British freisan all over the the somerset levels now just a couple left maybe but more cows 80+

those mobile bails, across the levels, weren't much fun in wet weather. And as the users got older, the next generation, were perhaps, more sensible, and kept them in the farmstead, and raised them up on blocks. Rather suspect you would struggle to find people to actually use them now. I started milking, in a bail, aged 10/11, on a concrete pad, surrounded by mud, while our h/bone, and sheds were being built, all over a wet winter, horrible.

There again, not over far away from us, a large spring grazing herd, has a mobile herringbone bail, takes the bending out, one downside, they turn 30/40 bulls out, come mating season, and they put holes, in the roof, serving cows during milking.

when we went back milking, looked for a bail, and couldn't find one, so fitted an old abreast parlour, in the old herringbone parlour, worked well, but a max of 75 cows ! When we decided to re-install a h/bone, needed a bail, and had the choice of several, got given one, and after we had finished with it, chap offered good money for it !

 

[cows sh#t me to tears]

That's what I was referring to, you neatly said it - "a bottomless cash pit"

What can it stand?
I'm not trying to prove a point, merely raising the question of how much shock can a farming business handle, and does efficiency cut it?
(Can it run with the income stream cut by 10%, 25%, 50% etc.)

My main lesson in what resilience might look like came from following the life and times of @Farmer Roy - it's an impressive model that can see a run of 3 years of nothing to sell, and still keep the farm and a shirt on his back.
Impressive mindset too, I wouldn't stand one year of drought. You can see how Aussies get tough, the ones that aren't head around the back of a shed and don't come back.

In our business which is heavily geared we could run with no income for about 7 months, or run with half the income, but I don't know if it would be recoverable beyond that point without propping it up with my own money.

It's still recovering financially from our first years of trying to do farming with it, a few more years of not farming will see us in a better position

drought after drought here since 2007 prove yes it can. Else we all would be gone. Even the worst mucker of a farmer in the district survived all those drought years and only sold last year after his 91 year old father died and the neighbors came round with a chequebook.

 

[som farmer]

drought after drought here since 2007 prove yes it can. Else we all would be gone. Even the worst mucker of a farmer in the district survived all those drought years and only sold last year after his 91 year old father died and the neighbors came round with a chequebook.

the high input, high output farms, are at the mercy of, weather, fluctuating prices, and the labour market, all things that are beyond their control. Been down that route, got caught out, and scraped through, just. Now, we milk less than half the cows we used to, can manage on our own, and use contractors, if we can't. To do that swap, wasn't easy, but we have been helped by events, the rising milk price, has meant that the milk cheque is roughly the same, as before, and costs have dropped - rising input costs, have negated some of those savings ! But what it has done, is given us room to manoeuvre around those rising costs, or resilience.
The biggest difference, is, if the prices are right, we could scale back up, to take advantage of them, the high input/output, are up to max, already.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Craig Carter

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[cows sh#t me to tears]

We were all at the mercy of the weather here. Made no difference how high or low input you were pre millennium drought. Also made us reasses what was high or low. We thought summer pasture was low input....(water was cheap and always available ). Then bam. No water. Thought grain was high input... Till you see the results in the vat. Just had to do the best to tread water at the time.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

We were all at the mercy of the weather here. Made no difference how high or low input you were pre millennium drought. Also made us reasses what was high or low. We thought summer pasture was low input....(water was cheap and always available ). Then bam. No water. Thought grain was high input... Till you see the results in the vat. Just had to do the best to tread water at the time.

Did you trim cows back to survive? I know you've spoken of the genetics within your herd, curious to know if you were able to refine them further during those times

 

[cows sh#t me to tears]

Did you trim cows back to survive? I know you've spoken of the genetics within your herd, curious to know if you were able to refine them further during those times

Did what we had to. Passengers went, and so did quite a few heifers. Export was paying good money at the time, so unfortunately some were sold to keep feed in front of the rest. It also has the benefit of then less mouths to feed. But we are still paying for it now with herd numbers.
But, like I said. It was a matter of survival.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Did what we had to. Passengers went, and so did quite a few heifers. Export was paying good money at the time, so unfortunately some were sold to keep feed in front of the rest. It also has the benefit of then less mouths to feed. But we are still paying for it now with herd numbers.
But, like I said. It was a matter of survival.

Life isn't meant to be easy and we sometimes have to make hard decisions.

 

[cows sh#t me to tears]

Life isn't meant to be easy and we sometimes have to make hard decisions.

Most things work out in the long run. Most of the time....

 

[som farmer]

Most things work out in the long run. Most of the time....

the wheel always turns full circle
regen is only 'old' fashioned farming, with 'new' tools.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

the wheel always turns full circle
regen is only 'old' fashioned farming, with 'new' tools.

Not really... old fashioned farming is old fashioned farming; much the same as new fashioned farming, but with old-fashioned tools

 

[Kiwi Pete]

That is on the assumption that 'regen' is relating to regenerative

Agriculture is really one of the very first examples of a mechanistic approach to solving a problem

and so there is a bit more to alter than putting an extra couple of species back in a rotation and proudly flapping the banner

.. which is also a mechanistic approach to designing a solution .

probably the feeling that we need to draw a line under whatever we think it is, to establish some body or some certification process around regenerative agriculture displays our struggle to let go of that way of thinking we're always going to struggle with wholism.

 

[som farmer]

Not really... old fashioned farming is old fashioned farming; much the same as new fashioned farming, but with old-fashioned tools

righto, old tools, because new ones, are to expensive.

we have a bunch of cattle, eating down some free grazing, horse paddocks, where they are not allowed to top. Our bull, was in another field, not horses, in a sea of natural grasses, docks, nettles, thistles and buttercups, a right mess, some of the nettle patches were huge, as were thistles. That field cannot be topped either. The next field over, looked better, that one cannot be topped, cut or grazed, its all in a scheme of some sort, but never heard of 'doing nothing', its pretty well 'rewilding'. But its a classic case of showing proper rewilding, is preceded by a right old mess. Nor will it last long there, as new houses, are already reducing the farms size, and it will all be built on.

And, if we hadn't learnt how to farm, world population, would be firmly under natures control.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

righto, old tools, because new ones, are to expensive.

I finished baling hay here for a neighbour at 18:30 and we both say in the shade of his tractor "chewing the fat" about Dad's life, farming and the state of society. We commented on the fact we'd just take and baled 30 acres of hay with about £30k total value in machinery ( 2 tractors, a baler and a rake). Most "modern" farms would have that tied up in just the baler and it wouldn't have done the job any better or cheaper, just cost more!

They probably wouldn't feel able to sit and chat after either, they'd have to "push on because time is money you know"