Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Grazing Grass Podcast features insights and stories of regenerative farming, specifically emphasizing grass-based livestock management. Our mission is to foster a community where grass farmers can share knowledge and experiences with one another. We delve into their transition to these practices, explore the ins and outs of their operations, and then move into the "Over Grazing" segment, which addresses specific challenges and learning opportunities. The episode rounds off with the "Famous Four" questions, designed to extract valuable wisdom and advice. Join us to gain practical tips and inspiration from the pioneers of regenerative grass farming.
This is the podcast for you if you are trying to answer: What are regenerative farm practices? How to be grassfed? How do I graze other species of livestock? What's are ways to improve pasture and lower costs? What to sell direct to the consumer?
Welcome to the grazing
grass podcast episode 129.
You're listening to the grazing grass,
podcast, sharing information and stories
of grass-based livestock production
utilizing regenerative practices.
I'm your host, Cal Hardage.
Cal: You're growing more than grass.
You're growing a healthier
ecosystem to help your cattle
thrive in their environment.
You're growing your livelihood by
increasing your carrying capacity
and reducing your operating costs.
You're growing stronger communities
and a legacy to last generations.
The grazing management
decisions you make today.
impact everything from the soil beneath
your feet to the community all around you.
That's why the Noble Research
Institute created their Essentials
of Regenerative Grazing course to
teach ranchers like you easy to follow
techniques to quickly assess your forage
production and infrastructure capacity.
In order to begin
grazing more efficiently.
Together, they can help you grow
not only a healthier operation,
but a legacy that lasts.
Learn more on their website at noble.
org slash grazing.
It's n o b l e dot org
forward slash grazing.
On today's show.
We are having a book review.
Yes, this is middle school all over.
Doing a book report for you today.
Actually I thought I'd
try a episode, see How.
See how you like it.
I am an avid reader.
And as I've mentioned on the
podcast, I'm a avid book buyer.
Probably a better book buyer
at them, but greeter, but I do.
I enjoy reading and try and read a lot.
So we're going to try this episode.
And for today we're doing Ranching Like
a 12 Year Old by Tom Kraweic he was
just on the podcast on episode 128.
So you get to hear about his story.
A little bit about the book.
We're gonna talk more about the
book today, in my opinion of it.
But before we get there.
The regenerative legacy summit.
Is coming up next week.
It's two days, Tuesday and Wednesday.
It's a virtual summit,
tremendous speakers.
Their keynote is Joel Salatin, but for
past grazing grass guests, you got clay.
Condrey that's coming on.
And a whole host of excellent presenters
is going to be there presenting.
It is virtual.
It's free to sign up.
So go sign up.
If you can't make it, that is
fine because you are able to.
Access to recordings
afterwards, wonderfully.
And I guess they run a little short on
speakers because they asked me to speak.
So I'll be presenting at it as well.
So.
Catch that.
Sign up.
If you can't watch it in
real time, not a problem.
Catch it later on.
So excellent opportunity to learn and
by signing up and watching it later.
You don't have to dedicate to.
Two days to it because I
know two days are a lot.
But what you can do and get that
recording and you can go through it and
watch the things are applicable to you.
I think it's an excellent opportunity.
The link will be in the show notes.
So click on that link and go
there and by I'm clicking on
the link in the show notes.
I get credit for you signing up.
The credit just means.
Hey, good job, Cal, but that's okay.
Click on that link.
If you can't find the link,
just go ahead and sign up.
More important that you learn from it.
Then I get credit for anything.
Anyway, that's the first thing.
And let's move on to
Ranching like a 12 Year Old.
So the full title of Tom's book is
Ranching like a 12 Year Old Ranching
That is Simple, Easy and Fun.
And before we dive into that, Tom was
nice enough to give us two copies.
Of the book to give away to
the grazing grass community.
So I went to grazing grass, community.
And pulled up the top
contributors for the last 28 days.
And that is posts, comments and likes.
And as I looked through this.
I'm not exactly sure how
Facebook weighs each of those.
But Tracy Rumsey and Riki Kremer.
Those are our top contributors.
So they both have a book right
here, Ranching Like a 12 Year Old.
They give me their address.
I'll get it mailed to you.
Don't worry if they're not listening
right now, I'd message them as well.
So we'll get them a copy of this book.
And we want to say thank you to Tom.
