Organic weed control doesn't even work on the small scale, much less on real weeds.

The best you can do without 2-4D is to heavily seed and fertilize he things you want to grow and help them stay ahead of the weeds. Pasture weeds thrive in bad dirt so you need to keep your soil in good shape. Chicken litter and lime are the only things I know of that would be natural if you don't want real fertilizer either.

Also to solve your creek/fence issue... run a heavy steel cable between two trees 5-20 feet on either side of the creek. Tie hog panels to the cable all the way across the creek. This lets the rising water and debris through without killing your fence. We've been doing it for 25 years and haven't replaced a fence over a creek since.

Unfortunately the only true organic weed control for grass in broadleaf plants, or broadleaf weeds in grass, is a hoe and a lot of sweat and backbreaking work.

You can seed more heavily, and you can work your pasture the way a golf course manager works his/her greens by overseeding annually, aerating, cutting high and cutting often (no farmer wants to do this, just sayin)  and basically intensively managing the grass, but it will still involve hand weeding.

Most modern day folk don't fully understand the level of physical labor that involves, nor do they want to do it.  

I'm not saying I like chemical weed control, but there's a reason farmers use it.  

Are you planning to go all-organically grown stuff on the farm?

You are likely in for a culture shock with the amount of physical labor that involves even for a garden of any size.  For hay or any agronomic crop, it's truly overwhelming to try to keep it to modern standards for weed control.  You have to lower the bar.

Ohhhhh. I'm with ya now. My bad.


Yeah, that pretty well sucks.

Depending on the cattle you have, they can be kept in with a surprisingly light fence.  

When we needed to move cattle to rotate hay crops, we used those very light stake-type (metal) fence posts, driven with a hammer, and strung smooth wire between them.  The fence box was a good one, and it was pretty damn hot.

This was for docile Hereford and mixed breed beef cattle. Here's the key that made this work...

a-we did not have a bull
b-calves were sold young so they never go to the age where young bull calves started pushing boundaries and busting through fences.
c-If we had one that was a problem and wouldn't stay where he/she belonged, that animal got sold.

Some breeds jump like deer. (The Charolais crosses I've dealt with are awful. Damn near seven feet tall and can jump anything you put up.  They could step over the fences we used to use)

Some breeds are just more laid back overall, I think, and the management can make a big difference.

Any cattle will sometimes get out, but if you get a nice hot fence box and walk your fence every few days to keep the weeds down and stuff from shorting it out, it can work without heavy posts or high-tension wire.  

YMMV of course, but it might be worth a try for you.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with the smaller, "dairy/meat" animals that a lot of homesteaders are working with now.  My experience is with cattle that are primarily EITHER dairy OR meat animals.

This is all true, IME. Especially the fence leaping Charolais.

Around here Ag lime is spread as a powder. It's ground up limestone.  Most of the time the local ag supply company (Southern States Co-op is one of the big ones around here) comes out with a spreader truck and puts the lime on at the rate per acre that is needed to bring the ph into the range needed for whatever crop is getting grown.

Our soil tends toward the acidic end of the scale around here, and we need it more neutral for most agromic crops.  

I'm sure there are lime spreaders available for smaller applications, but it may end up that if you NEED lime (and that's a definite *if* as you won't know until you do the soil test) it will make more sense to get it spread by your local ag supplier.

You can buy it in bags, also.  But on a field the size of a pasture, I doubt it will pay you to buy the equipment to spread it yourself.

I will also say....you may need more than one test on that pasture if the flooding occurs on part of it but not all of it.  The flood sediment is going to make for a very different soil test (probably) than the part of the pasture that does not get flooded.  

So if there is a line you could draw across that slope, and the water almost never gets past that point?  Take a test BELOW that line, and take another test ABOVE that line....you might need to put treatments on one part or the other.  Realize of course, that whatever you do uphill is going to eventually end up downhill--at least part of it--before it gets watered into the root zone.  A visit to your county agent for agriculture might be in order....or to some other farmers around you (the guy who's doing your hay might have some good information) to ask what their bottom land is like, as opposed to their hillsides, and if they do anything different to one part or another.

Scroll down this page--you'll see that there are some implements that can get pulled behind tractors.  the ag suppliers also usually have some of these sitting out back.  Sometimes a farmer will go to the supplier and pull one of these home full of lime, hook it to his tractor and lime his field.  That might be an option for you...or your farmer who's managing your field now might do that for you since he likely has a larger tractor than you have.

Images of lime application

I'm going to say something else here about cattle management in a situation like yours, because I'm not certain whether you have any experience managing cattle or not.

If I were in your shoes and that was my property, I would plan to feed the cattle a little something even if there's plenty of grass.  You'll have to start this sometime other than spring, because in spring the grass is REALLY yummy, so it'll be harder to get them to care.  Here's why I suggest doing this:

You're going to need to be able to move those cattle easily and at the drop of a hat because of the flood possibilities.  Flooding is never going to come at just the right time. If those cattle are used to moving when you ask them to do so, your life will become WAY easier.

Ever wonder why cows come in to get milked and go oh-so-cooperatively into that milking stall?

