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.

Experiments with Fire

Faithful readers of this blog will have read my whining about medusahead in the pasture. Medusahead is a noxious annual grass, unpalatable due to high silica content. Due to it's later date of maturation, it is noticeable on the hills as the light green color when the other annual grasses have dried out. After it has gone to seed it leaves a dense litter through which nothing else will germinate. Medusahead covers part of one of my paddocks and is increasing in area. During my visit to Jepson Prairie (see pretty pictures in last post) I read the signs about how they had used prescribed fire to control medusahead. "Fire is usually 100% effective at controlling medusahead if done before its seed heads shatter." A couple of months ago I bought a fire-breather tool (I can't remember the real name) that is attached to a propane tank. It is sold for use in weed control, particularly when weeds are small. It's intended use is to heat the  plants and burst the cells rather than actually setting them on fire. I thought I'd experiment in the field. Having just irrigated (in addition to unexpected May rain) the plants were wet and there was even standing water in many areas of the pasture. I wasn't worried about starting any wildfire.

On the way to the medusahead I saw a thistle. Normally I'd just dig this up, but having a propane tank  rather than a shovel, I blasted it with fire. You can see the singed leaves.

This is the thistle the next day. It may not have killed the whole plant, but you can see how it destroys the part that was heated. If the plant was very small that would be the end of it.

I didn't really have a plan but started burning various parts of the medusahead covered area. Because of the moisture content, I wasn't seeing much fire, but I was singing off the bristly parts of the seeds and burning a little of the litter. Then I noticed this.

Notice the forbs growing under the medusahead. I don't want to kill those plants. I want to encourage them. This made me wonder if it would be effective to just burn (or superheat) the tops of the medusahead. This brought up several questions.  Would super-heating it stop the seed from developing? Are the seeds already viable even though the plants life cycle isn't complete? If I heat the top of the plant enough to burn off the outer part of the seed head will it kill the seeds? If I do this will the plant produce more seed heads? I decided I needed a test-plot.

I used fiberglass fence posts to make 5 plots. The two upright fence posts mark two corners. They are hard to see, but trust me, they are there.

My plots are:

1. Flame (superheat) the tops of the medusahead long enough to burn off the outer halo of the seed heads.  Are the seeds already viable? If they aren't, will this stop their development. If they are viable, will this kill them. I don't know.

2. Flame the tops of the medusahead longer than in #1 so that I can see more damage done to the seed head. Same questions as #1.

3. Flame the stalk of the plant in between the base and the seed head. If the seeds aren't already viable will this stop the development?

4. Flame the base of the plant to damage it.

5. Burn the whole *#@&^% thing.

Remember that the plants are wet from rain, the plants are still green, and in some places there is plenty of ground moisture if not standing water. If this were "normal" conditions I'd probably be starting a fire. And it may be that FIRE is the best answer. Even if I succeeed in reducing the seed produced by the medusahead, in much of the area there is still that heavy thatch which probalby needs to be burned off. And maybe I need to completely remove the plant and it's seed by incinerating it.  But that's another issue.

There are too many photos to post here, but I'll give you an example of what I did.

Here is Plot 2 before burning.

This is a close-up of the tops of the plants after burning.

This is a view of the plot the next day.

This is Plot 3

This is Plot 3 after burning.

Plot 3 the next day.

I don't know what all this will tell me. I didn't set this up so that these are permanent plots and I think I want to burn everything to be sure. But I have raised some questions for which I want to find answers. I know a couple of people to ask. I'll report back if I learn something.

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.

Green Grass

Now that it's warm the grass is growing and the pasture has finally dried out enough to put the sheep out. However, there was a break in the electric fence and I couldn't turn the sheep out until I fixed it. I finally got to that today.

"Can't you hurry up and let us out?"

The rams are left behind in their bachelor quarters.

I'll race you to breakfast!

I'm pleased with the pasture this year, especially considering the number of sheep I have grazing. One 5-acre pasture is subdivided with electric fence (NZ spider fence) into 8 paddocks, each of which can be split in half using electric net fencing. There is one other 2-acre piece that I split in half. Here is the paddock the sheep went into yesterday.

If you go to the "prescribed burning" tag on the right you will see this same paddock (looking from the other direction). See all the dry grass? There was so much tall, rank dallis-grass that there was no green feed growing up through it. We burned it two years ago and with proper grazing I'm able to keep the dallis-grass in check and there is a lot of trefoil and other desirable plants. In the photo above it's those clumps that are the dallis-grass. The sheep eat it readily if it's kept in an early vegetative stage.

This is after I opened the net-fence at the end of this paddock and the sheep are going into the new one.

A few lambs who didn't get all the way around the fence and then started following the ewes back up the fence line on the wrong side. Now Rusty gets to help.

You can easily see the difference between the paddock they were just on and the new one. A paddock is not overgrazed by putting a lot of animals on it; it's overgrazed by time. Once a pasture is eaten low it needs to rest. If the animals continue to graze it as the new growth occurs, there will be negative impact on the root system and it will take much longer for the plants to recover. So the trick is to eat the paddock evenly and then move the sheep to a new paddock. By concentrating the sheep on a small area they eat all the plants, not just the ones they like best. This also helps with parasite control. right now with the lambs getting so big I'm moving the sheep every day or two. If I go through all the paddocks too quickly I may need to hold the sheep off and feed them in the barn for a little bit. I will probably try to coincide that with my next irrigation when I have to have sheep off the pasture anyway.

Another fence-line photo.

Entries for Solano County Fair were due this week so I needed to figure out who to enter. It was fun to separate out all my yearlings for a look. You get a different feel for the sheep when you get them out of the main group and I hadn't had a look at the yearlings as a group since they were lambs last year.

This is most of the 19 yearlings in the flock. There are some really nice sheep with with great fleece in this group. I narrowed the field down more and more until I chose my show sheep. (drum roll please....) And the winners are...

...Dazzle and Spring. They both have nice conformation, good size, and consistent fleeces. I have entered these two, the two yearling rams, and 4 lambs. Does anyone want to come help me show? It's June 22-24, a few days after Black Sheep Gathering.

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.

I guess I won't quit my day job.

I thought that maybe I would switch jobs and be a wildife photographer. Here are some photos I took in the pasture the other day. This marsh hawk (birder friend, Claire, tells me that it is a northern harrier, but marsh hawk is the name I remember) was flying around the pasture, would land, and then as I stealthily snuck up on him, would take flight again.

Same with the egret. The hawk is on the ground and the egret comes in for a landing.  I don't have a very long lens so this is the best I can do before they take off again.

So I guess I'd better keep at the fiber business and just use wildlife photography as a side-line!

Some of this weeks scarves:

These first three have supplementary warp of various odds and ends.

More log cabin scarves:

These are the same except that one has a bleached white yarn and the other has an ivory yarn.

A friend and I did an impromptu dye session this week.

She dyed yarn and I dyed fiber.

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.

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.