Oh dear!
If you clicked on this hoping that you’d find the answer to all your problems, I’m sorry. The perfect recipe doesn’t exist.
Unlike baking a cake, there is not a recipe that will get you smoothly from point A to point B. On the other hand, like baking a cake, you can start with someone else’s recipe and make adjustments to the ingredients, to get something that works for you. That’s how we ended up with cookbooks like “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.”
What I’ve been trying to provide you for the last nine years are all the potential ingredients available for creating your very own perfect grazing recipe and examples of how others use them to create their own success. I’ve covered:
• Fencing and watering options
• How grass grows, and the importance of rest and recovery if you’re going to have a sustainable forage resource.
• Livestock and their health and behavior
• Ideas for how to be a profitable grazier and how you can get financial and technical assistance from agency staff.
This year, I’ve been more targeted in my approach. In the time that I’ve been doing this, I’ve learned that all the “how-to” information in the world won’t help unless a grazier knows where they’re going and why. So, we started the year focused on resources and tools to help you create your own vision and goals for what you’re trying to accomplish. The next step was to map your pasture so you’ll have a picture of your resources that will help you as you plan your grazing and everything else you do to make your operation and life successful. This month, we’ve focused on the grazing chart as a planning tool. You can find the links to anything you may have missed in this series here.
These are all just examples of one way to do things. You might find that the free grazing charts we provide don’t quite work for you. That’s fine. Maybe the ones at Holistic Management International, Ranch Management Consultants, or the Savory Institute suit you better. You can even make your own, or hire someone to do it for you.
This month I also shared some different ways to figure stocking rates, including a worksheet based on what Troy Bishopp uses for his planning. But those aren’t the only options. You might like this Wyoming Stocking Rate Calculator, or this one from the University of Alaska – Fairbanks. If you Google “stocking rate calculator” you’ll find lots of options and probably one that works just right for you.
As Troy says in this week’s Thinking Grazier, “Farming IS hard!” But with the right tools it can be easier. I’m doing my best to provide you with the tools you need. And I’m also relying on your ability to adapt tools to fit your particular needs.
I hope you can take these ingredients and turn them into your favorite cake – vegan or not! 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Kathy
