Revisiting the pasture

I have irrigation water coming on tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.  (It comes through Solano Irrigation District and I have to call when I want the water "on"--in my ditches.) Irrigation has been a struggle this year. Even with the water on for 36 hours there are some paddocks that have died back because I can't get water to them. Part of the problem is probably the old culvert--too deep and too small. It is half filled with mud that I can't get out. I taught a weaving class today but after that we went out to tackle the problem. Dan dug the culvert out with the tractor.

For tomorrow's irrigation the water will be running through the ditch. Eventually we need to replace the culvert with a bigger one.

After setting up the tarps to keep the water in the ditches I checked the paddock where I experimented with burning medusahead. This is the plot that my son burned early in the season. He didn't think it was effective but the medusahead is still gone.

The area of trefoil is where I burned the medusahead that was growing over it. This is some of the area that got water but that medusahead is still thick. I hope the pasture plants will choke it out.

This is some of the area that I haven't been able to irrigate. Not much forage there and look at the medusahead cover.

Medusahead closeup.

Here is the trefoil that would be a wonderful replacement for the medusahead. Hopefully irrigation will go a little better tomorrow and we'll get water on those dry areas.

Pasture management revisited

Regular blog readers may know that in the late summer and fall I start complaining about the unpalatable late summer grasses. I'm sorry, but I'm going to complain now even though it is only spring. I only graze about 7 acres so all of it seems precious. We dealt with some of the issues of the thick dallisgrass a couple of weeks ago by burning it. I hope something starts growing where all that heavy thatch was. Today's issue is the condition of the east paddock. Medusahead is a nasty, unpalatable grass that goes to seed in the summer, covering all the soil with thick dry thatch. The medusahead is starting to grow now and the only other thing growing with it is a perennial grass (Elymus--wild rye-- I think) that the sheep don't like either. The rest of the soil is covered with the dry residue from both of these. My goal in this paddock is to  graze it hard enough that they will at least trample and break up the dried up grasses from last year and hopefully eat some of the less palatable grass.

As I was uploading these photos I realized that they don't show what I've been talking about.

This is the view looking south. You can't tell, but it's the east side (left) of the east paddock that has the problem vegetation.  It took them only a day to clear off almost everything in the south part of this paddock (as opposed to 2 days in equal sized paddocks with better vegetation).

They are hungry and ready to move.

I took this photo as I opened the fence and stepped back so I wouldn't get trampled.

Arthritic Stephanie follows the running sheep.

Amaryllis brings up the rear. She will follow Stephanie anywhere.

This view is looking north, from the part of the paddock they just left. In this photo you can't really tell the difference in vegetation between the west (now on the left) and east sides of the paddock. It's much easier in person, but notice where the sheep are. There is no fence keeping them from the east side--it just doesn't have what they want to eat.

Compare this photo to the one where they are running into the new pasture. There is a blue cast to these plants--this is very sparse (although it may not look so in a photo from this angle) and it is so tall because the sheep avoided eating it the last time they were here.

Tomorrow I will start irrigating. I hope for some warm weather to follow so that the clover and trefoil will come in faster.

Irrigation time again

I live on the western edge of the Central Valley in CA.  We get winter rain and it's dry all summer. The only way that things stay green here is through irrigation. One reason that we wanted this property was because it was part of the Solano Irrigation District and we could get irrigation water without having an ag well.

When I order water the water tender opens a valve at the west end of this ditch (left in the photo). This is not on our property, but the water flows down this ditch and then onto our property by opening the valve at this end.

The water flows through a pipe that goes under the fence and the water comes up in this standpipe and out the hole into the ditch in the pasture.

