Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

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.