Grass Farmer

I've been told for a long time that if you're intending to raise cattle, or goats, or chickens, like we are, you'd better consider yourself a grass farmer first.  For grass is the one thing that you must grow in order to have healthy livestock roaming on your pasture.  While it might seem like an easy thing, sometimes it's not.  Our soil pH is low and this means that a lot of the fertility in the soil is locked up, unusable to the grass.  I really need to lime.

Sometimes you don't get the rainfall that you need.  Last year we got very little rainfall and the grass was virtually non-existent.  Sometimes you get too much.  The photo below shows a view of the pasture.  You can see the four boxes of bees and a dead willow tree that I need to fell before it falls over the fence.

You can also see the grass in various stages of growth.  The pasture is made up of a bermuda and bahai mix.  Much of the grass has matured and has seed heads on it.  The cows aren't fired up about eating that and it doesn't have the nutritional load that lush spring grass packs.  But they'll eventually eat it.

The grass, looking back the other direction, is thick.  It has grown up also because it's gotten real hot.  Instead of eating grass all day, the cows lay up in the shade all day and only go out to graze in the late afternoon/night.  As you walk through the tall grass, mosquitoes, horse flies and deer flies hover around giving us and the livestock fits.

There's more than bermuda and bahia grass out there and I've always got my head on a swivel.  I don't want invasive weed species to invade.  This afternoon I looked around and saw some of this coming up.  We always called it bitterweed.  Supposedly, if your cows get into this and eat it, it makes their milk taste bitter.  For that reason, I don't want tot let it get a foothold.

I promptly pull this up by the roots, making several passes to ensure I don't see any more.

I'm okay with different grasses and even weeds growing out in the pasture.  It lets the animals free-range and eat what they like, but I'll always be on the lookout for those species of weeds that I don't want on the homestead.