A Fluffy Fall! Repairing Pastures

It's almost too pretty to cut!

Wow!  It's been a long time since I've written, but I have a really good reason:  I've been on the tractor!

I set a goal for myself of cutting all of the property I'm responsible for--42 acres--so that we can hay some of it, and, if I can get the fence in over the winter, buy 2 or 3 beeves in the spring.

Far from fashionable,
but definitely serviceable!

It's been a long fall:  working all day, then coming home--on the days when I did not have an evening meeting--and jumping on the tractor for the 1-2 hours of daylight left.  Over half the fields have not been cut in several years, and the bluestem sedgegrass and sweet gum trees had taken over.  One of the most aggravating thing about sedgegrass, other than cows do not find it palatable when it's dry, is the fluffy seed pods.  The fluff was so thick that I had to wear a mask (I cannot wear the usual kind, so I used a pillow case and some binder clips!).  Even more importantly, I had to stop every 600 feet and clear

Stopping to clean away "fluffies"
from the radiator screen.

fluffies from the radiator screen.  Given that my bushhog is only 4' wide, you can imagine how often I had to stop.  Eventually, I got smart and realized that, if I mowed while the dew was still wet, the fluffies wouldn't "fluff."  This made the mowing go much more quickly.

This field can be used for hay!

The fields I had cut in early summer needed cutting again, so I whipped through those, managing to cut the sedgegrass just before the current year's fluffies emerged!

Note to self:  always cut the new sedge in the first week of October!

Some of the fields are, currently, too rough for hay.  I have a plan, though:  disc first, then till (to smooth the field), then adjust the pH, then add a little common bermuda seed (per the suggestion of a life-long farmer).  Sounds like the tractor and I will have a busy autumn!

Lesson learned from all this:  it's easier to maintain a pasture than to repair it!

But isn't that true of most of life's endeavors?  I wonder what has "gotten away from me" while I've been mowing?  I think I'd better go look.

Nancy