Maintaining the Dress Code: Using Holistic Planned Grazing to Deal with Weeds as a Social Problem while Regenerating the Land
by Andrea Malmberg
Tony and I have been stewarding 94 acres of Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) zoned land (36 acres of which are within the city limits) outside of Union, Oregon, since 2010. The brief history as I know it: It is the land of the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla. It has been named for generations as the place of foaling and camas. On the ridge above the meadows is a buffalo jump and the waters were full of salmon who swam hundreds of miles inland to find their spawning grounds. The water rights named “Union Orchards” date back to 1874, the time in history when settlers transformed this place into a foreign image of how food should be produced. The house and barn were built in the early 1900s and served as a “poor farm” during the depression to house people who were in need of paying off their debts.
Since 1993, this place has been managed according to Oregon’s Right to Farm Statute, which acknowledges that agriculture, because of the open space necessary for production provides public benefits. For example, the open land used for agriculture south of Union’s city limits is a vital natural and economic asset for the city. In addition, the preservation of a maximum amount of agricultural land in large blocks is necessary to maintain the agricultural economy of the city and state and to ensure that citizens obtain adequate and nutritious food from Oregon’s lands. For all intents and purposes, the land we steward is an agricultural portal for the rural town of Union.
Our primary product on our EFU land is grassfed beef and, secondarily, grassfed lamb. Our customers demand a product free from herbicides, pesticides, growth hormones, and added antibiotics. They are reassured that our animals are treated humanely, and management enhances soil health, conserves water, provides wildlife habitat (including pollinators and birds), and supports overall ecological function. We are also in the agritourism business, and our Airbnb guests want to be in a place free from toxic chemicals, enjoy being on a working ranch, and are eager to learn about our regenerative agriculture practices.
Yet, the regulations for EFU lands are geared toward industrialized agriculture, which supports policies that encourage bare ground, monocultures, and weed and pest wars.
Many people seem to think it's crazy that we would move our ranching operation from a remote, basically regulation-free place in Wyoming to the edge of a small town in a liberal-leaning state like Oregon. Yet, generally, the political and social atmosphere of moving from the cowboy state to the beaver state supports our values and purpose of demonstrating that livestock-based agriculture can co-exist and benefit from functional fisheries and ecosystem processes, and properly managed livestock are essential to creating regenerative landscapes.
It’s true that in Wyoming, we didn’t get weekly phone calls from regulators or fines, but hundreds of thousands of acres are bombarded with aerial spraying of herbicides and pesticides. The policies to promote industrialized agriculture, petrochemical dependence, and the lack of understanding of the root causes of desertification run deep wherever you are on the Oregon Trail.
Holistic Planned Grazing as a way to manage social problems
As Holisticators, we understand the importance of our grazing plans. These plans, one for the growing season and one for the dormant season are our tools to manage the complexity of livestock management. They guide us in getting the right animals to the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons, and with the right behavior. Our ultimate goal is to regenerate soils, thereby optimizing plant production. This, in turn, supports animal health and welfare, as well as our profitability.
We create these yearly grazing plans for the entire property, as no two years are alike. Weather, customers’ preferences, weight gain and finishing time on animals, plant communities, wildlife and pest issues, and social dynamics are always changing.
As one can see here, the plans are well-used. They help us keep on top of the big picture as the plan inevitably changes. For example, if plants are growing faster than expected because of a warm, wet spring, livestock moves faster as well to prevent overgrazing of desirable plants.
With a herd of cow-calf pairs, yearlings, and a few sheep that we move almost daily, it is obvious to any passerby that we are in the business of agriculture. What might not be obvious is how these grazing plans guide our overall operation. For example, depending on the year, while other farmers are baling hay, we often let our forage grow to stockpile as winter feed. This type of management reduces inputs while increasing the function of the ecosystem processes. They also help us to advance biodiversity by moving the plant community to more complexity.
So, what about All the Weeds?!
The simple plant community that predominated the landscape was here because of past management decisions that included extensive irrigation, herbicide and fertilizer use, tilling, hay production that exported nutrients, and continuous grazing with a few animals. In 2010, being the first year of active management the place honestly felt inhospitable as I enjoy moving livestock in a skirt and moccasins. I maneuvered that personally desired dress code in the sagebrush steppe, but the thistles at our new homestead were just too much. Jeans and boots were required. Hot. Confining.
Yet we saw the possibility of repairing this lovely place in the world and established long-term trend and condition monitoring sites to inform our management.
This statement from the third-party monitoring notes is illustrative of the ranch’s overall plant community at the time:
“This pasture has probably received some type of continuous grazing, historically (milk cows or horses perhaps). This is probably the reason for the strong weed presence for areas of the pasture. Dense areas of Canada Thistle to the west coupled with musk and Scotch thistle patches (and curly dock) to the south.”
Being new to the area, we continued a haying contract with a neighbor and tested the decision to spray herbicide as per his recommendation for hay production, targeting dandelions in the hay fields.
And in the garden—what a mess. We were told we had a perfect garden spot and that it just needed to be rototilled. Mostly new to gardening, given that Tony and I have spent our lives in high-elevation landscapes, we welcomed the local wisdom.
In 2011, we were greeted with the unintended consequences of our decisions—more dandelions and Canada Thistle simply trying to cover the bare ground that we had created. We knew that we needed to focus on the tools we knew well—grazing and animal impact.
We rototilled the established garden plot in 2010 and brought in sheep to control Canada Thistle in 2015. By 2019, the soil surface was mostly covered, and we harvested a healthy crop of vegetables.
We had many more dandelions in 2011 a year after spraying them. By 2013, the same area was dominated by Canadian thistle. By 2018, we saw more clover and perennial grasses.
We were focused on the goal of continuing to create desired plant community while successfully treating whitetop, Canada thistle, catchweed bedstraw, Scotch thistle, hemlock, stinging nettles, buttercup, mullein, poison hemlock, burdock, bull thistle, and hounds tongue. Monitoring data and photo points show significant control on much of the property and by 2016 I was able to wander the pastures in my preferred attire.
The Social Disaster
When diagnosing the root cause of a problem, we are asked if there was a natural disaster that led to the situation. I have come to see almost all disasters as social in nature. One such event happened in 2018 when the ditch rider allowed a fire to get loose, burning a pasture on the edge of town. The result was bare ground and the emergence of a healthy crop of Canada thistle. Tony and I didn’t think it was a big deal. The plants were doing their job -- covering bare ground, photosynthesizing, drawing up needed nutrients, breaking up compaction, and allowing space for the soil to breathe. Some of our neighbors and the City of Union had a different opinion, and we faced a hefty fine if we didn't mow or spray the field. Given our experience using these tools of technology and backed by eight years of data on transforming the plant community, we approached it as a great learning opportunity. What we learned, unfortunately, is that you can't fight city hall!
In 2019, we did a “carbon treatment” by feeding excess hay on Canada thistle. Within a year grasses took over.
Tony and I stuck to our guns, paid the fine, and continued the rewarding work of caring for livestock who are repairing the land. We also learned we have to maintain a bit of a dress code to keep our neighbors’ perception of what is good management at bay — along the roads we will spray vinegar on the plants so they look dead without damaging soil health. It’s human nature for people to see what they believe and not believe what they see.
Sheep were used to graze the burn area the summer 2019 and an EOV short-term monitoring site was established.
While we have a long way to go in diversifying the plant community, today, I'm happy to say this is my dress code for summer 2024!
Andrea Malmberg stewards UVE’s learning site Bunchgrass Land and Livestock with her husband Tony.