And on the 8th day of May…
It finally *%$#*# rained! Whether you grow vegetables for a living like our farmer friends Kathy Bennett (also our boys’ live saving dyslexia tutor) and her husband Alex MacLennan down the road, milk cows, make hay, or raise alpacas, if you are connected to the land and live in this neck of the woods, you are a much happier camper this morning. We have obviously had plenty of droughty periods here before in southern Vermont over the years, they just don’t generally start this early. A few years back, our true grazing season effectively ended in early July when someone turned off the spigot and we had to start feeding out hay in our outdoor feeders a full 6 to 8 weeks earlier than we normally do. Not by chance that was the same year that our local hay folks were still trying to fill out our quota of small bales for our two lower barns in early October. To be dry throughout virtually the entire month of April, as it was last month, is pretty unusual though. In fact, in my 30+ Aprils spent in this lovely little state of ours, I can’t remember another one quite like it.
Regardless, this morning the outside world at CCNF is a decidedly darker shade of green. Our pastures which have been in a bit of a holding pattern, will hopefully really take off now. Though having said that, there are some paddocks that I still don’t anticipate us grazing for another week or two. This is the dance we do every spring. When do you let the critters out to graze? We have about 35 to 40 acres of pasture here for a herd that runs about 230 right now. Let them out too early — particularly during a dry spell — and the alpacas can hammer a paddock so badly that it will essentially never recover for the rest of the grazing season. Let them out too late and we end up having to bust out the mowers to keep it down, which is a waste on so many levels.
There is talk of combining the two feed groups down at the Stud Barn and letting them tackle the one paddock off of that building that looks like it’s got a good 5″ to 6″ of growth on it. That growth perhaps coming courtesy of a hose drill conducted by our local volunteer fire department a couple of weeks back (seriously). Nothing like a few thousand gallons of pond water in the midst of a dry spell to wake a pasture up! So long as all of the Herdsires agree to be relatively benevolent (read: Sovereign and Ringo) and not chase and hump the yearlings into a state of shock, that’s definitely in the cards. The big dogs are getting restless.
The paddock immediately off the east end of the Main Barn looks like it could use a few days of munching from the group of eager juvi boys that are housed right next to it as well. Not by coincidence I think, that is the same paddock that houses our guard chickens and their hutch on wheels every spring and summer. Who knew that the poop of 10 to 15 free range laying hens could fertilize a 1/2 acre of pasture so well? There’s probably something to that, don’t you think?
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