Eight Acres

We have been talking about perennial pasture for months now. Actually I wrote about it in July 2013 , so its been nearly two years in the planning and discussing phase. This weekend we bought pasture seed, ploughed up about 10 acres and planted the first section of our 60 acres of cultivation land with a perennial pasture mix. What were we waiting for?  Rain mostly, and also just deciding what to plant and how to plant it.... ploughing the paddock one last time Here’s what I wrote before about why we wanted to try to establish a perennial pasture instead of growing forage for our cattle: When we looked at how much we had spent on diesel, seed, and fertiliser just to plant these forage crops, which never made it to hay bales, we started to question whether it was really worth doing. Forage crops do have more energy and protein compared to perennial grasses, but they cost more to grow and are unpredictable in dry-land farming. From a permaculture perspective , all this dr...

Our property is 258 acres in total, with about 60 acres of ‘cultivation land’, which means that its been cleared of trees, it has contour banks to prevent erosion and it has been regularly ploughed and planted with forage or crops. Forage is anything that can be made into hay or fed straight to the cattle, whereas crops are grown for grain or seeds to sell (and the remaining straw might be baled or fed to cattle). Some species are available as either a forage or a crop variety, such as oats or sorghum. The forage variety will grow thicker leaves and seed late, while the crop variety is short and produces copious seeds. Growing forage is one way to supplement pasture, especially through winter, and to make a high quality hay, which can also be used to feed during winter. When we first bought the property, the previous owner had planted about 10 acres with forage sorghum and cut it once to make hay. When we put the offer on the property the hay had just been cut, and by the time we own...

Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG), also known as cell grazing, mob stocking, holistic managed planned grazing and possibly other terms as well.  There’s lots of different names for it and each method is slightly different, but whatever you call it, the idea is to split up your land into the smallest size paddocks you can manage and move your animals as frequently as possible.  The opposite is called continuous grazing, where the livestock have access to all the land all the time.  The disadvantage of continuous grazing is that cattle will tend to nibble at the green tips of the grass they prefer, so the roots have to continuously contract to produce more leaf.  Eventually the plant will die unless it is given a chance to recover and re-grow deeper roots.   grass roots depending on grazing period and recovery time Rotational grazing allows the grass to recover.  If its done properly, the cattle should eat most (but not all) of the availa...

Some people spend thousands of dollars on a manure spreading system that attaches to the back of a tractor so they can spread manure over their pastures..... We just keep chickens  -  and we get eggs as a by-product..... (Although it can be difficult to find any manure to put on my garden because the chickens spread it all out in the paddock before I get a chance to collect any!) By the way, my chicken eBook is now available if you want to know more about backyard chickens and using chicken tractors.  More information over at the  chicken tractor ebook blog .  Or you can get it directly from my shop on  Etsy  (.pdf format), or  Amazon Kindle  or just send me an email eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com. What's the eBook about? Chickens in a confined coop can end up living in an unpleasant dust-bowl, but allowing chickens to free-range can result in chickens getting into gardens and expose them to predators....

This time of year (spring) we don’t get much rain.  The tropical grass species in our pasture have dried out over winter due to the low temperatures and low rainfall.  They are in a fully mature state, with relatively low protein and mineral content.  The stock feeding on this pasture tend to lose or maintain weight, but rarely gain significant weight.  Now that the temperatures are starting to increase, we are waiting for rain so that the pasture will re-enter its leafy growth stage and provide good quality fodder for the cattle to start getting fat for market. In Queensland, late winter and spring tend to be our dry period, with rain coming in summer. Growth stages of perinneal grasses and legumes ( image source ), note that protein and mineral content decrease with maturity There are several ways to accelerate this process.  Certainly if you leave the dry dead bushes of grass in the pasture, the amount of leafy growth, even when it rains, will be...

Once again we are learning on the job and its time to make some decisions to manage our stock feed through the winter. The typical system in our area is to have pasture with mainly tropical grasses that do very well in summer, but die back in winter.  These are rhodes grass, bluegrass and gatton or green panic.  When the grasses die back the protein content decreases and stock don't put on weight.  They have to eat a lot of the dry grass just to maintain weight and we have to feed them hay.  Some farmers we know only keep steers from spring to autumn and don't even try to keep them over winter.  This means they are buying when the price is high and selling when its low.  forage oats  To help the stock gain weight farmers will grow a forage crop in a cultivated area.  Over winter this can be oats or rye grass, and over summer sorghum or millet.  The cattle can be let into the cultivated area to eat the forage or it can be baled int...