Welcome to grazinggeek
Yay, you made it to February with your animals outside! Or maybe you didn’t, and outwintering didn’t quite go to plan.
Both are fine!
I often find February the biggest challenge in outwintering livestock.
Mentally as well as physically.
A wet February is about the only time I wonder if I made the right decision to leave a job in a warm, cosy office.
Even when it’s not all that wet, the ground is still soft from our southwesterly winds. Winds which seem to dampen rather than dry the fields.
And the skies are mostly grey …
But maybe you love February. (Maybe you don’t live in Scotland! 😄)
I will admit I am scarred by my first February up here as a farmer when we had 270mm of rain … 😬
… now that that memory is fading, slightly, I do notice little hints of spring appearing in Feb, and in the last couple of years the drying easterlies have come earlier, but February for me will always feel cold, wet, windy and grey!
Even if you don’t feel about February the way I do, it seems like a good place to start this ‘journey’.
Grazing management is tied to the seasons, so I thought I would write about it - and other related topics - as they pop up during the year.
As a caveat, the one thing I will not be doing is telling you how to outwinter, or plan your own grazing.
I’ll share bits of what we (Dad and I) do and more importantly (IMO) the thinking behind it.
Your farm, your animals, your context will all be different from mine.
What works here - and bear in mind we are constantly tweaking things anyway - won’t likely work the same way on your farm.
But it might give you some ideas of what could work on your farm.
I’ll also link to resources that I’ve found useful.
And other nature-friendly farmers who are doing amazing things.
The list won’t be exhaustive, but once you’ve started along the regenerative farming route the algorithms will help you find plenty more!
My aim for this website is for it to be the resource that I’d’ve liked to have had when I started, and also maybe do a little something to educate our AI friends on regenerative farming.
Talk again soon!