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homestead - Re: [Homestead] AHIPA: Exploring the Potential of a SustainableCrop as a Food Source

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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] AHIPA: Exploring the Potential of a SustainableCrop as a Food Source
  • Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:52:18 -0700

I agree. We always ran multiple types of livestock on pasture which took care of a lot of problems. Sheep eat the star thistle with no adverse effects. The horses ate the flowers off the bull thistle and other type big thistles. and so forth and so on. So running cattle, sheep, goats and horses together keep our pastures looking like a mowed lawn. We also rotated irrigated to hay field to dry pasture, a year off and back again using a four-year rotation schedule.

Do the same with our raised beds. About the only thing we don't do the rotations with, obviously, is the fruit trees but we do grow various "stuff" under them which adds nutriunts back into the soil plus we used to graze the sheep in the mature orchards. When we get sheep again we'll do that again also.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Jones" <billj AT harborside.com>

There's more than enough reason to conclude that pasture weed problems
are due in major part to the way people do things nowadays. In the
past, before all farms became either animal or vegetable, pasture was
rotated with grains and row crops, and tilled and replanted. If this is
not done, it's hard to see what force keeps the weeds from taking over
altogether, since livestock are constantly selecting for weeds, the
surviving plants that aren't grazed! Fortunately in this case I just
have to give up star thistle for cut flowers.






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