This is our second year trying to graze through the winter. We are learning a lot and respecting the cold a lot more. Our first year was an easy one by all accounts and this year everybody is expecting it to be a lot colder.
December 24th 2015
In 2015 there was no snow on the ground and life seemed good. Christmas Eve 2015 we were grazing our newly planted Chicory / Orchard grass / Birdsfoot Trefoil pasture. Even thought we grazed a bit and visited the turnip field we realized that we did not do enough because we did not have enough grass stockpiled to keep going the whole winter.
December 24th 2016
By Christmas Eve 2016 we have had snow on the ground for more than a month. What is different from 2015 is that we do have grass stockpiled even though we still don't know if we stockpiled enough (we don't think we have enough, we were not able to get the cattle off the farm as early as we wanted to). We will see how things go.
The sheep seems to know how things work even though they did not read any books about it. We just need to walk them to where we want them to graze and they do the rest. We feel grateful every morning that they are waiting by the gate to go outside, it feels like they are doing their part to keep the dream alive to graze the whole winter.
