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0:00:00 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 129. You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, cal Hartage. You're growing more than grass You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy-to-follow techniques to quickly assess your forage, production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at nobleorg slash grazing. Nobleorg slash grazing. It's n-o-b-l-e dot org. Forward slash grazing.
On today's show, we are having a book review. Yes, this is middle school all over doing a book report for you today. Actually, I thought I'd try an episode. See how you like it. I am an avid reader and, as I've mentioned on the podcast, I'm an avid book buyer Probably a better book buyer than a book reader but I do enjoy reading and try and read a lot. So we're going to try this episode and for today we're doing Ranching Like a 12-Year-Old by Tom Kravitz. He was just on the podcast on episode 128. So you got to hear about his story, a little bit about the book. We're going to talk more about the book today and my opinion of it.
But before we get there, the Regenitive Legacy Summit is coming up next week. It's two days, tuesday and Wednesday. It's a virtual summit, tremendous speakers there. Our keynote is Joel Salatin, but for past Grazing Grass guests, you've got Clay Condry that's coming on and a whole host of excellent presenters are going be there presenting. It is virtual, it's free to sign up. So go sign up. If you can't make it, that is fine, because you are able to access the recordings afterwards. Wonderfully, and I guess they run a little short on speakers because they asked me to speak, so I'll be presenting at it as well. So catch that sign up. If you can't watch it in real time, not a problem, catch it later on. It's an excellent opportunity to learn and by signing up and watching it later. You don't have to dedicate to two days to it, because I know two days are a lot, but what you can do, get that recording and you can go through it and watch the things that are applicable to you. I think it's an excellent opportunity.
The link will be in the show notes, so click on that link and go there. And by clicking on the link in the show notes, I get credit for you signing up. Credit just means hey, good job, cal, but that's okay. Click on that link. If you can't find the link, just go ahead and sign up. More important that you learn from it than I get credit for anything.
Anyway, that's the first thing, and let's move on to Ranching Like a 12-Year-Old old. So the full title of Tom's book is ranching like a 12 year old. Ranching that is simple, easy and fun. And before we dive into that, tom was nice enough to give us two copies of the book to give away to the grazing grass community. So I went to grazing grass community and pulled up the top contributors for the last 28 days and that is post comments and likes. And as I look through this, I'm not exactly sure how Facebook weights each of those, but Tracy Rumsey and Ricky Kramers. Those are our top contributors, so they both have a book right here ranching like a 12 year old. They get me their address, I'll get it mailed to you, don't worry if they're not listening right now. I'd message them as well. So we'll get them a copy of this book. And we want to say thank you to tom, because tom provide him free of charge for us to give away, and I'm going to go ahead and say it here. I will say it at the end.
If you're interested in purchasing tom's books, it's available on amazon as well as other places. But if you go to his website, simply ranchingca, he is in al Alberta, canada, so ca on the end of that website, simplyranchingca. We'll put that link in the show notes. But if you buy a book directly from him, versus Amazon or any of the other booksellers, he makes more money on it, which is always nice for authors. So either way, I do understand that sometimes we're like but amazon gets it here in two days, so whatever, but if you have time, you might purchase it directly from his website. So let's talk about his book.
First thing, his book is 183 pages and there's not a lot of extra pages. Sometimes you get a book and there's like I don't know, a half dozen pages at the front, a half dozen pages at the end. They don't say anything. His book is packed full of words which, if you read books, you're happy when they have words or most of the time, sometimes feature books are nice, but it is a really nice read.
I read it over two days before his episode. I'd purchased the book last january with the plans of reading it during the winter. I did not happen, so when I had the opportunity for tom to come on the podcast, I thought I really need to read this book in advance of his episode. So so I jumped in and read. It's a nice, easy read, one of those that you can get and read it over a few evenings. If you follow the rule I like to follow Read 10 pages of a book a day It'll take you a little over. It'll take you a week and a half to read, approaching two weeks to read, but not. It's a nice, easy read and I encourage you to read it.
He has his book established on the premise and this guides his thoughts throughout. The book is can a 12 year old do this? You may be wondering why did he settle on a 12 year old? The reason he says they're anything like a 12 year old. He had Heather and Tiffany, friend's daughter and her friend. They would come out to the farm during the summer and help and when they started doing that I believe they were 12 and 13,. So that started guiding his decisions rather than him having to do it. Can a 12-year-old do it? And I know for managing employees, a lot of times it's a struggle because you can do it faster, I'll just go do it. But I like that thought. Can a 12-year-old do it and then get it in a way that they can do it and take ownership and do that activity? So that's really the premise. Of course. Of course it's the title too, but the premise of his book and guides his thoughts for activities that are that make it simple to do his ranching and also they reduce labor at the same time, because if we're wanting to be a sustainable farm, labor is a huge cost there. So his book's 183 pages. He has it divided into five sections Grazing, infrastructure, animal handling, stockpiling and Business and Economics. Each of those sections includes a few chapters that dive into that area.
