by Gene Logsdon
I noted in chapter 4 how grazing chickens scatter the piles of cow dung, effectively saving the grazier from the job of dragging a harrow over the field to do the scattering, and how chickens also eat the worm eggs of sheep parasites to help control that problem. Chickens probably eat the eggs of face flies and attic flies too, a job formerly done by scarab beetles which, as lamented earlier, we no longer are blessed with in this part of Ohio.
The manure droppings of cows and horses have their special significance to the pasture, and not only as the latter's chief source of fertility. When cows or horses eat herbiage going to seed, the seeds, especially those of clovers, often pass intact through their bodies. Having gone through the digestive tract of the animals and then dropped to the ground in a protective covering of moist manure, these seeds sprout much quicker and much stronger than in the sod. In this way new patches of clover, in particular white clover, are started around the field. Sheep manure seldom serves in this capacity because sheep tend to digest fully the seeds they eat. But this fact can also be used in pasture management. Sheep grazing on weeds gone to seed (I am thinking particularly of Queen Anne's lace) will not spread the weeds.
There is one more set of important relationships that you must bear in mind. For the greatest efficiency, especially on a small farm, the meadows must be involved in a working partnership with the cultivated fields. These cultivated fields, in their own annual rotation of crops, can become at the right intervals in their rotations part of the rotational grazing scheme too, especially during drouths when emergency pasture is needed.
Blending the two kinds of rotation is tricky. I have my meadow land divided into five sections, and move the livestock from one to the other on a more or less regular basis depending on how fast the grass is growing. But when conditions warrant, I move the stock onto one or the other of the crop sections of corn, oats, wheat, and hay to give the meadows some relief and a chance to grow, for example late in a dry summer. In August, I can turn the stock into those fields of clover that have regrown from the first cutting of hay and that would normally be used for a second cutting of hay. I have never had to do this but I could if squeezed hard enough by drouth. But in August after wheat and oat harvest, I often turn the animals onto the new clover that I interseeded with the grains and that is now growing strongly. The animals can stay there in August until they eat down the stand of clover, and the clover will still have time to regrow before winter and make a fine stand of hay the next year. In September and October, I regularly turn the stock into the cornfield after I have harvested the ears of corn from the standing stalks. The animals will eat, with surprising relish, the dried leaves off the stalks. In September, November, and December I can turn the animals into the hay fields from which I took a second cutting of hay in August. I will most assuredly do that on the hay field that is scheduled to be plowed and planted to corn the next year. As part of their grazing in the crop fields, the animals also eat weeds out of the fencerows around the fields, saving me a difficult job. And in November or December, 1 can pasture the new wheat, sown in September, without hurting it for next July's grain crop.
In short, by being able to move the animals from the meadow paddocks to the crop sections, point and counterpoint, I can usually avoid feeding them my precious winter hay in late summer drouths. In some years I do not have to feed hay until the middle of December, which is quite noteworthy for northern Ohio.
In July I will also move the animals for a week to the woodlot where I do not want any more brush or seedling trees to grow for the time being. This simple practice keeps brush from shading out wild flowers like dogtooth violet, Dutchmen's britches, Jack-in-the-pulpit, hepatica, rue anemone, trillium, wild geranium, and many others that grow in the spring. If allowed in the woods earlier, the sheep would eat the wildflowers before they matured, thereby eventually killing them.
Finally, there is a relationship between humans and their meadows beyond the reverie the two can engender. When the children are small, and eventually the grandchildren, some of the happiest family days on the farm are spent sledding down pasture hills. Meadows are also the best places to fly a kite. Once I outfitted a group of children with makeshift butterfly nets, and watching them skip over the meadow was even more delightful than watching fireflies sparkling above the grass in the dusks of July. In April, before the ball diamond uptown dries off, our softball team uses the biggest meadow as a practice field. My son and son-in-law also use it as a golf driving range. These values should go on the cottage farmer's computer spreadsheet, but how?
Major Pasture Plants
Listing the most important grasses and legumes for the graziers' purposes sounds like an altogether straightforward proposition. Instead, wherever two or more graziers gather together, expect a loud argument. This is because no two farms are alike, and certainly no two counties, states, or regions. I am going to list the plants that work best for me, and that I think are the best for a cottage farm in the Cornbelt, mid-Appalachian piedmont, and New England. Others may argue for their favorites, and I will try to mention some of them too.
