| | | Newsletter from Montana - Minnesota
August 2011
We had a fast and furious hailstorm in Red Lodge a few weeks ago - talking to old timers, nothing of the likes happened in the last 30 years they know of. We had a chipped window, chipped paint and the roofs got ruffed up. The area was declared a "disaster area" which means when you call your insurance claims department they send an appraiser around who assesses the damage and then the insurance sends you a check (from all the money YOU had paid in) without talking about deductibles. This will not raise your rates either, if the rates do go up they will go up for the neighbor who did not call the insurance adjuster in exactly the same way, so you might as well reach for the phone. For State Farm it is 800/732 5246. An automated system will ask you for your zip code and if it is on the list, they will take your address. At any rate, lo and behold we received a check in the mail from our insurance. Since my husband knows how to fix airplanes, he certainly knows how to fix a house. So instead of hiring somebody we will use all the money to buy materials, such as a round of new windows, a metal roof for the garage and new paint. The poor man is bored to tears anyway since we sold our farm in Minnesota and all our farm equipment takes up space in the back yard and garage until we get our new digs in Montana. Our little house here in Red Lodge will serve as office then, besides growing up in Berlin I am not ready to give up "city life" all together.
Not only the sky is falling, but so are the prices for land and homes and even Montana got wise to that fact. The fabulously treed four acres south of town with all utilities - including water, but a septic system is still needed - can now be had for $125,000 - that is quite a reduction from $180,000. Here you are half way between the Red Lodge Ski Resort and downtown Red Lodge, close to hiking trails into the National Forest and the stunning Highway into the Yellowstone Park, soaring to 11,000feet.
Hunting season is upon us and if you enjoy butchering, maybe this is the business opportunity you are looking for. A small town among ranch land where the deer and antelope roam and play. The town does need a butcher and they reduced the price for the
building downtown to $ 90,000 with two big coolers to boot.
Some people just like to enjoy living out in the country and off the grid. The
480 acres near Fort Benton fully equipped with solar and wind power ($100,000 value), two barns and a pond are now available for only $445,000. The owner cannot keep the property due to health reasons, make an offer!
In Red Lodge the
Equestrian Center "Aspen Ridge" of 250 acres came on the market for $4,950,000
There is a video of it,
A Fact Sheet and several
galleries of photos.
The owners have $ 6.3MM in it, with the barn alone costing $1.3MM, the home $1.8MM, land improvements $1.2MM, caretaker's house or guest home $500,000 and they had bought the acreage for $1.5MM. Wow.
Aspen Ridge comes with the 5,760sf executive home, a 1,462sf guest house, a 5,760sf state-of-the-art 12-stall luxury barn, 4,380sf of additional buildings, two large pivot sprinkler systems and ten subdivided lots in case you want more homes for your family and friends. The property is on the grid but can also operate independently with the installed solar and wind power. There is a stream running across the property and ponds are nestled in the rolling hills. 10+ miles of groomed riding trails await you there among the Aspen. The Nordic center is close by for cross country skiing, the ski mountain is a 15 minute drive and
downtown Red Lodge for shopping and dining is 6 miles:
This month the horse magazine "Going Gaited" is featuring my ad. This is also the same ad that will run in the Red Lodge Real Estate guide and this time
I put all of my listings in there.
It is linked from "columns" at the top of the page, way down at the bottom, in case you want to find it from the main page. The online magazine features interesting articles about horse care.
If you are new to farming, you might want to know that small pastures for your animals will yield better results than sending all your critters onto one huge pasture.
Multi-paddock grazing improves vegetation, soil health and animal production relative to continuous grazing in large-scale ranches, according to Texas
AgriLife Research
scientists.
"In our study we examined the accumulated impacts of nine years of different grazing management categories on vegetation and soil parameters at a commercial-ranch scale," they said. In rangeland ecosystems, maintaining normal soil and ecosystem function over the landscape and watershed is possible only if there is adequate plant cover and species composition to provide protection from soil loss. This allows microorganisms to prosper and maintain ecosystem functions such as water-holding capacity, control of erosion, soil fertility and forage production.
The study evaluated the impact of multi-paddock grazing at a high stocking rate compared to light continuous and heavy continuous grazing on neighboring commercial ranches in three proximate counties in North Texas tall grass prairie. The same management had been conducted on all ranches for at least the previous nine years.
Multi-paddock grazing was managed using light to moderate defoliation during the growing season followed by adequate time to recover, Teague said.
With multi-paddock grazing and ungrazed areas, the vegetation was dominated by taller more productive grasses. With heavy continuous grazing, it was dominated by less productive short grasses and forbs, he said. Light continuous grazing had a lower proportion of tall grass species than multi-paddock grazing or ungrazed areas.
