Hey I’m Dave, your farmer from Wrong Direction Farm. Today’s the beginning of the grazing season. We’re just starting out our rotation through the pastures. And we’re making very quick passes through the fields, just to match the grass growth. Later we’ll come back and we’ll graze these fields more intensely. But right now we’re taking bigger sections, maybe five to eight acres in a day, and grazing them down moving on to the next one. We’ll settle into a higher density grazing regime as the season goes on as the grass starts to accumulate a little more biomass in the field. The grazing season moves in cycles because the grass growth moves in cycles. You probably notice that you mow the lawn a lot more in spring and early summer than you do in late summer or fall. And so we’re matching the grass growth to the speed at which the cows are going to be grazing these fields.

It’s something interesting to take a look at. This heifer behind me, you can see she’s got kind of a bronze color to her coat. During the winter, you know, they’re out in the cold weather and they grow they a very thick coat of hair that insulates them from the cold. And in the spring they start to shed that off and they’ll often, see this color, as the hairs are dying and then falling out. Sometimes you’ll see some bald patches too. She’s got a few over toward her butt end. It’s a little patchy back there. So she’s going to be shedding out this hair coat and she’ll grow in a new glossy black coat of hair in the next few weeks.
This is always a a great time for us on the farm when the grass is growing, and the cattle are happy to be out on the grass. The chickens are out. Everything seems to be starting up again. The engine of the farm is is running at full speed again. And we’re always glad to be able to participate in the life and the abundance of all that’s going on here.