Its not how many, it’s how long

      Let’s go back in time to a time when Mother Nature was managing the Mississippi River grasslands. She had infinite numbers of allies above and below ground level that created the incredible prosperity of this unbelievably productive region. She had more kinds of microscopic life below the soil surface, all lending a hand, than she had above the soil surface. She had 60,000,000 grazing Buffalo. There were huge numbers of deer, elk and more classes of ungulates than I can bring to my mind, giving her a complexity of grazing animals to eat this sea of grass. There was also time for pastures to rest after these vast grazing herds ate, stomped, pooped, and peed on the grass in one area called “Herd Effect.” Then they moved to new vistas using the “Herd Effect” to keep all things healthy and hardy, and occasional fires were important to keep unwanted weeds at bay. 

         In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that split the country into 160-acre plots that a citizen could go to the local government recorder's office and make a claim on the 160 acres that he wanted. After working his plot for several years, he then went back to the recorder's office and received clear title to his land. 

            By the late 19th century, the buffalo were almost extinct. From 60,000,000 to but a few thousand, and the Moldboard plow had replaced the sea of grass with corn, soybeans, and other row crops that our growing population needed for food. 

           Cattle replaced the buffalo on land that still had grass on it. Barbed Wire was a new invention in the late 1800s, so ranchers could now fence their property, letting many owners leave their cattle year-round on the same ground to graze the best grass species and leave the least palatable, which would eventually overtake the best. A practice called selective grazing. This proved the old saying, “It’s not how many cattle are on a piece of land but how long they are going to be there is most important.” 

            Let’s fast forward a thousand years and see how technology can save our remaining grasslands. Enter the company called Spacex that just a short time ago put many satellites into orbit called Starlink. I think that many dog owners have used a collar that will give a warning shock if they try to wander off the property because of a virtual fence that surrounds their home. There’s a company named Halter that makes a collar for cattle, letting the owner build a virtual fence that can be made any size or shape the cattle owner wants. All that is necessary is a cellphone and an app that will draw a virtual boundary around a herd, so if a grazing animal with a collar decides to leave the herd, a warning “buzz” sounds to not go any further. All grazing animals are instinctively gregarious by nature (there’s safety in numbers), so it’s not too hard to keep a herd together. 

          For me, now that I have control over the herd, I can use my grazing animals to become a tool for better use of my grasslands, and by copying Mother Nature’s ways I see a bright future for the land beneath my feet. I’m presently working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to help design and defray some of the costs of a water delivery system for the V6 that will allow all my virtual fenced cattle a drink of cool, clear water. 

                           See Ya, 

                              Jack