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When Is a Weed a Weed?
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Determining which pasture weeds are nutritious additions and which are undesirable. Weeds are called weeds because we named them that way. The word “weed” suggests they are undesirable. However, not all weeds are created equal. This article addresses that. Perennial pasture never contains just the planted and desirable forage species like the grass species and the legumes that…
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Some Considerations for Beef Cattle Calving
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In part four of our “What’s Your Beef?” series on raising cattle on small farms, we present several management factors for your beef cow-calf herd to take into consideration. This is the fourth installment in our ongoing series “What’s Your Beef?” to assist new and beginning beef cattle producers. Previous installments can be seen in recent…
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Consider Glamping to Diversify Income from Your Scenic Pastures
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The Cornell Small Farms Program’s Erica Frenay details how a glamping operation has helped diversify her farm’s income stream. In the early 2000’s, I had the joy of spending a memorable 4 days with Bill Burrows, a 6th-generation rancher and Holistic Management practitioner from Northern California. Bill told us the story of how his family…
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What’s Your Beef?
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So you think that you would like to raise some beef cattle on your small farm? This is the first installment of a multi-part series of articles on raising beef cattle on the small farm. In this series of articles in the Small Farms Quarterly, I will outline many of the topic areas that you…
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Brush Hogs and Rotary Cutters: Multi-purpose Tools for the Small Farm
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Brush hogs can knock down vegetation and weeds in a timely manner, and have several very useful purposes. Small farmers of necessity must accumulate a certain amount of machinery to work their farms and landscapes. One of the most useful tools is what is known as a “brush hog” or “rotary cutter.” Brush hogs are…
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Grow Your Farm Business by Learning to Grow New Products with Our Online Courses
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Our new season of online courses is underway, and now’s the time to register for upcoming block two courses. Did you know that the we moved our suite of online courses to a new, more user-friendly platform? Now registrants have permanent, year-round access to their course content. Courses are offered with tiered pricing from $199…
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Add Diversity to Your Pastures with Multispecies Grazing
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Much has been written on diversity of crops, forages, and soil biology but the diversity of grazing species is just as important. “The presence of multiple species of large herbivores is the typical condition of grassland and savanna ecosystems,” says John Walker, a range ecologist who wrote on the subject more than two decades ago…
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Building Healthy Pasture Soils
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The following article is an excerpt from the factsheet “Building Healthy Pasture Soils” available in full at www.ATTRA.org and can be downloaded as a free PDF at the website, along with many other guides and resources. Let’s consider the agricultural practices that help build healthy soil. In essence, we want to increase aggregation, contribute soil organic matter, increase biodiversity,…
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Building Healthy Pasture Soils
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Focus on biology to build resilient soils that sustain production and deliver profitable yields with reduced inputs. Soil fertility in pastures goes well beyond a simple discussion of soil samples, fertilizers, and the nutrients needed to produce high yields. Rather, soil health is an ecosystem concept: it is holistic and complex, and involves regenerative,…
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Ovines in the Vines?
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A New Idea for the Finger Lakes Region of New York Grazing sheep in vineyards has been an idea we have tossed around for a while. This spring Hans Walter-Peterson and Mike Colizzi with the Finger Lakes Grape Program and I sat down to actually talk about it. This practice is done on the West…
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