The Pastures Are Kicking Our Ass-tures

Last year was the first time we turned our attention to our pastures, and wow, it turns out 22 acres is a lot to take care of! You might think, like I did, that’s it’s just grass so hay it or graze it. How hard could it be?

That’s how we thought about it for the first 12 years, but…we were wrong.

For one thing, we have the parts of our land going back to wetland, which we didn’t anticipate, and for another we started learning about the importance of native trees and plants meaning the need for hedgerows and allowing trees to take root. We’ve also learned about the need for soil, not dirt, and the importance of grazing.

And we are much more aware now of the invasive weeds that are a huge and constant threat to our farm, from the tansy ragwort that’s toxic to cows and horses, to the Scotch broom that sprung up when the logging company thinned behind our place…Scotch broom that is making a slow but steady march down the hill towards our place.

Other weeds we battle are Canada thistle which, it turns out, was declared an invasive weed in Washington state in 1850, and bull thistle, as well as the ever present (and destructive) Himalayan blackberry.

Still other invasive weeds have shown up in our garden (from bringing in gravel for our greenhouse) and cow paddock (from bringing in sand for our schooling arena).

So…what does all this look like as far as pasture management is concerned?

It looks like a lot more work than we realized.

It’s pulling tansy and spraying Roundup and brush hogging (aka mowing). It’s figuring out how to do rotational grazing with cows who want to constantly test—and then ignore—your electric fence.

It’s learning you let your horses over graze their pasture, making it an inviting place for weed seeds to take root.

It’s realizing that at some point you are going to have to talk to your neighbor about the weeds they don’t manage that spread seeds on your own land, and accepting that maintaining the weeds on the logging road is going to fall to you because the logging company doesn’t care.

The good news is, we are learning—always learning. And what have we learned?

We realize we need to divide the hayfield with permanent fence to help keep the cows where they should be. (Bonus: That gives us more possibilities for planting hedgerows!)

We are ready to buy our own haying equipment, because relying on others has been a royal PITA. We haven’t done it before due to inflexible work schedules that didn’t allow us to do hay when we needed to, but that will soon change. (YES!!) How does haying help? It keeps the grass cut which encourages more growth.

We’ve learned the weeds are simply going to be an ongoing battle and it will be years before we are the winning side. Simply put, we have to tackle the weeds the best we can knowing this. Last year we spent 95 hours battling tansy ragwort and we took several tons of garbage bags of it to the dump. This year we still had tansy, but probably a third of the amount.

We’ve learned we need to start pasture management in the spring, not after the grass is getting tall.

For now, in 2025, the pastures are kicking our ass-tures because we are so very behind. And this summer’s drought and heat definitely gave the weeds the advantage.

But we will keep learning and striving to do better year after year, because we are farming for a future, and we are in it for the long haul.

And in the evening, you don’t see the sparse grass or the weeds…only the beautiful sky.

And that’s it for now.

August 26, 2025 0

Seed Drill Success!

Using our cows for rotational grazing is one crucial step toward farming for a future. Planting cover crop is another. But…planting a cover crop was a bigger undertaking than you might think.

And we did it! Yes, the newbies got a fall cover crop planted in part of the old hayfield!

It took the help of another neighbor to borrow a big enough tractor, the generosity of our local conservation district to have a seed drill to rent for cheap, and a seed mix shipped across the country (to get what we wanted)…plus cooperative weather.

And it all came together. The week we had the seed drill reserved was perfect weather wise, and it hadn’t rained so the ground was dry. (That meant we didn’t have to worry about tearing up the field with the big tractor.)

neighbor shows Bob controls on borrowed tractor — *Our neighbor Bob shows our Bob the controls on the borrowed tractor.*

The fall cover crop seed mix is wheat, barley, sorghum sudangrass, radish, winterpea and forage turnip. It’s designed to help build soil but also feed our cows.

This mix will put nitrogen into the ground, help to break up the hard clay, and provide our cows with healthy forage next year…if it makes it through the winter.

*Bob puts the seed mix into the bay of the seed drill.*

That’s the big unknown. Our weather can be unpredictable in our valley because we get either warmer or colder than the surrounding area. This seed mix is meant to overwinter. Fingers crossed it will.

*Seed drill in action! The grooves are where the seed drill has carved out a groove plus dropped seed.*

We did make one mistake: We cranked up the density too high. We didn’t see enough signs of seed in/on the ground, and it didn’t seem like we were using as much seed as we wanted to.

Turns out we were wrong about that, because once the seeds sprouted, we could see just how close together they were planted. Oops! Here’s hoping they don’t crowd each other out as they grow.

That also meant we didn’t cover as much ground as we could have, but we planted about three acres of the 10-acre field, and we were happy with that. It was our first time, after all, and three acres was our plan.

After our luck held with getting the seeds in the ground, we were blessed again a few days later with just enough rain to cause the seeds to sprout. In the picture above, you can see a radish and grass-like seedlings growing. YES!

Now that we’ve done it once, we plan on doing this every year, even if it means we have to buy a bigger tractor rather than count on borrowing one. Our goal is to be planting cover crops on every field in a rotation, because some pastures will need to be grazed, meaning we can’t plant the whole farm at the same time.

OK, so you might be wondering, “Why didn’t you simply plow up the field and replant it?” Well, that gets into the whole no till approach, which will have to wait for another post.

We were like kids on Christmas morning on this September day. This is a huge step forward for us and our goal to be farming for a future. It was something we had learned about and longed to do, and what a treat to make it happen!

And that’s enough for now. 🙂

October 4, 2024 0

The Grass IS Greener…When You Graze It

Our property is 22 acres and the back 10 have been a hayfield since we got here 12 years ago…but not, because we’ve had so many issues with finding reliable people to do the hay for us and the field just got in worse and worse condition.

Learning about building soil and carbon farming, we decided we’d turn it over to rotational grazing and just buy hay from someone else. That 10 acres already looks better! You can see how green the grass is in the foreground of the photo above…despite the hot, dry summer we’ve had.

We’ve had the cows on two sections of it, about 2+ acres each. Why didn’t we use the whole 10 acres? Because the north end is in such sad shape, there’s no point in putting them out there. And we only have three cows right now (technically two cows and a heifer), so we had enough grass with only using half of it.

And oh, do they love it! For example, when we moved the cows to a new patch in mid-July, we hardly saw them for several days. They only walked back toward the barn for their morning and evening grain and for water then went right back to grazing…as they should do!

This has meant mowing (brush hogging) the field too, and that alone has made a huge difference. It made us aware of the extent of our tansy ragwort infestation…but more on that in another post on pasture management.

Mowing stimulated grass growth as did the grazing. On the section that is so poor, we will rent a seed drill and borrow a bigger tractor and get cover crop planted that will start the process of building soil which in turn will help the plants we do want to outcompete the weeds. Plus it will provide better, healthier forage for our cows.

I stand in the field and I look at the green grass and the fat cows and I think, “This is right.” We can buy hay. We can’t buy healthy soil.

(And honestly it’s cheaper to buy hay than to go through all the hassle of trying to find a trustworthy person to cut and bale ours for us.)

So this is right. The animals tell me it’s right. The grass tells me it’s right. My gut tells me it’s right.

September 6, 2024 3