In the middle of a vast green pasture in Edgartown, Dan and Meg Athearn are trying to get the attention of their cows:
"Hey, cows! Hey, you cows! Hey, You Cows! Hey Cows!! Come on, cow!"
It’s time for the cows, a herd of mothers and calves, to move from the pasture they’ve been on for 24 hours to fresh grass. As they get going, we hop in Dan’s truck to follow.
"The idea is that, yes, you're coming through with, they call it mob grazing, and so you get a big herd of cattle, you move in a temporary electric fence, the cattle are on that piece of land just for a day, and then they're off of it."
Mob grazing is a strategy Dan’s working with to try to control what’s growing on this unique stretch of grassland. His family, (which runs Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown), took over managing the land with a group of other local growers and cattle farmers in 2021.
"The soil out here is better than pretty much anywhere else in Edgartown. This is Katama loam, and it grows grass well."
But it’s been through a lot of different hands over the years, and Dan thinks the pasture isn’t as healthy as it could be — yet. So he’s working to improve it.
"Basically, we're doing two different techniques at the same time. I'm trying to do a low-intensive, kind of top-down approach. So first, you're gonna try to get the pH neutral. So a lot of grass species want to have a neutral pH. Also trying to promote legumes, so clover, alfalfa. And the truth is, weeds are great too. Cows eat all sorts of weeds. It's the woody plants that are a problem."
If the pasture isn’t grazed intensively enough, woody plants like multiflora rose and Eastern red cedar start taking over.
"And they are very hard to deal with," explains Dan. "So there are some areas where I'm trying to manage the cattle in such a way that there's a heavy impact on the land while the cattle are there and then you're off of it and then it has a long recovery period."
This way, the grass comes back, but the woody plants don’t have a chance to get going before the cows come in and graze the area again. Mob grazing like this works well in areas where the woody species haven’t gotten really established. But where they’ve already put down strong roots, Dan has decided to try something different.
"We are plowing about five acres each year and doing that into an annual forage crop. So that allows us to grow sorghum or oats, which are very bountiful and we'll actually cut that and make a bailage, bail it up as a wet hay. And we're getting a very large yield off that and that allows us to be in a tillage cycle for two or three years and then come back to a permanent pasture. And there we're seeding the species we want and we'll actually use oats as a nurse crop. So the oats shoot up real fast and they kind of shade out a lot of the noxious weeds and allows the grasses and the clover to be established under the oats."
Then, Dan brings the cows in to graze the oats off, and the understory of grasses and clovers shoots up and takes over. This is working well, Dan said, and he’s hopeful that as they keep fine-tuning their techniques, the group of farmers now grazing animals on this Katama grassland can help create habitat for other species, too.
"This land is very valuable. Pasture like this is extremely valuable to all the rare birds and birders love it out here because this is a unique environment, a grassland sandplain. This attaches to the old airfield which is a special habitat for all sorts of birds. And the grazing of cattle matches well with providing that for the wild birds and wild ecosystems alongside."
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Learn more about the species that rely on New England grasslands here.
Learn more about mob grazing here.
Learn more about silvopasture, which incorporates trees and grazing animals here.
Learn more about Elspeth's forthcoming book here.