Bluegrass. It seems to be a penchant with pasture specialists in agricultural colleges to knock bluegrass in favor of some higher-yielding, coarser grass. These other grasses come in and out of fashion, like hemlines, but bluegrass is the blue jeans of the turf world. Over the long haul, it is the most dependable, manageable, and permanent of the coolseason grasses. It needs to be limed, two tons to the acre, every five years or so, unless you are blessed with natural lime in your soil like that paradise of horse farm meadows around Lexington, Kentucky. Bluegrass makes a solid turf, one that sheep can walk on even in early spring thaw if necessary, and cows and horses can be turned on it as soon as the ground is reasonably dry and solid without making deep hoof prints. If mowed occasionally in addition to grazing so that it does not go heavily to seed, and if rain is plentiful, and if grazing animals have generously fertilized it with their manure, bluegrass will provide pasture all through the growing season except in the heat of late summer. In 1992, with continuous rains, the bluegrass never went through its customary rest period in August at all.
The other wonderful thing about bluegrass is that in the region where we farm, it will volunteer. Take any field and start mowing it regularly and within two or three years, with lime and perhaps some fertilizer, bluegrass will slowly take over. This characteristic seems almost miraculous until you try to keep bluegrass out of a raspberry or strawberry patch and learn how tenaciously it can grow. Contrary to what is often said, succulent new-growth bluegrass has almost as much protein content as legumes. Wendell Berry, the original contrary farmer, tells me that cattle can be fattened on good Kentucky bluegrass pasture just about as readily as on corn-and he's talking about land that is too steep to cultivate and that formerly had eroded to near wasteland because it was cultivated.
When we bought our farm, the part of the acreage that would eventually be pastured had been haphazardly cultivated to corn and soybeans and then just let lay in some miscreant government subsidy program. It was growing rankly with giant ragweed above a soil surface that was otherwise mostly bare. I ran the disk lightly over the soil and the dead weed stalks, limed it, and then scattered ladino clover seed over the surface with a hand-held broadcast seeder. I now know I could have used red clover just as well but ladino will stand wet and slightly acid soil better than red. The stand of clover was wondrous to behold and as it slowly disappeared over two years, volunteer strains of bluegrass and other wild grasses took its place. In very early spring I then broadcast white clover and birdsfoot trefoil over the thin, dormant sod. Both grew. The trefoil eventually disappeared. The white clover established itself permanently with the bluegrass and with several other wild grasses I can't identify by name. If you sow bluegrass seed, fifteen pounds per acre is plenty, and ten pounds will do.
White clover (Little Dutch.) grows in symbiotic relationship with bluegrass and, in many areas, volunteers with it without special
seeding if the soil is limed. Like all legumes, white clover draws nitrogen from the air and fixes it in the soil. When soil nitrogen rates go up, the bluegrass responds with lush growth, crowding out the clover. When that nitrogen is depleted, the bluegrass languishes a little, and the white clover comes back fat and sassy. This ebb and flow will continue almost forever if mowing (and occasionally hand-weeding when necessary) keeps coarse weeds and tree seedlings from establishing themselves, and if the pasture is not overgrazed.
Where rain is plentiful, white clover will continue to grow through the hot, drier part of summer. Otherwise it will "rest" like the bluegrass and then come back vigorously in September, with the fall rains. White clover is the favorite herb of grazing animals; at least my animals eat it first and graze it the hardest. The best planting rate is two pounds per acre, if you have to sow it.
Alsike, birdsfoot trefoil, and other lesser-known legumes all volunteer in my pasture. Alsike clover is the variety farmers used to plant before they were able to get their fields well drained with tile. It is a persistent clover, but less vigorous and not as tall as red clover. Alsike has a pinkish white blossom, unlike the reddish-purple of red clover. Alsike grows in places that are too wet for the other clovers. It evidently reseeds itself; I planted it only once.
