Contents d Foreword ix Introduction: The One Cow Revolution
1
Chapter One: The Farm Photosynthesis 101 ¶ Extractive Farming ¶ Regenerative
11
Chapter Two: The Land Where Do You Want to Be? ¶ What Qualities Are Necessary? ¶ Durable Tenure, Regenerative Agriculture, and the Next
23
Chapter Three: Water Finding Water ¶ Pressurized Water—City and Well ¶ Surface Water—Ponds, Streams, Rivers, and Lakes ¶ Rainwater and Runoff—Roofs, Foundation, and Pavement ¶ Nonelectric Pumps—Nose, Sling, and Ram ¶ Developed Water Sources— Springs and Seeps ¶ Stock Watering Systems ¶ Water in the Pasture—Pumps, Hoses, and Tanks ¶ Record Keeping
41
Chapter Four: Grass Grass, Pasture, Forage ¶ Elements of a Good Paddock ¶ Estimating Forage ¶ Grazing with the Seasons ¶ Pasture Management ¶ Pasture Grasses ¶ Record Keeping
71
Chapter Five: Fence Intensive Grazing ¶ Electrical Fences ¶ Fencing Equipment— Posts, Reels, Chargers, and More ¶ Bringing the Charge to the Fence ¶ Setting Up Fence ¶ Points of Paddock Design ¶
97
Farming on the Independent Farmstead
Right Thing
Moving Livestock—Making Paddock Shifts
Chapter Six: Ruminants 123 Choosing a Ruminant ¶ Goats—Caprine Grazers ¶ Sheep— Ovine Grazers ¶ Cows—Bovine Grazers ¶ Buying a Ruminant
IndependentFarmstead_finalpages.indd 7
7/27/16 1:16 PM
Chapter Seven: The Dairy
In the Beginning—Calving, Lambing, and Kidding ¶ Milking a New Mother at the Sow’s Ear ¶ Milking Routines ¶ Calves— Feeding and Weaning ¶ Breeding ¶ Health
151
Chapter Eight: Poultry 181 Chickens ¶ Shelter and Fence ¶ Hen Housing ¶ Feeds and Feeders ¶ How Many Birds Do I Need? ¶ Breeds ¶ Reproduction ¶ Broilers ¶ Turkeys, Peacocks, and Guineas ¶ Ducks and Geese Chapter Nine: The Pig Piggy Banks ¶ Pig Husbandry ¶ Keeping It All Together— Shelter and Fence ¶ Planning the Year—Piglet to Pork Chop Chapter Ten: Milk, Meat, and Manure— The Solar Harvest Dairy ¶ Meat and Butchering ¶ Manure
207
235
Chapter Eleven: The Independent Farmstead 289 Farm Time ¶ People ¶ Failure ¶ Independence, Interdependence ¶ Seasonal Order . . . and Disorder ¶ Farm Education ¶ Homestead Assessments ¶ Dinner ¶ Tools ¶ Belonging Acknowledgments 305 Resources 307 Index 309
IndependentFarmstead_finalpages.indd 8
7/27/16 1:16 PM
The Independent Farmstead which may give the infant grazier confidence in his decision making process. It is also (comparatively) lengthy, complicated, and (for people without essential math genius) fraught with possibilities for error. We own a grazing stick; we have never used it. If you don’t just love math, you can leave this tool alone. Number of tillers and growth points. For the science lover. Your soil and water office will probably have literature available describing “optimum” grazing impact for various forage species in your area, or you can find this information online.
Figure 4.3a. Showing 60 percent grazed, 30 percent trampled, 10 percent standing.
Every plant eaten, stepped on, manured, or urinated on. Self-explanatory.
It will be seen from the above list (just a selection from almost unlimited possible systems) that while the goals remain the same—that is, increased solar energy capture, deepening topsoil, greater fertility, more and better food from the land—the means adopted can vary considerably. The multiplicity of approach might be intimidating, if we thought that for successful grazing we needed to understand all the possible intensive grazing methods so that we could be sure to apply the best one to our own homesteads at any given moment. A better view is that, with so many approaches to one goal, it is easier for the amateur to succeed, and harder for our efforts to produce negative results. Modern technological and educational systems condition us to look for “right” answers and to expect consistent practices to produce consistent results, but you can forget the idea that there are hard-and-fast rules for best grazing—or for practically any other aspect of farming, either. It has been important in our own grazing efforts to realize that nature is not static. In a thousand years graziers will
Figure 4.3b. In early summer, impact may be very light.
Figure 4.3c. Still a desirable level of impact.
1 76 !
IndependentFarmstead_finalpages.indd 76
7/27/16 1:16 PM
Fence
Figure 5.19. On our farm, winter-dormant pastures and stationary frost-free water mean we line graze long cells or “lanes,� allowing access back to water without trampling ungrazed forage. Illustration by Elara Tanguy.
1 121 !
IndependentFarmstead_finalpages.indd 121
7/27/16 1:17 PM
IndependentFarmstead_finalpages.indd 4
7/28/16 9:00 AM
The Sow’s Ear Farm. Illustration by Elara Tanguy.
IndependentFarmstead_finalpages.indd 5
7/28/16 9:00 AM