Offerings of the Hub

The course will provide the opportunity for participants to understand the fundamental concepts underlying Holistic Ecological Monitoring and gain experience in the field observing signs of change.

Participants will learn how to complete the basic and comprehensive monitoring procedures and be proficient in using them to monitor their land when they return home.

Why Holistic Ecological Monitoring is important: The basic procedure enables you to gather enough information to keep your management on track. The comprehensive procedure provides more “quantitative” data and enables you to track specific measures over time. Even though the focus in both procedures is on a longer time frame, control, which must be immediate if monitoring shows you are veering off track, remains the most vital part of the monitoring feedback loop and is essential for keeping your management proactive.

Duration: 2 Days
Dates: TBD
Price: $299 + meals and accommodations (Discounts available for larger groups)

The Fundamentals of Holistic Ecological Monitoring

• Where Holistic Ecological Monitoring fits in Holistic Management
  • Early warning monitoring of new practices
• The importance of monitoring annually to identify trends
• Time of year to monitor
• General observations
• Key land health indicators: The four ecosystem processes
• Soil capping: its development and effects
• Reading plant forms
• Identifying species: it’s not just a name game
• Grazing patterns and what they can tell you
• Living organisms: community dynamics revisited (see pages 26-28, ebook #12)

Monitoring Your Land

Implementing the two monitoring procedures:

• Basic Monitoring
• Comprehensive Monitoring

In this course participants will learn the Holistic Land Planning process by working through an example provided by the educator, or by developing their holistic land plan.

In the latter case, some work will be needed after the course to complete the plan, but participants will leave the course with a good understanding of what remains to be done and how to do it.

Why Holistic Land Planning is Important: It enables us to consider new paddock layouts that minimize the number of water points required and give us much greater flexibility in our grazing planning and more options for improving animal performance. We can anticipate the facilities we need to have in place as animal numbers and herd sizes increase and thus avoid costly redesigns in the future.

Duration: 2 Days
Dates: TBD
Price: $299 + meals and accommodations (Discounts available for larger groups)

The Fundamentals of Holistic Land Planning

• What is a holistic land plan?
• Holistic decision-making related to Holistic Land Planning
• How Holistic Land Planning integrates with Holistic Financial Planning
• Gather Important Information
• Prepare maps and overlays
• Decide on grazing unit and herd sizes

Creating Your Holistic Land Plan

• How to create a Holistic Land Plan
• How to implement the plan
• Layouts and hardware

The course will provide the opportunity for participants to work on both a growing and a non-growing season plan, using a scenario provided by the educator and/or details from their own property for one of the plans.

In the latter case, some work will be needed after the course to complete the plan, but participants will leave the course with a good understanding of what remains to be done and how to do it. The focus of this course is on learning the process because once that is understood, any situation, no matter how complex, becomes relatively easy to plan.

Why Holistic Planned Grazing is important: It caters to all the many variables that are commonly left out of grazing planning, such as erratic weather, different types or classes of livestock, grazing through croplands, orchards, vineyards, wildlife needs, and family needs (such as vacations), and much more. Although people think they can plan all of this in their heads or assisted by a calendar, notebook or chart, it is simply not possible to achieve the best plan in such a way. Following the aide memoir step by step while noting each decision on the chart renders even the most complicated situation simple— and produces the best possible plan. And this allows us to manage livestock grazing so that animals stay healthy and productive while increasing the biological capital that will sustain our business or livelihood for generations to come.

Duration: 3 Days
Date: TBD
Price: $399 + meals and accommodations (Discounts available for larger groups)

The Fundamentals of Holistic Planned Grazing

• Holistic decision making and how it relates to Holistic Planned Grazing
• Why plan your grazing?
• Measuring forage utilization – in animal days
• Grazing, overgrazing, and growth rates
• Grazing periods and recovery periods
• Time, density, and paddock numbers
• Forage and drought reserves
• Determining correct stocking rates
• The critical non- or slow-growing season
• Managing a drought
• Watering large herds
• Creating herd effect
• Single vs. multiple herds
• Wild grazers and browsers
• Matching animal cycles to land cycles
• Pests, parasites, and other challenges
• Reading the land (walking or using slides) to review the brittleness scale, ecosystem processes, and management tools and their probable effects

Creating, Implementing, and Monitoring Your Grazing Plan

• When to plan: open-ended and closed plans
• Pre-planning considerations
• How stocking rate relates to a holistic grazing plan
• How to address livestock, land, conservation, and social needs
• Create your growing season plan using the aide memoire and planning chart
• Create your non-growing season plan using the aide memoire and planning chart
• How to implement, monitor, and control a holistic grazing plan

The course should provide the opportunity for participants to work on a financial plan – either one provided by the educator or one participants create using their own figures.

In the latter case, some work will be needed after the course to complete the plan, but participants will leave the course with a good understanding of what remains and how to do
it.

Why Holistic Financial Planning is important: By integrating this simple-to-use, cash-based planning process into your current accounting or budgeting systems, you will be able to increase your profit and improve your quality of life and your land’s health and productivity. Even if you aren’t engaged in agriculture, there will be much that applies to your situation, no matter your business or occupation.

Duration: 3 Days
Date: TBD
Price: $399 + meals and accommodations (Discounts available for larger groups)

The Fundamentals of Holistic Financial Planning

• Holistic decision-making and how it relates to Holistic Financial Planning
• Your holistic context: Aligning your financial decisions
• What is wealth? What are the sources of wealth?
• Profitability
• Using the context checks related to finances
  • Financial weak link: Generating wealth
  • Energy/money source and use: Investing soundly
  • Marginal reaction: Getting the biggest bang for your buck
  • Gross Profit Analysis: Bringing in the most money for the least additional cost
• Management Tips and Good Ideas
  • Simple appreciation: How to handle emergencies
  • Context checking matrix: Tracking your decisions
  • Brainstorming/brainwriting: Generating new ideas
  • Net managerial income: Rewarding managerial effectiveness
• Planning Forms
  • Standard Worksheet
  • Livestock Production Worksheet
  • Annual Income and Expense Plan
  • Control Sheet

Creating Your Holistic Financial Plan

• Introduction
  • Planning the planning
  • Creating ownership
  • Overview and general scheduling
• Preliminary planning
  • How to address logjams
  • How to address adverse factors
  • How to identify and address financial weak links
  • How to figure gross profits
• Putting the plan on paper
• How to balance a plan and check for cash flow
• How to operate, monitor, and control a holistic financial plan to ensure profit