@Stephen_Sinnott our operation is 600 or so total acres, 210 in livestock. We run cattle, sheep, goats, and diverse poultry. All are intensively managed- daily move high intensity grazing. We have not done any fertility applications of any kind in the last 2 years. I am seeing a fair degree of dysfunction in numerous of our fields. Observationally- very tight soil, slow recovery, poor water infiltration, and on some fields we have some real weed challenges. My thinking based on those observations were confirmed via soil analysis, and I’ve been drawing up my RX for a few weeks now. It’s my first complete set of agronomic/cultural management recommendations, and I’m pretty excited to be doing it. You asked about moisture- we see heavy rain for part of the year, followed by hot and dry summers. It’s fairly challenging, actually. This spring we saw fields saturated for weeks at a time, and then in summer we hit a growth slump. I am in the rabbit hole of keyline design presently- we located a keyline plow relatively close, and I am hoping to manage water on the property much better that way, as well as bust some compaction. I’m also considering using the keyline plowing as an opportunity to inject some materials (humates, calcium) and plant, but I have some question marks there.

My goals are whole system function improvement for a diverse pasture setting, diversifying plant species including winter forage and getting off of hay entirely and controlling water better. I am first working on soil physics to improve gas exchange and water movement, and then sending microbes and microbe food in and planting. As we go on, my best idea to get a handle on mineral and trace mineral cycling and availability is to choose some baseline species in the diverse forage to run sap analysis on. Maybe if I pick a species or two to monitor, I can get some idea of how nutrients are functioning in the system as a whole for all the plants.