Meadow management

Our land consists of around 0.9 hectares of meadows, which need to be managed. In summer, usually mid- to end-June, the local farmer cuts about 0.6 ha for hay. Freshly cut, the hay contains about 85% moisture and would spoil by fungal infection if left in piles - so it's spread and 'tedded' to dry to about 20% humidity before being compressed into watertight bales for storage. (Moist hay can be fermented into silage - a bit like saeurkraut - and is often seen as bales covered in plastic). Unfertilized meadows such as mine stuggle to produce more than 3 tonnes of hay per hectare, so the farmer probably takes a maximum of 2 tonnes - though that's still enough to feed one cow for one year. He then leaves the grass to grow until the following summer.

In traditional farming, livestock are introduced into meadows after the hay cut to graze until winter (when they will feed on the stored hay). The happy side-effect of this system is that spring flowers are allowed to grow and seed before cutting, and the subsequent grazing provides space and light for their germination and growth. Over hundreds of years this has created semi-natural meadows with a great diversity of flowering plants. I do not have livestock, so my grass grows thick through the summer and the diversity of plants remains low. At least the umbellifers thrive and provide a place for insects to alight and feed.

The small hay meadow behind the house is just under half of the area cut by the farmer. I have decided to graze it after the summer cut to increase plant diversity. I am converting two-thirds of the meadow into an orchard. Here I leave the grass cuttings along the tree rows to allow their nutrients to seep back into the soil to feed their roots, whereas in the meadow between the rows I take away the cuttings to maintain the low fertility which restricts the fast-growing grasses that compete with flowering plants. In a few years, when the trees are big enough, the farmer will abandon the summer hay cut here - and I will need to do this the traditional way using a hand scythe. I could give the hay to a neighbour who has horses or goats.

I am left with 0.3 ha of meadow which the farmer doesn't cut, which was kept as a lawn by mowing throughout the year. This year I let it all grow, to see which flowers are present. I identified areas of diversity, and have selected those which I will grow in future as islands of flowers within the lawns.

To 'graze' all these meadows I purchased a surrogate big red cow of a beast - the tractor mower.

Each year I will need to remove the cuttings from the 0.3 ha area of orchard and lawn in which I want to enhance plant diversity. Although in half of this area the bulk of grass is removed by the farmer's summer cut, there's still a lot of grass to dispose of - I guess 0.2 ha of full season's growth. That would yield 0.6 tonnes of summer hay, based on my earlier estimate, and the subsequent growth added could bring the total to over one tonne of dried cuttings. I read that one tonne of loose hay takes up about 15 m3. My grass is not left to dry but stored moist, so the extra water will add to volume. On the other hand, the weight of the moisture will compact the grass more. So, 15 m3 per tonne is probably a good estimate (that's 15 times the volume of pure water which, as you know, weighs 1 tonne per m3).

My storage solution was to build bays out of wooden pallets; a series of three, with a total volume of around 17 m3 - in theory enough space to store all my meadow cuttings. Unlike the farmer, I do not mind if the moisture causes rotting - that's how I can reduce the volume. However, to avoid a sludge forming I cover the heap with tarpaulin and regularly add shredded cardboard waste to provide some structure. 

The result was beyond my expectations. A few weeks after filling the first bay the volume had reduced dramatically - presumably from compaction, moisture evaporation and ingestion by organisms - such that there was room to put in the cuttings from the following cut. I now have a system where I can stagger the areas cut through the season (which spreads the work load) and use the degradation to manage the level in only one bay - with the option to spill over to a second bay if necessary. This has freed up space for the other meadow waste - the leaves that fall from the trees. Although I do not collect the leaves that fall in the wooded areas, to encourage fungi and microorganisms, I remove them from the areas where I want to keep a lawn aesthetic. I collect them with the mower, which shreds them, and put them in a bay, where I further shred them with a stimmer - like making soup. This all helps, as the degradation of leaves to mold is a slow process relying on fungal activity. As fungi require moisture, the bay is left uncovered.

I use the shredded leaves and mold as mulch for my fruit trees, to suppress the grass that competes with them for water and to reduce soil evaporation.

One day I may use the decomposed meadow cuttings as compost, to fertilize vegetables in a yet unbuilt vegetable garden. I am reluctant to dig up the potager meadow, and lose the flowers and the wildlife they support, just to grow food I can afford instead to buy - but if man's instinct to forage his own food doesn't force a decision, Marianne's desire to cook delicious homegrown food definitely will.