As must people know the 2007 summer has not been kind to the east coast as far as rain has been concerned. Most of Virginia has seen severe drought and has we move into fall many of us including myself have not had to do more than light mowing since late May or early June. For me personally I pretty much had written off this year and was planning for next Spring. Some how the horses managed to stay pretty "fat" with limited amount of grass they could find in out three pastures and not being fed any hay.
10/17/07 - I bought spike tooth harrow to help break up and spread the horse manure in the fields and rejuvenate the grass in the pastures. It worked pretty well. It is still really dry . . . and it needs to be when running the harrow over the manure. We need some rain bad . . .
10/27/07 - Rain FINALLY!!!!! They had been calling for rain and we got four days straight. It was the perfect time for me to do some aerating so I rented a 600lb aerator for the weekend and prayed that it would dry out enough for me to use it.
Additional 550lbs of rock salt for ballast!!!
I ended up waiting to about 2PM on Sunday to try and give the ground enough time to dry so that I didn't destroy the grass. The condition where not perfect because although we had significant rain leading up to the weekend the ground was still pretty hard do to months of drought. I was getting very little penetration with the tines. I ended up adding 500lbs of rock salt to the aerator frame which gave about another half inch to inch of penetration. I was now getting close to two inches total which was acceptable. After a few days the rain and aerating looks to have helped, it definitely didn't hurt. Hopefully it helps to get more air and water into the soil over the winter prior to new seeding in the Spring.
11/4/07 - One of the last things I wanted to get done before it got really cold outside this year was to get one of our coral gates moved. One of our 16ft. exterior gates exited our property directly onto Rt.15 which of course is a main highway. For security reason but more so for safety concerns we wanted to relocate that gate to side of our property right off our driveway. That meant physically pulling up the posts (6'x6'x8') that the gate was hung on and swapping those with the "regular" line post where we wanted to gat to be. Toss that in with replacing what I assume was going to be at least a few fence boards that were going to be cracked or broken in the dismantling of the fence, we had a couple days work ahead of us.
16ft. steel gate . . . 6'x6'x8' locust fence post
Gate in it's new location . . . New fence boards, no more gate . . .
So after lots of digging, cutting, drilling, and hammering we got everything moved and I don't think the horses even notice anything had changed!
Dec/Jan/2007 - With winter being in full swing the horses have been going through hay pretty quickly. This was the second of three round bales that we had on the property. I have not bought a bale spike yet since I am not sure how long we are going to keep using round bales. At some point I will get one since it makes the job of moving them much easier.
2/23/2008 Pasture Renovation . . . February I had to start thinking about getting the pastures together for the spring/summer grazing season. Two of the them were not overly bad outside of suffering from the harsh summer and the over usage from the horses. The third however need A LOT of work. It sits lower on our property which is technically in flood plain so it does not drain water very well. Secondly, we fed the horses out of that pasture for most of the winter and as a result it got torn up from them walking through it and me driving the tractor across it. At any rate, if I had waited and let it dry out on its own I would have never been able to get it replanted prior to June or July. All of the mud simply would have not dried out by the end of the spring seeding season. This is how it looked when we finally moved the horses to the upper pasture just before I started working on it.
Notice that wonderful pile of manure and compost. It's like free money, really it is . . .
Below you can see the results of my labor. I basically moved in aprox. 15-20 bucket loads of fill dirt from another part of the property to help bring up the level of the lower pasture. It was naturally lower to begin with but it was quite a bit lower after I moved out all of the mud to get it down to hard pack. Once I got it backfilled to a point where I good drive the tractor over it to pack it down without it sinking (like it did in the mud) I switched out the rear blade for the steel tooth harrow. I was able to drag the newly graded pasture enough to a point where all the large clumps and rocks were no longer an issue and I only had a few low spots. Now its just a matter of letting the pasture dry out as much as possible for the next few week before spreading fertilizer, lime, and seed.
3/01/2008 . . . I had my soil tested in early February. That consisted of 5 soil samples from different parts of all the pastures all mixed together. The results came back and the told me that I needed just under 8 tons of lime and 950lbs. of nitrogen and urea based fertilizer. The grass seed would come later. I determined that I would spread the fertilizer myself and save on the $125.00 delivery charge. The lime on the other hand was going to have to be done by the Co-op simply do to the shear amount that was needed.
