Tag Archive: #grazing


“Paying attention to the nuances of the land, I’ve learned to grow really high quality forages, protein, and energy.”  Jack and Anne Lazor, Butterworks Farm, raise their herd of Jersey cows on pasture and high-quality forages in Westfield Vermont and produce a certified organic yoghurt.

For most Vermont farmers, the variable weather of summers from the extreme dry summer of 2016 to the wet cool summer of 2017 has proved challenging.   To meet these challenges, Jack considers increasing the organic matter content of agricultural soils as an important strategy to address many of the impacts of climate change.  The farm has doubled the organic matter content of the soils over the past 40 years. This has significant benefits for water infiltration during times of extreme precipitation, while maintaining soil moisture during dry periods.  The organic matter also improves plant growth, regulates soil temperature fluctuations, and helps resist the erosive forces of rain and flooding.  “It’s all about soil building. I want to see what I can do to increase the OM of the floodplain lands and stay off the tractor when the soil is wet.”

During years of drought, Butterworks Farm has been short on feed for their herd of Jersey cows. They have relied upon increasing their land base to provide more summer forage and more hay in the winter.  Jack noted that maintaining good grazing practices during drought was crucial to the health of the entire agroecosystem.

Specifically, his rule is grazing down to only 3-4 inch height, instead of down to the ground or only 1 inch. He said, “If you want them to regrow quickly, don’t brutalize them.” That requires more land base, which not all farmers have.

Overall, Jack is transitioning is farm land to predominantly perennial forages. “Forage consumption has increased at least 40% for our transition to grassfed, which goes along with transitioning more land out of grain into permanent forage.”

“It’s all about soil building. I want to see what I can do to increase the OM of the floodplain lands and stay off the tractor when the soil is wet.” – Jack Lazor

Business Management Decisions 

Management decisions are informed by weighing a complex set of goals, challenges, constraints and opportunities. Butterworks Farm is transitioning away from grains because there are so many challenges, some of them directly or indirectly climate related. Jack says, “Though I love it, its not financially viable.” The farm is striving the make a transition into the hands of the next generation while reasserting a strong presence in the organic dairy market, though these trends are informed by, but not driven by climate change projections.

Constraints and Challenges

Jack recounted the history of the economic successes and trials of his business over the last 40 years, explaining that when the yogurt business took off and the business was flush with cash, they were able to not only purchase extra equipment and amendments, but also invest in the ecological sustainability and climate resilience of the farm. In this way, Jack linked the farm’s capacity to invest in new adaptive management strategies directly to the financial stability of the farm and market opportunities. Since 2008, the farm has experienced a decline in skim milk yogurt sales, which has dominated much of the farm’s strategic decision-making.

Making the investment into good soil and committing to regenerative agriculture takes a leap of faith, time and money, and Jack sees that some farmers are afraid of that. In Jack’s experience on the land, he sees the return on his investments into the minerals, soil amendments, cover crops and equipment show up in the health of the soil and the plants, and then in the health of his cows and quality of milk and cream.

Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Strategies and Potential

“My main takeaway from being on the land for 40 years is you think you’re being kind to the earth, but there’s always more you can do. Everyone needs to educate themselves and make changes.” – Jack Lazor

Jack emphasized the importance of developing a carbon consciousness. Agriculture has a lot of potential to offset the greenhouse gas emissions in multiple ways. We know that some carbon is captured by perennial, reduced tillage and other systems that increase organic matter, but exactly how much is captured is difficult to measure. Further research is needed on the carbon sequestration potential of grazing systems, and innovative manure and tillage methods. We should be proactive about this, even if the exact amounts of carbon sequestration or reduction in greenhouse gas emissions are unknown- every bit counts!

Contributing author: Alissa White, Research Specialist, Agroecology Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC), visited Butterworks Farm in April 2017.  Suzy Hodgson, UVM Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture, visited in June 2017.

“Flexibility is absolutely the key!” declares Karen Freudenberger, as she looks below where farmers Chuda Mahoro and Theogene Dhaurali are struggling to free one of the farm’s trucks stuck in the mud in a waterlogged pasture. Karen is the Pine Island Community Farm Project Manager, guiding it into existence as a working farm from a conceptual idea formed a few years ago. The majority of the pasture land on this farm is located in the floodplain of the Winooski River, in an oxbow and surrounded on three sides by the river. While extremely fertile, with abundant forage for the 200 or more goats that graze here, the chances of flooded conditions are often present.

While springtime has always been a time of expected flooding, in recent years it has become painfully apparent that flooding can and will happen just about any time of year.


