Life on The Farm

As some of you good folks relax by the pool, lake, or maybe are enjoying a nice float on the river this Labor Day Weekend,  we are enjoying the great cool down brought in with this early Sunday morning rain here on the ranch.  I've mentioned before that weekends and weekdays are pretty much the same for us farmers.  And holidays are generally just extra words on the calendar.  Now don't get me wrong, all of us on the ranch love to vacation we just don't do it every holiday or every weekend.  And even though our livestock ranch is primarily a grazing operation, meaning they feed themselves, tending to livestock is a daily chore one way or the other every day.  Now some people say they like to rush through their work week to get to the weekends because what they call free time is more precious to them than what they do every day.  This just doesn't make sense to me. 

Our diversification of livestock here on the ranch include grass fed beef cows, grass fed dairy cows, pastured pigs, pastured meat birds and laying hens, pastured turkeys, grass fed sheep, browsing dairy goats, and a small herd of browsing meat goats.  Now, we operate in a manner that would be considered not orthodox by any standards.  We graze our animals primarily year round regardless of the weather.  And unlike most ranches we do not harvest any hay for later feeding during the winter.  We promote forage growth with our intense system of Holistic Planned Grazing all during the growing season and actually yield a much higher than average quantity of forages grown on the ranch.  Not only do we promote the typical grasses and legumes that other ranches have but we encourage a list of native and other type forages which include chicory, plantain, burnet, many herbs and wildflowers, and all kinds of brush.  Now this brush is a major conversation piece. 

Because most farms and ranches in Missouri are rather traditional cow properties, grazing of forages like fescue and clover are also very typical.  And for most of these ranches to keep an abundance of these rather plain type forages a great deal of effort and expense is exerted to promote the growth of these plants while reducing and/or eliminating all other growth which include all kinds of brush, blackberries, multi-flora rose, sage, thorn trees, cedars, wild lespedeza, and many other plants that most cowmen and women find as a nuisance.  The brush control methods of choice are generally a great deal of brush hogging with a tractor, and probably a considerable amount of poison herbicide to suppress brush growth.   Most people know that I will not use herbicides and brush hogging is way too expensive and labor intensive so we have had to learn new methods.  And remember that we operate kind of on what is considered the lunatic side, so good advice for helping us solve our ranching problems is very hard to come by.  As with almost all of our practices here on the ranch, the professional agriculture experts would condemn us in a heartbeat.  As an example they could find absolutely no fault is spraying herbicides on brush but would find great fault in the fact that we have not vaccinated animals for over ten years.   And of course, when I mention that my death loss is only a fraction of what it was during the 30 years that I did vaccinate, most only shake their heads in disbelief.  The abundance of native plants, herbs, and a list of over 100 different species of edible plants for our animals to pick and choose as nutrition from throughout the year must have some improvement on their immune system and overall health.  It has been said that under this style of grazing the cow is the best chemist known to man.  I can think of several ways that this health issue could be compared to our human health but that will have to be another article.    

With all this extra growth of brushy type plants on the ranch we have come to the conclusion that we have not a problem with brush but an opportunity instead.  This type of brush is prime number one feed for meat goats.  So instead of trying to spray or brush hog we have been adding to our animal species mix.  We are about half way through this expansion and when we finish later in the month we will have added about 1,000 more meat goats to our ranch.  Each goat will average over 1 kid per year that we will be able to place into the market and our goal is to earn money from what grows so abundantly here in Missouri instead of spending money on trying to get rid of it.

Our Family Fun Day is coming up on the first Saturday in November and I am quite sure we will be visiting the meat goat pastures.  Our apprentice Caleb is setting up a small camping trailer on the other side of the ranch to help our newest arrivals get adjusted to the ranch.  I think he is looking forward to spending more time with the new goats and maybe less time with the rest of us on the ranch.