I picked up a 950lb. broadcast spreader from Agri-supply to use for the fertilizer and grass seed. As you can see the fertilizer was bulk mixed and loaded into my pickup truck. I then had to shovel it into the hopper to spread. It didn't take to long to load. That was the good. The bad was that the clouds were rolling in fast and I had to get the stuff put down before it started to rain.
3/30/2008 . . . Well the good news is that about three weeks ago I got the seed down in the large pasture and the renovated pasture. The third pasture is scheduled to be seeded in about another week and half. I ended up putting down about 175lbs of seed, 25lbs in the small renovated pasture and about 150lbs in the front larger pasture. That is a bit more than the typical 25lbs./acre that is the norm but I new I was better putting down a bit extra than taking a change with not putting down enough. I am still waiting for my lime. It's been nearly 45 days since I ordered it. I knew they were backed up but this is getting crazy. I called them last week and their spreader truck broke down so that extended the outlook for delivery even longer.
Remember this pasture . . . before and after pictures. We just need some more rain!!!!!
4/05/2008 . . . Having got the main pasture and the smaller paddock prepped and seeded it was only a waiting game to see how they would do with the warmer weather and rain that I was hoping we would get. In the mean time one of the (or both) of the horses we had on the property currently got into the one remaining section of wire fence that was left from the previous owners. The rear of our property backs up to a large cow farm and that section of fence consist of two runs, one barbed on his side and the other smooth strand wire on our side. At some point over the winter a dead tree fell on part of it and put a bit of slack in the runs as well as completely snapping a few of the lower strands. With the horses being locked in that one rear pasture do to the re-seeding of the others for a few weeks I am not surprise the got into that fence. Any way long story short I decided that since I had lots of fence work to do this summer I should just start with that back section.
Since I REFUSE to dig holes by hand any longer I purchased a Woods PD65 PTO driven post hole digger with 12" auger. Probably more than I will ever need at least in the near future as it's pretty heavy duty but as the saying goes, you can never have too much "horsepower".
I haven't installed a PH digger for a number of years so I had forgotten how much of a PITA it is do it by oneself, especially when the one your installing weights so much. At any rate, I got it mounted and ready to use the next day. I also was able to get my fence post picked up so I was ready get started early the next morning.
Harder than it looks . . . 4"X 6"X 16' treated pine
Here you can see the old wire fence and how it runs the back of our property. I figured I would start at the top of the hill and just start making my way down to the other corner. I knew that this fence run had the potential to get a little be frustrating with all the trees and roots. I figured I would just play this one as I went along an make the needed adjustments as they became necessary. In the end I knew the run wasn't going to be completely "true" because of the trees and roots we digging around.
For the next week and half we managed to get all of our fence post in. I also took the opportunity to put in a small 8ft. gate behind the smaller run in barn that allowed secondary access from one paddock to the other. This will is a nice feature to have but in all honesty was done out of necessity. I needed a way to access the fence line without driving through my newly seeded and nicely growing paddock and secondly because I had pile compost and dirt up in front of the fence that now had to moved in order to set the new fence post.
New post all in . . . New gate . . . notice the dirt I had move from fence line
Now we just have to get the fence boards installed which I hope to have done in the next two weeks. Then we can move on the next section of new fence.
4/12/2008 . . . You remember that muddy field paddock that I had to totally renovate right? Well last time we saw it (scroll up) the grass was starting to come in. We have had some good rain and some nice warm sunny days so not surprising the grass has continued to come in nicely. I let the horses in to get a taste of the new paddock mix for a few minutes but because it is still fragile I only gave them an appetizer.
4/16/2008 . . . I still had one pasture left to re-seed and it was getting on in the season so decided that I would get it done this week. This one had a lot of rocks and sticks in it from a failed brush burning that I had attempted a couple of weeks earlier. I ended up having to drag it with the harrow and then hand rake much of it. After removing the rocks and sticks it was ready for seed. I had also got work that my name was next in line for lime spreading so the truck was coming to put down the lime. The came late and so were only able to put down half of my load which was about 4 ton. They are scheduled to come back tomorrow to put down another 4 ton.
