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Five Year Development Plan for Foggy Bottom Farms.
Grass. It's all about good grass. We are building a salad bar for cows, goats and maybe even sheep. Our 5 year plan started two years ago when we first began rebuilding the soil. And while the lime and grasses we added were much needed, they won't do all they should until they have the proper density of animals on them.
It's marvelous the way nature has built the relationship between ruminants and good grass. We also learned to leave some bushes and low hanging trees for the goats.
Our plans are as follows:
Year 1 - Test and treat the soil. Learn the lay of the land for drainage, sunlight, wind and traffic. Remove the years of neglect and abuse through digging, cutting and hauling.
Year 2- We are already behind, because we are in year 3. We asked for help from the USDA and NRCS, but they were worse than useless. They promised help with the fencing, but then after we did all the paperwork we somehow didn't have "enough points." Translation, the big boys got the money. Needless to say, we aren't participating in the "pay you to do nothing program". Considering our previous experience how much worse could that be?
Year 3- The fencing for the cow field is up. We have begun a new program of remineralization using sea salt and had surprising success. See our page "Cows Know Food" for details.
Next year, we hope to introduce a series of microbial "critters" this year as we experiment with building better grass.
Year 4- Our herd size doubled. That means we went from 4 to 8 cows. Next? Add the goats.
Year - 5 We may have our first "table ready" beef. We should be getting plenty of milk from the goats and may start trying to make artisan cheese.
Anyone who reads copyright notices will see that we have to be in year 7 by now.
The herd size is at 11 and that's after we sold a couple, buried and ate a few cows. (Wow, there has to be a better way to phrase that!)
We got a big boost from the Nature Conservancy. See our page on their help.
The chickens are laying 2 dozen eggs per day. What a marvelous creature in the bargain of life.
We trade them food and protection and they give us food and poop.
Hmmm..sounds like a government program.
