Ewes, lambs & alpaca move to fresh pasture & race around for tasty bits
Channel: Zwartbles Ireland Suzanna Crampton
Date: 15/05/2023

So much eatable diversity in this field and the ewes know this and hunt around for the best most tasty grazing. 
Sheep, goats & cows eat buttercups. Buttercups are a particular nutrient accumulator of both calcium and nitrogen. They help neutralise acidic soil by adding nitrogen so they can be beneficial. Mob grazing cattle, sheep or goats with daily moves can change the soil as trampled in buttercup feed their high accumulation of nutrients back into soil which next year will grow more grasses. If you spray off buttercups you only make it better for growing buttercups. If you add anything it would be lime as the calcium is what the soil is looking for so by mowing or graze trampling buttercups so the worms eat rotting vegetation to activate calcium for soil. The trick is to learn what the soil needs by what grows in it. Weeds talk is a great book to learn why certain weeds grow and how to address what soil biome needs to grow what you would prefer. Our high buttercup population this year is due to drought grazing horses across this field last year.  




Zwartbles Ireland is a small company run from a farm in County Kilkenny in Ireland. We are a regenerative farm which means restoring soils health and regenerating its natural carbon and nutrient cycle with biodiversity of pasture sward with grasses, legumes, forbs and herbs. This also means we farm with nature. Healthy soils are important for healthy environment. So we encourage all life from the microbial to dung beetles, ants, pollinators to flora biodiversity, birds, hare, hedgehogs, rabbits, fox, badger as well as our livestock. This mean we farm in a style of mob grazing and giving fields long rest times between grazings. We have seen a huge increase and return of wildlife including woodcock and snipe in winter months foraging for dung beetle larvae, red squirrel, wood peckers and pine martens. We also have the rare natter bat and previously thought extinct Tawny Mining bees.
We sell, Zwartbles sheep, Zwartbles blankets and yarn made from the sheep, and calendars featuring Inca the World's Smallest Sheepdog and her coworkers. We also sell alpaca yarn spun for our own alpaca. Our yarns are 100 percent natural, grown by our sheep which grazing our small green Irish fields. This wool is naturally sequestered carbon which you can then knit into warm environmental friendly clothing.