Silvopasture Pro Workshop

This past week we collaborated with Rural Action Ohio to bring Austin Unruh and the Trees for Graziers team to give their “SilvoPro” silvopasture training for the first time outside of their home region in Lancaster Co, Pennsylvania. They traveled from the prime dairy lands in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to the upper Ohio River Appalachian land where we proceeded through three of the best farm tour training sessions I have ever had the privilege to attend.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Tuesday, we arrived at the lovely United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary in Rutland, OH and got to know our teachers and our group, our experience and our motivations. A group from the Dayton area included a middle school teacher who wants to branch out from managing a home garden into a larger space of agricultural land management and some urban farmers doing extensive work intercropping fruit trees and berry bushes with chickens bringing the animal energy to the system. Two representatives of The Savanna Institute came with their own particular know-how,interested in how the practices adapt to a different region and in getting more direct feedback from working farmers about how silvopasture fits in their systems.  A couple of farmers from around Union, WV-- guys who raise beef for Hickory Nut Gap Meats and operate an organic dairy-- are looking for ways to reduce heat stress and increase gain while stabilizing slopes in a couple of steep areas. The family behind Trouvaille Farm wanted to see what their next phase would be as they have begun fenceline plantings of chestnuts and other valuable trees into the fertile ridges where they grass finish beef. Everyone of the group of around 30 people who spent time together over the three day training wants to improve their game for integrating forage +livestock + and trees. That's the easy definition of 'silvopasture',general enough to include practically infinite variation as farmers and farm service professionals like Trees for Graziers, learn how to arrange those three elements on different landscapes, in different working systems.

Austin shared his core motivation forgetting into the work along with the basic model behind his service company's success. Austin came out of tree planting work based on riparian buffers in particular, which is a key intervention being funded in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, as boucoup de' dollars flowed into cleaning up the bay. But he realized, that where trees could be directly integrated with livestock, the issues with ag runoff impacting the bay, and all of the knock on negative impacts of the commodity feed corn, soy, dairy and beef system overall, could be more deeply impacted, by reducing cattle stress and increasing yield on pasture, reducing need for monoculture grains and oilseeds. In short, silvopasture could be one of the most scaleable ecological land management tools available, potentially impacting millions of acres.

His background in riparian buffer work allowed him to see the way to fund this work through watershedgrants, enabling Trees for Graziers to create a turnkey system for planning, funding, nursery, planting and tree aftercare that requires minimal work for already-busy farmers.  Now the Trees team is finding ways to show other regions-- here in the Ohio River valley and at their next stop in North Carolina-- how to replicate their sensible and effective system.

Silvopasture is as attractive to farmers as it is to watershed/carbon sequestration champions. The light dappled shade that is produced by the best silvopasture trees--thornless honey locusts, black locusts, walnuts, mulberries,persimmons-- leaves 50-60% sunlight even once trees are in full canopy. This light environment helps the cool season grasses that dominate in our region to perform better through the summer slump when not much is growing. Then the high sugar fruits and pods provide animals feed in the late fall, improving farmer capacity to stockpile grasses for the winter. The soil benefits from increasing biological diversity enabled by the protective shade/moisture barrier layer of leaves that fall and through the deep roots which bring up water and minerals, and-- in the case of the locust trees-- fix nitrogen from the air into a soil-available form. For hogs and chickens which have digestive systems more like a human than like cattle and goats (no rumen) and who don't thrive on grasses, the fruits and pods can be hugely beneficial in reducing grain needs. Austin's slideshow includes a medieval tapestry showing a man beating acorns out of a tree for a waiting hog! This is an ancient practice remembered.

Another goal that brings Trees for Graziers into this work long term is to improve homestead resilience and keep farmers and families on the land. Tree crops can bring both additional streams of income and sources of food and feed that are not sold, but used on farm. They can also provide firewood, cider,bring deer and turkey for hunting-- wealth that you don't have to count in dollars. As Austin puts it, “I want farm families to stay on the land, turn a profit, and reduce need for outside inputs forgenerations to come...continuing on the farm and in intact, diverseecosystems; because that's where we thrive as a People.”

At our farm tours on Tuesday night and Wednesday the group got to see a fascinating contrast in methods and approach to "installing" silvopasture systems, beginning with Bill Krusling, currently restoring soil and forage yield on his FIFTH "poor" farm (this one an abandoned hog research center!) by LETTING THINGS LIVE, mowing around young groves of trees(particularly locusts and walnuts which can take care of themselves relative to deer and livestock browsing pressure) to allow them to grow up and produce shade, feed, and shelter for free; and then staking and tubing favored persimmon, mulberry and other trees where they are appreciated while effectively using his lovely, hardy lambing ewes and their capable guard dogs to improve pasture condition. Our next stop was at Lindsay and Michael's Trouvaille Farm where they started their tree-planting journey by adding chestnuts into double-fenced fencerows to improve shade for their grass finished beef herd. Our last farm visit was to Molly Sowash and CJ Morgan's MoSo Farm where they had done a full-scale tree planting in the style Trees for Graziers typically uses on high-value cleared land in Lancaster County. We planted mulberries grown from softwood cuttings and talked about howto improve our softwood cutting game. CJ put his forester hat on and helped us look at an area of low value woods that could be moved towards silvopasture through clearing. Michael and Bill talked cattle condition while studying on the MoSo herd. Everyone found ways to get hands on experience with what we had been talking through. A dairyman from the region said he left with useful changes to make in his current layout for a big project he plans to undertake this fall.

Austin's closing advice: start small and get some easy wins with a smaller number of trees in the easiest space to manage, and then look for ways to meet bigger goals with grant-funded projects. Mt. Folly's climate smart grant can fund this work, among many others. Learn more and find our grant team contact info here. My closing advice is that the group use the shared contact list to continue to follow up on the great conversations that were breaking out at every turn, to nurture the seeds of collaboration that were planted in those wonderful three days. The questions we worked through in our last session: “What is the silvopasture services ecosystem and how do you help silvopasture get a foothold in your region?” were not academic. Let's do the work! May we together help many more landowners to integrate this practice into their land management strategy, improving our soil health, our livestock health,and our families' health.

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