Regenerative Farming on Bucklands Guest Farm
On our recent visit to Bucklands Guest Farm, we learned more about regenerative farming in the Karoo. We highly respect the farmer for the amazing work they do. We helped for a few days to move the kraal (enclosure) every day and to collect the livestock at night to bring them back in the kraal/ enclosure. It is hard work!
The livestock (on Bucklands - sheep and goat) are put into a temporary enclosure, made with interlocking gates every night. The temporary enclosure is moved to a different location the next morning. Each morning, the sheep and goat leave the enclosure (kraal) to walk "free" and graze in the surrounding areas. At night, they have to be fetched and brought back into the enclosure (kraal). This protect the livestock from predators, but this is also where their "night work" starts. 🌙 🐐 🐑
Livestock, in this case Angora goats 🐐 and sheep 🐑 is is used to restore the veld. The veld needs to get brief, intense grazing on it, and then be left to recover for many months. That is why the enclosure is moved every morning to a new location.
Livestock has the following impacts : grazing, trampling, hooves cutting soil, and fertility (dung & urine).
Grasses grow moribund and die when not consumed. Many seeds need to be distributed and fertilised by animals.
As the livestock walk and nibble fresh shoots, their hooves flatten moribund grass tussocks into mulch, exposing the growth points to sunlight again. They break up the crusted earth with their sharp hooves. Wherever they go, they leave their dung as a gift to the land and its seeds. When the rains come again, green grasses will spring up here.
The belief is that most farm areas were overgrazed, not because there were too many animals, but because they were left in one place too long. It was a function of time, not numbers.
Records show that there were sporadic but enormous springbok migrations across the dry plains. Many are reliably estimated to have numbered in the many millions. Some even say the migrations would have contained more animals than there are livestock present on Karoo farms today. (Before the current drought, there were around 7 million sheep and goats in the Little and Great Karoo.)
One particular trekbok migration in 1849 took three days to pass through Beaufort West. Writer Lawrence Green reports that they left the veld looking as if it had been consumed by fire.
The theory is that the buck, following the scent of rain and fresh forage, travelled mostly bunched together by predators. They would eat almost any living plant before them – there was no time or space to pick and choose the most palatable ones. All the while they would be churning up the crusted soil with their hooves, depositing their dung on the waiting seeds. Then they would move on, leaving the plants to recover and grow over months or years.
The veld thrived on this rough and irregular treatment. Explorers and hunters in the mid 1800s reported how the tall grass reached their booted shins while travelling through on horseback near Richmond in the Northern Cape, something almost unimaginable today.
