Northern Farmer

During the last few days I have been mulling over what it means to be a godly steward of my land. What Biblical principles should I be applying to the management of my farm and livestock? There are a number of things that come to mind, but one thought that has been on my mind for a long time is the idea of “rest” for the land. Leviticus 25 talks about giving the land a “rest” every seven years. In the seventh year, sowing of fields, pruning of vineyards and gathering of crops was not to be done. We are not under the law, but it seems that there is probably a principle here that should still apply. I have toyed with the idea of taking a portion of my pasture (I don’t plant field crops) and letting it grow without being grazed for one summer. The next summer I would do the same on another portion of my pasture. Does anyone have experience doing this sort of thing? I have a vague recollection that land is left fallow in drier climates. What do you think? Does leaving land fallow make sense? I suppose a program like CRP gives the land a rest, but at the cost of taking the land out of production for a number of years rather than just one, plus getting the government involved is not a good idea.

My son tells me that mob stocking after letting a pasture head out and get mature produces very good results. My initial thought is that mob stocking seems close the Biblical idea of giving the land a rest. Next summer I plan to let a portion of my pasture get mature and then mob stock it. A portion of my pasture was left to grow wild prior to my purchasing of our current small farm. Some of this area that was left to grow wild has some poorer quality grasses. The area with poorer quality grasses is the one that I want to mob stock. Since I do not have any equipment to till and reseed, mob stocking might provide me with a very low cost way of renewing pasture.

In the next few days I plan to frost seed some clover into my pasture. A large portion of my pasture came out of cultivation when we purchased the property. A local farmer initially seeded the pasture, but not enough seed was used. I have since frost seeded white and red clover into this pasture, but need to do more seeding to account for the shorter longevity of red clover. In the past I have frost seeded in the spring, but often the window to frost seed is very short due to snow cover sticking around too long. This time I will try fall frost seeding, assuming snow cover will protect the seed.

Jim V

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Jim V. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.