Being a farmer with grazing animals means, as one acquaintance puts it, that you are a dirt farmer. You are also a grasses & forbs farmer. We are keenly aware of when and how much it rains, and what is coming up in the field, and if there are bare patches where there were none before, and if the star and bull thistles are showing up.
Invaders
Most of the grass in California is invasive, non-native grass that has pushed out the native stuff. The invaders are mostly annuals; the natives, mostly perennials. California Native Grasslands Association (CNGA) is devoted to helping restore native grasses; it’s a worthy goal.
(It’s also hard work, telling one grass from another. We took a weekend CNGA class on identifying native grasses and forbs and at one point, Amy went to the restroom and cried.)
Think of it this way: the native grasses and forbs evolved with the native pollinators and animals and birds. Then, late in the game, some bullies joined their class and started beating them up, stealing their lunch money, trampling them on the playground.
And the European colonizers also brought with them grazing animals. The non-native grazers bullied out the native grazers. Cattle and sheep replaced deer and elk. The predators of the grazers, wolves, were exterminated.
The deer, elk, and wolves were the classmates of the native grasses and forbs; they evolved together over thousands of years. They were connected and kept balance here in ways we non-native people are only beginning to understand. The loss of these connections is part of the reason why California is turning into a desert; why grasslands are eroding; why we are losing topsoil in both quality and quantity, even in places where you would think everything should be okay, but it’s really not. Read Savory. Listen to talks by native people about “fire on the ground.”
Shifting the Point of Balance for a New Dynamic Harmony
So, although we are grazing sheep and goats on our farm, we are experimenting, trying to do it in ways that create healthy, sustainable, self-reinforcing loops of water cycles and nutrient cycles, that build richer, denser, thicker soil, with longer water retention, and also, bonus, carbon sequestration.
The grasses and forbs are our partners in this, key to the whole idea of carbon farming. Think of them as tiny rainforests swaying in the wind, rippling, growing roots in the dark underside of the green and golden fields, holding us together.