Making A Pasture

[Baymule]

What's even better is the sweet deal I made. I emailed through Craigslist, the guy back in April, asking for his phone number for future reference. Told him we weren't ready yet, but were very interested. A couple of weeks ago, he emailed me asking if we were ready yet. I replied that we had a lot of unexpected expenses, the mule blew a head, fan motor and cost $$$$. Just parts were at $2,500 and we hadn't got the bill for labor yet. It would be a few months before we could lay out any more expenditures.

Normal pricing for a forestry mulcher here is $250 per hour, 8 hour minimum plus drop charge and travel. Their time starts when they get on the road, not when they actually start working on property. I had looked into renting one, it was $1200 a day plus an operator which of course was mo' money. Insane.

So this guy charges $150 an hour, 8 hour minimum, no drop or delivery fees and time starts when the machine cranks up. That's a great deal, but money is popular! So he emails me back and said he needed to keep his employee busy, for a week he would drop his price to $100 an hour! I read it to BJ and he nearly fell out of his recliner. We agreed that we just couldn't pass it up, when could we ever get another deal like that!

Because we like to share good deals, we told a couple of neighbors whose places back up to ours. Both have about 3/4 of an acre that needs cleaning up, not enough to warrant paying for 8 hours of work. But we will take down the fences, the operator can run the mulcher through, clean up their places and everyone is happy. They are excited, we are excited and the guy gets more work without having to move equipment.

 

[Baymule]

We will plant 2 types of clovers, Kentucky 32 fescue and rye grass this fall. Then in early spring, giant Bermuda grass.

 

[CntryBoy777]

If ya get the hulled seed, if available in that variety of bermuda, ya can sow it this fall with the other for spring sprouting....if ya have a lite winter it may start growing earlier....and ya only have to cover the area once with seed, instead of doing more in the spring....

 

[Bruce]

The young man operating the forestry mulcher said we can't walk back there, it throws chunks 200 feet

Yep, they are similar to bush hogs in that respect, they can chuck stuff fast and hard enough to kill a person at a pretty good distance.

So he emails me back and said he needed to keep his employee busy, for a week he would drop his price to $100 an hour!

Wow, that is GREAT!!!!!!!!!

 

[Baymule]

Finished today. I can't believe the difference in this place. We now have one patch of wild tangled woods on one side that will give us a little privacy if that neighbor ever does anything with his land.

Our new neighbor Judy, was beyond thrilled. For $300, she got the back of her place cleaned up, leaving the big trees, and her doublewide hasn't even been delivered yet.

Our neighbor Jimmy, whose place is even with our house is so proud of his "new" land. Now we can see each other's houses. We have given up some privacy but the trade off is that we had land that was unable to be used due to the overgrowth. Jimmy walked to his back fence, our side fence, last night and called me. He was so proud that he could walk to the fence and must have thanked us for including him 8 or 9 times.

I'll post more pictures, the difference is utterly amazing.

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Finished today. I can't believe the difference in this place. We now have one patch of wild tangled woods on one side that will give us a little privacy if that neighbor ever does anything with his land.

Our new neighbor Judy, was beyond thrilled. For $300, she got the back of her place cleaned up, leaving the big trees, and her doublewide hasn't even been delivered yet.

Our neighbor Jimmy, whose place is even with our house is so proud of his "new" land. Now we can see each other's houses. We have given up some privacy but the trade off is that we had land that was unable to be used due to the overgrowth. Jimmy walked to his back fence, our side fence, last night and called me. He was so proud that he could walk to the fence and must have thanked us for including him 8 or 9 times.

I'll post more pictures, the difference is utterly amazing.

I Am so happy for all of you, that feeling of openess on your property is very rewarding, 'ya done good Bay " and saved yourself tons of $$$$

 

[farmerjan]

I think that it was a great deal for all of you. And believe me, when guys with machines like that are "in between jobs" it is better to do the work at basically cost and keep the guys on the payroll working, rather than trying to find busy work for them. We actually paid some guys to do some bush hogging a couple years ago. The owner of the business was trying to keep his guys busy and gave us a deal that was less than what we could have done it for ourselves; all because they were in that area and had a lapse in time til they could move to the next job. Sure it was a bigger "out of pocket chunk" of money all at once as opposed to fuel and such..... but it also saved alot of wear and tear on our equipment and we used that time to get other stuff done.
Great going. And look at all that organic matter to decompose into soil for you too. Alot better than burning....and not having to deal with GREEN BRIARS by hand

 

[Baymule]

@farmerjan will it decompose any faster if I scatter nitrogen fertilizer? I am aware that decomposing wood will pull nitrogen out of the soil, was wondering if an application would speed things up any.

 

[farmerjan]

Better to try to find some manure.... that would pull the dung beetles and earthworms more, and worms will do a better job of pulling the organic matter into the soil. I guess some nitrogen wouldn't hurt, but be careful as it could "burn" the worms. I think I would leave it alone and let it protect the soil from the heat and drying weather there for the worst of the summer. But I am not all that familiar with your soil conditions other than it is like "sugar sand". And one thing, I know that it is good for growth, but I HATE FESCUE and we will not plant it anywhere...... Don't like the toxicity and problems with abortions in the cattle. I would rather have Johnson grass than fescue. It is just " my pet peeve". It grows here everywhere, we have it in several of the hayfields, but we really don't like it. Cows don't like it much either as hay, because the starches do not change to sugars when making the hay. Only happens after a frost.
I don't know that much about the Kentucky 32. Is it an endophyte free fescue? If so then it is probably okay. There have been some studies done here with endophyte free fescues as opposed to the old endophyte infected fescues. Cattle have done much better on endophyte free than the old standby kentucky 31. They also don't like to eat fescue until after it has frosted to change the starches to more palatable sugars. It makes a great grass to stockpile for late fall/winter pastures. Does it have the heat tolerance there? Again, I don't know much about your area for that. Is it recommended by the extension agent? Or others? I know here it goes fairly dormant in summer, and the warm season grasses kinda take over and then in the fall it starts to really grow again.

Maybe @greybeard will come out of hibernation and chime in on it????? He has had some activity on a newer CattleForumToday because there have been too much S#@T on Cattle Today going on lately. But he was going with his sister to her cancer treatments, and talking about moving to the western part of Texas, so don't really know quite all that is going on.

 

[Baymule]

@farmerjan Greybeard was totally against the fescue which I understand because of the abortion problems with the endophytes. The Kentucky 32 is endophyte free. My sheep love it and so far, so good. It reseeded and came back up last fall. It dies back in the heat. @Mike CHS has it in his pastures and his sheep do well on it. I may skip it this fall. I need to get clovers established for the nitrogen fixing in the root nodules for conditioning the soil. I'll sow some rye grasses too, maybe some chicory, the sheep love that stuff.

At this point, I need all the soil conditioning I can get, those 40 bales of rotten hay will be used! Our horses are in the 2 1/2 acre plot behind the horse barn. We gotta get busy and put up some fencing to keep them dry lotted. They sure aren't going to like me very much. We are going to clean out the horse barn and spread the manure, same with the sheep barn. In the sheep barn, I just throw the dead hay (stems and what they don't eat) around in the barn and make a deep litter. We clean it out when we need it for the garden or before they start lambing. So we have a good start for manures. You are right on the dung beetles, I treasure those little hard workers!