Making a Living Mimicking Nature

bring it and facilitate it.

The other part of their work is tillage. When we incorporated pigs into our animal employment, we found that they could alter plant composition and we could use them to hack the fine tuning of desired species diversity. We encourage them to root some of our pastures to allow us to reduce competitive and chronic increasers such as quackgrass and reboot them through establishment of cover crops, that the pigs harvest as well.

Let animals do the work. They do it better than we do.

2.Take sides on “cides.”

Initially, when we started ranching full time in 1992, we learned what we could from things like Beef Magazine and county ag agents. Some of their information was germane and useful.

On the other hand, much of their chemical recommendations were highly flawed.

We tried some of their approaches, and were very cautious to do so, as Caryl and I were both trained ecologists (I was previously a Forest Ecologist and Caryl was a PhD plant ecologist). What we found was very disappointing. Fertilizers made our pastures like people on drugs; first a little seemed like enough and had great biomass results. Then, in subsequent years, more and more was needed to get the same effects.

Then, as we applied other “cides” on our animals and land—insecticides, herbicides, and aquatic herbicides, it appeared as though it made our systems more fragile. Our soils became more susceptible to weeds. Our cattle became fly-ridden if we failed to rotate ear tags.

In addition, there were effects on us: organophosphate headaches became common after tagging 200 mama cows in a day. I’d get “metal-mouth” after applying chemicals.

By the late ‘90s, we decided it was time to go with our hearts rather than the corporate mouth-speak of the likes of Monsanto and began the steps to organic certification. By 2003 we were certified, and even in the three years of transition we started to see natural systems once again become resilient and functional again. Purchased beef cows we brought into organic certification (their calves only) had chronic fly and worm problems that our own organic mama cows didn’t have. Native plants instead of cheatgrass and spotted knapweed began recolonizing former weed treatment areas on our drier ground.

I really believe that agricultural chemical use is holding back our potential in regenerating

What if we engaged in practices that would simply reduce alfalfa dominance, and allow grasses to predominate? And so we did. We intentionally fed cattle on thick alfalfa stands in the winter with mature late cut hay crops comprised primarily of orchardgrass as well as other species we wanted in our permanent pastures. The cattle tromped in the seeds as we fed, and the impact of cattle on wintering alfalfa plants on moist ground is well known. In several years, it worked: the plants represented in our hay began to dominate our pastures.

I’m sure our neighbors were scratching

In addition, we introduced new seeds to the mix. Where we had quackgrass monocultures, we introduced sainfoin through tillage. We frost seeded hundreds of acres of red and white clover. And over time in just 10 years, we went from under ten species or less on much of our irrigated home ranch to over 50. Added benefit of diversity: our beef improved.

Flavor and tenderness went up. Even our weight gains improved. When you think about it, it is relatively simple. Providing cows, pigs, sheep and chickens with the ability to choose and fulfill their own dietary requirements always maximizes their wellness and their performance.

3.Diverse Pastures.

Certainly, when you think about it, diverse pastures are one of those ‘Chicken or the Egg’ things. Diversity can fast track you to soil health, and yet, soil health must be in place to fast track diversity. That said, achieving and striving for it is the thing that should keep you awake at night. All these other action items really revolve around increasing diversity, but there are certain things we did that were specifically aimed at adding species.

When we first arrived on the Pahsimeroi Valley Ranch in 2005, alfalfa monocultures dominated much of the pastures. Previous owners prioritized this single species and sacrificed all others at the altar of ‘god alfalfa.’ For us, it wasn’t like we were going to rip the plant out of the ground and start over—instead, we saw it as an opportunity. We liked it as a species component in our mix, but in quantities less dense than it was when we took over.

Cows have know how.

Let them choose it and they will be healthier.

Soil diversity reflects above ground plant diversity.

Diversity is key.

4. Minimize Iron.

There’s a saying on our ranch that we keep at least four sets of mechanic tools on the place. One set is in the shop on the workbench, and the other three are scattered all over the ranch, putting iron into the ground!

It’s partly due to hiring so many young people over 27 years—they simply lose tools. Even I lose some—I have at least four multitools out there, and several pocketknives.

And cellphones!

Most of what we were doing out there on the land was wrenching on much bigger iron. Tractors, plows, discs, balers, and swathers. Now, we minimized those things, and even our tool loss.

What happened? What ended our dependence on iron? Did we have a religious awakening in a belief system that we embraced that ended our need for that kind of technology?

