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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Establishing pasture
  • Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 10:13:52 EDT



> >How long would it take, do you think, to plant and establish pasture?
>

If you plan on it being a permanent pasture, one year.

There are two major ways of looking at pasture, at last two:

With plenty of mechanical or animal power an no reluctance to use it, many
farms rotate pasture and crops on the same land. This means you will plant a
hay crop, same as if you were planting corn or wheat or potatoes, then you
harvest the crop, or graze it and then harvest it. Or in some cases harvest
it
then graze the leavings. Then you plow it back up and use the land for some
other purpose and plant a hay crop eleswhere.

The other apporach is to establish a more or less permanent pasture. These
pastures will tend to be diverse with lots of different types of plants
growing
there. We have some experience with this here in the higher parts of the
Appalachians because much of our land is too steep to ever be rotated into
anything but pasture and hay. It is in perpetual meadows. When undesireable
plants
grow up, they are eliminated. Tree seedlings, ironweed, joepye weed, and
thistle are mowed off which gives the grass and clovers an advantage over
them.

A diversity of animals will make the best use of permanent pasture. What one
favors the others will ignore. If that diversity includes chickens and
geese, all so much the better. If you have chickens in a pasture, you will
never
have to drag it to distribute the manure.

In the case of growing a crop of hay in a rotated field, the heavier grasses
such as timothy, rye, wheat and such can stand up to some trampling and
thrive. So a common practice is to get the crop established and then turn
the
animals out onto it to graze when the blades are only a few inches high. The
animals will bite off the emerging seed stalk and so the plant will react by
creating six or ten or more seed stalks and expanding its crown to accomodate
them.
When you remove the animals after a few weeks, the plants are many times as
thick and sturdy and send up a much heavier hay or grain crop. Likewise,
after
the hay or grain is harvested, turn the animals back in to clean it up. I
wouldn't do this with sheep, at least not long. They graze the plants off
much
closer to the ground and don't mind grubbing up the roots and eating them as
well.


As fuel gets more and more expensive, the notion of permanent hay fields gets
better and better.

James </HTML>




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