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nure per acre. Five to ten acres are covered each year. It’s a herd health tool, and an important part of our fertility program. It gets manure out into the field where it’s needed.”
In summer, the Polyface pastures become patchworks of green rectangles which follow the shed’s movement by about seven days.
Mr. Salatin credits his father for inventing the tin-roof-on wheels. “As far as I know, there’s not another one like it in the world,” he said. “There ought to be thousands.”
Chip composting
Mr. Salatin’s main source of organic matter for composting comes from the woods. He follows each logging operation with a chipper, which reduces tree tops and branches to mounds of excellent, healthful bedding. “Chips can absorb a lot of ammonia,” he said, “up to 250 percent of their dry weight.” He applies the composted chips to his pastures in late spring.
Throughout the summer, the Polyface pastures are grazed intensively. “Very intensively,” he says. Mr. Salatin grazes 50 head on one and a half acres for two days. Then he moves his portable electric fences to confine the animals to another area.
The idea of intensive rotational grazing is to prevent selective grazing of legumes. “Force them to eat all types of forage in the pasture, graze them heavy, stimulate the grass to grow and impact only a small area,” he says. “Then move them to another field and don’t let them come back. Don’t allow them to graze any grass that’s less than six inches high.”
Mr. Salatin’s practice of intensive grazing maintains a lush mixture of grasses and legumes, and he never has to overseed. “We’ve never spent a dime on clover seed or commercial fertilizers in 25 years.”
The overseers of Polyface and Horseshoe Hollow Farms have developed workable, progressive farming methods that are economically viable and enhance long term productivity. They are demonstrating that farmers who observe carefully and think independently can develop fruitful practices that are appropriate for their own croplands.
Lyt Wood is editor of the “Virginia Biological Farmer," a journal of the Virginia Association of Biological Farmers which is a non-profit, non-political statewide organization of farmers, gardeners and food distributors who are working to promote sustain-able agriculture. The spring issue of their quarterly journal will feature details of pasture management from several Virginia farms. For information, write VABF, P.O. Box 252, Flint Hill, VA 22627.
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