A couple of things I really like about the format of the book and the way he's done it. He lists where his references are. This came from. I really like, for one, being able to trace his thought pattern. For two, it gives me further resources to research. For example, when he talks about low stress animal handling and creating a herd, he references Whit Hubbard and Whit was unfamiliar to me, so that's definitely someone I follow up on and research more about, because I'm all about low stress handling and I say that I'm not saying I'm an expert, but I am very interested in doing a better job. And with that low stress handling, he talks about how to create a herd, which I think is very interesting Because he's creating herds from multiple species.
When I think about the book and I think about my big three takeaways and I try and be careful about this but they're all going to be grazing related and I know grazing grass podcast we talk a a lot about grazing, but grazing is only one part of a sustainable farm. But these three are grazing related today and the first one is the sweet spot. And what he calls the sweet spot is that point in time right before your grass reaches maturity. So it's in that stage two before it hits stage three. You don't want it to mature and he talks about that's where he wants to graze. He doesn't want grass to get too mature, because when it gets too mature then you start losing some quality there and losing some quantity as well. The plant is putting all its efforts towards seed production. At that point, to be honest, I'm not worried about that too much. I try and keep my grasses in a vegetative state. But, as I've complained on the podcast before, it seems like fescue goes to seed in two weeks whenever it decides to. So I'm trying to do more of that sweet spot grazing and keep it from getting too mature. But a couple other things that the big three takes away will explain that too. Second thing of the big three takeaway is 13 paddocks, and he talks about why 13 is the magic number for him and how that works for his graze period and rest period. And a while ago I said about that grazing too mature stuff and I don't worry about that. We'll talk about that in the rest period. The 13 paddocks the rotation works out that if you honor the graze period as well as the rest period, 13 paddocks works out to do a wonderful job of that and by doing 13 paddocks, I know so often Regentee bag.
When we're talking about adaptive multi paddock grazing, we're talking about moving animals, often Daily or even multiple times a day. Especially if you're doing ultra high density grazing, you want to keep those cattle moving. At the same time, we have to be conscious of our labor requirements. If you're working off the farm, even if you're not working off the farm, this is applicable, applicable. It's applicable. But working off the farm, it's applicable. But working off the farm, it's really important Whether or not you have time to go move those cows every night, or what if you do it every other day or every three days or after the graze period and not worry about moving them every day. I think for an off-the-farm person that is wonderful. And you say well, how long should that graze period be?
That's the third big takeaway for me is that graze period and rest period.
And the graze period is that period of time you can graze animals on a paddock before it starts growing back and they go back and graze it Tom talks about in his context. It's three days most of the time but it can change. I think in my context we get in summer things really slow down on growth. So it's going to depend on what's happening, but he provides an easy way to figure out what your gray spirit is, and that's by utilizing water at one end and some strip grazing and moving them day by day and seeing when they go back. A better explanation of it is available in his book, but I really like that. It's an easy way to assess how long you should have animals on the paddock before you move them.
And a second part of that, because you can't have a graze period without having a rest period. You can't have a rest period without a graze period. Actually, I guess you can if you're not grazing animals, but we're talking about grazing animals. The rest period he talks about how long that is and you should honor that and to be honest, I don't. And that puts some of my grass into that mature stage three where he's trying to keep his grasses from going. So as I look at it, it makes me think more about my rest period. Maybe I shouldn't be just letting it rest as long as I can before I come back to it. Maybe I should do a little bit more management there and to that end, I've started implementing a grazing chart and I'm playing with that, seeing how that goes, and he talks about in his book and on the podcast how important and essential a grazing chart is. So I'm playing with a grazing chart. In fact, if you'd like to see my version of a grazing chart, you can get it in downloads at grazing grass insiders. As I said on wednesday, there's a calculation I'm working on and then I'll get it uploaded there so you can play with it and see if you like it.
Basically, I wish I'd read his book when I purchased it and I encourage you to read it. And who should read it? Well, if you're grazing animals, you should read it. But I really think if you are working off the farm and grazing animals, pick up this book, read it. I think it's got some labor-saving ideas in it. I think the 13 paddocks really help. So if you're working off the farm or you, maybe, instead of saying it like that, we should say if you don't have enough time to do everything, you should read his book. Really enjoyed it and I appreciate Tom coming on the podcast and I appreciate Tom writing this book and I appreciate you listening today.
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