A Visit to the "Trough"
A visit to the “Trough”
This juicy title has little to do with slopping the hogs or charting a low pressure system. The Trough I am referring to is a large river gorge carved out by the South Branch of the Potomac River situated in the “Potomac Highlands” of Hampshire and Hardy Counties, West Virginia. Last summer I had the good fortune of hooking up with conservationist, guitar playing and Pig-town fling general, Steve Ritz, and friends, on a river float down this Chesapeake Bay feeder river.
It was neat to paddle through the rapids where George Washington traveled in 1748 and seeing the many families of Bald Eagles flying overhead on our way towards the Trough General Store. As we headed back to town along the winding road, I started to become acutely aware of how a hundred years of traditional grazing practices and poultry houses are affecting the watershed. It didn’t take me long to realize my farmer reflection in the water is who should help the process of healing the land against the onslaught of an ever demanding cheap food system on the natural resources.
The quest to help navigate a different grazing course had me back this winter to work with the WVU Extension Service, USDA NRCS, USDA FSA, and the Hampshire County FFA Alumni Association on a weeklong series of evening discussions with farmers in the eastern panhandle counties of the bay watershed. By the time the church-ladies’ chicken dinners and homemade pies were safely tucked away in the farmer’s stomachs along with agency program highlights and an uncomfortable CAFO update, I was ready to deliver the gospel of grass. My passion for pastures seemed clear but the “feed’em and they will come” strategy only really helped folks get in touch with the inside of their eyelids. It was a rough start.
As a Toastmaster, I wasn’t going to take it personal but I was going to be prepared for the next night. Sunrise and 70 degrees greeted this Yankee as I drove over “hill an dale” throughout Romney and Keyser to see the grasslands that keep tourists to the Mountaineer State happy. Basically I saw overgrazed pastures, erosion, little portable fencing infrastructure, and lots of hay rings. I could only deduct the farmers had more money than me, their land taxes were cheap, they liked what they were doing and they held firm, traditional, continuous, grazing practices. I wondered, “How am I going to inspire anyone to change to a different mindset in one hour”?
I threw up my power-point with pictures of erosion from my watershed, before and after shots of our grazing management using portable fencing and cows grazing through snow on stockpiled grass. Hey, no sleepers! Feeling bold, I turned to economics and asked 2 simple questions in an effort to engage the audience. How much does it cost to maintain a cow/calf pair for a year? And what is your cost to make a ton of hay? Oh boy, asleep again. I’m not sure if it was the pie, not knowing or pride that quieted the group. The average 2009 figures according to WVU extension is $450/cow/calf/yr. and $100/ton respectively, which only meant we have opportunities to lower our costs through better grazing management.
A scent filled my head as I exited Moorefield’s South Branch Inn the next morning in an “Apocalypse Now” moment, and a twist on Robert Duvall’s famous quote. “Smell that? What? Chicken manure son, nothing in the world smells like that. I love the smell of chicken manure in the morning.” My nostrils told me opportunity was evaporating with hardly one grass plant enjoying it.
I took my trepidation to three forward thinking farms in the watershed that invited me to walk the pastures and do a little whispering. We talked and planned about setting up a doable pasture rotation, rest intervals, planning for drought, applying litter in the growing season, stockpiling grass, grazing neighbor’s crop residues and even moving calving up a month to reduce feed costs. It was awesome to hear the excitement about changing a paradigm based on a table-napkin generated plan. This connectivity didn’t just start over economics however. The reason we bonded was over a long term goal of sustainably, and having more family time and leaving the land in better shape. This “in the field” inspiration was just what I needed to fight off the sleepers.
They say “good things come in small packages” and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Out of the West Virginian archives, Mr. Ritz handed me this brightly colored booklet called Green Pastures by native grazier, cattleman and 1978 West Virginia Outstanding Conservation Farmer, George Halterman. This 1985 eight page booklet chronicled his experiences about the benefits of rotational grazing and keeping a taller sward which he learned from Morgantown based grassland specialist, Jim Newman. Topic headings included: Not like a Golf Course, Graze Half--Leave Half, Deep Roots, Grass makes its own Seed, Bigness may not be the Answer and Give and Take with Cattle and Grass.
I held up this reminder at the evening get together when eyelids were heavy from a brownie with an ice-cream chaser. “I’m just a different preacher that is reinforcing the message; the work has already been done by one of your own. It’s time to heed George’s advice”, I bantered. As the historic document was passed around, it was evident that folks had forgotten this little, local gem of success. “Hey, where can we get this bulletin”, one farmer asked? Ahh, the seeds have been sown. Apparently it needs to be reprinted. Thanks to Craig Yohn of WVU extension it’s on the web now at www.jefferson.ext.wvu.edu/agriculture/agronomy_links.
As the meal of chicken and apple crisp marked my final talk at the Berkley County, WV Fairgrounds in an ever encroaching suburbia, I am satisfied that I helped awaken folks to the possibilities of using grazing management to effect the triple bottom line. I think I was a good boy overall, with minimal rhetoric towards the input kings but I did witness some major challenges to the sanctity of the Trough. Chicken production and its associated litter are powerful forces not to be messed with. The nutrient imbalances between grazing and crop land are very real. And the tradition of doing the same thing for a hundred years while importing 80% of the food into West Virginia households is unsustainable.
One bright spot continues in my mind for the entire watershed. If we put as much energy into growing high quality grasslands with deep root systems as we do in nurturing row crops, we could solve agriculture’s water quality issues and respect the next generation of farmers, consumers and fisherman. Published 4/24/2010 in Lancaster Farming