Multi species crop trial in 2018

This year we thought we would try planting multi species crops to do a number of things for us.  Feed for our cattle is the number one but we are looking to improve our soil structure and fertility and so we did our homework  (mostly on the internet) and tried a version of cover cropping in our pastures. The USA has been going down this track for some time now so we found some very interesting youtube pieces to watch.
Gabe Brown’s philosophies are what we have modelled our trials on.  There are many schools of thought on covercropping and lots of great advice out there.

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A QUOTE FROM GABE BROWN –  “When I tell people about my ranch, I tell them that we try to fail at something every year. If we don’t fail at something, we’re not trying enough new things. Failures are simply learning experiences. It’s what you do with that failure and how you change that dictates your path in life. We take these failures — make sure they are small, you don’t do an experiment on the whole operation, you just do it on a small percentage of it — but you learn from and you grow from it. It also makes it fun just to see what you can do.”

We planted 300 acres with a multi species mix and because of the season it didn’t fair too well.  Some however, germinated (only about 50 acres) and the sorghum amongst the mix has grown pretty well.  Well enough for us to be looking at chopping it for feed through the winter ahead.  That will be done by the end of January- if we can keep the pigs and roos at bay.