I'm very interested in details on how Sepp overwinters his animals. Summer stuff is pretty clear, but the winter period is not.
Diversity of plants and free ranging certainly can help cattle, pigs and chickens find some food themselves. But I'm pretty sure that you just have to give them alot of hay in case if the weather does not allow them to find food themselves.
Hay is not hard to harvest and store. The daily feeding itself takes up alot of time and effort. Is there any way of dealing with that routine at Sepp's farm? Does he just place the hay stack near the animal shelter and let them eat by themselves?
Does Sepp use the same areas for summer and winter pasturing of animals? Does he differentiate between summer and winter plant mixtures?
Sunchokes are good for winter "pasturing", but I think, that you need lots of naturally wintering root-crops (beets, carrots, potatos, turnips, onions, garlic...) and long keeping stuff like pumpkins. Now it starts to look just like a vegetable garden to me.
Does Sepp just leave part of these crops to be covered with snow and being eaten by his animals in the winter?
In this case cows and chickens just have to rely on pigs to get all that stuff from under the snow.
How deep can pigs digg in the snow? It can be more that 3-5 feet of snow it my region.
