Fwd: When Hemlock Swallowed Iron and the Future of Grazing
2 views
Skip to first unread message
Seth Itzkan
Mar 10, 2026, 5:16:51 AM (9 days ago) Mar 10
to Soil Age
Hello Friends, You might appreciate this rumination.
When Hemlock Swallowed Iron and the Future of Grazing
A typical scene in the Vermont woods: 100-year-old barbed-wire coming right out of the middle of a hemlock tree. Pastures here are mostly reforested. Even stone walls in the middle of woods aren’t unusual. Times are certainly changing. Places like Vermont and the rest of New England will reforest when large herding ruminants are gone, but the natural grasslands of the world won’t. They’ll become desert. We don’t need barbed-wire anymore, but, on most of the world, we do need herding ruminants (not to be confused with forest herbivores like deer and moose). How those (domestic) animals are herded remains the ongoing question - electric wire, programmable collars, dogs, drones, walking herders, cowboys and cowgirls, shepherds, or, in parts of Australia, even helicopters 🚁 (Yes. Helicopters). One way or another, however, they have to be herded and there better be a plan. According to Allan Savory, that “plan” needs to be holistic, meaning social, economic, and environmental considerations managed tightly together as one system, like a giant medicine ball being pushed by many hands across the fields of time. In New England and other perennially wet areas, we can “cheat.” Nature is more forgiving. It will rebound. It will gobble up our errors, like hemlock swallowing iron.
(Picture taken by me in Thetford, Vermont)
A typical scene in the Vermont woods: 100-year-old barbed-wire coming right out of the middle of a hemlock tree. Pastures here are mostly reforested. Even stone walls in the middle of woods aren’t unusual. Times are certainly changing. Places like Vermont and the rest of New England will reforest when large herding ruminants are gone, but the natural grasslands of the world won’t. They’ll become desert. We don’t need barbed-wire anymore, but, on most of the world, we do need herding ruminants (not to be confused with forest herbivores like deer and moose). How those (domestic) animals are herded remains the ongoing question - electric wire, programmable collars, dogs, drones, walking herders, cowboys and cowgirls, shepherds, or, in parts of Australia, even helicopters 🚁 (Yes. Helicopters). One way or another, however, they have to be herded and there better be a plan. According to Allan Savory, that “plan” needs to be holistic, meaning social, economic, and environmental considerations managed tightly together as one system, like a giant medicine ball being pushed by many hands across the fields of time. In New England and other perennially wet areas, we can “cheat.” Nature is more forgiving. It will rebound. It will gobble up our errors, like hemlock swallowing iron.
(Picture taken by me in Thetford, Vermont)
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages