Sheep eating turnips to extend the grazing season

While this planting of turnips wasn't a blowout success, it has been the best we've done planting turnips so far. When comparing the cost and effort of planting turnips to feeding hay, we determined that the turnips needed to last the sheep a month of grazing.

Unfortunately the sheep only made it 3 weeks before they finished eating them all up. But there was a gotcha, we decided to cancel our last butcher date to process 8 lambs for our own consumption to save on the fees. Our plan is to butcher them ourselves this winter. So with 8 extra sheep in the flock eating up the turnips it isn't surprising that the turnips didn't last as long as we had hoped. However it was likely pretty close to a wash either way.

If the neighbors will let us plant their field again next year, I think we will give the turnips another shot. I'll likely be more prepared and get them planted a little earlier and hopefully the soil will be ever so slightly improved from the microbial activity added from all the sheep manure. In the spring we plan to frost seed a cover crop grazing mix which we will let grow all spring and then graze it off with the sheep just before planting the turnips mid summer.

#permaculture #permies #homesteading #rotationalgrazing #sheep #lamb #meshtadel #regenag #regenerativeagriculture