Remineralization with animals followup
Last year, our goats
barely nibbled in their summer pastures. But after twenty months of
manure deposition, the soil is finally fertile
enough for plants to
grow. And grow they have!
This photo was taken six
days after the first image in this post. Artemesia, with the help of
her kids, has eaten away all of the choice greenery within neck reach
of the fence and has squirted out three quarts of excess milk for us to
enjoy in the process.
Time to bend down some
of those extra-tall ragweed plants in the center of the pasture so our
dwarf goats can continue chowing down!
Overall, I'd say
Artemesia is now getting half of her daily greenery ration off the
pasture, which is a good start. (I still take her out in the evenings
to graze in the woods.) Perhaps in a year or two, we'll have a couple
more pastures and yet more fertility in the soil and won't have to
worry so much about rustling up extra-curricular forage for our goats.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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