Disking the Field

Our front west field is being disked now to prepare it for planting. We don't have a big enough tractor or disk to do this sort of work on the fields so we hire the job out to custom farmers in our area.

We're going to put it back to permanent irrigated pasture. We will be planting a mix of grasses this year that we can either graze or hay as needed. It's unlikely we'll get much feed from the planting this year but we can let it grow all summer and then graze it off this fall after a major frost and it stops growing. We will eventually add in clover but not this first year in case we have to do any spraying to kill broadleaf weeds. We can always frost seed clover in the spring if the weed load isn't too bad.

We had originally hoped to be able to do rotations of grass and various annual forages but all we do when we disturb the ground is plow up a nice new crop of rocks so for us a permanent pasture is the only viable option. It will be nice to have this all done though. It will give us many more options for grazing for the sheep and we might even get a bit of hay in some years. Our front pear orchard field will be done as well.