Winter's Grazing Plan

Phil had to bring the van in for routine maintenance today. While waiting, he had ample opportunity to look at the grazing plan for the winter, and came home so excited. Several months ago he had tried to calculate how many paddocks the cows would have, how long they would remain in place, how much forage there would be for them to eat. He had to give up, because there were too many unknown variables.

But now he could actually do a full plan, and by his calculation we will have to feed 22 bales of hay this winter. That's not bad: we'll see how accurate his calculations are.

It was good for him to be off the farm for a while, he said.

And since it was drizzly and wet all day, it was a fine day for him to be gone. (I calculated this morning, and we've had over 15 inches of rain since September 1. That's crazy.)

I spent the better part of an hour on the phone with a nice gentleman from Coe's Comfrey in North Carolina. I have looked for two years for a good source of comfrey cuttings, and was thrilled to finally find this company.

I am hoping to plant comfrey outside the daffodils that will go around the apple trees, though after talking, I am tempted to plant whole fields of comfrey. A perennial plant with a protein content of 30%, it rivals soybeans, and could significantly boost our milk production, which has been nil since early this year. In the middle of the last century, there was the Great Comfrey Race, and one man in England grew 23 tons of comfrey per acre. For comparison, a reasonable alfalfa expectation is six or eight tons annually, with ten in an especially good year.

But for now, the budget dictates just a few hundred plants around the apple trees, and that's okay. The promise of plants is the promise of reproduction, so a few hundred could turn into many more, in time.