After he finished with the lime spreading we hurried back and dropped the harrow from the tractor and hooked up the broadcast spreader. I was able to quickly get 50lbs. of paddock mix down and then get the spreader rinsed and clean up and put back in the barn in about 45 minutes. Then it was time to get the harrow hooked up again and try to get some of that seed covered so hopefully we get some successful germination.
It came out pretty good. However I suspect that portions of what you see here won't do very well because it is a high traffic area. I was more concerned with the lower portions down towards where you see the trailer setting and on the other side of the barn which you can see in this picture. We are putting up some temp fencing so that we can keep the horses in smaller portions of the main field. That will allow us to keep them off of the two small fields while allow the larger field to be rotated a bit.
4/17/2008 . . . This morning when I went down to open the gates I took another picture of the smaller pasture as there has been some significant growth over the last week. I guess at the very least I did something right . . .
By the time I got home from work in the evening, Kay had got the main pasture divided up and strung with the temp fence and it was ready to put the charging unit on. The only problem was the older unit we were going to use needed to be put out of its misery as it was putting out an amazing 0.9 volts. I had run back in town to pick up a new unit. It's just as well as imagine we can get a lot of use out of this one for the time being and I can refocus my fence building efforts to a new front pasture we decided to build rather than permanently dividing up the main pasture right away. At any rate, by the time it got dark we had everything hooked up and I had tested the full length of the line and it was putting out in excess of 5,500 volts the entire length.
Touch it, I dare you . . . Lazy morning
4/19/2008 . . . The forecast for Sunday was rain so I wanted to get as much of the rear fence finished as possible, if not all of it. We got up early Saturday morning and ran the trash up the elementary school for pickup and then hustled up to the Coop to pay for the lime they spread earlier in the week. We also had to pickup the fence boards. I thought we would need about 27 to have just enough to finish out the run. It was a nice surprise because the lime was cheaper than we had calculated when we first ordered it . . . either that or it was my bad math. As a result we were able to get the lime and the fence boards for just a bit more than we had originally thought it was going to cost us for just the lime.
A long day ahead of us . . .
It ended up taking us the better part of the day with a few breaks thrown in but we got it done and it turned out pretty nice. The weather held up and it was actually pretty nice as it cooled off towards the end of the day. All we have left to do now is to trim the top of the fence post to make them a bit more uniform since some had to go in plus or minus a few inches do to some large root we encountered. I also need to pack some dirt around and tamp down the holes since the rain has cause them to settle over the last few weeks.
Next we move out front to start on a new small holding paddock that we are going to be putting in just across our drive from our main pasture, stay tuned.
5/13/2008 . . . Our plans changed mid-stream because decided to bring in a couple of additional horses so we could start training them and getting them prepped to teach lessons with. We settled on two, a 4 year old mare named Chloe and a 11 year old Gelding named Comet. With the two new additions coming to the farm in less than a week we had to get our two vacant stalls prepared. However, there was one problem. Because we have had so much rain, to the tune of nearly 9" just this month, one of the stalls looked like this . . .
With that amount of water laying in the stall there was no way were going to put any animals in there without some work. Within 12hrs. we had aprox. 25 tons of blue stone in the driveway ready to build up a base in the stall. The idea was to get the "flooring" 3-4 inches above the dirt hard pack and with that the moisture. But first I had to drag out all the water and muck using the rear blade and loader. Then it was onto spreading the gravel . . .
It took me about 3 hours to get move enough gravel to finish both stalls as well the area in front of the upper stall and the area where I park the tractor and mowers.
After spreading the gravel I took a few minutes to turn my manure pile since it hadn't been done for some time.
With the new horses coming we also took the opportunity to divide our top paddock into two small paddocks. This work out really well and gives us options when it comes to the quarantine of new animals as well as paddock/pasture rotation to keep the grass healthy. We were also able to gain a "holding" area to use for short term confinement of animals. We used the remainder of the stone we had delivered as a ground covering for that area.
New fencing dividing upper paddock into two . . .
New holding area . . .