This morning is Day 2 of the most recent lawnmowing experience here on the farm. We had a stretch with no rain there so didn’t need to mow, but the recent rains have created a jungle in the yard needing some attention. Rather than take half a day on the riding lawn mower using expensive gas, we move the cattle through the yard in carefully thought-out slices marked off with a single strand of electric fence. After attending a mob-grazing seminar in June, we’ve cut our slices smaller and smaller until our goal is giving them about double the area they need to stand on. You can see I gave them a little too much in the slice above. They grazed this area from 7:30 to 9:30 am.
This slice (move 2 of the day, move 1 is just to the bottom of this photo) is a bit smaller. Hopefully they will eat it a little closer. In the upper left of their grazing area you might see 3 plastic posts. These are blocking the cattle from our little flower bed in the middle of the yard. I’ve got a pretty good system of dividing out the yard which allows me to protect the plants the cattle would make a mess of yet allow them to graze everything else. They don’t eat all the ragweed plants, but they knock them down enough so we are happy with it. We do have to walk a little carefully the first few days after grazing the yard, but then we don’t need to fertilize the yard either! It’s a trade-off! And think of the ecology of it all. I bet Al Gore grazes his yard with his cattle too in order to save on all that gas for the lawn mower. Or, do cattle put off more CO2 than a lawn mower? I get confused on that, maybe some global warming fanatic can help me out?
