Land Management
At Sage Knoll Farm, we strive to be excellent custodians of the land. We promote a diversity of native plant species, and provide habitat for animals, fungi, and other creatures. Keeping horses doesn’t have to mean degrading the land. Too many farms have horses standing knee deep in mud, and pastures that have been overgrazed to the point of only sustaining the growth of foxtail and buttercups. There is a way to promote a healthy ecosystem with horses as grazers. You just need to know how to listen to the land.
Make it stand out.
Our land management model is inspired by Equicentral and Paddock Paradise Track Systems. Both models are centered around the idea of giving horses freedom to move about their environment and reading the land to prevent overgrazing. When grazing pastures at the appropriate frequency and duration, horses can actually promote growth instead of curtail it, as we so often see in equine operations. Furthermore, there is a way to keep horses off pasture when needed without confining them or letting them stand in mud.
The Equicentral System
“The Equicentral System works by utilising horses' natural and domesticated behaviour to benefit them, the land and their owners”, according to founders Jane and Stuart Myers. It incorporates permaculture and regenerative agriculture to create healthy pastures and horses. It involves having a “loafing” area for horses with well draining footing to minimize stress on pasture and improve horses’ living conditions. At Sage Knoll Farm, we use our section of track with Class I sand and a well draining base for this purpose. Here, the horses’ resources of water, hay, and salt, as well as the main gate horses pass through for their training sessions and mealtimes in the barn. This way, no mud is created in the spaces where horses spend the most time. We also rotate our 5 pastures for the horses that do spend time grazing, and aim to do so at a rate that maximizes growth and avoids overgrazing and soil compaction altogether.
This is our pasture in December!
Paddock Paradise Track System
The Paddock Paradise Track System consists of narrow alleyways that wind around the property to keep horses moving and off the grass. Horses did not evolve to consume the lush pastures like we have here in the Bluegrass. In fact, many easy keepers cannot handle grazing our lush pastures at all and often face health problems such as laminitis and/or are confined to a stall or mud lot. The track system offers the nutrition and encourages the movement easy keepers need to live healthy lives. Horses evolved to travel up to 20 miles each day over rugged, dry terrain, constantly moving to the next resource. Wild horses travel to resources across their home range through tracks that they form, which is what this track system mimics. At Sage Knoll Farm, the footing of the main section consists of class I sand over a well-draining base. On this section, water, salt, and slow feeders are spaced out, keeping horses moving and out of the mud. This abrasive footing on the main section promotes healthy hoof growth by wearing hooves down and keeping them dry. So many of our common hoof problems (thrush, white line disease, central sulcus infections, abscesses, cracking etc.) can be resolved simply by keeping a horse in a more natural environment that is rugged and dry, on a diet of constant low sugar forage with balanced trace minerals.
Other sections of track pass through the woods, where horses can enjoy the natural shelter of established trees without having to fight over a run in shelter or brave the sound of rain on a metal roof. Logs remain on the ground to encourage novel movement, which is essential for a healthy nervous system. Horses traverse hills, different types of footing, and wind between trees and an ephemeral spring. Sections of track with grass are reserved for horses that are able to consume grass without health issues, and once that grass is eaten down, footing will be added.
The track also makes for easy management, as the main resources are by the gate where the horses come out to work or eat their supplements. It also connects to all the gates to our pastures, so all we have to do is open and close the appropriate gates, and horses turn themselves in and out.
Conservation
Part of our land management program involves removing invasive plant species to allow our native, desirable plants to thrive. In just the first 2 months of living on the farm, we’ve removed thousands of individuals of Amur honeysuckle, Callery pears, burning bush, multiflora rose, Chinese privet, and Euonymus fortunei. That’s hundreds of thousands of seeds that will not be dispersing and spreading on the farm and surrounding areas.
ExtraFlora
Sage Knoll Farm is also home to ExtraFlora, a nursery selling mostly native plants and some houseplants. ExtraFlora is owned by Annemieke’s partner, Judson Collins. Judson is a professional horticulturist with interest in native ecosystems with vast knowledge in plant taxonomy, identification, and propagation.
