vtsnowedin wrote:My only livestock at present are wild deer which I keep out of food plots until they mature with electric fence on fiberglass push poles that are easy to move. I mow tight with a rotary shredder (bush hog) along the line before I set it up and if needed mow close to the line again and reset the fence over three feet to keep the weeds off the lowest wire.
In my youth we raised dairy cattle and had a team of work horses. By August they had the largest pasture mowed tight to golf green shortness and had stripped every edible leaf from bushes as high as they could reach. We then moved them to hay fields that had regrown a rowan crop after the initial harvest. That would hold them until fall rains rejuvenated the main pasture. In the forty years after the cattle were removed there are now trees thirty feet high on what was once a grass monoculture.
My fence is a little more elaborate with permanent perimeter fence of 4 strand barbwire with 3 strand electric. Interior is a flexible composite post that is 5 strands with 3 hot 2 ground. This fence can easily be walked over if you shut it off with your handheld. I also use temporary fence to either make ally ways or divide up paddocks.
I am impressed with people who have messed with dairy cattle or goats. That is hard work and requires daily efforts that are hard to vacation from. My calf and kid operation is easier to leave for a week or 2 but still not easy. Whenever I leave for family obligations I am always worried about the farm. In a way I embrace localism to avoid the stress! LOL. I do hate leaving the farm and the stress of leaving makes it harder yet. There is a comfort to localism a kind of security of staying home.
I love pasture management. I like to tell people that I am harvesting solar and putting it on people’s tables. My form of REAL Green has permaculture central to the low carbon effort with animals and pasture. I am converting grass into food calories. I also harvest wood for heat and have solar for electric needs. It is amazing how well animals can manage pasture but it is hard work and requires expensive infrastructure that needs ongoing repair and maintenance. There is a line between hobby farming and agricultural activity. There is no free-range grazing like in times past. If you want to produce lots of product it is inevitable you become industrial with practices, inputs, and animal care. Generally, the more you want to produce the less care is taken for the land and the animals. I am incorporating animals into my low carbon living but I tell people I can't make a living doing this. My fossil fuel drenched investments from 30 years in the fossil fuel world allow me this luxury. If I want to make a small living, I will have to go more industrial AG. To me that is catch22.
I have seen fields regrow and I notice them when I drive somewhere. I like to tell greens if you do not take care of land it quickly turns into wasteland in the process of succession. Today with so many invasives and poor agricultural land practices letting quality land go fallow too long is a recipe for problems. Land management is drenched in fossil fuels. We had a previous manager of our family farm who allowed succession practices but they got out of control and lots of damage was done. I had to come back with a dozer and skid steer and over 2 years reclaim fields. That is a lot of diesel and some chemicals. This will be an important issue in the future if the world transitions to renewables. There better be a good strategy for agriculture becuase electrified AG is not at all available at the moment in most places.
I know the nature loving degrowthers want to think idealistically about returning agriculture to a partnership with nature. I am doing this but there is no making a living with it. There will have to be a behavioral change with subsidies. There is no silver bullet either. It seems most renewable discussion is about urban areas instead. Vertical farming and greenhouses are a niche and will never scale up IMO. The world is not considering agriculture in its green new deals. They are focusing on transport and urban areas. Food is an afterthought.
I love when AOC was caught with her boyfriend eating a burger after a Green New Deal speech. LOL. That is the problem with the rich urban fake greens touting EV's and solar roofs with power walls. They have not liveed the life really instead just preaching fantasy solutions. Really the only way forward with real change is green behavior but instead most fake greens love their tech toys instead. Lower scale means less affluence but fake greens want to be more comfortable and affluent. I still prefer a fake green over a science denying brown but I will not live the fake green lie either. My realistic green accepts we are carbon trapped in path dependencies. There are trade-offs with scale and affluence. Behavior is the key with less physical comforts but more spiritual satisfaction coming from meaning and community. The trade off is being poorer. No questions about this to me but the green world is the polar opposite. I guess that is the only way to sell green in this capitalistic world then so be it but I am living this life in search of meaning not just promoting energy strategies.