From the Pastures: Fields to graze

‘Tis the season to give, so I gave the rams to the ewes. Now everybody’s happy. I should start lambing about mid-May. Hopefully we will have a lot of green vegetation to graze. Two years ago, I grazed my eight-way cover crop field, which had been planted into wheat stubble about the first of August, from mid-November into February. One year ago, I grazed the cover crops from mid-November to mid-December.

This year, the crop is barely above my ankle and it’s already mid-December. I might “lightly” graze it now and then rest it until springtime or I might just let it grow until spring. By not grazing it in the fall, I will lose the oats and turnips to the cold winter temperatures and they will not regrow in the spring.

I am going to unroll hay over the cornstalks and winter the flock on the stalks until February. Then I’ll pull them off the field and put them in a sacrifice lot during “Muddy March” and until the ground firms up enough to go back out grazing. I plan on planting beans into the corn stubble in the spring.

Also, I l had oats, turnips and cereal rye flown over the standing corn in August that the sheep can eat along with the hay and left-behind corn. The cereal rye will be the only thing to come back in the spring, so if I can make it work, I’ll graze it before planting the beans.

The replacement ewe lambs have plenty of permanent grass pastures to graze, but the old ewes will be on big round bales of hay soon. Their landscaping and farm beautification jobs are done now and have been moved home.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year — remember Christ is the reason for the season!