Our “big” field (coming in at 17.5 acres) was dry enough to disc yesterday.
You can just make out the tractor on the left side of the photo.
The fertilizer truck showed up at 6:45 today.
This was quickly followed up by another pass with the tractor, this time with a digger to work in all the fertilizer.
After a quick trip to the co-op in the next town over to pickup our barley seed, we were ready to start planting. The total haul for the day was 47 bags of “Lacey” barley and a bag each of meadow brome-grass, tall fescue, and medium red clover. The grasses, legumes and 6 bags of barley are going toward a different 6-acre field that’s being converted from row-crops to improved pasture.
We planted a similar improved pasture in the other half of this particular field last year, and so far it’s the greenest thing on the farm this spring.
While it looks awfully green from across the farm, it hasn’t grown all that tall yet. (pliers for scale) In spite of the warm temperatures it looks like we’re still a few weeks away from the start of the grazing season.
Being devoid of a grain-drill we are currently relying on our endlessly helpful neighbor Tim to do our small-grain planting for us. Tim showed up around noon and got started on the barley in his little Deutz tractor and Van-Brunt / John Deere grain drill.
By mid afternoon the barley was in and the other 6 acre field was prepped for planting tomorrow.
After that’s all done there will be just two smaller fields (about 6 acres each) to plant. The remaining fields will be planted with soybeans this year, which means that we have until the end of the month before they need to be planted.