But the grazing season of 2015 has shown the opposite can also be true. While June of this year broke records for number of inches of precipitation and cloudy days, August has been the driest on record for Vermont.


 

Stuck truck in wet pasture, June 2015

Stuck truck in wet pasture, June 2015

So what does flexibility look like? For the crew at Pine Island, it means the crops and gardens are not necessarily on the best agricultural soil.  Flexibility means a grazing plan that includes a “reserve” or “contingency” pasture on the higher ground at the farm that can be utilized at any time to accommodate animals for grazing, should the weather dictate the need to do so.


Flexibility means a grazing plan that includes a “reserve” or “contingency” pasture.  We must use major differences in the terrain here as it is needed,” Karen explains while watching the two farmers below. “We need all the areas, and we need to use them strategically.”


 

Pine Island Community Farm represents a partnership between the Vermont Land Trust and the Association of Africans Living in Vermont.  It supports New American farmers who wish to raise goats, chickens, or garden crops at the farm and sells pasture grown animals to families who wish to slaughter their own goats and chickens for meat.

It is a collaborative farm where each individual farm enterprise (e.g. Chuda’s goats) is run by the owner as his own small business.  Together, the business operations share the land, the barns, and the equipment.

Flood Plain Pasture,

Flood plain pasture on Winooski River, Pine Island Community Farm

Planning for the Unpredictable

Now in its second year of operation, and finding a rhythm with the land, livestock, and crops – the wild card remains the unpredictable weather fluctuations and learning how to work with that reality. The community gardens were placed on the upper plateau, even though the better agricultural soils are on the river plain below. But the risk of flooding and crop loss is too great on the lower level, and the financial impact could be devastating, so the decision was made to place them up above, requiring substantial amounts of soil amendments to increase the land’s fertility.


Now in its second year of operation, and finding a rhythm with the land, livestock, and crops – the wild card remains the unpredictable weather fluctuations and learning how to work with that reality.


The goat enterprise is even more complicated. Since most of them arrive in late winter/early spring as very young animals, it is particularly important that their pasture not be wet or even very damp as those are the conditions most favorable for the internal parasites that can take a young animal down very quickly. Planning for this means reserving a section of the upper plateau for the initial forays onto pasture at the beginning of the grazing season. The chances of this higher elevation land being drier are much better, and lowers the probability the young animals will pick up parasites.

Once the goats have grown in size, become good grazers, learned the process of following a shepherd, and the pasture below has dried up enough – they are taken down each day to fresh forage on the river plain. However, if there is a heavy rain event, the animals are often returned to the barn, and put on hay.

Moving animals prevents parasite intake and is seen as practice for general goat health. Goats traditionally come from dry environments, and have prominent back bones, so when conditions are extremely wet, they can sometimes get a deep chill, particularly young animals. So they are returned to the barn for cover until the weather eases up enough for them to be outside again. The frequency of this procedure has increased in direct correlation with the heavy precipitation events – again an increase in cost due to the extra time and labor involved.

Barnyard and fencing at Pine Island Farm

Barnyard and fencing at Pine Island Farm

This June and July have proven to be exceptionally wet, and circumstances have pushed the farmers to start utilizing any areas they can find with reasonably dry pasture. Chuda explains how it affects his day and makes for inefficient labor.

“We must spend a long time scouting around for any new dry area, mowing a strip to accommodate fence set-up, putting the fence in place, and bringing the animals there. Normally, long strips would be mowed where several days or even a couple of weeks’ worth of fence line can be set up and a new paddock made each day using the section from the previous day’s paddock as the animals are rotated onto new forage each day”. The labor invested is much less when the paddocks can be made in consecutive blocks, or even close by instead of wandering all over the river plain.

This season has pushed everything to the limits. Because of the record breaking rain and wet conditions, pastures have been slow to dry up and many still have standing water in places, prohibiting their use. Livestock have been restricted to sacrificial paddocks or barnyards and fed any reserved hay from the previous season.

But for many, even the reserve stash is gone. For the same reasons, haying has been delayed and many farmers have not been able harvest any, so without any new crop, and reserve supplies depleted, the only choice is to import feed from far away – a costly solution – or eek out any small opportunities close by. This means resorting to a “hunt and pick” type of operation, seeking any bit of dry pasture land that can be found to set up a grazing paddock. The inefficiency brings a greater cost to all – time spent looking and setting each area up takes a good portion of the day, and a watchful eye kept on it all should there be a need to quickly get the animals back to high ground.


Karen says, “This year has really pushed us to understanding the need for back-up reserves, and getting better at planning for that”.


 

 

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