July 22, 2022
Rice Brook which runs alongside our fence line is bone dry, and the grass is literally crunching beneath our feet. If we don’t get some steady rain soon, we’ll have to kick the sheep off pasture and start feeding them hay. In normal years they can graze into December – but clearly this is turning out to be yet another “not normal” year.
The U.S.D.A defines silvopasture as “the deliberate integration of trees and grazing livestock operations on the same land.” And for the first time ever, their “livestock survey,” which we dutifully fill out every year, included questions about “Silvopasture, Windrows and Riparian Buffers.” All of these were a part of every farmer’s bag of tricks a hundred years ago, but since then what was once considered just common sense, somehow became “fringe”.
The pastures we created as silvopastures are clearly doing much better in this heat than our pastures without trees. Animals, and pastures, are happier and produce better when there is shade. It’s a lot more work for us, but I believe it’s well worth the effort.
In an interview last week, Anne and I were asked to describe our farming techniques and I said “We’ve basically turned the clock back a hundred years. If there is a more labor-intensive way of doing something, Anne and I will find it”. I was being humorous but there is truth to it.
“Modern” agriculture in an effort to reduce labor became completely dependent on cheap fuel and fertilizer – neither of which are cheap anymore. Factory farms and confinement operations began to replace family farms during the horribly misguided “Get big or get out!” campaign of the 1970s. Big Ag was touted as the only way to feed a growing population, but it’s failing miserably. The efficiencies of scale indeed reduced human labor but in the process exponentially increased animal suffering, trashed the environment, and destroyed the infrastructure needed to sustain small farms - and that’s not a price either of us are willing to pay.