News and Blog

8/15-My grazing chart so far 

8/10- Todays 52 day old grass (field 11) and Rainbow

6/25  Katie graduates from Waterville High, now on to Fredonia.

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Here is the 6/27 sample results and trample....  22.5%P, 67McalNE  171RFV  not bad for old native forage.

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6/27- Took a forage sample today of field 3 with 55 days rest.  The sample included 26 species, burdock, quackgrass, plantain(narrow&wide), broome,fescue,milkweed, timothy, prickly pear,orchardgrass, knapweed, red & ladino & dutch clovers, ragweed, alfalfa, bluegrass, vetch, goldenrod, Bishopp's weed, wild parsley, mint, thistle, chickory and dandelion. 

6/9- Great pasture/grassland bird walk at Fay Benson's Farm with Audubon New York’s Conservation Biologist, Andrew Hinickle.

6/8-  Cows eating "weeds" and enjoying the nutrient-laden leaves of hedgerow plants.  But who wants weeds anyways, they have no value. 

6/8-  My friend Eric Noel "The Organic Mechanic" from Highgate Vermont send me his pictures of tall grass mob grazing and associated trample. 

6/7- In memory of my Grazing partner and spirited farmer advocate,  David Huse who parished last year in a car/ tractor accident.  Rest in peace along cool waters.

6/4- Pagent of the bands in Sherburne.  Waterville wins best in class C.  Katie's last pagent, sniff, sniff.  Gave Lamonte Garber from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation a tour of our farm and took a picture of him overlooking our watershed. 

6/3-  Participated in Senator Gillibrand and Darrell Aubertine's listening session at Cobblestone Valley Farm with hosts the Knapp Family.  The Senator said, "Enhancing grazing in NY is a battleline issue".  Nice!!  Thanks Maureen for bringing up parity.

6/2-  Here is the forage sample from 5/27.  It comprised of orchardgrass, bluegrass, ryegrass, broome grass, red clover, and forbs(dandelion, broad and narrow plantain, honeysuckle leaves, knapweed leaves, buttercup, goldenrod seedling leaves, burdock leaves and any other "forage" I saw them eating.  Jim Gerrish says they should gain 2 pounds or better on this with such high energy selection and maximum dry matter availability of the top third of the tall plant's leaves and seeds and all the succulent understory in the clovers and forbs.  I don't know, they seem to be fat and happy and contented so who am I to judge. 

5/29-  Travis and Lindsay's cow had a heifer calf.  Ahh, aren't they cute! 

5/28-  It keeps raining so pasture litter is becoming more important to keep the field from pugging.  Before and after a 2 inch rain. 

5/27- Tall grazing and maximizing animal performance and experimenting with trample ratios of 50 to 80% to keep them out of the mud.  Took a forage sample last night with over 12 species of plants plus seedheads.  Hmm, wonder what it will say?  Check back and I will post.  Also getting excited by all the wildlife activity associated with creating a prarie.

5/26-  OMG!  Grazing in the stream corridor.  Is it bad??  Didn't the buffalo do it?  Sayed tuned as I keep taking pictures of this area throughout the season.  Here are before and after the 1st grazing with 75 head for one day.  Won't be back for another 45-50 days.

5/25- Trying to reclaim some of the hay spots I fed on this winter with animal impact and give the worms some closer material to work.  My tool: The mineral feeder.  stay tuned

5/21- The calves are coming.  The pasture makes a nice maternity pen.

5/15- improving field 17 that was wintered on also. Growing grass sucks up these nutrients like a sponge, not allowing them to runoff.  This field will be fallowed until after July 15th for the grassland birds and other critters then grasses plowed back into the soil with the big hooves. Thinking about trying to plant some warm season grasses in this as an experiment.

5/14-  It's Prom Night for the senior!!!

5/13- Another load of cattle from Ken Jaffe (http://www.slopefarms.com/about-the-farm.html) delivered by Nick Tommell Cattle Co. and driver Mikey.  Kristen O'dell from Orange Co. SWCD was here to supervise (or just get out of the city). 

5/8-  Happy Mother's Day to my Mom, Wife and Daughter Sarah.  Remember last year's snow!

