I wasn't prepared! What Nobody Told me about Regenerative Farming Small Acreage

most people are throwing fertilizer out on this ground so they would be throwing five thousand dollars worth of fertilizer out here when you just don't need to do it you need to establish an ecosystem that's what it's all about guys it's establishing an ecosystem on your farm not an ecosystem of commercial fertilizer but an ecosystem that promotes soil microbes earthworms and manure this is our 29 head cattle herd we established this herd this year no wormer no medicines no antibiotics no nothing grass and cows it can be done guys this is the completely passive water system right here this water system runs on gravity feed from the pond up there the cows never ever see the watershed they never get in the ponds they never get in the creeks there's no manure in the creek there's no manure in the pond and no fertilizer ever since we've been here never another soil amendment we're bringing carbon to the farm no commercial fertilizer soil amendments biochar and composting manure pile over here we'll put this on the land once we burn it along with the manure more soil amendments never had commercial fertilizer applied this is what the soil looked like on the farm when we bought it about six years ago one time we had to fertilize in order to get our grass seed started this has not had fertilizer on it for six years only soil amendments this brown that you see has not been mowed and this distinct line that you see it's been mowed on this side and not mowed on that side i'm experimenting to see whether mowing it stimulates the growth after we take the cows off the land and this has been rested for about 40 days this is our solar well set up here on this side of the farm this side has approximately 42 acres of pasture no fertilizer for five years no commercial fertilizer in six years i mowed it and i didn't mow it mowing it stimulates grass growth thickens the grass and makes it a better pasture hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to another beautiful day here oh it's bright on the stoney ridge farm we're out here in the cow pasture with you today and i'm going to talk to you a little bit about the woes of intensive grazing on a smaller piece of property so guys we've got 150 acres here we've probably got about 80 something acres of cleared pasture right now and we're mob grazing a 29 head herd of cattle so come along and let's talk about the real world the real facts whether you can get away without using fertilizers without mowing what makes it the best what works the best on a small acreage like our farm 150 acres or even less or even more 250 acres 300 acres we're mob grazing our cattle and we're not using medications and we're not using fertilizers and we're doing it right and it's working come along [Music] bridge welcome to the stoney ridge farm channel if this is your first time here or if this is your 500th time here please pound that like button jump in subscribe the channel i'd love to have you back that's one of our donkeys over there we've got the donkeys out here to protect our baby cows and our big cows from coyote attacks so these are the ultimate coyote weapon right here and i think this one's going to sneak up behind me and nibble on my butt so what we're doing out here in the cow pasture today we're here to talk to you a little bit about intensive grazing and what i've learned here over probably the past six years now we just got our herd established we started out with two or three cows moved on up to about six cows and now we've got a full herd of about 29 cows okay cows cow calf pears young bulls young heifers so that's what we're doing here on the farm we're moving these cows on a semi-daily basis so we're on a smaller piece of property here and you guys need to know this if you're considering this intensive grazing method that's promoted by like greg judy and joel salatin and some of the others post them down there post some comments down there if you if you subscribe to any other theories we're moving our cows as much as we possibly can here on the farm but water and infrastructure is expensive and it's time consuming moving these cows every day is very time consuming we want to move them as much as we possibly can because we're reducing the manure load and thus reducing the the worm load this is cody this is the first bull born on the farm and he's looking good you looking good bud hey buddy you're looking tough so guys look at this herd do they look healthy to you we're not medicating we're not fertilizing we're letting the cows eat grass now this field has been moderately over grazed and you can see little piles right here i guess little tufts of taller grass and that's where the cows have pooped okay we're going to move the cows to a different paddock here in just a second we're going to open up another section of uh pasture for these guys to chow on it's evening time right here the sun's about to go down but what i want you guys to know is if you're if you're considering intensive grazing your animals and if you're considering trying to live this holistic sustainable farm life you need to plan ahead for it okay so you need to go on and have some permanent fencing some permanent really tough fencing around your perimeter of your farm so you want to make it safe everybody's excited you want to make the farm safe you want to make it safe you don't want to get that call in the middle of the night that your cow had gotten out and a minivan had ran into the cow and it hurt somebody you definitely don't want that what are you doing guys what you doing what are you doing number man these cows look good so anyhow the lessons that i've learned is have some water infrastructure in place guys what we're having to do is open up new paddocks every day or every other day here on the farm and we're not getting enough rest time on some of the land the land that we're on right now because the cows have to make the trek back to the water tanks at least twice a day here each cow probably drinks somewhere in a neighborhood of 16 to 25 maybe even 30 gallons per day in the hot hot summer time so get some water infrastructure in place don't bank on hauling water like we did so i was hauling water all over the farm and it was costing my butt and it was costing me a lot of time so this intensive grazing thing can work for you but you're going to have to make some modifications if you've got a smaller piece of property like this we don't have 300 head of cows moving them on 3 500 acres and we don't have i don't know 85 cows moving them around on 1600 acres a lot of these guys that you're talking to about intensive mob grazing are moving a small herd on a large piece of land we want to maximize our herd size and use as little land as possible so that's what this is all about let's go over here and move the cows a little bit what i've learned is get some infrastructure in place for water because water has been the biggest hassle of everything here so get some infrastructure in place reach out to your local county extension agent and have them draw you up a plan for