What’s it worth? Shade for your pasture
When I lay out the benefits of silvopasture to a producer, I like to highlight four key goals: Shade, shelter (windbreak), summer fodder and winter feed. There are other benefits of course, like nitrogen fixation, cycling of nutrients from deep underground, increased...
What am I giving up? Shade and forage production
If you plant trees in a pasture, you can kiss your sweet, lush, beautiful forages goodbye. Or so the fear goes. When talking about trees and pastures (which I tend to do a lot), there is one main hesitation that comes up again and again: “Won’t that hurt my forage...
Double (Yes, Double) Your Feed Production
“The tree grows in a Bermuda pasture and is always loaded in the fall with luscious fruit. The cows and hogs stand under it, always ready to devour every pod that falls. The tree is very large and very, very beautiful. The cows improve in milk and the hogs in weight...
Persimmon: Seven months of manna from heaven
“Hogs, cattle, cows and horses are fond of them. I couldn’t tell which likes them better. Just turn them out and they go to the persimmon tree first thing. They just love persimmons better than anything.” Dr. Lamartine Hardman, quoted in J. Russell Smith’s Tree Crops...
Year-Round Paradise (or at least moving towards that)
Don’t you sometimes wish it was spring year-round? I’m a fan of rollercoasters, but only at an amusement park. Not when it comes to business. Photo from Jessica A. Williams, Penn State. As I write this, snow is coming down towards the tail-end of February, and...
Seeing the forage on the trees
Spring and fall are wonderful times to be a grass farmer. The weather is pleasant, the livestock are fat and happy, and the forages are lush. But of course, summer comes right after spring, and the lean, dry times can wipe away the memory of those beautiful lush...
Customers, carbon and charisma
You and I are privy to an important yet little-known fact: well-managed ruminants can do wonders for soils and ecosystems. Yet the group of people that understands this simple truth is much, much too small. It seems regenerative grazing has a PR problem. There are...
On spaghetti, silvopasture, and a whole new world of opportunities
When you think of Italian food, what pictures come to mind? Scrumptious spaghetti. Luscious lasagna. Perfect pizzas. What do they all have in common, other than the ability to send you into a carb-induced coma after a heavy lunch on a hot day? Tomatoes. They all use...
The Tortoise and the Hare Plant Trees
I’m confident you know the tortoise and the hare, whether from Aesop’s Fables or Looney Toons. What you probably don’t know is that in addition to their racing careers, both were accomplished graziers. By that I mean that they both grazed, since grass is...
Honey Locust: King of Stockpiles
Talk about winter stockpile! Do you know how much forage you have stockpiled for this winter? What would you do with 2,000 extra pounds of high-energy, self-harvested feed per acre? What about 4,000lbs? What would that do to your feed bill? How would that change your...
How to Plant a Tree in Your Pasture
As you well know, there are many reasons to strategically plant trees in pastures: shade, windbreak, dropping feed, growing timber, etc. The problem isn’t that folks don’t want trees, or don’t know the benefit of trees. It’s mostly that planting trees in a pasture can...