This view is still looking west. The water is starting to flow from the standpipe down the ditch at the north end of the property. The ditch turns south and gets the water to the rest of the pasture. The ditch is supposed to have high enough sides that the water is contained and only flows out where I dig a cut-out that lets the water into the pasture. The idea is to open a few areas at a time and be able to fill those cut-outs in as you open more. Ideally the pasture would have just the right amount of slope so that the water would flow evenly. Easier said than done. One problem with our place is that we don't have the equipment to re-ditch the property. I'm using the same ditch that we had dug (by a neighbor with a tractor and ditcher) when we first started here. I see the alfalfa farmers re-ditch every time they irrigate and I'm jealous. I've looked into a pipeline system in which there wouldn't be a ditch, but a buried pipe with valves that could be open and shut to control the irrigation. Unfortunatly the cost is completely unrealistic for my business. So I keep plugging away with the shovel and hoping for the best.

That is a mowed alfalfa field on the north (top of the photo) and our property is the green field. The standpipe is in the northwest corner of the property and the ditch in one of the photos above is along the north fenceline. You can see the water flowing down the ditch going south and that part of the pasture is already flooded. The sheep have to be in the corrals and barn when I'm irrigating. (So I have to feed them hay for several days every 3-4 weeks. I usually have the water on for 36 hours, but it takes several days for the field to drain enough to turn the sheep back out.)

That ditch that takes the water south dead-ends on this ditch that runs east-west and carries water to the other 5 acres. This view shows the south west corner of the property.

Here is the south east corner. I strip graze this 5 acre pasture. The strips run north-south and are separated by a 3-wire electric fence. You can make out the strips in this photo. See that black thing towards the top? That's a portable water trough that I plug into the water pipeline that we installed a couple of years ago. The water trough is on one of the fencelines. I have just finished grazing the strips on either side of the water trough. The next two strips are more lush. They are ready to be grazed next. Notice the very pale green in the strip above the water trough? This strip is hard to irrigate and for several years I couldn't get much water on it. That light green color is medusahead--a very unpalatable grass. Ideally I think burning it would be good, but I don't think I can do that. We just bought a better heavy-duty weed-eater and I think I'm going to try to stay on top of the medusahead by using the weed-eater. I hope that I can make an impact on it this year. It renders that strip of the pasture unuseable. I noticed tonight that my irrigation water was getting there. I hope that if I can keep the medushead at bay then something else will start growing there.

What's for Breakfast?

I moved the sheep to a new section of pasture this morning.

They immediately buried their heads. This is like a salad bar for the sheep--something for everyone. In the photo below you can see clover, trefoil (yellow flower), Dallis grass (broad-leaf grass), yellow foxtail (that grass with the foxtail-looking head), bermudagrass, dock, and other plants.

Some of these plants make summer grazing tough. The bermuda and yellow foxtail are late summer grasses and take over the pasture, crowding more desirable plants.  The sheep choose to eat the plants they like and leave the less desirable ones.That's why, to graze properly, you put more livestock on a small area and move them frequently. When the sheep are in a small area they eat even  the less palatable plants while eating the ones they really like. Then you move them to the next area. This also helps with control of internal parasites.

Dallis grass has been a problem too. It is a perennial grass that originated in South America and can be a good pasture grass if grazed properly. If I can't keep it grazed low it gets so tall and coarse that the sheep won't touch it. Then it takes over and nothing else can grow. If you go back to older posts in the blog you'll see where last year at this time I was doing everything I could think of to get the sheep to eat the thick stand of dallis grass. In the spring we finally burned it.

So what did I see in the salad bar pasture this morning?

Amaryllis went right for the yellow foxtail! Nobody else eats that.

Here is another undesirable plant. This grass is medusahead. It is an annual grass that grows in dry areas and has these nasty seed heads. Sheep don't want to eat it even when it is still green. The medusahead started growing in this side of the pasture when I couldn't get irrigation water to this area. The last few times I irrigated I have been more successful at getting water here so that's why it's green underneath. I hope that if I'm successful at irrigating this area next year the medusahead won't be able to take over.

But look who is eating it!

So what are the sheep eating?

This is Della with her mouth full of dallis grass. (That's the dallis grass seed head in the foreground.)

Ebony is eating trefoil and dock.

Linda is eating dallis grass.

The goat, Chloe, is eating trefoil and...

Jasmine is eating dallis grass.

One way to join me in a "pasture-walk" and photo shoot is to join the Farm Club and spend some time here. It's on my website--see the link on the right.

