HUMBOLDT — Standing in a feed lot finally dried from unseasonable mid-winter rain, Craig Sharp allowed if he were to reach his goal of having a “green” operation, “I may have to get a degree in microbiology.”
At 64, Sharp isn’t likely to return to school — he has ag degrees from Kansas State — but he does take advantage of a wealth of information available from the Farm Service Center in Iola and is a faithful attendee at grazing schools.
Sharp and his wife Sussie will be honored for their grass management practices Wednesday evening at the annual meeting of the Allen County Conservation District.
When he took over father Bob Sharp’s cattle operation west of Humboldt 10 years ago, he divorced a meager portion of row crops and turned completely to grass and its management.
“The Lord provides sunlight and water,” he said, which makes those two essential ingredients of lush pasture cost-free. The third is nutrients in the soil that ensure growth. He still uses a bit of fertilizer, but is working toward using what occurs naturally, with management being the key.
Sharp plants legumes — he soon will sow clover — and mixes them in with fescue and naturally occurring grasses to enhance activity of microbes in the soil on which grass roots dine.
Good measure for his rush to self-sustaining pastures is that he makes due with 360 acres to feed 200 stockers, both steers and heifers, as an interlude between post-weaning days and when they go to feedyards to be fattened for slaughter.
“I can’t buy more land, so I had to double my output,” Sharp said.
Put in simple terms, what he does day after day is ensure that cattle convert grass into a marketable product — meat.
WHEN Sharp graduated from Humboldt High in 1959 and went off to Kansas State, he had no idea his eventual livelihood would depend on squeezing every last nutrient from blades of grass on the family farm.
On leaving K-State his immediate responsibilities were with the Kansas Livestock Association. Three years later he was working feedyards in western Kansas.
Work-a-day life was interrupted when he returned to Kansas State to study ag engineering where he learned new practices.
Today, Sharp cordons off his land in parallel strips for what he calls mob grazing. Calves are allowed four to six hours of grazing before being moved onto the next strip. As they congregate in each little piece, Sharp wants the cattle to shear grass to a certain height, by eating all available not just the most desirable. “They’ll even eat Johnson grass,” he said.
The intense grazing module has side benefits, Sharp said. Bunched up, the calves’ hooves help aerate the soil and keep pastures from becoming a patchwork of grass and bare ground. “If you turn cattle loose in a pasture they go to grass that they like best, and leave the rest alone,” which creates barren spots.