Why We’re Not Mowing Our Fence Rows This Year

When I look at photographs and descriptions of Indiana farms from my grandfather’s generation, one of the things that stands out is how much more varied the agricultural landscape was.

Fields were generally smaller and were often separated by fence rows, pasture, waterways, woodlots, lanes, and uncultivated corners. Farmers were not necessarily creating those areas for wildlife. They were simply part of how farms were laid out and managed at the time.

Over the decades, farming became more efficient. Equipment became larger, neighboring fields were combined, fence rows were removed, and it became possible to cultivate more of each acre. Many farms also adopted a cleaner appearance, with field edges, roadsides, and fence rows regularly mowed.

We followed some of that same thinking at Tyner Pond Farm. Mowing a fence row seemed like routine maintenance. It looked orderly and gave the impression that the property was being cared for.

Over the last several years, however, our experience with regenerative grazing has caused us to question practices that we once did automatically. Mowing fence rows has become one of them.

Biodiversity Changed the Way We Look at the Farm

A large part of that change came from thinking more seriously about biodiversity.

Agriculture depends on biological systems. Plants rely on soil organisms and nutrients. Insects pollinate plants and provide food for other animals. Birds consume insects and seeds. Different plant species have different root structures and respond differently to drought, excessive rain, heat, grazing, and other stresses.

That diversity matters because a farm is constantly dealing with changing conditions.

The more we thought about that, the more we began asking whether the simplified agricultural landscape we had become accustomed to was necessarily the healthiest one.

The question I eventually found myself asking was whether a working farm could have too much biodiversity.

There are obviously species we do not want to encourage, including invasive plants, diseases, and serious pests. But when we are talking about a healthy agricultural ecosystem with a wide variety of useful and native plants, insects, birds, wildlife, and soil organisms, I do not think excessive biodiversity is the problem most farms are facing.

The larger problem has been the loss of diversity.

That matters beyond wildlife conservation. Long-term food security depends on productive land that can continue functioning through changing weather, drought, heavy rain, pests, and other pressures. Biodiversity gives a biological system more ways to respond to those changes.

Once we began thinking about the farm that way, mowing a fence row stopped being an automatic decision.

Instead, we started asking a more practical question: What are we accomplishing by mowing this area?

There are plenty of good reasons to mow certain places. We need access to fences. Vegetation cannot interfere with gates or equipment. Road intersections need visibility. We sometimes need to control particular plants.

But there are also many fence rows where none of those conditions apply.

When we mow those areas simply because we prefer the appearance, we remove flowering plants, seed heads, tall grasses, insects, and cover for small animals. We turn a structurally diverse strip of vegetation into a short, uniform one.

That does not automatically mean mowing is wrong. It means we should have a reason for doing it.

This year, in many places, we could not come up with a good enough reason. So we left the mower parked.

What We’re Seeing Along the Fence Rows

The difference has become increasingly obvious as the summer has progressed.

Our unmowed fence rows contain plants at several heights and stages of growth. Some are flowering while others are producing seed. Insects are using those plants, and the taller vegetation gives birds and small animals places to feed, hide, and move through the farm.

That variety is very different from what exists in the pasture immediately beside it, even though the two areas may only be separated by a fence.

This has also made us recognize a contradiction in the way we had been managing the farm.

Inside our pastures, we actively encourage diversity. We do not try to establish one grass species and eliminate everything else. Our cattle graze mixtures of grasses, clovers, broadleaf plants, and other forage. Different paddocks are at different stages of growth because they have been grazed and rested at different times.

We have learned that the pasture does not need to look uniform to be productive. In fact, variation is part of what makes the system work.

Once we became comfortable with that idea inside the pasture, it became harder to justify automatically creating uniformity along every fence.

Indiana’s Pheasants and Quail Made the Connection Even Clearer

As I began reading more about biodiversity on farms, I became interested in the history of pheasants and quail in Indiana.

