I have often struggled with knowing where to start when there is always so much that needs doing. I have learned over the years to make lists, so I won’t forget anything, but I still waver on what to tackle first.
As a wife, mother, farmer (and now grandmother) it is challenging to balance everything that demands to be accomplished. I have often gone to the verse in Proverbs 24:27 to help me to prioritize my list. “Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that build your house.” Accepting that Nature waits on no one makes it easier to avoid the mundane chores of housework and laundry if only until the outside tasks are done. Animals and weather have cycles and deadlines that cannot be ignored. But having said that if you don’t want a naked and hungry family, laundry and dishes must also be done.
I have found that having routines in place for tasks helps a great deal. Routines make daily tasks into habits and provide a comfortable structure to life. We have daily routines, weekly routines and seasonal routines. Simple things like making sure everyone, including the animals, starts their day with full stomachs is important to having a successful plan. Not all routines are set in stone, some change as the seasons change and some are completely blown out of the water by the unexpected. But, having a framework to plan in takes a lot of wavering out of prioritizing your to-do list and keeps you from overlooking something until it becomes overwhelming. It also gives one a sense of accomplishment even when nothing goes according to plan.
Daily: Breakfast together and go over the plans for the day. Dinner together to go over the day’s accomplishments and challenges.
Weekly: Monday through Saturday, clean one living area each day. Clean one area daily in the Barns, Shops etc. Plan one thing to recharge yourself.
Seasonally: Winter is time for paperwork, planning and rest.
Spring is prepping fields and planting crops and gardens, followed by fence maintenance.
Summer is all about harvesting all the plant life and putting up enough feed and food to last till the next harvest.
Autumn is the continuation of harvest and prepping the gound for the next year.
By breaking these jobs down to daily tasks, no one task becomes so overwhelming that you just want to avoid it. Keeping up with the cleaning and organizing the time intensive jobs of planting, birthing and harvesting are not such a hardship.
NCAT Gulf States’s Felicia Bell will be hosting a virtual workshop on beekeeping. Beekeeper Ali Pinion will share about getting started in beekeeping on a budget, alternative beekeeping methods, revenue sources from hives, and much more.
Warm-season grasses provide wildlife habitat and excellent livestock forage. Photo: NRCS
Farmers, ranchers, and researchers have come to understand that the functionality of ecosystems on farms is largely dependent on plant and animal biodiversity. Functional ecological processes and services, such as soil and water quality, renewal and regeneration of soil and plant organisms, and nutrient cycling on farms and ranches, are facilitated by biology, necessitating maintenance of biological integrity and diversity in agroecosystems (Altieri, 1999). It is not surprising that adaptive multi-paddock grazing is an effective conservation practice on grazing lands for enhancing water conservation and protecting water quality (Park et al., 2017), as well as enhancing soil carbon, fertility, and soil water-holding capacity (Teague and Barnes, 2017) that soil organisms rely on for building healthy soil.
But there is another aspect of biodiversity that is just as important as soil and plant organisms. Livestock and wildlife compete for landscape resources, and they both put pressure on the forage available, as well as water, cover, and space, depending on their resource needs. In fact, wildlife species often “require considerably greater amounts of space to achieve acceptable levels of reproductive performance whereby survival of a population is assured” (Barnes et al., 1991). Birds need cover and shelter during their reproductive phase, and deer and elk need forage, cover, water, and a range large enough for them to thrive. Small mammals need space and protection from predators, and fish need quality streams and ponds. The concepts of resource supply and demand are just as important for wildlife as they are for livestock, and this affects our grazing management.
Historically, livestock have been a destructive force on landscapes (Ohmart, 1996), but they don’t have to be. Our agricultural landscapes are habitat for wildlife, connected and ecologically linked to set-aside wild lands, parks and reserves, wetlands and riparian zones, abandoned farms, privately owned non-agricultural forests and fields, and peri-urban low-density residential areas, which make up a large portion of the land in many areas. The ecology of our lands has changed over time due to invasive species, exotic species, removal of large carnivores, and human encroachment. But farmers and landowners have become better wildlife stewards, and many include wildlife habitat into their whole- farm plans out of love of the wild and for quiet woods and fields populated with majestic creatures. And they invite friends and neighbors into the woods to see and reflect on the wildness that constitutes an important part of their farm.
Nest located on land where NRCS has provided technical assistance to landowners in the prairie pothole region of northeastern South Dakota.
We have a large toolbox of practices that can help us be better stewards of our land and all its inhabitants. One way of including wildlife in farm planning is to manage plant succession to favor diversity that is beneficial for wildlife. The desired plant community for a diverse population of wildlife species is one comprised of a diversity of grasses, forbs, and woody plants interspersed across the landscape and having different structures in terms of size, growth form, and physical maturity (Stevens, 2016). Livestock grazing can be used to manipulate various paddocks to maintain different habitats throughout the grazing season. For example, habitat requirements vary seasonally for nesting, breeding, feeding, etc. for different wildlife species. Standing vegetation is often best for nesting birds but grazed diverse vegetation is good for feeding sites (Vavra, 2005). This is just one example of including practices that take wildlife into consideration.
An adaptive grazing system, because of its inherent flexibility, can be compatible with wildlife habitat management by mimicking the seasonal movement of species based on forage quality and quantity (Schieltz and Rubenstein, 2016). It can foster diverse landscapes at various times of the year by manipulating animal numbers in paddocks, grazing some paddocks heavily and some lightly, and some perhaps not at all for a part of the season, leaving diverse grasses and forbs ungrazed for a part of the year for wildlife.
There are many resources to help farmers, ranchers, and landowners foster wildlife habitat on their land, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners Program, which works with private landowners to plan and implement on-farm projects to create, restore, or enhance habitat for wildlife. Farmers and ranchers are telling their own stories of restoration of the land for its own sake, much like Meredith Ellis, a second-generation Texas rancher, put it better than anyone I’ve heard when she said that species diversity and rare species are indicators that you’re doing something right (Ellis, 2021).
Reference:
Ellis, Meredith. 2021. Keynote presentation at the 2021 National Grazing Lands Coalition Conference, Myrtle Beach, SC.
New webinar from Seed Savers Exchange! Join us Tuesday, January 25 @ 1 PM Central This is the second seed rematriation webinar of a four-part series highlighting the 2021-2022 seed rematriation work with seven partners funded through a North Central SARE Partnership grant awarded to Seed Savers Exchange. Join us to learn how Indigenous farmers, activists, communities, and nations are welcoming seeds home to grow and share. The second webinar will be held Tuesday, January 25, 2022 from 1 – 2 PM Central Time (US). Find your time zone. This webinar is open to the public.Based on the enthusiasm for the first session we have doubled our capacity for live attendees.
Note: The event will be recorded and shared with everyone who registers. Even if you are unable to join us live you will be able to watch it at your own convenience. Register Today Seed rematriation addresses the desire for Indigenous communities to actively reclaim their ancestral seeds and traditions. Moderated by Shelley Buffalo, this session features panelists Shiloh Maples and Rosebud Bear-Scheider sharing information on their experience with the rematriation process, regional variation/northern climate growing, Indigenous Seed Keepers Network initiatives, and ways this partnership could be modeled for others looking to engage in this work.
A common misconception outside of the industry is that in order to accommodate for the food demands of our growing population, there is going to be an environmental toll on the planet. In another short video from the NatGLC’s Youtube library, we can remind each other that diverse environments and covered soils are actually cleaning up the planet in the process of meeting these food demands.