4/29-  At least we got some good grass coming.  Received our first load of stocker calves from Ken Jaffe who we are working with to produce 100% grass-finished beef for market.

4/26-27-  Planted more honey locust, black locust and Sycamore trees with Travis last night along our riparian corridor and in Olin's Grove.  The Tamarack trees are coming nice.  BIG storm last night that prompted me out of bed at 3am to find we were in the path of a tornado cell.  I really hate hearing the emergency alert tone.  The driving rain flooded out many folks in the area and made for some interesting pictures of soil loss, overflowing road ditches but the grass stayed firm and we had little damage except for pasture pugging. 

I judged at the regional envirothon competition in Wayne County and saw major flooding of the Seneca River but also saw wetlands working and got a peek at some Purple Martins.

4/26- Jonathan Ling, Farm Manager of J-D Farm, Jim Curatolo, Coordinator of the Upper Susquehanna Coalition and Dan Williams of Williams Fence have a team meeting to plan out a 6000 foot riparian buffer along the Otselic River in Madison County.

4/24- Happy Easter!!! 

4/23-  Hooray!!  A sure sign of spring.  Bonomos is open for ice-cream for their 52nd year.

                                                                                                                                   4/21-  Spreading hay out from the winter, saw earthworm castings as thick as mud from munching on litter under the snow, had another calf, worked our 2010 calves(tagged,vaccinated & castrated) with my friend Karl Palmer (aka The Sugar Daddy), watching the snowflakes fly still as the bluebirds try and find refuge.                                                                                                                              Its a sad day before Earth day to get this letter from the Chief of NRCS discontinuing the Graze-NY program which I am funded through.  Grass-based foot soldiers are always in short supply but are the easiest to defund because there isn't much fight compared to all the program dollars going to concrete and steel.  Its also a shame that our congressman must initiate the agency to put dollars in for grazing mentors.  You would think this would be cheap conservation as we help farmers with management strategies not depreciating materials.  Will this defunding pull the legs out of the New York grazing movement?  Time will tell. 

4/17  Spent some time in Troy, PA teaching grazing planning to farmers and agency folks as part of our NESARE grazing training project.  Saw Dapper Dan Ludwig talking about feed management in the Bay watershed. 

4/11  Worked with Tioga Co.(NY) SWCD on a planned grazing workshop at Marvin Moyer's Farm.  Thanks to Brian Reaser for organizing the event and giving out grazing charts.

4/7-  Had our first heifer calf, saw my first Bluebird today and the grass is growing with strong roots rested since last September.  Started planting locust trees today for shelterbreaks.

4/1-  Momma cows back on the hill vacuming up last season's stockpile(2010) that has been under snow since December 14th.  I took a forage sample of it today.  It's entertaining to see the cows work their tongues around the old grass for a few sprigs of freeze-dried green grass.   

3/30/2011-  The grazing community lost one of the good guys last week.  Terry may you rest in peace and lie down in green pastures next to the cool waters.

The multi-faceted grazing guru, Terry Gompert, introduced farmers to holistic planned grazing concepts and practices while delivering the adage:  “Grass-based farming is a great place to start”.  He weaved his life experiences on being a grazing extension educator, a beef producer and a holistic observer of natural processes to the crowd.  He laid out his vision of success:  Understand what you want and design a program working toward your goals, get in sync with nature, build soil carbon, and keep the poisons off the land and animals.  To that end, he said, “Be really careful at hating anything because the most nutritious weeds tend to be the ones we want to kill.”  He described in detail, the inter-workings of ultra-high stock density, “mob” grazing strategies and how this herd effect has been a positive for the environment. Terry commented, “This herd effect is the only known method that can heal the land.  We are essentially grazing half the fully rested sward and trampling the rest into the soil to build litter and biological activity.  I like it because watching cows kick up their heels gives them joy and also treats my wallet right.”

3/27- Placed 3rd in Chili Cook-off to benefit "Feed the Vet Program".  We were the only ones with sunshine in our beef. 

3/25  Dave and Pam Williams of Endless Trails Farm are the 2011 Madison Co. SWCD Conservation Farm of the Year