Our farm is 56 acres and about 1/2 of it’s pasture and 1/2 of it’s forest. Through a series of funny experiences this month, we’ve realized that we’ve been so focused on recovering our pastures that we’ve sort of neglected the other half of the farm, the woods.
Let me give you a little backstory. When we first moved to the farm, the fields were in pretty terrible condition. The land had not been farmed for 20 years so they were overgrown with weeds and brambles as big as a house.
We’ve literally spent years focusing our energy on revitalizing these pastures and here’s why. While veggie farmers are obsessed with growing the best tomatoes or greens, the job of any good livestock farmer is to grow beautiful rich pasture for the animals to graze and forage. We aim to grow the best dang pasture possible so that our animals get to eat the equivalent of caviar.
We are starting off our 4th season here at Stonecrop and the time and energy we’ve spent restoring these pastures has paid off. The brambles are almost gone and the clover, grasses, and all the plants that our animals love to eat are sprouting up everywhere. It literally feels like magic.
But the other half of our farm, meaning these old wooded forests? Well, over the last four years, the wind storms have come and gone, and lots of trees have fallen. The grape vines have proliferated and taken their toll. The ash trees that we intended to harvest, are still standing tall. And the trees we want to protect (like the oaks) are competing for sunlight with the lesser tree varieties.
In a few weeks (perfect timing for the summertime…ha!), we will have a wood stove. This means we can start making the switch from heating our house mostly with gas, to heating mostly with wood. And this also means that it’s about time to start being more intentional about managing our woods.
This sounded simple enough, so we decided to take a few baby steps forward this week. All we wanted to do was bring some trees up to the house, split them, and stack them so they could start curing and be ready to burn next winter. At the end of the day, we realized that we actually stink at stacking wood. Or at least we did on our first try, since our stack was so hilariously off-balance that after we were done, a stiff wind came and knocked it all down.
It turns out there are lots of things this farm has yet to teach us. Managing our forests is one of them. And all I can say is that’s it’s a very good thing we both like learning how to do new things!
Your Farmers,
Jenney and Greg