Mow, Bale, or Burn?

About a month ago I wrote a little bit about our pasture on the farm. Right now the entire 26 acres of pasture is in the Conservation Reserve Program and it appears to have been seeded into switchgrass at some point during its tenure in CRP. The switchgrass is a nice warm season grass that we hope to maintain as part of the pastures (it will be difficult), but judging by the amount of small trees and brush growing it has been awhile since it was last burned off or mowed. So, the grass is really tall and not really ready for grazing by our Dexters. Which leads us to the question at hand ... Mow, Bale, or Burn?

The picture above (click image for larger picture) shows some of the grass still standing and some of the area that we mowed on Tuesday. My dad test drives County Clipper ZTR mowers so I had him bring one up and we mowed the area around the building site so we could more easily envision the project and to see what it looks like after a couple of passes with a mower. Of course there is a lot of residue on the ground after mowing, but it is fairly well chopped up. One thing that I did notice after mowing was that there are there are clumps of switchgrass and then there are spots were other grasses are coming on. We are supposed to get some rain tomorrow and then a slight warm up on the weekend, so we will see if the grass pops.

I'm not sure if the residue from chopping up the grass is too much cover for new grass to come through or if it is just really good organic matter that can be incorporated into the soil. That is why I have been thinking about the second option, baling. I could go out and mow and rake the grass and then have a friend come in and bale it up to get it off of the ground. The bales would be much good for feed, but they could be used for composting or something. The main reason behind this is to open up the growing grass to more sunlight, but maybe the mowed grass residue would help keep moisture in?

The final option is to burn it off. Maybe this would be the most natural way to manage a pasture full of native switchgrass, but I'm just sure that I have the patience. Right now there are plenty of wet spots around the farm because of all of the rain, and judging by the forecast they will be wet for a while longer! Also, there is a waiting list that we are on to have the Rural Fire Department do the burn and it could be a while before they get to us. I think I just may cross this option off of the list unless I come up with some compelling evidence to make me patiently wait.

What are your thoughts?

Pasture Renovation

With so many thoughts running through my head with our hopefully impending land purchase I have decided to dedicate this week to blogging about it and shamelessly asking for input! Today I want to focus in on the pasture. The picture on the right gives you a close up (you can click the pictures for a larger view) of what most of the grass on the land looks like. The pasture is about 26 acres in size and is most a South facing slope. You can scroll down to the past to posts to see an aerial shot. Also, there are two water ways running down the pasture that will need special attention so we don't have a couple of Grand Canyon's on the place!

One of the questions that we are facing is exactly how to get rid of the grass that is there right now. I don't mean we want to kill it all off, but we need to clip it down to size for various reasons. First of all there are huge ant hills everywhere. As you can tell from the picture on the left they are pretty tall. That is Caleb standing on one that is over a foot tall! It wouldn't be so fun to hit those all day long as you were cutting hay. So, we need to make the grass shorter so we can knock down all of those ant hills. Secondly, starting the spring with new growth is probably a good idea for our cattle and for the hay that we will make.

We have two options. Option number one is that we mow it down. I have the wonderful fortune of having a father who test drives lawn mowers. He could come up for a while and knock it all down and find the ant hills (by running into them). One problem with that idea is that you will have a lot of grass clippings on the pasture ... that may or may not be a good thing. The other option is to have the rural fire department come out and burn in off. That would expose the ant hills and give it a fresh start this spring. Right now I am leaning towards option number two, but would love any thoughts on the subject.

The second question I am thinking on is whether or not we should attempt any seeding this spring. For quite awhile the land has been in the Crop Reduction Program (more on that tomorrow) and at some time I believe it was seeded to some sort of switchgrass (not sure on the variety). The stand of grass is pretty strong and there really aren't many weeds in the pasture except for some brambles and berries pushing in on the edge of the woods. But, I am wondering if I should or shouldn't try and inter-seed some sort of clover. Also, I really have no idea how the switchgrass will stand up under Management Intensive Grazing. I have done a little reading on switchgrass as a forage and it sounds like it is good as long as you keep it clipped at about six inches, but I haven't found out how well it does with grazing.

I really can't wait to see things green up this coming spring as the pasture comes to life. I can already image our Dexter herd out grazing on the pasture!