Let’s go for a walk, shall we?

There’s lots of grass out there. Just under the cemetery hill the fescue recovered completely since the last grazing some time in September…er…October…er…Fall.

It’s still pretty green down in the bottom. But across the little stream…

…in the woods there is little grass. The squirrels have been busy taking hedge apples apart. There is not much grass standing in there.

Across the fence to the 40 things are a little different. This is north of the hog building in a messy field full of buried field fence, broken fence posts, tree limbs, stumps and thorny trees.

I have quite a bit of work to do in this field this spring. We intend to start the chicken tractors at the east end of the field and run them slightly downhill across the field. Should be awesome. But that will force me to clean up the mess out there. And it’s a big mess…including the log that looks like a dead cow.

Did I say it’s a mess? The remnants of fencing and watering supplies litter the area. I don’t even know what to do with this. I guess hook it back up and have a water supply…after I haul away the scrap.

Further east are the clover field to the north and the pasture where the cows are currently grazing to the south. I think we can safely say the cows are grazing the not-clover field. There was no clover out there last year. None. Not until dad and I cut hay and spread manure that is.

I didn’t graze the east field again after we cut hay. It’s a little hard to get to anyway so we just didn’t go there. I guess we had some seeds in our compost. No surprise, really, but it is a nice surprise to see evidence that clover once stood here. But not enough clover.

That’s all grass and weeds. I plan to overseed a mix of legumes to improve the pasture. That in addition to the seeds the cows deposit, the pasture should fill in with variety over time but I would rather speed things along. I like to see the mouse nests out in my fields. I’m glad to have something besides chicken for predators to hunt for…minks especially.

It is obvious where we cut hay on this field. I’m not sure what that little, scrubby gray weed is but cutting in July seemed to really set it back.

It is interesting that the cows came across their first growth of what I believe is big bluestem and they left it alone. They either just missed it or it didn’t smell like fescue and orchard grass.

Lots of brown grass and weed skeletons out there. The cows seem to relish it though. Much more than half of my farm remains ungrazed. More than half of my edible hay remains (more on that soon). We are sneaking up on February. I’m not saying we’re in the clear but I feel good about what’s happening. This walk wasn’t the entire farm as I have done in the past. This was just a straight line east from our house.