We’ve had many teachers and helpers for farming!
Our #1 teacher has been Pearl (on the right in the picture above), a rescue Great Pyrenees who was our first guardian dog.
We study and observe life on the farm to better understand the relationships among the sheep, the goats, the guardian dogs, the soil, the grasses and forbs, the birds, the insects, and all the life here.
Beyond the farm, we’ve attended many teachings by gifted educators that helped us understand many aspects of farm life.
Studies
- Multispecies Grazing & Browsing Academy hosted by the University of California in Auburn in 2014, led by Roger Ingram
- No-Till Farming talk on soil health with Farmer Paul Kaiser in 2015 at SHED
- The epic book Holistic Management by Allan Savory
- Permaculture Design Course taught by Toby Hemenway 2015 – 2016, hosted by Daily Acts
- No-Till Farming class at Singing Frogs Farm in 2016
- Pasture walk in 2016 with Richard King, a local instructor from Savory’s school, who after the walk was kind enough to make a visit to our farm
- Targeted Grazing clinic with Dr. Stephanie Larson at Shone Farm in 2019
- Visit by Dr. Stephanie Larson to our farm in 2019
- Visits by Kristin Flynn, Rangeland Management Specialist of the NRCS, to our farm in 2010 and 2020
Friends
We’ve received much support over the years from our good friend Brooke Sambol.
Fibershed has been a key part of our learning. The generosity and vision of this organization is amazing. For example, they organized a May 2019 site visit here by Lynette Niebrugge, Erin Walkenshaw, and other grazing-savvy Fibershed friends.
Holistic Management International
But even with all teachers and helpers, Amy couldn’t work out how many sheep she needed to achieve the wonders that Savory described. She could not figure out how much grass she had to work with, nor what to do with the land in the back pasture.
Guest cow grazing provided fuel load management until March 2020, when Amy took a Holistic Management International course online with Ralph Tate. This was the turning point of “ah ha!”
In these pages on Rotational Grazing Amy breaks down step by step what she now understands about rotational grazing planning, in the hopes it might help other graziers with their plans.