Pasture Puzzle (All Flesh is Grass)

This year the grass has been slow to start growing. It’s been a very cold, wet spring. But finally, nearing the end of April, after months of mud, there is finally a decent amount of grass. Good thing too, because we’ve flat run out of hay. Actually we’ve run out of hay twice and gone for more, but as of yesterday we are out again. At one of the places we bought hay there was a tame raccoon and I got to hold her. Just putting that in there so I don’t forget THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE. 

The goats are in the main pasture now, but the cow has been in the sacrifice area, because he is rambunctious and I worry he will injure the pregnant goats or the newborn babies. That’s why we had to get rid of Rowan’s cow, Nettles. Also I want to preserve grass for the goats. One dairy cow eats as much grass as six or seven goats, easily. 

We have three fenced pasture areas, but only the largest - which is about 60% of the total area -  has any real grass in it. The second largest one is about 100x100 and is our sacrifice area. The smallest simply isn’t large enough to have much grass, and moreover the grass doesn’t grow great in there because it is very wet. It’s more of a holding pen for keeping animals separate from each other when necessary. 

There is one other fenced area, and it has a ton of grass. That’s the orchard. Unfortunately we can’t put the goats in the orchard, because they are fully capable of killing the smaller trees in a day or two. I long for the day that the trees are big enough to withstand the caprice onslaught, but that day is still several years away. The cow may nibble on the trees, but cows aren’t browsers like goats are, so I’m hoping he will munch on the grass instead. 

Getting the cow INTO the orchard, however, was a problem. The cow has not been trained in any way, shape, or form, and when he gets out of the corral he goes mad with freedom and starts running about wildly and kicking up his heels. He’s very dangerous. Instead of attempting to lead the cow across the yard with a grain bucket, which might end up with a cow running around on the state highway, I decided to get some wire cutters and open up a gap between the sacrifice area and the orchard. 

Currently I am sitting on the lawn with a book, watching to make sure the cow doesn’t start trying to push over the trees or anything like that. The gap in the fence is closed with a bungi cord. I have a loaf of sliced bread next to me. If the trees are endangered, I can just undo the bingo cord and throw bread through the gap. The cow will chase the bread into the sacrifice area, and I can bingo the fence shut behind him. 

I hope this works, because we really have needed an extra area of grass for a long time now. A five acre farm is really quite small - all those silly books about homesteading on an acre? Yeah, chuck those books out the window. We have about three and a half acres of pasture and that is a bare minimum, even for dairy goats and it really isn’t sufficient for a cow PLUS dairy goats. 

It’s been frustrating to have a big fenced area of green grass we couldn’t use, and it’s very gratifying today to sit here listening to the cow tear up and chew all that green embodied sunlight. Come fall, it will all be meat. For, as the Bible tells us, “all flesh is grass.” 

I may have a slightly different understanding of those words than Isaiah intended.