First Day

Today was my first day of classes in the Sustainable Food Production program at M State. It was intense. I definitely felt like a city girl! We learned how to estimate the dry matter yield (i.e. grass/food) in pounds per acre, to figure out how many days a certain number of cattle could graze on a given paddock. This involved created a tool to measure the height of the grass; taking the height measurements in several sample areas of a field; averaging the grass height from the sample areas; and plugging the average grass height into a formula (DMY = 432 * average height) to estimate how many tons of grass were on a certain acre. Then, we visited a real farm -- with real cows, chickens, and oh, yes, GRASS -- and we figured out how much time 40 cattle could graze on the paddock next to their current pasture. We calculated that there was about a ton and a half of grass on the next paddock, so the cows could graze their for about a day before they needed to move on to another pasture.

In sum, I learned how to estimate the length of time a certain number of cows can graze in a given pasture (before they eat all the grass). This guess-work involves a lot of variables and a lot of assumptions; it's very complicated and by no means precise. Lesson learned: farming involves a lot of careful estimation on a number of complex variables that yield useful information, but with a healthy margin of error.