With the summer drought well under way, the grass has pretty much gone dormant for the season. But you know what hasn’t?
The weeds! (Although borage is a bit too useful and pretty of a plant to be called a weed in an unqualified sense).
A quick trip into the food forest area to pull a couple thistles was enough to convince me than the bindweed there is possessed. There was a mat of it covering 300 square feet of wood chips (which we put down this spring to suppress the weeds). In 30 minutes I had pulled an entire wheelbarrow load of the stuff.
As a sort of experiment I wheeled that wheelbarrow into the barnyard to see what the livestock made of it.
They made an all-you-can-eat buffet of it.
The sheep even nibbled at the thistles, although they tired of that pretty quickly.
But the bindweed!
They chowed down on that bindweed like ice cream.
In half an hour they had eaten the entire wheelbarrow load.
So the next morning before work I pulled another wheelbarrow load (don’t worry, there is plenty more) and tossed it in for the ruminants.
They like it better than orchard grass, better than alfalfa. If only there were a way to pasture them out there without them nibbling all the leaves off of our new trees, or stepping all over the irrigation system.
Little Farm in the Big City 