Big Idea #1: The ag tech that will change everything for us

I’ll cover my top three Big Exciting Ideas from the Marbleseed Conference over the next few weeks. Up first is Nofence!

The MOSES — now called Marbleseed — Conference was last weekend in Lacrosse, WI. Like any farming conference, the main attraction was reconnecting with farmer friends from all over the Upper Midwest at what’s essentially the Organic Farming Super Bowl Equivalent. The workshops on everything from organic thistle management to next level grazing techniques were a fun bonus (and I received great feedback on my Pastured Pigs 101 presentation!).

Usually when I get home from MOSES I might try a few new things but mostly I bask in the glow of being surrounded by innovative, likeminded farmers for a weekend. However, this year I find myself particularly stoked about three Big Exciting Ideas that’ll I’ll focus on this season. The first is Nofence!

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Virtual fencing from Nofence

Here I am hamming it up with Al Sorenson of Nofence. Not trying to overhype it but this new technology has the potential to drastically increase the resilience of pastured livestock farms and disrupt the ruminant fencing industry.

Nofence makes these snazzy collars that are a solar powered containment system for goats, sheep and cattle. Al is modeling the goat/sheep collar and I’m wearing one for cattle.

(They don’t have plans to make them for pastured pigs and I’m fine with that — I think pigs would destroy them in less than a day AND IMO pigs are extremely easy to contain with electric netting given the right training.)

So, here’s how it works: Essentially, you draw the pasture paddock on the Nofence app, each collar gets updated with the new boundaries via GPS/cell service and badabing badaboom, you’ve moved your goats. The collars use a combo of audio warnings then a 3000 volt shock to keep them in.

Of course, your livestock do need to be trained to the system. However, Nofence says it only takes a few weeks and that the critters usually learn faster than the farmers!

We are part of a US pilot program so we’ll be testing out 12 collars on our seasonal brush goats starting this summer. In the future I could see us using these collars to contract graze the roughly 90 acres we own and lease.

We see two big benefits to this system. First, we can finally stop messing with rage-inducing electric goat netting that gets stuck on every twig. Seriously, if you want to develop an immediate anger problem, try to move the netting on a hot day in a thicket of multiflora rose. UGH!

Second, the collars pay for themselves by “buying” us more land. Right now we have about 20 acres of brushy sloping woods that are unfenceable — ok, I’m unwilling to use the netting in them because they are SO steep and uneven and difficult to access. The Nofence collars give us the ability to rotationally graze ruminants on those slopes without hating our lives. With sky high land prices, the “expensive” collars (about $200 each plus $50-60 subscription per year) all of a sudden pencil out incredibly well.

Dear readers, it could all go sideways but I have extremely high hopes! I’ll leave you with my favorite picture of one of our 5 bucks from last season who helped us prep 4 acres of Xerces Society funded pollinator-oriented silvopasture.