I also planted birdsfoot trefoil once, and it continued more or less vigorously for five years. To my surprise, the animals did not prefer the lacy, leafy trefoil to other clovers but that turned out to be an advantage. The trefoil had time to root down well before the cows and sheep decided to eat it.
Several other clovers are present naturally in our meadow. I am not sure of their identity but people say they "look like" hop clover, black medic, and subterranean clover. I have a peculiar attitude about things that come to me gratis from nature. I don't want to learn the name for fear the knowledge will somehow scare the gift away. A patch of purple vetch volunteered in one pasture and quickly spread. The books say it is not very palatable but my sheep have not read those books and gobbled it up. I think they like a change in diet just as we do.
Wild grasses. As there are various wild clovers volunteering in the pasture, so there are several species of grasses that flourish without my help. I don't know what they are-some foxtails and wild millets and bromes plus what I call buffalo grass, and many others that I can't identify. Some of these grasses are the "warm-season" kinds that stand the heat of summer better than bluegrass and keep the pastures "alive" when bluegrass is dormant. I'm inclined to rely on them (plus red clover) for summer grazing rather than trying to introduce prairie grasses from the drier west as other graziers do. They are planting Plains grasses like bluestem, switchgrass, and Eastern gama for summer grazing.
Red clover and alfalfa I grow mainly for hay, but they make good semi-permanent pasture. Alfalfa will last longer (five to seven years) and some varieties have been developed specifically for grazing, like Alfagraze. Red clover will last two to three years if the new two-season varieties like Redland and Arlington are sown. They will reseed spottily, as will alfalfa, thus persisting in the pasture and providing feed in dry summer. I prefer red clover to alfalfa because it grows better on our heavy clay soils and it isn't bothered by alfalfa weevil. I habitually broadcast a light seeding of red clover over portions of the meadows in late winter to add to natural reseeding. The standard planting rate of both these legumes is eight to twelve pounds per acre.
When heavy stands of red clover or alfalfa are pastured, as in hay fields, be sure some grass is available to the animals. I sow timothy with these legumes for hay, and have grass borders around the plots in the annually cultivated fields. When livestock have both legumes and grasses to eat, they are not as liable to bloat. Bloating is especially a threat with lush alfalfa. I would not turn cows or sheep into lush first-cutting alfalfa or red clover. Second and third cuttings are usually safe if grass is present and you fill the animals up on hay before turning them on heavy stands. I've never had a case of bloat.
Timothy is the best of the coarser hay grasses in my opinion. Animals like it better than the orchardgrass which has so often replaced it. Whenever you plant red clover, plant timothy with it. I often seed it over the pastures where the bluegrass is thin. Its seedlings are so fine, you hardly notice them coming up through the sod, but invariably, in late summer of the second year after planting, or sometimes the first year, it seems to suddenly jump up and go to seed. A little will continue to volunteer every year and provide pasturage when bluegrass is waning in summer. Sow ten pounds per acre with clovers.
Orchardgrass produces a heavy growth of grass for pasture or hay, and a stand will last about five years before it gets spotty and clumpy. The best way to use it is to make a hay crop of the spring flush growth, and summer pasture the regrowth. Where I started an orchardgrass pasture, bluegrass and white clover slowly took over as the orchardgrass diminished. Some orchardgrass still remains, in spotty clumps, and that's what I like. It adds summer grazing when the bluegrass and clover are dormant and the animals relish the orchardgrass seeds when they are in the milky stage even though at that time they will hardly eat the maturing stems. Where a stand of orchardgrass is heavy, if you don't make hay of the first tall growth, by all means mow it in late June after the stock has gotten its fill of milky seedheads. Then the grass will grow new, tastier leaves. Sow fifteen pounds per acre.
When mowing off aging pasture plants, don't think you are wasting forage. The regrowth will be more palatable and nutritious, and the old growth acts as rotting mulch to hold in soil moisture and increase organic matter.
Ladino clover is a substitute for red clover on soils that are a bit too wet or acid for red clover. It looks like a large version of white clover and is almost as palatable, but lasts only two years in a stand. Sow two pounds per acre.