Ring-necked pheasants are not native to Indiana, but after they were introduced, they became associated with parts of Indiana farm country and with a long tradition of upland bird hunting. Their numbers were much higher during the middle of the twentieth century, when the agricultural landscape included more small fields, pasture, fence rows, weedy areas, and uncultivated ground.

Bobwhite quail are native to Indiana, and their history may be even more relevant to what we are seeing today. Quail depend on a mixture of grasses, low vegetation, shrubby cover, and edges between different types of habitat. Fence rows and field borders can provide exactly that kind of structure.

As agriculture changed, much of that habitat disappeared. Larger fields replaced smaller ones. Fence rows were removed. Brushy areas were cleaned up. Road and field edges were mowed more regularly.

No single decision caused the decline of these birds. The landscape changed gradually as thousands of small pieces of habitat were removed.

Learning that made me reconsider another phrase farmers use all the time: productive ground.

We usually define productive ground by what we can harvest from it. An acre grows forage, corn, soybeans, wheat, or some other crop.

A fence row may not produce a crop that we sell, but that does not mean it is doing nothing.

It can produce seeds that birds eat. Flowering plants can support insects. Dense vegetation can provide nesting and escape cover. Deep-rooted perennial plants can protect the soil. A fence row can also provide a connection between two larger areas of habitat.

Those functions are more difficult to measure than pounds of beef or bushels of grain, but they are still part of what the land is producing.

Learning From Pheasants Forever Here in Hancock County

One of the things I recently learned while researching this subject is that Hancock County has its own Pheasants Forever organization.

That caught my attention because their work extends beyond pheasant hunting. Habitat improvement for pheasants also benefits quail, pollinators, songbirds, and other wildlife that depend on grasslands and agricultural edges.

I would like to learn more about what they are doing locally and look for opportunities to coordinate.

Between our own land and the partner properties incorporated into our grazing system, we manage a lot of pasture edges, fence rows, waterways, and small areas that are difficult or unnecessary to graze. Some of those places may have much greater value as wildlife habitat than they would if we simply kept them mowed.

I am interested in learning from people who understand upland bird habitat better than we do and seeing whether their work can complement what we are already doing with grazing and soil health.

That is one of the things I appreciate about agriculture. Different groups can approach the landscape with different interests and still discover that they are trying to accomplish many of the same things.

A cattle farmer may begin by thinking about forage and soil. A hunter may begin by thinking about quail or pheasants. A birder may be interested in meadowlarks or kestrels. Someone else may be focused on pollinators.

All of those interests eventually bring us back to the condition of the land.

Rethinking What a Well-Managed Farm Looks Like

We are still a working farm, and producing food remains our primary purpose.

But I no longer think food production and environmental health should be treated as competing objectives. Healthy soil, functioning water cycles, diverse plant communities, insects, birds, and wildlife are all parts of the biological system in which agriculture operates.

That does not mean every acre should be turned into wildlife habitat. It means we should be more thoughtful about the areas where food production and habitat can coexist.

Our fence rows are a good example.

We can continue grazing the pasture beside them while allowing the vegetation along the fence to grow taller. The cattle still have forage. The fence still performs its job. At the same time, the farm gains another type of habitat that would disappear if we mowed everything to the same height.

So this year we are treating our unmowed fence rows as an experiment.

We are watching which plants grow, which insects appear, and which birds use those areas. We are learning more about the wildlife that once occupied Indiana farm country in much greater numbers. We are also trying to understand where mowing is necessary and where it has simply become a habit.

Before mowing an area, we are trying to ask one straightforward question:

What will mowing improve here?

Sometimes the answer will be access, safety, fence maintenance, or controlling an unwanted plant, and we will mow.

When there is no clear benefit, we are becoming much more comfortable leaving the vegetation alone.

The result may not look as tidy from the road, but a neatly mowed fence row is no longer our definition of good stewardship.

I am increasingly interested in a different measure: whether we can continue producing good food while increasing the variety of plants, insects, birds, and other life that can share this farm with us.

That seems like a goal worth pursuing.

Good food begins with a place.