Hot chick!

This is Goldie, the chicken that likes me.  She runs to me and expects to be picked up when I open the chicken house door. She is hot, like the rest of us. The TV news people love it because they get to say "triple digits".  Of course they're inside their air conditioned offices.

So what am I doing on these hot days? Plugging away at everything that needs to get done. We're mainly working on getting the shop put back together. No photos until it is done! I'm taping and painting and putting down floor. Dan is building a deck, doing electrical work, etc. I have a spinning class this weekend so I have to be able to get in the door!

I've been sorting sheep again. State Fair entries are due this week so I needed to figure out who to show. I have a lot of lambs from which to choose. I sorted the lambs into groups based on sire so that I could choose 4 lambs with the same sire for one of the group classes. These are Houdini's 2-horn ram lambs...

...and these are his 4-horn ram lambs.

These photos are in the dark because it was night before I got to this task. Hard to evaluate fleece in the dark. So I looked again in the morning.

You can barely see Rusty behind the rams. They are so dog-broke now that I can work with them in the field.

They are going into one of the pastures that was so swamped with tall grass last year. We burned it in the spring. Look at the trefoil growing in what was a 4-foot tall sward of grass.

Here is a close-up. This is one of my favorite flowers--bright and pretty and good forage for sheep.

Some parts of the pasture are starting to get overrun with that Dallisgrass again. I'm hoping that the ewes can make a dent in it if I keep them out there longer. I've been letting them in the barn during the hot part of the day. If I don't make them go back out they'll bed down in the barn at night, but they will have more of an effect on the pasture (bedding down, manure deposited, etc) if they are out all night. So I've been moving them out at dusk.

Do you see that big round one--third up from the right? That's Madeline. She is pregnant and due to lamb at State Fair just before Labor Day.

I can't believe I sheared in November and I still haven't processed wool. I sold a lot of it, but I have some to process. Wait until you see the new products I'm going to have! (I'm not telling right now.) Three bags full:

These guys are waiting for something fun to happen. They are ready for the girls, but we'll wait a few months.

That's Rubicon on the left and Moonshine on the right.

Back to more painting!

More about the pasture

This photo is of the same field that is in the last post, but it's taken in the other direction. See that tower on top of the barn? That's where I was when I took the other photo. This 5-acre pasture is divided into 8 vertical strips with high-tensile electric wire. I subdivide those strips with electric net fence and it's that fence that I move when I put the sheep on fresh feed every day or two. In the photo below the sheep see me on the other side of the fence and they are waiting for me to let them in. In the photo you can't really see the green grass and clover because the dry grass is taller, but it's there.

This is a not-so-flattering photo of Ranger waiting with the ewes.

As I open up the net fence the sheep go rushing through.

I spend time just watching sheep eat! I like to see what they go for first.

Pasture observations

Are you going to get tired of reading my pasture observations? Hey, it's what I do. When you raise livestock on the land then you are really a grass farmer first...or should be. My first observation this morning was the dew on the grass that I have learned is called yellow foxtail. It is one of the late summer grasses that is NOT desirable. The sheep don't like to eat it which is why you see so much in the field. But it did look pretty this morning.

Another observation is what has happened to our crop circle. Our crop circle is not like the ones you may have read about. If you see our place from above (which we can do even in the flat Sacramento Valley now that my husband has built a 2 story barn with an additional tower) then you see this area in the middle of the pasture that is a different type of plant. It is some kind of reed, another undesirable plant and one that indicates poor drainage.

 

Do you see that darker area in the middle of the pasture? That's the reed. But do you also see the bright green part of it on the right? That's new annual grass that is outgrowing anything else in the pasture right now. This summer my brother built a prototype shade structure that I could move around to various parts of the pasture. That is where I had the shade while the sheep were in that part of the pasture. A few days of trampling that reed opened that area up to allow grass to grow now that it has started to rain. Here is a closeup.

 

I have more observations, but I'm going to put them in another post. The last couple of times that I included a lot of photos it fouled up the format of not only those posts but all the previous ones too.