Pasture Strategies

With the recent rain and warm weather we have a good bit of winter grass in the pastures.  Lawrence and I had planted 13 acres of oats for winter grazing but, since we have the winter grass and still have at least a 30-day supply of hay, I decided to try and finish out the winter without grazing the oats.  I had the fertilizer guy come out to fertilize and apply weed killer, and we'll see if we can cut them for hay.  We can always go ahead and graze them if things all turn bad, but I'm optimistic for a hay crop.  If we can avoid buying hay in Kansas or the Dakotas and trucking it down here again, I think we'll have made a good choice.

The drought damage to the pastures isn't repaired by a wet winter though.   The warm weather grasses and Coastal could really use some rest.  In 2005 Dad and some of the neighbors had some guys come out and cut cedars, and they were supposed to come back within a few years to burn the brush piles and conduct a controlled burn of the pasture to kill weeds and more cedars.  We hadn't heard from the guys in quite a while but they've contacted us and assure me they still have funding and are in business.  This winter they've burned part of Bob Self's pasture and hope to burn the rest before it gets too green.  A fall or winter burn requires that you take your cows off in the spring and summer, to let grass and weeds grow up for fuel to sustain the burn.  Bob did that last year, asking Tommy Fuqua to hold off renting for a year.  I've talked to Bob and Tommy to see, if they get his pasture burned and the grass comes back good, if I can put some of our cows on his place and let ours get ready for a burn this fall.  The near term benefit would simply be letting the pasture rest and recover from last summer's damage.  The long term benefit, if we can get it burned, would be the elimination of more weeds and cedars that compete with the grass for water and nutrients, and maybe make it better than it was before.

Larry and I have signed a hay lease with the Operstenys, the owners of Garlon's old place, to cut Klein and Coastal hay there.  We have a lease at Ischy's for Coastal and Sudan, the fields at Wesley Jones' and the Sycamore for Sudan, and the Gamblin place and part of the field above the house in Coastal.  Hopefully there will be plenty of hay work this summer.  I've fixed the air conditioner in the tractor, so come on down and drive it around for a while.