Jess Friedman [00;00;04;13] Hello and welcome to pastures for the planet, the podcast for equestrians who want to work with nature, not against it. I’m Jess Friedman of Friedman Family Farms, and I’m here with Alayne Blickle, creator and director of horses for Clean Water, an environmental education program trusted by horse owners all over the world. Alayne, I’m so excited to be here with you for our very first episode!

Alayne Blickle [00;00;26;24] Oh, I’m so excited to be here, and I’ve been looking forward to doing this for a long time.

Jess Friedman [00;00;32;29] You’ve been teaching sustainable horse keeping and land management for over 30 years. When we started talking about creating this podcast, you felt that the first topic we should address was pasture management. What makes pastures so important?

Alayne Blickle [00;00;46;02] Well, there’s a lot of reasons. And pastures are really important to horse owners because they know how much their horses enjoy them. But first and foremost, a healthy pasture sequesters carbon.

Jess Friedman [00;01;02;24] We often hear that tossed around as a buzzword. But what does it mean exactly?

Alayne Blickle [00;01;07;02] Well, it’s a pretty cool thing. Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, which is our most prevalent greenhouse gas. During photosynthesis, plants capture CO2 from the atmosphere and convert the carbon that would be the C and CO2 into sugars and carbohydrates that they are going to need for growing so that oxygen, the O2, is released back into the atmosphere.

Jess Friedman [00;01;39;08] Okay, so it makes sense why they call forest the lungs of the planet. It’s like breathing, just in reverse.

Alayne Blickle [00;01;44;18] Exactly. But the really cool thing is that while trees account for about 25% of carbon sequestration globally, that carbon is stored primarily in their trunks and their leaves. Grasslands, on the other hand, sequester carbon primarily as their roots. And as those roots break down, the carbon is transferred to the soil. A 2018 study by UC Davis in California indicated that grasslands are actually more resilient carbon sinks than forests, because when a wildfire moves through a forest, which unfortunately, as we know is happening more and more frequently, all the carbon that’s stored in those trunks and leaves is then released back into the atmosphere. But when a wildfire moves through a grassland, most of the carbon stays safely stored in the soil.

Jess Friedman [00;02;44;05] Okay, so healthy pastures capture carbon dioxide and store it underground. How else do they help?

Alayne Blickle [00;02;50;00] Well, pastures can help build drought resilience by improving soil water holding capacity and decreasing runoff during heavy rains. When properly managed pasture grasses develop long, thick root networks, especially it’s they’re comprised of native grasses. These roots can reach super deep into the soil and a lot deeper than like lawn grass, which is really short. So when the roots break into the soil, they break up the soil. And this releases soil compaction, which will allow water to infiltrate back into the soil during a plant’s life cycle. They naturally are going to shed parts of their roots and regrow new ones, and the shed roots contribute to the organic material on the soil. And all of this just works together in a really cool way to make the soil more sponge like and allow it to absorb and store water.

Jess Friedman [00;03;54;19] So in addition to storing carbon, we’re also storing valuable water. That’s pretty amazing.

Alayne Blickle [00;04;00;12] Yes. Then on top of the soil you have the grass stems and the leaves. The leaves are actually called tillers, which help to slow the flow of the surface water. And then that gives the water more time to percolate down into the soil. Not only does this help prevent erosion, but it allows the soil to act as a filter for environmental pollutants like excess nitrogen that’s found in horse manure or other pollutants, potentially like, chemical fertilizers or herbicides.

Alayne Blickle [00;04;36;18] If rainwater runs from your horse paddocks or manure piles, and if it’s left unchecked, it can flow into natural bodies of water like aquifers and even get into our groundwater and our wells. And these things in the water can actually cause harmful algae blooms that kill native wildlife and even pose a risk for human health. Yeah, it’s a big word.

Jess Friedman [00;05;01;15] That’s called eutrophication, right?

Alayne Blickle [00;05;06;24] A lot of times we see it applied to lakes, but in a healthy pasture contaminated rainwater runoff gets filtered by the soil, leaving the nitrogen where the plants can make good use of it.

Jess Friedman [00;05;20;03] To create chlorophyl, which is the compound that drives photosynthesis. Talk about coming full circle. Nature is pretty amazing.

Alayne Blickle [00;05;27;19] Yes, exactly. So productive pastures also help keep temperatures down, which is an added benefit when we’re talking about global temperatures that are rising.

Jess Friedman [00;05;38;23] You can even feel that difference when you walk out in your paddock versus in your pasture on a hot, sunny day. The pasture always feels a little cooler.

