My Learning to Farm: Newbie Renovating Pastures in MD

[Learning to Farm]

Happy May, well since my last post I picked up some chain link to make the drag and did some mowing. I will probably start a thread when I start making it (and post a link here). I also took some pictures of the sprayer and a few of the fields (which I will post from my phone).

 

[BeezFun]

We talked about the bindweed/mile-a-minute last year, sorry to hear it is still a pain, did you talk to your Ag Ext Agent? I think your right about getting to it with Round-up.

Did talk to extension office, they said it's tough to get rid of, they gave me the name of one chemical they claim would kill the bindweed, but it's such nasty stuff I didn't want to use it. They said the roundup thing should work, but it's labor intensive. Since my labor has no value, that's the route I'm going.

Woohoo on the round pen... hehehe, make'm work for thier dinners. I never asked how many head do you have on how many acres and what are they? What do you do with them?

We own two, we've boarded anywhere from 1-3 others, right now we just have one. We have a Paso Fino and an Icelandic, the boarder is an old quarter horse. We have 5 acres of pasture and 1 acre of grass around the house. We let the older horses on the house grass because they don't tear it up. Everyone else goes on the pasture. We live across the street from 3500 acres of forest preserve that's setup for fox hunts (no real foxes), so there's jumps and mowed trails. My wife is a dog trainer so she taught the paso to do all kinds of tricks using the same clicker techniques she used with the dogs. So the horse will situp and beg, fetch the newspaper, heel, pickup her toys, all kinds of stupid things. And of course she rides her. We do shows at retirement homes and kids birthdays with her, she's quite the hit. The Icelandic is new, he's a 4 year old stubborn blockhead, lots of training in his future.

 

[pacerron]

My wife and I went through your thread primarily looking at the pictures and some of the descriptions. You posted the link on "Blue River's" thread this morning or yesterday.
You sure have been busy on your project and are beginning to see some results. Is the soil very sandy there? Looks that way in your pictures.
Is there a problem with horses having "sand colic" in the area.
Did you broadcast a cover crop last fall to fill in between the drilled fescue?
In your picture it doesn't appear so. How long did your extension agent say it would take until you have sufficient cover to allow some limited horse grazing
on the seeded area?
My wife, who is the real horse person, made me promise that we would own property, as soon as possible after marriage, where she could have horses.
It took a few years as a military obligation limited our ability to accumulate much money quickly but she has happily had horses on our home properties for about 40 years now.
Her immediate comment on your last post of pictures was that low square
2 board high thing, which is probably where you put the round bales you mentioned, is just an accident waiting to happen. Horses are beautiful animals but if they can find a way to hurt themselves, especially their legs, they will do it or their buddies in the pasture with them will force them into getting hurt. Just a split splinter sticking out of an old oak rail fence can do a lot of damage if a 1000 pounder runs into it or decides to rub there.

Good luck on your pasture renovations and in your competition events.
Keep posting your progress on TBN.
Ron