When It Rains, It Pours

We’ve gotten a cumulative 9.75 inches of rain the past six days. Our weather app says more rain is predicted this afternoon. What a stark difference from the Augusts of the last two years, in which we experienced droughts that had us worried about grass production and cattle feed. Not this year! Our phones have been buzzing with alerts of flood warnings every couple of days. On August 10th, the Hocking River measured 3.19 ft. Two days later it rose to 18.84 ft.

We are feeling particularly grateful that both of our farms are on ridgetops. While this can also mean that soils are thinner and more depleted due to erosion over the years, it’s a saving grace during these intense rainfall events to be perched on a hill.

What we grass farmers think about when managing land is not how much rain we get in a given year or event, but how much rain we keep. Healthy soils are better able to absorb water. The high organic matter and soil organisms create a porous soil structure that acts like a sponge, allowing water to infiltrate and be stored within the soil rather than run off. This can be the difference of a resilient farm that maintains sufficient forage during drought to feed the herd and a farm that has to truck in expensive hay from a distance.

Let’s see how this plays out locally.

On our home farm in Athens county, our soils are about 2% organic matter. But on the Shew farm we’ve taken on in Morgan county, the soils average 5% organic matter. In clay loam soils, an increase of 1% organic matter increases the soil’s available water capacity by 2,665 gallons per acre (source).

So on the healthier soils at the Shew farm, we’re able to store 7,995 additional gallons of water per acre than we can on our more depleted soils back home. Spread out across the Shew farm’s 110 acres of pasture, that’s 879,450 more gallons of absorbed water that would otherwise be lost in poorer soils.

This has obvious implications for drought periods. But the resilience of healthy soils also extends to flooding. The better that land absorbs water, the less that water swells up in waterways, runs downstream carrying topsoil with it, and floods our fields and towns.

Why are the soils so much healthier at the Shew farm? 40 years of managed grazing! Cattle help build healthy soils when grazed properly. We hope that our home farm will one day have the same healthy soils that can retain so much water.