From the Pastures: Needing rain

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. We’ve gone more than a month now without any rain and none in our forecast, so the pastures are thirsty. In spite of that, the cover crops on our wheat stubble are looking surprisingly well. I was a week later than normal getting them seeded, on Aug. 12, but they are at least 10 inches tall. We got eight-tenths of an inch of rain that night, so the stand looks good. I left about six acres since the volunteer wheat looked good and some of that ground may be getting some new topsoil this month.

Contractors doing Interstate 80 work are cleaning ditches under the road and needed a place to haul the dirt, so since the crew chief knew me from the overpass construction, he asked if I could use it. And since I couldn’t sell them fill dirt for that project to get a pond built where they previously removed a hill 60-some years ago, that ground is finally getting its topsoil back, 500 semi loads anyway.

I wish I could say the lamb and beef markets were looking better now, but such is not the case. I’m hoping later this year it rebounds some. It’s not exactly doom and gloom like the grain markets, though. We’ve been moving a few lambs through our locker this past month, but since I don’t expect to carry lambs through the winter for the holiday sale next June like I did last year they will probably go in December, hopefully catching a better price than now.

We have the 40 acres of cover crop to graze here at home and if I was energetic I could fence off some of the 55 acres five miles away to graze, but that’s iffy. There’s no water there, but previous experience has shown that sheep on good cover crops in late fall don’t need water anyway. I used to set water for them and they didn’t drink since the turnips and oats and wheat and about eight other species supply all the water they need. I don’t think I would try that with cattle, though.

Years ago, when I was setting up my pastures for grazing, I installed lots of hydrants. I was too cheap to buy the best ones and now I have about three cheap Chinese hydrants to dig up and replace before winter. Eventually, I put 4-inch PVC pipe over them so they could be replaced without digging if necessary, but not at first. Let that be a lesson for you. But you probably already knew better.

Ruth and I finally got away for a few days and went down to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. What an experience! Besides being massive — the largest wooden structure in the world — there was much to learn there. We usually prefer traveling west on our getaways, but travel time eats up more days than we could be away this time, but we enjoyed the trip.

We saw very little harvesting as we traveled, but it seems to be getting started around here now. As always, stay awake and alert out there. Harvest can be a fun time; try to keep it that way. Happy trails.