Planting trees from seed is perhaps the best proof that one has achieved the patience that only comes with real maturity. Pasture development that includes growing trees is the ultimate long term project. We use no modern fertilizers or poisons on our pastures. We do not look for quick fixes.
Often maligned as invasive, mimosa trees have provided tremendous benefit to our soil. These trees are legumes that fix nitrogen in the soil.
The New Land is a nearly twenty acre parcel that Beth and I acquired for the program's use several years ago. It had been used for row crops for over 100 years, used as pasture for about a decade, and volunteer trees had crept over the pastures for over twenty years. On a few acres mimosa trees grew to completely dominate the landscape.
Those few acres became a fascinating ecosystem all of its own. Forbs, primarily honey suckle, grew to a deep, lush green covering the ground under the trees. The soil was soft, nearly fluffy, under the trees. Rabbits flourished in the area. I saw more wood cocks there than any piece of land that I had ever walked on. Deer made great use of the honey suckle.
And I did not have any understanding of what was going on. I just knew that it was beautiful to see from a distance, with its pink flowers lighting up the sky and was even more beautiful to walk into on hot summer days.
Now I am beginning to understand what was happening and I am delighted to experience the long term effects that those trees are having as we seek to develop the area into first rate pasture. The nitrogen that the trees fixed help the honey suckle grow. The honey suckle roots and the mimosa roots provided a constant feast for microbes that further aided in the growth of the plants, which created more roots, which lead to more microbial life, which created vegetation with very high nutrition, which attracted wild life, which resulted in the infusion of more microbial species from the animal manure, all of which lead to an explosion of earth worms (hence the freakishly large concentration of wood cocks), all of which resulted in a radical reduction of soil compaction and increased water retention and reduced runnoff.
As we began clearing the New Land I coppiced most of the mimosas and left several intact. The livestock, including the horses loved the nutritious leaves and bark of the trees, especially those that had been coppiced and allowed to put out fresh shoots.
The living mimosa stand on the New Land is now decreased more than 95%. I am protecting many mimosas along the outside of our pastures.
And now it is a wet, ugly February about five years after I started taking down the large mimosas on that mimosa grove. yet the trees that once flourished there are continuing to contribute to our soil development.
Yesterday I begin turning over manure piles in different parts of the large pasture. I was delighted to find earth worms colonizing the piles. It was the area where the mimosas once flourished that provided the most shocking evidence of their worth. Manure piles in those areas were loaded with earth worms! More strong, vital worms than I had encountered any where except under a rabbit warren at the Little House which abuts the New Land.
Most horse owners have never heard of the concept of soil compaction and have no idea what it does to create mud and dust in a horse pasture. Soil compaction can be fought on many fronts, but microbes and earthworms are an effective part of the strategy that we use to fight compaction. Most horse owners only view horse manure as a problem that must be removed from the pasture instead of understanding that the manure is part of the solution when it is allowed to become part of the soil instead being taken from the soil that needs it so badly.
Future posts will focus on the development of the New Land pasture. We turning a wood lot of about fifteen acres into silvopasture and will be documenting the development of that project on these pages. If topics like this interest you go over the button on the side of the side of this post to click on it and receive these posts in your email.
You can learn more about Mill Swamp Indian Horses by visiting our web site www.millswampindianhorses.com
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