The Backwards Bookkeeper

~ This article first appeared in The Leader Vindicator newspaper. ~

In a drawer to my left, the lowest to the floor, opened to the stops, I keep something of a little shrine.  The stash consists of pocket notebooks.  They’re worn from being carried in an active pair of blue jeans through all seasons, surviving innumerable slides into the pickup seat and countless bends and scribbles.  I like the look of my collection; used paper has an appeal to me.

Referencing the books, I can tell you with remarkable accuracy which acre my herd of cattle was traversing on any given day going back through 2017.  Notes in the margin explain weather conditions, anomalies in behavior or management, additions and subtractions to the herd, and even crude descriptions of forage and concomitant manure quality.  The record is exhaustive.

My goal is to become an extremely talented grazier, as good as I can possibly be.  The notebooks were supposed to be my edge that would get me over the hump.  Everyone knows without asking that talented people possess some inner drive to record meticulous detail regarding their field of work.  Hence, I recorded.

Imagine my dismay to realize, after years of day-to-day note taking, I still find myself in situations I don’t know how I got in and lack the knowledge to get back out of.  Don’t I keep records to refer and avoid future catastrophe? 

Imagine the bitter defeat when peers set up with a herd of cattle and proclaim in a month that they’re already doing what I do.  Now, wait; I worked hard to understand this and you’re just - *poof* - doing it?  My effort was a waste!  I make this so difficult!  Doubt is a close companion when you compare yourself to the neighbors.

Allan Savory would tsk-tsk such foolishness.  Chapter forty six of his book Holistic Management, a New Framework for Decision Making, contains a few paragraphs titled “Record Keeping”.  Savory laments “…Professional grazing advisors … frequently fall into the mistake of turning the planning chart into nothing but a record of the past, dropping … all forward planning.  This is fatal.”

I admit to using failed plans of the past as an excuse to avoid any current planning sessions.  One of my favorite quotes is “The best laid plans don’t survive their first encounter with reality.”  It’s true: Quite a few of my expectations – plans – have blown up in my face, so why bother planning at all?  I take it a day at a time, thinking ahead by a week or so when I’m feeling sprightly.  And I get by.

Then again, “fatal” is not a word I’d like associated with the projected longevity of my grazing project.  Perhaps I should adjust my method.

Planning isn’t as simple as thinking about what to do next.  As my favorite quote exemplifies, few people have had much luck with a plan.  That’s because a plan is only a segment of a much larger loop.  Savory advises readers to “make plan a twenty-four-letter word: plan-monitor-control-replan.” (pg. 335)

This context allows me to see the folly in my own approach.  Most of the time I come bombing into a new grazing sector, herd in tow, and make up the next steps in a day-by-day series of desperate maneuvers to keep the dang things full of grass.  This is stressful.  Then I write in my notebook and I never look at that page of notes again because I’m always busy writing down what I just got done doing.  In other words, I put in a lot of work to record history.

A better approach is to scout ahead of the herd and write my ultimate plan on paper: In this field, I want to increase sod density to outcompete woody, unpalatable plants like Goldenrod.  What do I need to accomplish that goal?  Now I am forced into recording the future, which creates tension in my mind to fulfill the objective.

Setting fences well ahead of time in accordance with my prewritten goal can make “move-in day” much easier.  With the framework in place, the cattle come in to an organized idea instead of an unrehearsed series of actions.  It is easier to follow a set of instructions, monitor progress towards those instructions, control variables that may affect the outcome, and replan if things go totally awry than it is to make up each decision on the go, as I’ve been doing.

Note that I mentioned it’s easier to follow the instructions.  Day-to-day activities are easier to complete with an objective.  Creating the objective in the first place is the challenge.

It’s very difficult to make time to sit down and think through every step for six months or a year.  Add in contingencies like drought or floods or any other interruption, and the task is daunting indeed.  This is why so few people plan ahead for anything; it’s not that planning doesn’t work.  Visioning the future is mentally exhausting.  Yet it is the most important work a farmer can make time for.

My notes are going to look different from now on. I intend to incorporate a grazing strategy station in my office with maps and seasonal calendars. Certainly I do not relish the thought of such an undertaking, but, as with anything, practice will make the task easier. I’ll do my best to keep my eyes out the front windshield instead of in the rearview mirror.