Nothing of the sort. We embrace technology, even metal, in certain areas. We have five center pivots. We still have a 1966 Case backhoe and 1972 Allis 170. Nothing to brag about in iron!

But we sold everything else. Why? We found it made neither economic nor personal sense. We were building and buying a ranch, and we had no inherited or outside equity. We never had available money to invest in state-of-the-art equipment, and economically the size of our place would not cash flow expensive equipment. That meant that our equipment was older, and prone to breakdowns. No one on my ranch likes equipment. Period. We all like animals.

We ran the numbers and found out that not only did we not like running equipment, we could contract hay or tilling work done far cheaper than doing it ourselves. And in most years, bought in hay would beat our homegrown hay in price by a significant amount (one year it was by 40%). Time, twine, fuel and the cost of iron never end, especially if you’re honest on your cost capturing spreadsheet. We have neighbors who are equipment rich (or is it poor?). And they like nothing more than a phone call from us asking them to cut some grass that was getting ahead of us on our grazing program to make hay. It was a win-win.

Another upside of that decision was a change in our own thinking, that I think is subconscious. If you have equipment, you will use it. If you have to pay someone out of pocket to hay, or if you pay out of pocket for bought in hay, I think your brain works harder to find an innovative way to avoid those costs, which are much more transparent than the costs of home grown hay.

We extended our grazing season and reduced the amount of hay needed overall. And the hay we did harvest from our home place varied in area and timing from year to year, reducing the impact of annual haying. Our worst pasture in our 10 year of soil tests (still a respectable 5.5% organic matter) was a field where it is logistically harder to graze and we end up haying more often than our other fields. he manages the grazing program. Haney tests in the 50s.

I’ll leave you with this thought: nature has no similar enterprise to that of plowing or haying. None of the biota we work with has adapted to those kinds of disturbances. Every time we started up a tractor we left our soils naked and exposed, either by cutting hay or tillage.

Nature always works to keep her soils covered. Now we do too.

It’s the cheapest and most available amendment on the market today. Hay is available. Your neighbors appreciate you when you buy it. They have extra. If you don’t buy it someone else will.

Hay is easy to feed. We feed with a team of horses or a pickup truck pulling a gooseneck. Today we fed eight tons to nearly 500 head from the back of a gooseneck, forked by hand (who needs Crossfit® anyway?). We spread the biomass impact, the hoof impact, manure and urine over our entire ranch intentionally every winter.

For rapid restoration on degraded land, there is no game changer like imported biomass.

6. Adaptive Planned Grazing.

5. Import Biomass.

There are only a few natural systems where biomass is imported from outside the system, but we were in trouble when we bought the Pahsimeroi Ranch in 2005. In full restoration mode, with soil organic matter in the twos, we knew we needed help. Biomass to the rescue! For us, it was a very simple amendment.

I have a neighbor who spends over $180,000 on commercial fertilizer each year on his 400 acres of irrigated ground. He soil tests, and was desperately hoping for better numbers. He was asking me how we achieved a 7.3% organic matter on our largest meadows in just 10 years on our 400 acres, and what my input costs were to get there. I told him that my input costs were only about $40,000 per year.

“Are you kidding me? What are you using?”

“It’s called hay,” I said. That addition of biomass and the keeping of our own small amount of hay at home was one of the game changers in our soil restoration protocol. I believe it is why our Haney Soil Health Score this year was in the 50s. My brother, Jerry, in the next valley has found the same to be true on the ranch where

Caryl and I started rotational grazing at the get go in the early 90s. My brother, Jerry, at that time was dairy farming, and was a Stockman Grass Farmer junkie. He fast tracked us to the benefits of this type of grazing, a la Andre Voisin, French author of Grass Productivity, and Jim Gerrish, author of Management Intensive Grazing, now living just up the Pahsimeroi Valley from us.

On the headquarters ranch, we had over 400 acres of irrigated ground. We quickly employed planned grazing cells, at first quite fixed and controlled. As our experience evolved around the practice, we took it to a new level of adaptive planned grazing, now holistically thinking not only of cattle and grass productivity, but adding in new attributes that tweaked our management in terms of size, location and timing of grazing cells such as:

• Maintaining and enhancing diversity

• Maximizing soil moisture through timing and residue

• Herd effect on plant selection

• Animal performance in both daily gain and flavor by considering plant selection and offering diversity of species within and between days (we raise and market 400500 organic grass-fed beeves a year)

• Timing of harvest during the day

• Maintaining wildlife cover and travel routes