Pasture Pasture Pasture

First, let me say, we are so blessed to have such phenomenal neighbors! We are moving from a cookie cutter neighborhood with an HOA, so naturally, we do not have anything that you would need to start a farmstead. God has blesses us with the ability to move onto a lot smack between my sister-in-law, and my niece who have already started their country journey.

Other than our driveway, our property right now is a blank slate. But since it has been farm land, there were some pretty significant ruts that needed smoothed out before it could be used as pasture. So around and around and around we went!

Step 1: Discing. Basically, a disc cultivator is like a huge pastry cutter, it has several rows of big round blades that churn up the ground.

Step 2: Disc it again…. This is also steps 3-5! Because the ground was so full of ruts, and also so packed down, I went over it again and again until the ground didn’t look chunky any more.

Step 6: Drag it with a drag harrow. << Another thing we do not have! (Remember those phenomenal neighbors I mentioned earlier who have let us use the tractor and disc cultivator? Here they get an extra dose of gratitude.) Basically the drag harrow is a sheet of steel barbs drug behind the tractor to smooth out what you just tilled up with the disc. Well, since it was designed to be drug, getting it high enough so that it did not drag while driving down the road proved rather time consuming.

My niece’s husband and I tried for over an hour to figure out how to lift the drag harrow high enough so it would not drag on the road from their yard to ours. And like all things, after spending a maddening amount of time trying to figure it out, the solution only took about 30 seconds. And these kiddos were marvelous. They climbed happily on their fencing and chased crickets, while we beat our heads on our hands.

Well, after much delay, we were able to head back to our side and drag the field (I don’t feel like I can call it a pasture yet… as it is pretty much just fluffed dirt at this point). But never the less, we are on our way!

And my tractor buddy is no longer laid out being dramatic. She has forgiven me (for now) for my previous offense of putting her down so I could take pictures!

Now to figure out what kind of seed I am going to put down…