The field by the bass pond

By Brent Fry

There’s a field up by the bass pond that I would show you if we rode across the farm together.

When I was growing up, there wasn’t much grass there. The ground wasn’t very good, and there was only one place for the cattle to get water. They would walk up there, stay around that spot, and wear the ground down.

It looks different now.

We move the cattle through smaller sections of pasture now instead of leaving them in one large area for a long time.

We use temporary electric fence to control how much ground they have at one time. Once they’ve grazed that section, we move them forward and let the grass behind them rest.

The grass needs time to grow back before the cattle return. Giving it that time has allowed us to get away from commercial fertilizers and herbicides.

Keeping grass on the ground also helps protect the soil underneath it. And because we see the cattle regularly when we move them, we can pay closer attention to how they are eating, walking, and acting.

It doesn’t work exactly the same every day. When the grass is growing quickly, we manage it differently than we do during dry weather. Sometimes we give the cattle more ground. Sometimes we need to feed hay. A lot of the job is watching what is happening and adjusting.

We’ve added fence and water line a little at a time over the years. There’s always another place we could improve.

To me, taking care of a farm means paying attention to the land and the animals, then trying to leave things in better shape than we found them.

The field by the bass pond is one of the places where I can see what those small changes have added up to. There’s good grass growing now where there wasn’t much grass before.