It's because they get something out of it beyond offloading that tight udderful of milk.  They get fed something they do NOT get any other time.  They usually get a little scoop of feed they think is uber-yummy.  When we were milking it was a small scoop of sweet feed. At the university farm where I milked as a student, they got either sweet feed or some kind of supplement the professors were testing. (The supplement wasn't very tasty, I'll tell you right now, cuz the cows scheduled to get the supplement were a PITA every damn time.  They always tried to grab the wrong stall and eat the yummy stuff.  NO COWS tried to steal the supplement.  The professors, of course, did not care.  We who actually milked the cows felt bad for the experimental subjects.  )

Anyway....

So if you set your pasture up so that it is connected to an "uphill" pasture that will absolutely, positively have them safe even if Noah gets an encore, and then you FEED them something yummy in that pasture at least every couple of days--you get them used to coming WHEN YOU CALL--then when they do come up there, they get a treat.  

So you keep them in the top pasture exclusively for a few days, where you feed them (same time every feeding is good) their little treat.  You call them when you go down to feed.  

Then after a few days, you open the gap (electric fence gate) and turn them into the bottom pasture.  Close the gap.  Then at "feeding time" go down there, calling the cows, open the gap (electric fence gate) between the bottomland and the top pasture, and keep calling until they come up to the top to get their treat.

Eventually you can leave that top pasture open if you want, but the point is that you can call the cows and they will easily come to the top pasture. At worst you could go down there and call/herd them up there, then close the gap and they are safe from flood water.  What you don't want is for a flash flood to happen and have some of them trapped down there.

This also will help you with checking your cattle.  You will know your cows. Say you have twelve, and one is close to calving and you'd planned to put her up close to the house before she calves, but you go down there, call the cows to feed them, and everybody comes up but her.  Well...you've miscalculated her due date.  She's off in the bottoms by herself, getting ready to calve.  That's bad.  

So since you see your cows all the time, you will know something's off before it goes bad.  You can go down there and find her, get her up the hill and to a safe place to calve.  If you didn't have this regular practice, you might not notice.

Other farmers ( @cowboy ) can chime in here...there are more ways than this to accomplish what I'm suggesting, and having farmers talk about this will help you...it might save your herd, and/or some heartache as if you're any kind of human person, you'll get attached to those animals and whether or not it costs you money, you will hate to see bad things happen to them.

I suspect you already know that good animal husbandry means caring about your animals, which means walking your land and counting your cattle.  

You have full time jobs in addition to running a full time cattle and hay business

What KWS posted about getting the cattle used to you calling is very accurate. We have prevented disaster because the cows were more interested in our calling them vs whatever shenanigans they were getting into.

Also make connections with a good vet on the front end of things. You don't want to be vet shopping when a cow is down or has a baby stuck half way out her and hips locked up, nor do you want to pull an arfcom and ask GD what to do. Time is usually of the essence and you are usually behind the curve already. They'll also need vaccinations and worming 1-2 times a year.

I saw it before the edit. I chuckled.

You'll have plenty to do.  There won't be a need for plumping that pillow.

You know..

All these haters aside...

People DO make organically grown work.  I have friends who not only do it, but make a living doing it.

I want to say that right here in front of God and everybody.

Cuz while there are those among the homesteaders who stick to organically friendly methods, they don't report in as much, and they don't generally have as much acreage as the OP is trying to manage.  This forum tends to be more "conventional farming" oriented, but I think it's important that all farming methods be welcome here, and everybody can learn from everybody else.

Yes, those of us who have farmed understand what the OP is undertaking, and are reasonably concerned that he/she might be biting off more than he/she can chew with full time jobs and trying for organic growing on more than ten feet of acreage.  I am, personally, going "no way can they do that."

So let me say right here, OP, I really hope you succeed, and through all of your struggles, I hope you come here and let us know, because I think it's cool that you are going to try without engineered chemicals.

Go for it.  We are behind you, and if you can do it, we will learn from you.  The naysayers have a point, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.  Others have, and you can too.

We will help you in whatever small way we can.

My folks have lost several untethered goats to 'yotes. Tying one up on a field would be akin to tying one up in the Trex paddock at Jurassic Park.


And the best way to keep a goat in is to start with a container that is air tight.

A tethered animal is called "bait."  Don't do it.

It's hard enough to defend the ones that can run.

I figure you must have meant to quote Rat_Patrol, as he talked about organic methods for weed control.  

My post was about cattle management in a flood zone. :0)

I have a question.

You're talking about a LOT of work here, and you say you are willing to do that.  But you're "not interested in getting any donkeys for herd protection."

You clearly want to maintain as natural an environment as possible, yet you will be "killin yotes as often as possible."

I hate to point out the inconsistencies, but...I'm going to point out the inconsistencies.

Donkeys are a lot less work than digging weeds,  and it's clear that grazing and good pasture management are  your best bet for weed control.  A Great Pyrenees (trained and managed properly) is a good tool to protect cattle also.

Maybe the inconsistencies are based on raw and complete inexperience with anything outside of a suburb, or maybe I'm just not understanding what you're after exactly.

So that we can better help you, can you elaborate on your philosophy a little?

Great stuff!

That crimson clover is beautiful.  I never see that here.