Holistic pasture management/farming.....

[Baymule]

That little yellow clover is a type of burr clover. I have it here too, the burrs are not sticker, they are soft. The sheep eat it too and that's all I care about.

Your grasses and clovers are beautiful. You tell your son that we not only admire pictures of grass, but we appreciate pictures of dirt too! LOL LOL I am happy for you, your hard work is showing. That is some gorgeous pasture!

 

[Beekissed]

That little yellow clover is a type of burr clover. I have it here too, the burrs are not sticker, they are soft. The sheep eat it too and that's all I care about.

Your grasses and clovers are beautiful. You tell your son that we not only admire pictures of grass, but we appreciate pictures of dirt too! LOL LOL I am happy for you, your hard work is showing. That is some gorgeous pasture!

Bay, the cool part about it all is that it works out just like Greg Judy said it would...graze them and it will come! We didn't do anything different than normal for this place except bunching the sheep into these small paddocks and move them to fresh when it's time to do so.

Now, if we can get the front yard to look like the back and side yards do...it's got the crappiest grass of all. When I see THAT part showing up with clover galore, I'll know this truly works.

And you should see these sheep move to fresh paddock.....it's like mentioning free beer to a college crowd. It's a stampede! I just pull up a push in stake, pull the line over to make a gate and yell for them...and make sure I'm out of the way!

This clover is pretty rich, so the poop is coming in clumps...I smeared a clump to one side to see what I could see...and I saw many clover seeds in there. Hopefully they will deposit a lot of that into paddocks that don't have much.

 

[Baymule]

How long is your clover season? Mine is gone now, the rye and fescue is too. We need to mow pasture #2, the rye and fescue is so thick, is dying back, and the Bermuda is coming out now.

 

[Beekissed]

How long is your clover season? Mine is gone now, the rye and fescue is too. We need to mow pasture #2, the rye and fescue is so thick, is dying back, and the Bermuda is coming out now.

We have clover for three seasons until it goes dormant around November. Starts back up in growing around March.

I wish I knew more about grasses but haven't had time to learn them all. I think it's the rye grass that has all went to seed around here...tall, spindly stems, lots of seeds. Or it could be the orchard grass...not sure. Either way, it's none too thick but it's evenly distributed throughout our graze areas and all went to seed, which the sheep won't touch.

 

[Baymule]

That is a LONG clover growing season! The crimson clover we have is quickly done, beautiful while it is here, but it doesn't last long. I scattered Dutch white clover and white ball clover. Not too sure which is which and don't care, I do know the Dutch white clover has the longest grazing life and there is white clover all over the place now. We grazed the horses in the yard, knowing they would go poop out the seeds down the pipeline, good for next year! LOL

I'm trying hard to get bahia and Bermuda established for summer grazing. In this powdery dry sand, it's an uphill fight.

 

[Beekissed]

That is a LONG clover growing season! The crimson clover we have is quickly done, beautiful while it is here, but it doesn't last long. I scattered Dutch white clover and white ball clover. Not too sure which is which and don't care, I do know the Dutch white clover has the longest grazing life and there is white clover all over the place now. We grazed the horses in the yard, knowing they would go poop out the seeds down the pipeline, good for next year! LOL

I'm trying hard to get bahia and Bermuda established for summer grazing. In this powdery dry sand, it's an uphill fight.

We have very little red clover and it doesn't last long at all. It's the white clover that is so hardy and sustainable here. And it's got the cheapest price if wanting to buy the seed for it. Some folks just put it in their supplemental feed or even the mineral mix to get it scattered across their land and fertilized at the same time.

Since scattering hay on the gardens and bare spots on the land these past few years I'm also starting to see spots and clumps of Ladino clover more and more, but it doesn't bloom for long. It's very tall, very large leaf. Have it growing in the flower beds, the garden and up by the dog run.

I'd love to see all species of clover here, especially crimson clover...I think it's gorgeous!

 

[Beekissed]

We grazed a small field next to us that we normally mow for an absentee owner and since then I'm seeing more clover~all kinds~than I've ever seen there before! I've been walking across that little stretch of land since I was 10 yrs old and had never seen that much clover there. We normally mow that several times a season before it gets too tall, but not as often as we do our lawn. It's amazing to me that the simple act of bunching some sheep on there so they have to fertilize it well and trample the soil~then pulling them off to let it recover~ could yield that quick of results. The deer have grazed that field all these years and didn't create that kind of pasture....and they sure are grazing it now!

Makes me want to jump and shout!

We'll be grazing that again in about a week or two, which will give that clover time to mature and go to seed, then the sheep will come along and get a good bit of those seeds to carry along with them to other parts of that field and to the next paddock in line. Just spreading that goodness....

 

[Cotton*wood]

We have dragged and burned tons of briars, branches, weeds and such over the last 4 1/2 years. But some we piled up in low spots and covered with horse manure. The tree trunks have rotted nicely, returning nutrients to the soil. These pictures are in pasture #1.

This was once a BIG pile! After I took the picture, I picked up a lot of wind fall limbs and placed on the pile. We’ll cover with more horse manure.

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These are a couple of smaller piles, they are almost totally returned to the soil.

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Sentry is watching Mom. Hey! Look at all these sticks!

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This was a huge pine tree that was cut down, but still attached to the stump, when we bought the place. The stump was over two feet across. We picked up branches and laid next to the trunk. The pile is almost gone back to the soil. The stump is in the foreground.

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We had some winged elm cut to open up the ground to more sunlight. The Sheep ate the tops off. Today we cut off the branches and hauled to the burn pile. We laid the trunks down and will cover with dead hay from the Sheep round bale, and sheep manure.

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You can see the hay pile in the background that we’ll cover the trunks with.

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I'm really liking this idea of making berms from the downed trees (of which we do and will have plenty). Rather than using the tractor blade to scrape out swales and shape berms, use the wood to slow the run-off of water and soil where our grass is thin and nutrients lacking. We're planning to park the sheep on that hillside for a week at a time in each spot, and feed hay, to get some build-up.

 

[Cotton*wood]

Those pics you show of the sprouts through the hay made me think of this article, @Baymule : http://greenpasturesfarm.net/2019/05/30/greg-judy-article-building-soil-with-wasted-grass/

This is a GREAT article and gives me much hope for the future of my pasture. I think Greg Judy is great, but I don't have a lot of patience for his videos. Yes, he has really good things to say, but he's a talker, and it often takes a long time to get to the "meat." Like Bay, I prefer reading.... But they are totally well worth watching.

 

[Cotton*wood]

How long is your clover season? Mine is gone now, the rye and fescue is too. We need to mow pasture #2, the rye and fescue is so thick, is dying back, and the Bermuda is coming out now.

In Kansas, we have clover blooming pretty much from June through late October. It was really gratifying to see it all coming up again fresh and green after being grazed down to the ground by the sheep (too small of a paddock, evidently), even now, in October.

Also, I was incredibly gratified to be able to identify new grasses in our "aster field" (ie, mostly just weeds and Broomsedge Bluestem, which the sheep do NOT eat)--new clumps of big bluestem, little bluestem, Indiangrass, and side oats gamma. Pretty darned exciting!