Thursday, March 17, 2016

Pasture Prep

Jason has been putting in a lot of quality time on the tractors over the last couple of weeks. As I mentioned in my last post he's been making compost piles in each pasture. He piles up all of the wasted hay and the manure collected around the hay feeders to make big compost piles in each pasture. If we get normal levels of rain over the next few months we'll be spreading the fully composted piles in September-ish. 

Jason has also been reseeding the pastures and spreading fertilizer. He's pretty much been doing all of the things lately. Everyone knows one of my hot buttons topics is for someone to make a comment along the lines of "at least the grass is free" when they see the horses grazing on their pretty pastures during the growing months. Forget all of the equipment needed to maintain the pastures such as bush hogs, sprayers, tractors, etc. We've spent a few thousand dollars on grass seed and fertilizer in the last couple of weeks. 

We usually do a split application of fertilizer. Right now we're fertilizing the cool season grasses. In late May or early June, as long as we have appropriate rainfall, we will fertilize again to give a boost to the warm season grasses. Unfortunately our compost piles do not provide nearly enough fertilizer for the farm. It does make Jason wince when he sees farms paying to have all of their manure and bedding hauled away. Compost it and give yourself some all natural fertilizer. 

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pasture prep in progress



Roho


Hesse


Hemi, Apollo, Moe and Levendi


Donneur and Flyer


Romeo and Lotus


Faune and Silver


Asterik and George


Gibson


Elfin and Apollo striking a pose


Lucky, Duesy and Lightning


Walden and Havana


the pet cows having yet another lazy day


Lily and Cinnamon


Lily


Tony, Cisco and Trigger

3 comments:

An American in Tokyo said...

A question about using natural fertilizer:
Do you think that the chemicals a horse might ingest (wormer, paint/wood stain from cribbing, etc.) might make "natural fertilizer" usable or not? I wondered about that specifically when local farmers around our riding club would use the "natural fertilizer" and how much of those chemicals might be transferred into our food via vegetables which were grown using it.

I would appreciate any information you might have as Jason seems very knowledgable about these kinds of things. Thank you!

lytha said...

I love the sounds of tractors, and most around here are antiques. Yesterday I heard one working and it got very loud so I looked out and sure enough, one was spreading liquid cattle waste in the field in front of our house. Oh, that smell, I'll never get used to that. Soon all the fields around us will be streaked with black.

Calm, Forward, Straight said...

Around here, compost = black gold.
And there ain't no free. ;D