Pasture Planning

With so much of Puddlepond centered on our horses, one of my core focuses is developing an effective pasture setup on the fifteen or so cleared acres available to us. Given the number of horses we have, letting them free range across the fields with minimal management would result in fifteen cleared acres alternating between dry lot and mud pit. The goal would be to establish a rotation of grass pastures to stabilize the soil and allow each unused field to rest while the horses mow down their current abode. A real stretch goal would be to transition from reliable species such as timothy, orchardgrass, and clover to native North American species, which I'll detail later.

Although the land has been used for haying in the past, the last few years of corn growth displaced most of the hay grasses, changed the soil chemistry, and allowed a variety of less-useful species to establish when the herbicide spraying stopped. Fertilizer and herbicide would be helpful tools or regain some control over the fields. However, I would prefer to minimize reliance on the former for cost reasons and the latter due to environmental concerns. Furthermore, anything I have to add to the fields would be outside of the natural cycle, reducing the potential for a long-term self-maintaining ecosystem. With these concerns in mind, I started my work with a preference for gradual shifts through cover crops, mowing, low-till maintenance, and eventual drainage management.

As of yet, our surface work in Horseshoe Hill has been limited to box-blading, drag and disc harrowing, and horsing around. I attempted to seed the field with spring rye one year, but missed the timing and only saw progress in areas already clear of most groundcover. I then tried dormant seeding, but a warm winter probably sabotaged my germination rate. This field constantly reminds me how new I am at this. Overseeding with ryegrass and orchardgrass yielded some results, but they were outcompeted by sedge during a wet early summer. The only real signs of progress are patches of timothy where we’ve located the hay ring for feeding and a carpet of clover that formed in late fall this year. 

While I continue to battle in Horseshoe, the first casualty of my impatience has been shifting to a traditional moldboard plow for help resetting the soil in the Lower Steppes. I also abandoned my hope for dormant seeding spring rye and missed the window to plant fall rye before the first few frosts risked ruining that plan, so my work this winter will center around preparing the ground for an early spring rye cover seeding and traditional northeast pasture mix based on ryegrass, timothy, and clover. I’m not certain if alfalfa would work well with our soil and grasses, but birdsfoot trefoil is a promising legume, as it pops up in healthy populations across most of our fields already.

If the Lower Steppes evolve as I hope, I think I’ll need to apply a similar plan to Creekcut Corner. Creekcut’s slope and runoff ravines are additional, but manageable challenges compared to the Steppes, but my biggest concern in Creekcut is the excessive presence of boulders. The relatively smooth soil of the Lower Steppes already gave me the opportunity to practice straightening two plowshares, so Creekcut might be the motivation I need to finally purchase an oxy-acetylene setup. Working Creekcut will undoubtedly take more effort despite being slightly smaller than the Lower Steppes. Even without the need to swap plow parts, we’ll need to dedicate extra time to recontouring the hillside lest all our good work wash away. Beyond erosion, if we can’t control the accumulation of moisture in the soil, we’ll probably just end up cultivating a rich field of sedge, since low-lying junk is much harder to manage through proactive mowing.

One day, I hope to establish the Upper Steppes as my crown jewel: a large pasture based on native North American grassland species. While there isn’t a large variety of cool-season grasses available, the presence of grasslands across pre-Colombian Long Island give me a good working model to base my species blend on. Upstate New York was more recently a woodland paradise, but warming trends give me confidence that what was once appropriate for the mid-Atlantic will now take hold in Puddlepond. Because I still need to maintain a healthy mix for feed, I don’t want to limit myself to copying any specific regional set of grasslands. Additionally, a lack of high-yielding legumes present a different challenge for soil management.

Bluestems stand out among the candidates for grasses. Big bluestem isn’t common in northeastern grasslands, but it promises higher quality forage than many other North American grasses. Even better, is can form strong sod to stabilize our hills and push out non-native species, and it does so across a range of soil conditions. These include acidic, rocky, and wet soils, but it still requires less rain than other options. I am concerned about its status as a tall grass, which may leave it relying on propagation via rhizome as it gets grazed down before seed maturity due to our rotation requirements.

Little bluestem is a short bunchgrass that can survive in tired, infertile soil, but doesn’t do particularly well in damp soils. It is reputed to grow abundantly under the right conditions, but is lower quality forage than big bluestem. Little bluestem may not be able to thrive in our use case, but I am still interested in using it to help establish the native species dominance. It should have better drought tolerance than big bluestem, and its reputation for abundance and short growth could prove important during grazing periods.

These species are found mixed in with short grasses of the grama family, which may not be as well-acclimated to our conditions, but would contribute to the diversity of our ecosystem. Sideoats grama are noted for their ability to grow on rocky slopes and mountainous plateaus, so I plan to focus these grasses on pasture that needs help stabilizing runoff erosion. The eponymous seeds that give sideoats its name will also provide forage for local birds and field critters. I’m covering the flora here but it is important to remember that hosting the right mix of wildlife also improves the health of the field. Birds and rodents might take a share of our forage, but they also manage the other pests, especially insects, and droppings further enrich the soil.

Indiangrass is another species that comes with challenges along with a unique set of benefits. It can produce both high-quality forage and hay, yet it loses nutritional value as it matures. As a side-effect of being such good forage before maturity, indiangrass is often preferentially grazed by livestock, possibly to excess. So here you have a grass that needs a chance to establish itself and grow before grazing, but begins to lose value if you wait too long. Horses are notoriously disrespectful grazers, and we’ll need to rotate on a schedule based partially on their ability to clear a pasture, so this should be fun. Indiangrass doesn’t need to dominate a grassland to thrive though, and its cold tolerance pairs well with drought resistance to make it a strong late-season contributor. Of course, being the Goldilocks grass of the group, it still needs to receive more rain throughout the year than other species to establish itself well enough to tolerate later droughts.

Additional grass species I’ve been considering for my mix include Canada and Virginia wildryes, with the former being suitable for late season and the latter taking advantage of our warming climate. Western wheatgrass would be far from home, but it could add additional forage for local fauna alongside meadow barley. Buffalograss is a storied cornerstone of the Great Prairie, but it may not really have a place in my pasture once the clay has been sufficiently pulverized.

The grasses are the fun part, with many options to consider and plenty of promise. On the other hand, adding in legumes for soil nitrogenation and supplemental nutrition may be more difficult. Alfalfa and typical clovers are naturalized to North America, but they aren’t native. Birdsfoot trefoil seems to love our soil, but it isn’t native either. Prairie clovers are the primary option, though they don’t grow out in carpets like red and white clovers, so I have concerns about their durability under grazing. Purple prairie clover has high nutritional value, and white prairie clover is moderately valuable, but mostly as a way to add variety.

Most other native grassland legumes are bushy or vining. Based on my experiences to date, this will mostly just make them susceptible to trampling during grazing and insufficiently quick spreading during rest periods. Of the less graze-worthy options, American vetch and roundhead bushclover should both survive in our soils and offer good nutrition. Similarly, American licorice is highly palatable and thus easily overgrazed but is attested to provide nutrition on par with alfalfa. The bigger drawback with licorice are the hooked seed pods that would add to our burr concerns on the horses.

Practical concerns mean that I can’t afford to attempt this experiment across more than one field unless I manage to actually succeed. Due to the extra upfront cost for these less commons seeds, I also need to wait until I’ve got the time and resources to do this right the first time (or two or three, I’m not entertaining delusions of competence here). The thing to remember is that anything I do with more traditional pasture establishment will be a lesson applicable towards this experiment. Growth in skills and pasture alike happens not just once but season after season.