Prescribed Grazing and Virtual Fence Field Day at Longview Farm

Join Future Harvest and the Million Acre Challenge for a Prescribed Grazing and Virtual Fence Field Day at Longview Farm with Penelope Breese. In this workshop we'll cover the basics of prescribed grazing, an introduction to virtual fencing, and dive into the Maryland Soil Health Card and the Pasa Soil Health Benchmark Study. 

About Longview Farm

The farm has been in the Breese family since the 1940’s. Bald eagles nest in our woods (and eye our chickens!) Deer, foxes and wild turkey are in residence. A traditional tobacco barn, where tobacco leaves once grown on the farm were speared onto sticks to hang and cure from the rafters, now houses our tractor. Piles of tobacco sticks remain, but are now used as spacers between the wood boards cut from fallen trees on the farm, stacked and drying to be used for fencing or barn siding.

Our Angus cows are humanely raised and feed only on grass and kelp and free choice organic minerals. We practice prescribed grazing, for this a pasture is divided into smaller areas or paddocks, often using portable fencing. One paddock is grazed for a short time, while the remaining paddocks rest and recover in a planned sequencethat takes several factors into consideration, including the rate of plant growth, level of vegetative cover, needs of the grazing animal. Eating a small percentage of forage, and trampling most of the forage and manure, the herds enriched the soil and grasses that remained behind. To emulate that “herd effect,” we move our cows daily to fresh pasture – making our cows and our soil healthier each day. Our heritage Berkshire Pigs are fed are fed a barley and wheat feed.  Wire fences allow us to rotate them through the oak and poplar woods to root for grubs, acorns, whatever strikes their fancy, making them particularly delicious. Our hens spend most of the year in “chicken tractors ” - bottomless pens that are moved once a day to fresh pasture, where they can hunt and peck for fresh insects and grass and worms

Event details

Please dress for the weather  Inclement weather date: May 13