putting waterers on your farm for intensively grazing your pastures and this past year check it out this is absolutely gorgeous guys this has not had fertilizer on it for gosh i'm gonna say at least five years i fertilized it and limed it the first year because i was conventional i did what the other farmers were doing and i'm realizing that's the wrong thing to do here we need to establish an ecosystem and when you put that commercial fertilizer on you start the ecosystem over again does this grass look bad no now are we telling you that grandpa's been doing it wrong for all these years if you want to farm that way you can farm that way if you want to farm capital intensive in other words if you like throwing money on the land versus throwing butt fertilizer out on the land go for it man i like bringing carbon to my soil and building my soil and building the microbes in the soil it actually works guys the proof is in the pudding right here and it's just getting better and better every single year so let's move the cows onto a new paddock cows know when the four-wheeler comes rolling over man it's food time we got to go to a different place we're going to wait just a minute before we start calling them get these guys over here and we're going to open up a paddock that's had probably 25 days of rest when you've got a small farm like this you don't have the option of letting paddocks rest for 90 days you just don't have that option the grass still looks good but it's not the best in the world it's it's really not the best in the world that's just the way it is we've got some les padilla in here we've got some broom grass we've got some native grasses we've got some ragweed in here we've got a multi-species pasture and that's what we want that's what's going to make our cows grow we don't want them just out here on fescue we want them to get legumes we want them to get grasses various types of grasses johnson grass all sorts of stuff uh man cows love milkweed but we don't want them to be on a mono crop or a mono culture out here these aren't horses and we're not feeding them horse hay we're feeding them this right here and they love it let's get them moved here they come woo girls come on all of our electric fence wire is poly braid and that's all from farm fence solutions and we'll turn off our solar controller right here this is a solar controller so we don't get zapped and we're going to be moving the cows are running down here man we're not going this way we're actually going to go right up there come on girls livestock is what this farm has been missing for years guys look at that isn't that awesome that's absolutely great all those cows spread out over that pasture the summertime blues that's what the cows are crying so all i do i have a little loop right here that's hooked to a post and i'm gonna open up this pasture this section of paddock for the cows to go in here and graze just watch this is so fun come on come on [Music] come on girls whoo come on through come on through girls [Music] got some fresh grass got some fresh butt fertilizer coming out here awesome these guys are like man hot dogs fresh grass come on so now these guys will have access to this for about three days two to three days something like that and they'll have access to go back so we're not back fencing in the summertime because we simply don't haul water all over the farm we cannot haul water all over the farm so my advice to you guys if you're deciding that you want to do this you want to live this lifestyle and you want to mob graze your cows on a smaller piece of property and we've got probably 45 acres in this entire pasture right here i've got it sectioned off into about seven or eight different sections guys it takes work it takes time and it takes infrastructure it takes a good perimeter fence and it takes good water so get some good water sources on your farm and make sure that you have that set up in place before you start trying to mob graze your cattle guys so they'll graze this for several days and then i'll come back in and i'll mow it i'll knock it down to about five inches tall when it recovers back it recovers back in succulent green grass so if you leave it alone and you guys can see from the footage from the drone footage right now you can see the brown and you can see the green the green is what i mowed and the brown is what i didn't mow i experimented i'm trying different things here so i can teach you guys what i've learned and what works for me on my farm here in north carolina no fertilizer on this pasture right here for five years okay the first time when we cleared the land and we put our seed down that's when we fertilize and i have not touched it since the cows are doing the work for us guys the sunlight the cows and the soil we don't have any topsoil here in north carolina this is the piedmont region of north carolina and we have the most highly eroded soils in the country you would think that arizona or somewhere out in the nevada desert would be the most eroded soils but the most eroded soils in the country are right here and we're showing you guys how to build it up i hope you guys learned a little bit on this video no fertilizer just cows just amendments we're bringing hay to the farm if you have any questions please post them down there in the comments i'd love to hear from you this is putting it into practice when it comes down to it we don't have a 1600 acre farm we've got 150 acre farm we don't have a 3 500 acre farm we don't have the option to move our cows and let the land rest for 90 days so we're giving it 20 30 days and we're intensively grazing and we're going in right behind them we're hitting it with the mower and letting it recover we're also going to be trying a new tool out within the next couple weeks we're going to be trying a drag hair so we'll come in here we'll drag the manure out and we'll mow it and we'll let it recover as it rains on the land we've had a little bit of a dry year this year so it's made it a little bit more and stressful on the cows typically around here you can run one to one and a half cows per acre on good soil and good grass but most people are throwing fertilizer out on this ground so they would be throwing five thousand dollars worth of fertilizer out here when you just don't need to do it you need to establish an ecosystem that's what it's all about guys it's establishing an ecosystem on your farm not an ecosystem of commercial fertilizer but an ecosystem that promotes soil microbes earthworms and manure awesome guys thanks a lot for joining me here on the stoney ridge farm it's absolutely gorgeous the sun is getting ready to go down and i'm getting ready to go on live stream for you guys so thanks a lot pound the like button subscribe the channel i'd love to have you back it's an absolutely gorgeous day every day here on the farm and i'm so proud of what's going on here over the past six years all of this was overgrown and brushy and a total disaster when we bought the farm and we're bringing it back pretty cool hope you'll follow the channel see you next time that's the way it's supposed to be stony [Music]