Hay v. Grass

I’ll admit it.

I don’t like hay.

Intensely don’t like hay.

I don’t like to harvest hay.

I don’t like to haul hay.

I don’t like to feed hay.

I only like hay when it keeps my cows, sheep and horses well-fed, healthy and happy.

Some people love hay – love the smell of freshly cut hay, love the purr of a tractor and the time to ponder while feeding hay, love to unroll round bales and watch the cows come running.

Sure, the scent of sweet-cut hay makes me smile.

If my life were in perfect harmony, I might enjoy the hours of putt-putting back and forth between the haystack and the feeding grounds.

But, in my entire life, I never have been able to sing. Putt-putting never has been my speed.

I have a solution for hating hay, though.

I’ll make more grass.

Yep. God and me, up on high, making grass.

Only, I don’t seem to have a strong connection with Up On High. Whenever I think I do, God grants me humility.

Lots of humility.

But the other day, a friend reminded me of a more practical way to grow grass.

Build fence.

He said every time he builds a fence, he gets more grass.

Research confirms his simple solution.

So do many ranchers who have cut large pastures into many smaller pastures.

Let the cows harvest instead of the tractor.

I’ve been thinking about fencing for several years.

I listened to producers who suggest dividing 1000-acre pastures into pie-shaped 20-acre wedges with the water source in the middle. They said each inch of pasture should receive 10,000 pounds of hoof pressure within three days and then no hooves for the rest of the growing season.

They have photos to prove how well the grass grows, pictures to illustrate a life in harmony.

But that’s a lot of fence.

“Electric fence works well,” they said, “Just get a 4-wheeler to roll and unroll the wire.”

Hmmm. Four-wheelers can’t cross many of my coulees and creeks. Plus, I don’t have good luck with sheep and electric fence.

Still, a few years ago, I got the Farm Service Agency maps so I could design where fences might go.

As I drew lines on the maps – in pencil – I imagined fenceposts zig-zagging across the prairie.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t destroy the wide-open spaces and the horizon that never ends. This wild prairie will not look like suburbia while I own it.

But I could cross-fence a couple of pastures, creating six out of two, with about six miles of fence.

A mile of four-strand fence costs about $10,000. Four strand fence won’t keep sheep in, and I don’t have an extra $60,000 to $80,000 right now.

I could ask for a cost-share with the federal government.

We did that once, when we first bought the ranch and were stone-broke. The feds paid 80 percent of two water troughs, a half-mile of buried water line and a mile of fence. They designed the water system and dictated where the fenceposts stood.

The gravity-flow water system runs uphill for a bit so the pipeline develops air locks periodically. The antelope-safe fence barely holds a cow in, and certainly not a sheep. I don’t like people to tell me what to do.

So I will redraw pencil lines on the maps, stake out potential sheep-proof fences and contract with a fence-builder to grow a little more grass each year.

And I’ll admire the wide-open prairie that never ceases to amaze me.