Because Tom.
Provide them free of
charge for us to give away.
And I'm going to go ahead and say it here.
I will say it at the end.
If you're interested in purchasing Tom's
books, it's available on Amazon as
well as other places, but if you go
to his website, simply ranching.ca.
He is an Alberta, Canada.
So.
Dot CA on the end of that website,
simplyranching.ca we'll put that
link in the show notes, but if you
buy a book directly from him versus
Amazon or any of the other books
sellers He makes more money on it.
Which is always nice for our authors.
So either way.
I do understand that, sometimes we're
like, but Amazon gets it here in two
days, so whatever, but if you have time.
You might purchase it
directly from his website.
So let's talk about his book.
First thing, his book is 183 pages.
And there's not a lot of extra
pages, sometimes you get a book.
And there's like,
I don't know, half dozen pages.
The front half dozen pages at
the end, they don't see anything.
His book is packed full of words, which.
If you read books, you're happy when
they have words or most of the time
sometimes picture books are nice.
But it is a really nice read.
I read it over two days
before his episode.
I purchased a book last January.
With the plans of reading
it during the winter.
It did not happen.
So when I.
Had to up to two for
Tom, come on the podcast.
I thought I really need to read
this book in advance of his episode.
So I jumped in and read.
It's a nice, easy read.
One of those that you can get
and read it over a few evenings.
If you follow the rule, I like to follow.
Read 10 pages of a book a day.
It'll take you a little over.
It'll take you a week and a half to read.
Approaching two weeks to read
but not, it's a nice, easy read.
And I encourage you to do read it.
He has his book establishing the premise.
And this guides, his thoughts throughout
the book is can a 12 year old do this?
You may be wondering why did
he settle on a 12 year old?
The reason he says,
ranching like a 12 year old.
He had Heather and Tiffany,
friend's daughter and her friend,
they would come out to the farm
during the summer and help.
And when they started doing that.
I believe they were 12 and 13,
.
So that started guiding his decisions.
Rather than him having to do it.
Can a 12 year old do it.
And I know for managing employees.
A lot of times it's a struggle
because you can do it faster.
I'll just go do it.
But I like that thought
can a 12 year old do it.
And then get it in a way
that they can do it and take
ownership and do that activity.
So that's really the premise.
Of course.
Of course, it's a title too
but the premise of his book
and guides his thoughts.
For activities that are that
make it simple to do his ranging.
And also they reduce
labor at the same time.
'cause, if we're wanting
to be a sustainable farm
labor is a huge cost there.
So it was books, 183 pages.
He has it divided into five sections,
grazing, infrastructure, animal handling,
stockpiling, and business and economics.
Each of those sections includes a few
chapters that dive into that area.
And a couple of things I really
like about the format of the
book and the way he's done it.
He lists where his references are.
This came from I really like for one
being able to trace this thought pattern.
For two, it gives me further
resources to research.
For example, when he
talks about low stress.
Animal handling and creating a herd.
He references with
Whit Hubbard.
And Whit was unfamiliar to me.
So that's definitely someone I
follow up on and research more about.
Because I'm all about low stress handling.
And I say that I'm not
saying I'm an expert, but.
I am very interested
in doing a better job.
And then with that low stress handling,
he talks about how to create a herd.
Which I think is very interesting because
he's creating herds from multiple species.
When I think about the book and I
think about my big three takeaways.
And I try and be careful about this.
But they're all going
to be grazing related.
And I know grazing grass podcast.
We talk a lot about grazing but grazing
is only one part of a sustainable farm.
But these three are grazing related today.
And the first one.
Is the sweet spot and what he calls the
sweet spot, Is that Point in time, right
before your grass reaches muturity so
it's in that stage two, before it hits
stage three, you don't want it to mature.
And he talks about that's where
he wants to graze he doesn't
want grass to get too mature.
Because when it gets to mature.
Thing you start losing.
Some quality there.
And losing some quality as well.
The plant is putting all its efforts
towards seed production at that point.
To be honest.
I'm not worried about that too much.
I try and keep my grasses in a
vegetative state, but as I've
complained on the podcast before,
it seems like fescue ghost to seed.
In two weeks, whenever it decides to.
So I'm tr I'm trying to do more
of that sweet spot grazing and
keep it from getting too mature.