Alayne Blickle [00;05;46;14] Yes. It’s wonderful. In a dirt paddock or an overgrazed pasture, it’s going to be a lot hotter because the heat from the sun increases the soil temperature, which is killing soil biology and reducing the health of the plants. And it increases the temperature of that little microclimate that you’re in at that moment. And by contrast, the longer, thicker stands at grass shade the soil. They help hold in moisture, and those long roots pull up some of the moisture stored in the soil and release it into the atmosphere through a process that’s called transpiration. That’s why it feels like good pasture is air conditioned compared to your confinement area. All of this works together to help create climate resilience.

Jess Friedman [00;06;37;06] Okay, explain that to me too. What exactly is climate resilience?

Alayne Blickle [00;06;41;07] Climate resilience is the ability to anticipate and prepare for and respond to hazardous events or trends or disturbances, that are all related to climate change. To put it another way, it’s a measure of how well-equipped a particular property or community is to handle the different challenges resulting from human caused climate change, such as drought, flooding, wildfire, etc..

Jess Friedman [00;07;12;08] So it sounds like creating healthy pastures isn’t just a way to reduce our impact on the environment, it’s also an important part of making sure our properties can continue to thrive in a changing climate.

Alayne Blickle [00;07;22;07] Exactly. Yeah, it’s pretty exciting. So we can each be a small but an important part to the solution of climate change and what what to do about it.

Jess Friedman [00;07;34;24] So how can I tell if my pasture is helping build climate resilience? Is it just a matter of looking out and seeing a wide swath of green grass, or…?

Alayne Blickle [00;07;43;03] Yeah, I love this question because that’s not exactly true. Green pastures aren’t always healthy because even overgrazed pastures can look really green if you think about it. Think about, really rainy parts of the world, like the Pacific Northwest in North America. Some of those pastures can look very, very green. But if you look at them, the grass plants are actually really short. And that’s because the grass plants are trying to grow and they’re continuously pushing out fresh, tender shoots. But there could also be a whole lot of weeds there. And all of that makes it look lush and green, even though it might be drought or not. A rainy time of the year, but weeds are a good indicator of imbalance in your pasture environment, and many weeds can thrive in compacted soils that have low fertility.

So the fact of the matter is that a quick drive by assessment isn’t going to tell you much about your pasture health or sustainability. To really get a good understanding, you have to get out there, take a walk in your pasture and take a closer look at the plants and the soil. Are there bare spots? What is the ratio of weeds to the desired pasture forage? Are your animals spending more time grazing in one area versus another? Is there standing rainwater after a storm, or are there areas that get really muddy? You might want to just stick your fingers into the soil and see how it seals. Is it super dry and hard, or is it soft and crumbly? Healthy soil should look and feel like chocolate cake.

Jess Friedman [00;09;30;02] And now I want cake.

Alayne Blickle [00;09;32;29] [Laughs] Okay. One way to assess your soil health is to take a hula hoop out there and toss it randomly on the ground. Observe what’s inside the hoop and jot down some notes. And this is actually a scientific thing to do. So you can do that several times in different spots all over your pasture, and you’ll end up with a fairly good idea of what’s going on out there and how things could be improved.

Jess Friedman [00;10;00;19] I remember doing this when I was working on my master’s thesis. We literally took a hula hoop and just tossed it. And that’s how we took randomized samples in the field where I was doing research.

Alayne Blickle [00;10;09;05] Yeah, I did a two on one summer job, in Montana, and we were looking at Rangeland Health and yeah, we threw a lot of hula hoops.

Jess Friedman [00;10;19;23] It’s a lot of fun, especially if you have kids that can help you. They’ll have a great time, and it’s a good way to get them involved in some real life science.

Alayne Blickle [00;10;26;24] Yeah, you can actually make a game out of it if you’ve got kids.

Jess Friedman [00;10;30;13] Okay, so say I’ve gone out and assessed my pasture and there’s definitely room for improvement. What are some things I can do to make it better?

Alayne Blickle [00;10;36;28] Okay, so there’s some basic, simple things. And the first thing is that plants need at least 3 to 4in of what I call solar panels in order to grow and be healthy grass plants. So that’s kind of the golden rule of pasture management, in that you don’t ever want to let your pastures get grazed down below 3 to 4in.

