Waiting For Rain
We, like the majority of the province are dry, very dry. With the lack of rain last fall, and no spring rains the ground is extremely dry and has no reserves. The few thunderstorms that have passed through our area have given us almost no rain and the few that had rain seemed to go around us.
We waited as long as possible to put the animals onto the grass as it was just not growing well and we wanted the grass to have a good root system before being grazed. First we fed the cattle all of the hay set aside for the cows, not keeping any hay in reserve for next year. Then we moved them onto the pasture and if we do not receive any rain will soon be moving them onto some of our hay fields as the grass is not growing back after being grazed.
With diminishing chances of rain in the forecast, we purchased some irrigation equipment and this week we have started to irrigate our pasture from one of our three large dugouts on our land. We have been blessed that these dugouts are extremely deep and have ample amounts of water in them to support this. The irrigation will be moved around the pasture surrounding the dugouts to hopefully help the grass grow. Until the irrigated grass starts to grow we are continuing to keep some of our sheep and pigs on winter pasture being fed their winter feed. We do not want to overgraze the pasture and with the dry conditions and slow regrowth this is easy to do. By reducing the number of animals on the pasture we can hopefully give it more time to recover between grazing.
We continue to hope and pray for rain as we know that with a little rain the grass will takeoff and grow at awonderful rate.
- Sunworks Farm
