Something Must Be Returned

Rawhide drying, boys lounging

Was I dying to get up at 4:30 to ferry the boys up the road and through the woods to Jimmy and Sara’s back hayfields to scout turkeys in the raw half-lit dampness of a late-April morning? Well, no, not exactly, but I could not bring myself to say no, if only because the fellas have proven themselves committed turkey scouters. Frequently over the past 10 days or so, they’ve extricated themselves from warm bedding and struck out across the land in the near-dark of predawn, straining to hear their quarry gobbling from the roost. This is valuable information, you see, because if one knows where the birds are roosting, one knows approximately where to assemble a blind into which one will nestle one’s self come season proper, hoping to transition a fat Tom from roost to roast with the concussive blast of a 20-guage shotgun.

I fear I will never make much of a hunter. Clearly, I’m not opposed to taking an animal’s life. Nor do I mind rising early, though 4:30 is a bleary time for me. It’s the sheer patience I lack. To go scouting morning after morning, with no guarantee or perhaps even likelihood of success. And then to sit hunched behind a blind for hours, waiting for those fickle fowl to emerge from the forest’s edge, at which point one might be able to maybe, maybe coax a bird into shooting range. Oy. It’s all just too much for me. Honestly, I’d rather spend a half-dozen months feeding and petting and scratching my dinner. That may suggest a different sort of patience, but at least I get to enjoy its company in the process.

We are waiting now for the grass to starting greening and growing. Our usual turn-out date for the cows and other grazing creatures is ‘round about May 15, which generally coincides with the grass reaching boot top height. This is looking like a late year, and I suspect it’ll be the 20th or so before the beasts set foot outside their respective winter paddocks.

Good grazing is an art. It’s a constant juggling act and to do it right one must factor weather, season, number of animals, size of animals, and even one’s objectives for the animals and for the pasture itself. For instance, though we generally move the cows twice each day, down in what we call the “logging cut,” a two-acre parcel of pasture we’re coaxing out of what was only a few years ago dense woods, we generally push the cows in a given paddock for a day longer than normal. This is because we’re trying to maximize animal impact, in part so they trample unwanted plant species, in part so they spread prolific quantities of shit, and in part because when they run out of forage, we feed out a bale of hay, which adds both carbon and seed to the evolving pasture.

The central challenge we face with grazing is that from June to about the middle of July, our pasture produces enough forage to support three times as many animals as we have. Try as they might, our motley crew of ruminants simply can’t consume it fast enough, and we end up either having to bush hog ungrazed pasture, or let it wither on the stem. We hate mowing, but the benefits to pasture are tremendous, because the mown grass becomes a nutritive mulch that returns nutrients to the soil. Of course, leaving it on the stem accomplishes much the same eventually, but it also smothers consecutive growth, which we desperately need come August and September, when we have to start thinking real hard about how we’ll manage what forage remains.

Now, some astute reader’s probably going to ask “why don’t you just take a cut of hay off the pasture?” The answer to that is at least twofold. For one, we don’t own the necessary equipment. For two, to hire it done would likely cost more than we could afford. For three (see? I said at least two fold), by taking the grass/hay off the pasture, we are essentially robbing the soil of nutrients, which means we need to think about how to return nutrients. If you’re looking for one golden soil rule to live by, whether you’re talking about hayfield, pasture, or garden, here’s my suggestion: For everything to you take, be it bale of hay, gallon of milk, or ear of corn, something must be returned.

There. Two lessons for one day. Crikey, I’ve outdone myself. To recap:

I fear I will never make much of a hunter
Something must be returned