Teague said there was more bare ground on heavy continuous than light continuous, multi-paddock and ungrazed areas, while soil aggregate stability was higher with multi-paddock than heavy continuous grazing, but not light continuous grazing and ungrazed areas. Soil compaction was lowest with multi-paddock grazing and ungrazed areas and highest with heavy continuous grazing.
Water infiltration rate did not differ between grazing management categories, but soil erosion was higher with heavy continuous grazing. Soil, organic matter, water holding and fertility were higher with multi-paddock grazing and ungrazed areas than both light continuous and heavy continuous grazing.
The fungal/bacterial ratio also was highest with multi-paddock grazing as a result of the greater amounts of tall grass species, indicating superior water-holding capacity and nutrient availability and retention for multi-paddock grazing.
The general management on the ranches using multiple paddocks per herd was to graze a pasture lightly to moderately for one or three days, followed by a recovery period of approximately 30-50 days and 60-90 days during fast and slow growing conditions, respectively.
This resulted in two light-to-moderate defoliations during the growing season with re-grazing before the majority of plants switched from vegetative to reproductive phases. This approach kept the plants in a leafy, vegetative condition during the growing season providing a high level of forage quality for the livestock and ensured the best possible forage regrowth after defoliation.
During drought periods, animal numbers were adjusted to match forage amounts. In the winter, the goal was to graze and trample most of the standing forage to enhance litter cover and minimize self-shading that would limit plant growth in the following spring.
"Multi-paddock grazing resulted in a higher proportion of desirable tall grasses, a lower proportion of less desirable short grasses, annual winter-growing grasses and forbs, and higher standing crop, even with a higher stocking rate than the lightly stocked continuous grazing."
Although the stocking rate was less with lightly stocked continuous grazing, the preferred plants and areas were never allowed any recovery under continuous grazing while multi-paddock grazing, correctly managed, prevented overgrazing and allowed for adequate recovery after defoliation, he said.
"It also provides the manager with the option of regulating the grazing pressure on preferred areas and plants by adjusting when to move animals to a new paddock, and provides the means to allow grazed plants to recover before they are grazed again.
"If managers adaptively respond to the ever-changing climate by changing the periods of grazing and time allocated for plant recovery, and adjust livestock numbers to match the available feed, as the multi-paddock grazers in this study did, negative effects of grazing by the livestock can be minimized."
When you are haying, the size of bale depends on the marketing plans for it. The use of big round bales started in the early 1980's. At that time mostly straw was rolled up for the mushroom industry on the coast. There was little to no interest in large alfalfa bales. Since then interest in big bales has increased tremendously, particularly in the dairy and ranching industry. Large bales reduce hand labor on the dairy, because they can be handled solely by mechanical means, reducing workmen compensation claims and reducing time needed for feeding. Five hundred dairy cows can be fed in an hour with big bales and the appropriate feeding wagons. Although big bales aren't cheaper to make than small bales, there are some advantages on the production end too. One of the most important is that the "baling window" is larger for the big bales, which do not need as much dew because there is less leaf shatter. With big balers, plants are not cut as they're baled. Even if leaves detach from the plant they stay in the windrow and are put in the bale. A big baler can cover about 1.5 times as much area as a traditional baler per hour. With the larger window for baling and the increased volume, large balers can bale more premium hay in a day than regular balers can.
Big bales also result in less compaction on the field because the haulers don't travel over as much ground as bale wagons do with traditional bales. Another advantage to large bales, is that transportation is easier. Any flatbed truck or freight shipper can carry the large bales. Bales 3'x 8'x4' in size are preferred over those that are 4' x 4' x 8' because more can fit on the truck as they can be stacked three bales high.
For large bales it is very important not to bale with too much moisture, 16-17% moisture should be the maximum for the large bales, using moisture meters both in the baler and then testing the bales. With small bales you could bale up to 20-22% moisture. Moisture is even more critical for bales larger than 3/4 ton bales. A lot of good hay goes to the horse market, and there mostly small bales are used. For the horse market the cutting interval is lengthened which provides horses with a good quality hay for their purpose which helps the grower to keep stands for five or more years. Also, one drawback to the big bales is there is no standard method yet for the proper way to sample them. Because of the way the windrow is fed into the baler, there may be more leaves at the top of the bale and more stem at the opposite end. Depending on where the samples are taken, the analysis could vary greatly. We see in the future increased use of large bales, especially as dairies and ranchers purchase the equipment to take advantage of them and lately even horse breeders.
If you are in the market for a large Montana or Wyoming Ranch, I have an updated list of ranches available for the asking, just let me know.
If you are not living on the East coast and have the luxury to observe the storm systems from your armchair, NASA posted
live movies of Hurricane Alley.
Maybe one of those winds will blow you in!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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