Webinar: Forage Grazing Micro Dairies

Join SDSPA on Nov. 18th at 10 AM CST for our webinar to learn about how the Dougherty’s have used intensive grazing for on their successful micro dairy.

Shawn and Beth Dougherty have been farming together since the 1980’s, for the last twenty years in eastern Ohio, where they manage 90 acres, much of it designated by the state as ‘not suitable for agriculture’.  Using intensive grazing as the primary source of food energy, they raise dairy and beef cows, sheep, farm-fed hogs, and a variety of poultry, producing most of the food, feed and fertility for humans and animals, on the farm.  Concerned that farming is so often dependent upon multiple off-farm resources, from feed, fuel and fertilizer to water and electricity, their ongoing project is to identify and test the means by which farming was done for centuries with a minimum of off-farm inputs. Their research has led them to identify grass conversion, especially the daily conversion of grass into milk by dairy ruminants, as a key to whole-farm sustainability, combined with the integrated nutrient feed-backs that are possible with a community of diverse animal and plant species, domestic and native. They are the authors of The Independent Farmstead, Chelsea Green Press 2016.

Register here to get the participation link.

This segment has been funded under a Conservation Collaboration Cooperative Agreement NR226740XXXXC008 between the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and South Dakota Specialty Producers Association (SDSPA), to promote sustainable agriculture practices and environmental stewardship. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA or NRCS.