Thread by @homemadeguitars

I spend a lot of my time mowing, so thought I'd talk about it some.
But first - I mentioned this the other day, but I think it's important to acknowledge. What I write about donkeys is true but it is not representative of my whole life.
What I can do with donkeys, I do, but

There are many reasons that I mow. One of the big ones is, you can't go out in hip high pasture grass and not get eaten alive by ticks and chiggers. So I mow trails and I mow all my work areas, where I have tree seedlings and the like.
Ticks can kill you.
I don't want to.
I mow.

My experience with DEET is, where I go it doesn't work. No point to put that nasty stuff on your skin and still get eaten up. So I mow.
Grasslands and big grazing animals co- evolved in a high oxygen atmosphere where stuff catches fire easily. Grass needs help.

4. Where I mowed today was the poorest land on the whole farm. Red clay and gravel not much bigger than coarse sand, no topsoil whatsoever. Been hayed nonstop probably since not long after WWII. You can't take grass off land forever. It starves.

5. So this particular hill, when I started mowing it, would barely grow anything. Tiny, scrawny blades of grass and daisy weeds with tiny white flowers. Sparse. Visible dirt. Poor land.
Mowed grass isn't buffalo shit, but it's better than nothing, so I mow and leave.

6. The clippings lay on the ground and rot. A sad amount of the carbon goes straight back into the air, but not all of it. Fungus and bugs reduce the clippings to soil. It's sometimes called sheet compost.
This land is still poor dirt, but it's a lot prettier than 15 years ago.

7. I plowed two swales across this land to catch rainwater, and planted elderberries along them, as I did several other places.
Many of these have died. Almost all the others have lived.
Poor, poor land.
I'll keep working. It will heal.
More on this topic some other day.
Bye.