June 4, 2021
We are still basking in the glow of having the sheep on pasture and not having to haul any more hay, but the lack of rain this past month was starting to feel eerily familiar. In a normal year (which is starting to feel less normal every year), we would be done with hay until winter. I really am very sorry about your Memorial Day plans but boy did we need the rain! If I were in charge (which clearly I am not), it would rain gently several nights a week from say 1 am to 5 am. Just enough to give us the inch or so of rain a week our pastures need, and your lawn prefers, but not so much that it ruins your plans or wreaks havoc on the sheep's hooves.
During the hay dependent winter months, our sheep greet us at the gate every morning. Hungry for the bales of hay we unload, they mob us like rock stars, making it next to impossible to walk, much less distribute the hay. Now that they are on pasture and surrounded by an “all you can eat buffet” of succulent grass, they no longer take much notice of us at all. We walk into the pasture with ease - unnoticed and unmolested. It is so much more pleasant! It is quieter, less frenetic – more pastoral. They do like it when we open up a new area for them to graze, but clearly we have been diminished in their opinion of us, reduced from the rock star status of sole provider to just simply “the gate keepers”.
If we had enough space and energy, I'd have 30 pastures and move the flock to a new pasture every day. This type of “always on the move” grazing mimics nature, where herbivores never stay in one place long before being chased off by predators. When a pasture is lightly grazed, it recovers quickly. However if the grass gets grazed down below 6 inches in height, the roots die off and subsequently need to be rebuilt before the grazable bits can regrow. So its actually in the sheep's and the shepherd's best interest if they don't graze it so low. At some point though if it doesn't get grazed hard, the grass shoots up quickly and goes to seed, becoming less palatable and less nutritious. We try to manage a weekly rotation with a three week rest before grazing the same pasture again. Sometimes though, we need to make allowances for things that we've learned over the years. Things that have nothing to do with roots or seeds.
We avoid the more remote pastures through the Fall as that is when the bears are most likely to kill lambs, trying to get the calories they need before they hibernate. We stay away from the pastures that have thick underbrush during the month of September as that is when the adolescent male coyotes are on the prowl looking for new territory - and food. We avoid grazing overnight along RT 4 during the month of May as that seems to be when high school students are at their stupidest, and are most likely to steal farm animals as a prank. Sometimes we make seemingly illogical pasture moves just to give a sow the place to herself for a few days so she can farrow in peace, without a flock of sheep constantly traipsing through.
In farming there are so many things that can't be controlled that the little things, like what pasture gets grazed next and when, take on an outsized role. I can't control the rainfall, or the coyotes, the teenagers, or the bears, but I am still the gate keeper and for now that'll have to do.