Another important rule is that you don’t want your pasture plants to go to seed, because once they have gone to seed, they figure that their job is done for the summer and they’re going to go dormant. One of my friends used to say, they’re going to kick back and put their seed up for the rest of the summer. So we want to keep them in the growing stage and not in the reproductive stage. And you can do that with your horses or by mowing your pastures. And we’ll talk about those specifics more as we go along.

Another thing to do is to not let your horses on wet pastures. And that’s because those heavy hooves of horses can compact the soil and push out of the air onto the soil, and the plants actually breathe through their roots. And you have a lot of air in the soil. And as you compact the soil, the plants can’t breathe and they start to die. The plant starts to die, and your pasture health is going the wrong direction. So that means don’t allow your horses on irrigated pasture or pasture that’s just been rained on in like a heavy rain. If you can walk out there and make a footprint, you know your horse is going to be able to make a footprint.

And then another important point is to think about using and recycling all that manure from your horses. 50 pounds of manure a day. You can compost it and reapply it to your pastures. And again, we’ll talk about this more in the future. But this is an important part of the natural cycle. And we want to include those nutrients back to the pasture. If you think about it, the horses are taking grass and nutrients from the pasture all the time when they’re grazing it or if you’re haying it. So you’ve got to put something back, and the way that we can do that in this sort of holistic approach is to recycle nutrients from manure and put that compost back on.

Jess Friedman [00;13;15;11] And then like we talked about earlier, it’s going to sequester the carbon in the soil and filter the pollutants. So they’re not harming us, our horses, or the environment.

Alayne Blickle [00;13;22;20] Exactly. Yeah. And healthy plants and healthy soils can actually break down other pollutants, like I mentioned before about excess fertilizer or herbicides. Healthy soils and microbes can break down harmful materials and keep them from causing other environmental impacts.

Jess Friedman [00;13;44;24] Alayne, I’m sure there’s more that goes into good pasture management than we can cover in a single episode. What are we going to talk about in future episodes? What can our listeners expect to learn?

Alayne Blickle [00;13;54;00] In a future episode, we’ll also talk about confinement areas—sometimes we call them sacrifice areas—and how important they are and how you use them with pasture management. I always like to say that the confinement area is the heart of a pasture management program, and even on big ranches, cattle or horses, you’ll see that they have a confinement area too, because this is where you’re going to put your livestock so that your pastures never get grazed below that 3 to 4in. And this is where you’re going to put them when it’s rainy or you’re irrigating. And it’s also where you’re going to put them in the winter time when your pastures are dormant and they’re not growing, because if we kept them out during that time of the year, the pastures would get grazed below that 3 to 4 inches and the grass plants would struggle next spring when they start to grow again.

We’ll also talk about rotational grazing. I love to do this because then you can treat your horse more like a lawnmower, and you can take advantage of all the grass plants out there, and not just the favorite ones that your horses want to return to—the short, tasty, high sugar plants. So rotational grazing is creating smaller areas within your whole big pasture and moving your horses through those. We do that and we’re actually able this year to do some light rotational grazing all winter. So I look forward to talking about that and sharing some ideas for people who have horses that have metabolic issues and can get overweight on pasture. We got lots of tips and ideas that we can talk about.

And we’ll also talk a little bit about small acreage equipment. We’ll talk about mowers and how you might want to either use a mower or even like a weed whacker. We’ll talk about harrows. We’ll talk about cost effective ways to harrow, like making your own harrow from some simple equipment. We’ll talk about spreading compost and how you can do it on small acreage as well as larger properties. And we’ll talk about different kinds of fencing, including the temporary fencing that you can use for rotational grazing.

Jess Friedman [00;16;14;02] That all sounds great, Alayne. I look forward to learning more about pasture management as we discuss those topics. Thank you for sitting down to talk with me today.

As of 2023, the American Horse Council estimates that there are 6.6 million horses in the United States alone. If even half of those horses were kept on one acre of good grassy pasture, there would be over 3 million acres of grass sequestering, carbon storing water filtering pollutants and cooling temperatures. It’s easy to see how small management changes can make a significant environmental impact.

Over the course of this season, we’ll discuss sustainable pasture management practices in greater detail. Join us to learn how to set up and care for your pastures throughout the year. Maximizing productivity, improving horse health, and acting as good stewards of the land instead of just users of it.

This podcast is produced by Horses for Clean water. You can visit us at horsesforcleanwater.com or follow us on Facebook and Instagram. If you have questions about sustainable horse keeping, send us a message on our Facebook page and we’ll consider it for a future episode. Thank you for joining us today, and until next time, happy riding!