But a couple other things
are the big three takes away.
We'll explain that to second
thing of the big three takeaway.
Just 13 paddocks.
And he talks about why 13
is the magic number for him.
And how that works for his
grace period and rest period.
And while ago I said about that.
Grazing too mature stuff.
And I don't worry about that.
We'll talk about that in a rest period.
The 13 paddocks.
The rotation works out that if you honor.
The grace period.
As well as the rest period.
13 paddocks works out to
do a wonderful job of that.
And by doing 13 paddocks, I know.
So often Regente bag.
When we're talking about.
Adaptive multi paddock grazing.
We're talking about moving animals often.
Daily.
Or even multiple times a day.
Especially if you're doing
ultra high density grazing.
You want to keep those cattle moving?
At the same time.
We have to be conscious
of our labor requirements.
If you're working off the farm,
even if you're not working off
the farm, this is applicable.
Applicable.
It's applicable, but working off
the farm, it's really important.
Rather not, you have time to go move
those cows every night or what if
you do it every other day or every
three days or after the graze period?
And not worry about moving them every day.
I think.
For a off the farm person.
That is wonderful.
And you say, well, how long
should that graze period be?
That's the the third big takeaway
for me is that graze period and rest
period, and the graze period is that
period of time, you can graze animals
on a paddock before it starts growing
back and they go back and graze it.
Tom talks about in his context
that's three days most of
the time, but it can change.
I think in my context and we get in
summer things really slow down on growth.
So it's going to depend
on what's happening.
But he provides an easy way to
figure out what your graze period is.
And that's by utilizing water at one end
and some strip grazing and moving them
day by day and seeing when they go back.
A better explanation of it
is available in his book.
I really like that.
It's an easy way to assess how
long you should have animals on
a paddock before you move them.
And the second part of that, because
you can't have a graze period
without having a rest period.
Can't have a rest period
without a graze period.
Actually, I guess you can, if you're
not grazing animals, but we're
talking about grazing animals.
The rest period, he talks
about how long that is.
And you should honor that.
And to be honest, I don't, and that
puts some of my grass into that
mature stage three, where he's trying
to keep his aggressive from going.
So as I look at it, it makes me
think more about my rest period.
Maybe I shouldn't be just
letting it rest as long as I
can, before I come back to it.
Maybe I should do a little
bit more management there.
And to that end, I've started
implementing a grazing chart and I'm
playing with that, seeing how that goes.
And he talks about in his
book and on the podcast.
How important and essential
a grazing chart is.
So I'm playing with a grazing chart.
In fact, if you'd like to see my version
of the grazing chart, You can get it and
download that grazing grass insiders.
As I said on Wednesday, there's a
calculation I'm working on and then
I'll get it uploaded there so you can
play with it and see if you like it.
Basically.
I wish I'd read his book
when I purchased it.
And I encourage you read it.
And who should read it?
Well, if you're grazing
animals, you should read it.
But I really think if you are working
off the farm, and grazing animals.
Pick up this book.
Read it.
I think it's got some
labor saving ideas in it.
I think the 13 paddocks really help
so if you're working off the farm,
Or you maybe in say is, instead of
saying it like that, we should say,
if you don't have enough time to do
everything, You should read his book.
Really enjoyed it.
And I appreciate Tom coming on the
podcast and I please appreciate Tom.
write in this book and I
appreciate you listening today.
Cal: Kencove Farm Fence is a proud
supporter of the Grazing Grass
podcast and graziers everywhere.
At Kencove Farm Fence, they believe
there's true value within the community
of graziers and land stewards.
The results that follow proper
management and monitoring can
change the very world around us.
That's why Kencove is dedicated to
providing an ever expanding line of
grazing products to make your chores
easier and your land more abundant.
Whether you're growing your own
food on the homestead or grazing
on thousands of acres, Kencove has
everything you need to do it well.
From reels to tumblewheels, polytwine
to electric nets, water valves to
water troughs, you'll find what
you're looking for at Kencove.
They carry brands like
Speedrite, O'Brien's, Kiwitech,
Strainrite, Jobe, and more.
Kencove is proud to be part
of your regenerative journey.
Call them today or visit Kencove.com.
And be sure to follow them on social
media and subscribe to the Kencove YouTube
channel @KencoveFarmFence for helpful
how to videos and new product releases!