A Ford 5000 ... a spring toothed harrow with sweeps ... and a drag harrow ... now we are in business busting anthills! Thanks to the help of (and shopping) of my uncle I am now able to bust up some anthills and try to get this pasture smoothed out a bit. And, I must say that this little rig is working great. Because of the size of some of the hills it will probably take a pass from each direction, but once it is all said and done I think we are going to do quite a number on the anthills on the farm.The next step will be getting rid of all the brush and then over course deciding what to send into the grasses that are already there. On one hand I could just let it come back on it's own over time, but I think with a little investment we can get the pasture in shape a little more quickly and add in some cool season grasses to go along with the relatively thin stand of warm season grasses that are left in the fields.
I will admit that it is the brush clearing that will take the most amount of time though. For much of it I can attack it with my brush mower on the back of the tractor, but there are a few stands of locust trees that will need to be taken out with the chain saw because they are pretty thick and pretty plentiful. On top of that they are very thorny! Once we get that accomplished then we may drill in some seed.
I plan on talking with some farmers in the area for a good seed mixture to use, but I know for sure that I will be talking with the local grassfed beef farm that has hosted a couple PFI field days the past two years. It is nice to see things start to come together around the farm!
