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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Pasture Renovation and Fertility

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  • From: Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Pasture Renovation and Fertility
  • Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 17:20:45 -0500

At 07:43 AM 8/6/02 -0500, you wrote:
Hello Frank,

450 acres is quite a spread! Sounds like, though, that just over 100 acres
are actually open, grazable pasture. Just going off of what the aggies
taught me at Texas A & M, each cow / calf unit needs about two acres to
sustain them. So for a starter figure if you have 70 cow / calf units,
you'll need around 140 acres of pasture. Does your extension agent dare to
make such gross guestimations? ;^>

Sounds to me like the soils could support these levels but perhaps the pasture isn't there yet. However, I would stay at your stocking rate and start pushing into the hills. Grazing can only develop properly with enough animals, especially when you need to knock back the brush.

Alan Savory on the other hand, says that the land can carry much more if the
livestock are part of an intensive rotation system. Where he's gotten his
way they're moving the cattle every 8 - 12 hours. Sounds like one would
need a couple of full time hands for something like that.

Length of rest is more important than where in the 1/2 - 3 day window you get off, as long as it's not wet. If the soil is getting chewed up you need to get moving. If you can move daily or more often the advantage if that you van concentrate the grazing action and make them chew down less desirable plants. Of course you are also much more likely to notice health issues and keep enough grass in front of them.

However, Savory
is pretty tight lipped when it comes to recommendations without actually
having seen the site.

Wise.


>> less desirable trees like beech allowed to grow. Virtually
unmanaged/untouched for Lord knows how many years. <<

In what ways is beech less desirable? In the way that sycamore, cottonwood
and willow are less desirable - in that they grow fast and become brittle?
If it hasn't been managed for 20 years, then it's probably better off than
if it had been managed, IMO. You've probably got something going on that is
far more complex and balanced than if someone had been in there with a chain
saw culling less desirable trees.

Not my opinion. Good selective cutting can get much more valuable wood growing and maintain understory better. Best done on frozen ground, farmers call it winter work.

>> Since much of this debris is on the pasture side of the fence I NEED to
do something. <<

Sounds like this is going to be a recurring problem. My first response is
to push it into 20' x 60' brush piles with a dozer and let it stand as such.
You could also make the debris into dead barriers on contour or exclosures,
inside of which you can begin planting other trees and medicinal shrubs.
Our friends live on Lake Buchanan in Texas and when it floods the amount of
flotsam and jetsam on their shores is indeed staggering.

Burning the debris is tempting, but only something I would do as a temporary
solution. As you get a handle on the many challenges you're facing you'll b
e able to fine tune your efforts and eventually phase out stop gap measures.

Put as few obstacles as possible in the way of the flood, limit fence posts, trees shrubs etc within the areas currently accumulating crap. I would knock out all but the most precious trees in these areas. You will find that the cattle can reshape the channel, mashing it down to archive a better shape. Ideally you will end you with the deep main channel and a secondary grassy channel. something like this...

L_____ ________I
L___I

This will hopefully keep most of the overflow in the secondary channel.

>> On the other eastern side of the pasture where the land runs from the
base of the hills down to the bottoms there is about 35 acres of pasture
that includes many evergreens, and some oak, beech,walnut and even a few
more species. <<

So this is 35 of how many garazable acres? Are the trees in the paddock or
on its margins?

>> When we have heavy rainfalls, or considerable rain fall land can become
very wet, lots of boggy areas in low spots as land runs down to creeks. <<

You'd be amazed at what a healthy grass system can soak up. The lusher your
pasture the less time water will stand.

Very sound thinking. Getting the soil chemistry right can help this too. If it drys out enough you may be able to use a deep riper of some kind to fracture the lower soil profile without messing up the sod, though there may be so many old stumps, logs etc that this is not advisable

>> I'd rather not such cut 'em down as most locals advise to improve, and
expand pasture, make cultivation with machinery easier. <<

You should carefully and respectfully filter what the locals and extension
agents tell you to do. I'm sure there's a lot of old time wisdom there, but
there are also a lot of attitudes that run very contrary to permaculture
ethics and principles. For instance, our local USNRCS, does not recommend
swaling because 1) they can blow out, and 2) they fill up with silt and stop
working so well after about 20 years. These things are both true, but when
care of the earth is your main ethic, doing a little swale repair is nothing
and that they fill up with silt is an indicator that the DO work.

Also the aggies would have you take down all willows around a stock pond
because they drink water and destabilize your dam. This also is true to a
degree, but all trees drink water, including our beloved live oak, and
destabilizing one's dam may be a minor consequence compared to the
ecological stability and diversity that results from a tree community around
a pond. Ever noticed how terrible a stock pond can look with nothing around
it but trampled mud and grass and cow manure?

I would take trees messing up you damn very seriously. Not only could you have a headache later, but a serious liability issue and or a danger to your neighbors if a large pond failed catastrophically. Remember, they blow in big rain storms. Kirby's comments on swales are right on. In fact one of your best ways to build up you low lands is to use good grass cover and swales to catch soil in these floods. Lemonade from lemons...

The only function of a stock pond, according to many ranchers, is to provide
water. This single function attitude is contrary to the Pc principle of
gaining the highest number of functions per component.

true, and fish makes a nice change from all that beef.

>> Some of these areas tend to be especially boggy. <<

The trees are there, probably, because of the standing water. Without them
the water would stand for much longer. Many of the true tall grasses, e.g.
for Texas, big blue stem, are part of a climax plant community with the live
oak tree. So maybe the next step is to establish a water loving tall grass
under those trees - Indian grass, eastern gamma grass, others? Work with
Nature rather than against Her.

C-4's like big blue and Indian grass make some sense there. Lets you use the pasture later in the season when they could be dryer. I'm not sure how much standing water they can take. I hate to bring this up, cuz someone will be upset about the invasiveness, but reed canary grass does great in wet areas and will take lots of drought



Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM





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