You do not fit in to my pasture management system. Therefore... you must die!
I still hesitate to use herbicide even though the product we will use is "safe" when "dry" with no suggested period of time to keep the horses off. Even the vet says "Keep them off for about 24 hours." I still hesitate! Yes, these powerful chemicals are designed to target plant proteins and are deemed "harmless" by scientists. But I have heard "scientists" say some pretty impressive CRAP.
That said, I am mowing the weeds as frequently as possible - while they are still small and not producing seeds. This will allow the grass to catch up (once we get some gosh darn rain).
Pasture 1 has been dragged, seeded, and dragged, and mowed, and mowed. The next step is to allow it to grow and once the rain starts (soon, according to the radar!) I will apply fertilizer.
Pasture 3 has been dragged and mowed. I have not put down the seed yet because I may still need it as a back up pasture for the 3 horses on 'this side of the farm'. If I seed it and then have to use the pasture, all my baby grass will be gobbled up before it can re-seed itself!
The new (used) drag!
Pastures 4 and 5 (on the 'other side') have both been dragged and mowed. I love to drag because it spreads out all the manure piles as well as pulls out some shallow-rooted weeds. And mowing gets the rest of the pesky weeds.
Stall horses have been coming in during the day now. Since I have time on my hands I am bringing them in around 10am or when it starts to get hot (they still get fed early, before 8am). I try turning them out by 5pm if it isn't sweltering out.
A HUGE oak tree came down during a rain storm a few weeks ago, taking out (what I originally though to be 40 feet of fencing) about 60 feet of pasture fence! Lots of good news though; no horses were in the pasture when it happened, it only took out wire and the posts are mostly in tact, and it wasn't a tree on our side, so we won't lose any shade. Yay! Trees happen.
Chris took on the monumental task of dismembering the tree with a hand saw (yes, the manual kind!) and a hatchet. Now that he's pretty much hacked it up Dexter-style he's sporting some awesome guns.
After leaving massive piles of tree digits, Alex loaded them limb-by-limb into the truck and trucked (no pun intended) them over to the burn pile, unloaded them, and went back for more. Whew! And in the Florida sun!
Do your Native American rain dances, send prayers to rain gods, and cross your fingers - we need RAIN!
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