Happy Frosty Season

Frosty Season is here! The temperature has plummeted, and our low country has frosted. Inside it is warm and toasty beside the fire. And while the days can be cold and windy, more often than not, those frosty mornings turn into a gorgeous sunny day! Welcome to what I call the Frosty Season.

To connect more with the land on which we live, I believe we need to be more in tune with what is happening outside, rather than looking at our calendar saying we are now in Winter (or Spring etc). When seasons start, and when season finish, change each year. Full stop. Therefore, I believe that identifying more seasons, allows us to connect better with the land and make better decisions.

For me, we have come through ANZAC Biscuit Season where grass growth has slowed (and sometimes has already hayed off), we have estimated how much feed we have accumulated through the growing part of the year, and built a plan around how we will graze that standing feed through to when we have a good chance of our next growing season having started sometime in Jacaranda Storm Season.

What triggers the start of Frosty Season is in the name itself, the first frost. This is significant because all the grasses where I live are warm season species that will frost.

At a basic level, the water in the plant freezes and kills the above ground part of the plant. Sometimes just a light burn, and sometimes more severe.

On a more technical level, Pearce describes what is happening during a frost. At cellular level when the environmental temperature falls below zero and frost occurs, the water surrounding plant cells of tropical pastures, freeze. This creates a pressure difference between the outer cell membrane and the vacuole, the cell’s storage tank containing proteins and sugars. The vacuole attempts to fix the imbalance via by transferring water from itself across the membrane causing cell dehydration. During particularly cold events, or slow thawing afterwards, the cell membrane may break, freeze or become permeable, releasing the contents of the vacuole. Click here to read the full article.

Unfortunately, the damage caused by frost to the cell structure cannot be undone. Only the growth of new cells and production of new leaves stimulated by rain and warmer temperatures will improve grazing nutritional value much later in the year.

The timing of the first frost varies from location to location. I’ve heard Old Timers from some areas of SE Qld say that traditionally they’ll get their first frost from ANZAC Day onwards. From my own observations, I’d say most years we’ve had some significant frosts by mid to late June. Occasionally we’ll have had light frosts in mid-May that can take our some of our twining legumes on our low country but not necessarily frost the grass. For some of you living closer to the coast, you rarely, if at all get a frost and for you Frosty Season may not be a thing at all.

Each year is different. The timing of the first frost. The timing of the last frost. The number and severity of frosts. Our home being half-way up a mountain, allows us to gauge the frost season. We consider the house is built around the frost line, so that during a severe season, our lawn will frost. Rarely however, do paddocks above the house frost; pasture grow will slow right down, but the grass is still alive.

What about trees and frost? When we take time to observe, we will see in some circumstances that the grass underneath trees is protected, while outside of the drip line, the grass has frosted. So once again we can see the benefit of trees within our grazing systems.

From a grass and grazing animal management perspective, some of the things I’ll be doing or considering are as follows:

·       By the start of Frosty Season, I will have already grazed a lap through our low country, taking out a significant amount of feed, knowing that it’s quality will drop dramatically with frost.

·       I’ll be monitoring the amount of cool season legumes that have germinated on these lower paddocks, things like various medics, vetches, and clover. If rainfall has been reasonable, like it has this year, there is some good quality feed for the next lap around.

·       I’ll now be grazing a lap through the higher paddocks, the paddocks that haven’t frosted, and that are unlikely to frost.

·       I’ll be updating my feed budget that I did during ANZAC Biscuit Season, to see how I’m travelling, to see if my original estimates were reasonable, or if I need to change them either up or down.

·       Once I’ve redone my feed budget, I’ll have a look at the livestock I have on hand and if I need to adjust their numbers. So basically, adjusting the animals I have to the feed I have available.

·       If I find that I have an overabundance of feed, I’ll assess market conditions and expectations for the next few months. Historically the lowest prices align with August/September, the time when most people are running out of feed in my part of the world, and therefore a good time to buy in cattle.

·       The final management practice is to reassess cattle manure. If it is starting to stack up, it indicates a protein deficiency that can be easily rectified with a urea-based supplement. Overall, the protein content of the grasses has dropped dramatically by now, however the cattle most years (including this year) are able to balance their protein needs via the cool season legumes. A good indication of this with cattle is having a beautiful, big, mud-pie type poo.

Going from a management perspective and the decisions we make, to now connecting more with the cycle of the seasons and of the Earth, we start asking some more philosophical questions.

Masanobu Fukuoka wrote the book One-Straw Revolution, a foundational book in natural farming and environmental philosophy. It was first published in Japanese in 1975 and later translated into English. The core message goes beyond agriculture — it's about how humans relate to nature, food, and life itself. It is a radical call to return to a simpler, more harmonious way of living and farming by aligning with nature rather than trying to dominate it.

Within his book, there is a message along the lines of winter is a time for the farmer to rest, to observe, to think. The days are short, Nature is asleep, and in a way, so should we as farmers slow down during this time of year.

Wherever you are, and whatever season you are having, I wish you all the best through this part of the year.