Book Review: Comback Farms by Greg Judy
This post is not generated, edited or prompted by Artificial Intelligence, so it probably has terrible grammar.
Greg Judy’s Comeback Farms discusses ways in which you can utilize low maintenance grass fed animals to make a living farming. More specifically, he eventually summarizes how one can make a living as a microbe farmer. He discusses how High Density Wholistic Planned Grazing can take sub-quality land and turn it back into productive pasture. He also discusses how small framed, low maintenance animals are the most profitable animal to raise. The small framed, grass fed animal thrives off of perennial pasture that utilizes solar energy to grow. This perennial pasture has millions of seeds within the seed bank to regrow every year and if properly managed should produce a high quality, low cost end product. The one thing about Greg Judy’s writing is that it is easy to wrap your head around. Why go to the store and pick up expensive bags of grain if you can just feed your cows “free” grass and some minerals? I am biased due to being indoctrinated by Ben Gotschall Owner of Holt Creek Jerseys and Kate Sabino of The Tenth Herd but it makes sense to me as I have witnessed it first hand that if you pair good pasture management with cows ready to thrive on grass the combination is unbeatable.
The following is what I gathered from Comback Farms as a whole:
Hay is not ideal: We’ve all been there before, you run out of grass and have to open up a bale or six to hold your cows over until you can get a proper number of rest days. If it's from off the farm, great, you’re bringing in fertility in the form of organic matter to your farm. However, if you are feeding hay for 7 months out of the year (like we did in Maine) you may realize that this is not sustainable. Try your best to create a system where you can graze stockpiled forages instead of feeding out hay. I don’t know how you would do this as a dairy due to the cows needing to trek over icy conditions to stockpiled forages and then back once or twice a day to be milked. Additionally, don’t tie up all your capital in hay equipment that is going to rust, break and put you into debt.
Pack em in tight: Try and get your stocking density as high as possible but move your cows fast, multiple times a day. Greg discussed a 1 million lbs per acre stocking density combined with a 6 move in one day rotation. He discussed how this led him to continue grazing his cows rather than opening up the whole farm as his neighbors did in a drought. You may ask yourself “how do I know how big the paddock should be and how many times should I move my cows per day?”. Well what I would do is reference the chart on page 159 of Sarah Flaks book The Art and Science of Grazing titled “Pasture Dry Matter (expressed as pounds per acre inch)”. I would then measure the length of grass with a grazing stick, figure out how much dry matter your cows will need per day and split those paddocks up into as many as you want with more being better. The more paddocks you make the more times you’ll have to move the cows but if they are fat and healthy this may be worth the time.
Take vacation: Ian Mitchell Innes the founder of High Density Wholistic Planned Grazing told Greg Judy he needed to get at least 2 weeks off the farm each year in order to prevent burnout. As anyone in the farming world knows this is extremely hard. Even as an apprentice at a non-profit I found it hard to take time away from the farm. If I were the owner of a farm operation I can’t even imagine how stressed I would be if I was off farm away from my cattle. We truly put ourselves second to the health and happiness of our cows. Getting off the farm for at least 2 weeks per year may seem impossible but I am committed to this for my family and my own “work life balance” that must be achieved for farmers.
