Agroforester and proprietor of Raven Ridge Farmscapes, Geoffrey Steen continues sharing his insights and skills integrating trees into pasture management. Learn the theory and practice of incorporating beneficial trees into farm fields to be used as animal fodder, green manures, shade trees, windbreaks for crops (alley cropping), and also provide valuable edibles from fruits and nuts. Discover efficient ways to measure a field, how to decide what to plant, tree spacing and design development. Find great sources for obtaining tree stock and starting your own silvopasture system.
VIDEO: High Productivity Agroforestry & Silvopasture Systems with Geoffrey Steen Part 2
Agroforester and proprietor of Raven Ridge Farmscapes, Geoffrey Steen continues sharing his insights and skills integrating trees into pasture management. Learn the theory and practice of incorporating beneficial trees into farm fields to be used as animal fodder, green manures, shade trees, windbreaks for crops (alley cropping), and also provide valuable edibles from fruits and nuts. Discover efficient ways to measure a field, how to decide what to plant, tree spacing and design development. Find great sources for obtaining tree stock and starting your own silvopasture system.
tks for sharing
Ty your a very self educated man I have learned alot
We're Americans we can learn metric "3 meters is 15 ft"…lol
Very informative, THANK YOU
Very informative. Thank you.
Why not have 100' high chestnut trees? In addition to a nut crop, chestnut wood was a versitile and valuable lumber. Tall chestnut trees are a great overstory tree.
What the speaker calls 'plowpan' is more often called 'hardpan'. Even using a soil ripper or Yeoman plow is said to simply move the hardpan a little deeper into the soil profile. Don't know if this is true or not…but Gabe Brown in N.D. has broken the hardpan, increased his soil organic matter tremendously, increased the water infiltration from 1/2" per hour to something like 8" per hour… and virtually eliminated pests and diseases with the use of diverse 'cocktail' mixes of cover crops, and rotational grazing – while producing cash crop of grain, beans, etc.
Plowing, discing, tilling – all disturb the soil life that provides the fertility to the plants. Pasture cropping – no-till drilling annual grain seed into a closely grazed pasture, preserves the Soil Food Web, prevents the 'burning up' of the carbon in the soil (what little is left), virtually eliminates soil erosion to wind and water, allows the infiltration of water into the soil to replenish aquafers, springs, and rivers, the living roots feed the soil life even when the grain is harvested, and the pasture will take off again as soon as the grain is harvested. Search Colin Seis on YouTube for details on pasture cropping.
Gabe Brown for info on using cover crops and permanant pasture to restore soil, the water cycle, etc.
He grows crops and vegetables into crimped or winter-killed cover crops using NO-TILL.
Dr. Elaine Ingham on the Soil Food Web.
Cattle will eat blackberry leave, and multi-flora, too. They may have to be trained to eat them. In the USA, cattle, and other livestock, have been coddled and fed to the point that they often have to re-learn how and what to eat. Multi-flora makes and excellent hedgerow or living fence, and once established, provides layers of nutritious forage. Horses pastured with goats or other animals that eat multi-flora rose will also learn to eat it. The hips are good for wildlife, they provide cover for wildlife, and the hips re also edible by humans. Though small, the flavor is good and they are a good source of Vit C. The leaves, flowers, and hips can all be eaten, or used as tea.
Sheep will also readily eat these plants, if you can find sheep that have deep, wide bodies – not the extra long-legged, shallow gutted sheep that the show ring has pushed for the past 2 or 3 decades. Deep, wide bodies and shorter legs and an overall compact size are good traits to look for in grass-efficient livestock – cattle and goats as well as sheep.
Hardware cloth may be better protection for trees than plastic tubes. Keeping the trunks of young saplings wrapped in hardware cloth protects them from goats, deer, other livestock, and mice and other small rodents that may girdle the trunks in winter.
Goats are not pets, they are livestock. More goat meat is eaten around the world than any other meat. Cheese made from goat milk is available in most supermarkets across the USA. Goat milk soap is also popular, too.
Goats as livestock have been 'looked down on' for a few reasons: – The bucks develop a strong odor during the fall rut, and engage in a few behaviors not considered appropriate in polite company. – They are challenging to fence in, curious, intelligent, and agile. – They enjoy variety in their diet, including gardens and fruit trees. – Goats can be kept on any little scrap of marginal land, so they were kept by poor people who could not afford to keep cattle, so owning a cow had more prestige, and owning goats, in some settings, was the opposite.
It used to be common for a milker or a few to be tethered and moved frequently to fresh browse/grazing – both goat and cows (though goats were more likely to chew through ropes). This may be the ultimate in controlled grazing. This is not practical with more than a few goats.
Traditionally, in many European villages, the goatherd or cowherd, or both, would gather the 'housecow'* and/or milk goats from each house and take them out to fresh pasture after the morning milking, and bring them back in time for the evening milking.
*A housecow supplied a household with milk; it did not necessarily live in the house!
If anyone wants to use Black Locust for animal fodder then you have to be extremely careful because too much can be very toxic, especially if they eat the seeds.
I have been gardening for over 20 years and you have taught me so much! Thanks!
How are some permaculturists anti tilling until they aren't?
If you are going to start a silvopasture how steep of a hill side can you do it on ?