Big Mistake is my name for sweet clover. Its value (debatable) is as a green manure cover crop to plow under where annual cultivation is contemplated on compacted, depleted soil. The trouble is that it tends to spread all over the farm and becomes a weed. It is not very palatable and can become toxic as hay. Use alfalfa instead to break up plow pan and to add organic matter.
Bromegrass is considered one of the better warm season grasses over much of the U.S., specifically for late summer grazing. I say that with my fingers crossed on the strength of others' experiences. I haven't tried it. It is difficult to get a stand established in my region. Sow ten to twelve pounds per acre.
Ryegrass works best as a winter cover crop in fields bared by annual cultivation. Not much place for it in meadows, although when renovating a pasture you can add a little ryegrass to your regular seed mixes and get a quick cover on the field for erosion control and grazing while the bluegrass and white clover or red clover are getting established. New varieties of ryegrass are being touted for palatability and staying power but I've never been in a situation where I needed them.
There are many other legitimate grasses and legumes (like lespidiza, bermudagrass, crimson clover, and bluestem) that have their places in southern and western pasture management and many regional books and government pamphlets to inform you about them. However, you would do better to ask some old farmer who has lived a lifetime in your area. Be careful about introducing strange plants. Bermudagrass makes a good southern coastal pasture but it is an absolute curse in a Kentucky lawn or garden. Kudzu was the great midsouth wonder plant of the 1940s that turned into the great midsouth scourge of the 1950s. Hybrid Sudan grasses produce enormous amounts of forage but there are problems with prussic acid and the stuff is neither permanent, nor, according to my cow, palatable-not the right choice for cottagers. There is a big push to introduce western prairie grasses (bluestem, Eastern gama, Indian grass) into the eastern half of the country for late summer pasture, and that may turn out to be a good move, but I don't know how these grasses will react to our humid climate over the long haul, and I can get all-season pasture from the grasses and legumes that have proven themselves here.
W
henever interest in grassland farming resurfaces, a new set of wonder plants comes into vogue. You can read about the current offerings in farm magazines. Most farmers go through about three waves of wonder plants in a lifetime, and when they finally learn not to bite, it's retirement time.
Urban Meadows
You can enjoy a meadow even if the only space you have is a large yard in town. Managing a lawn to look like a meadow, and not like a wild jungle of noxious weeds that will get you in trouble with neighbors and the zoning board, is not easy. You need to think of your lawnmower the way an artist thinks of his brush. The lawn is your canvas. You are going to paint wildflowers in the grass. At first leave a couple of square yards unmowed and watch what happens. By the third year you might be very surprised. Allow a couple more patches to grow. Where wildflowers (or weeds) bloom early, the plants will mature by July and you can mow those patches into respectable, WASP lawn again. Next year the wildflowers will come back. Where fall blooming wildflowers appear, you can usually mow those areas until July, and the fall bloomers will then grow. So now you know how to keep one part of the lawn "presentable" for the first half the growing season, and another part "presentable" for the second half.
Then you can get really sophisticated at creating wildflower landscapes in your lawn with a mower. Sometimes mowing at a height of 5 inches will encourage several kinds of wildflowers to flourish while maintaining a semblance of Prussian neatness that so delights the Germanic mind. Usually, if you pursue this delightful madness, you will work out a staggered schedule of mowing: Plot A is mowed in July; Plot B in October; Plot C every other August; and so forth. I have gone from complex madness back to simplified madness. Our whole backyard, being shaded, is easy to manage for wildflowers because the shade weakens the growth of grass to the delight of spring wildflowers. From April until June, the yard. is lush with blue, white, and yellow violets, spring beauties, winter aconites, forget-me-nots, snowbells, grape hyacinths, wild strawberry, Siberian squills, Grecian windflowers, mertensia and crocuses. These wildflowers bloom and fade before the grass does much of anything. By June the grass can be mowed back to "neatness" without harming the wildflowers and they return every spring, spreading farther across the lawn. You can have the most talked-about lawn in the neighborhood (yeah) by letting trees grow up so that the lawn is always partially shaded and then starting spring wildflowers all over it. Winter aconite and snowdrop are the best because they will be blooming as quickly as March snows fade away, and will be gone in time for you to mow as early as mid-May and thereby remain on good terms with Prussian neighbors.