Our Worst Pasture, Unearthed.

We just had some fellas out to the farm with a bit of heavy equipment to fix us up with new water pipe from our well. In the process we went ahead and had them bury a new water line out into the pasture behind our barn.

This is the worst pasture on our farm. Sometime in the 1950’s it was scraped bare and all the good dirt was hauled 1/4 mile away to build a highway overpass. We’ve been trying a few tricks to rejuvinate this pasture like spreading old hay and fertilizing it with our pastured chickens. This has yielded some rather impressive results (at least on the surface) but when the well guys dug a 6′ deep trench through this pasture it really showed the extent of the problem.

This is the trench through the “not so bad” part of the pasture. Ground level is where the little tufts of grass are sticking out of the pile of dirt; below that is the trench. There is only about 10 inches (at most) of good black dirt. Below that is 6 feet or more of red sand.

In the middle of the pasture where the water tank is located there is even less good black dirt, a mere inch or two. We’ve got a lot of work to do to heal this particular patch of land.