Hi I’m Mike, and this is Little Orphan Andy getting his breakfast.
Today we tackle the project list once again, as we perform some pasture maintenance and
reseed our feed lots on our Wyoming life.
Welcome to our Wyoming life, each week we invite you to come along with us as we explore
the ranch life and escape the ordinary, please subscribe and join us as we ranch, market
garden and get into a little bit of everything in between.
Behind me as always, is the project list.
A list of things that need done around the ranch.
Each week we get to tackle something off the board and I get to take you along with me.
I’ve been asked how we decide what and when to do each individual project and the answer
is both hard and easy at the same time.
Some projects we can just get after, but others are time dependent, or even weather dependent
and need to be done in a time frame that is dictated by mother nature.
For example, cleaning the barn or the shop can be done anytime, rain or shine.
We are mostly inside and projects like those are easy to work on when you are limited on
what else you can do.
Which is usually why projects like cleaning the shop sometimes get pushed back on the
list.
There are also those projects that can become emergencies, like setting a new stock tank
because a well when down and you have to haul water to the cows.
Then there are the projects that have a small window to get done, like todays project.
We have today to get it done.
Rain and snow is on the way and we are going to use it to our advantage as we get started
reseeding some pasture.
This pasture we call the triangle pasture, and right beside is a smaller pasture we call
the lot.
The triangle pasture is about 19 acres and the lot is another 3 giving us 22 acres to
reseed today.
The total width of our work area today is a third of a mile and a quarter of a mile
long.
Almost a million square feet.
Just to put that in perspective, a football field is a about 1.3 acres.
So we have about 17 football fields to work on today.
We have a bit of a time crunch going on well because weather is moving in and the whole
point of getting this done today is to get the seed out so that the moisture from this
storm will help with the germination of the seed.
As with any project we have some prep work to do first.
After feeding Orphan Andy we can head out and get the cows fed.
We are going to feed them away from the pastures we are going to reseed today because from
here on out they will not be allowed into the area we are working on.
Once we have our seed out it needs to be left alone and cows will not be back into this
area until fall.
Don’t worry about them though, they have a lot more room to roam.
I don’t know about you but sometimes it seems like someone is working against you
when it comes time to get something done.
For me, that force working against me is usually myself.
We are going to be reseeding the pasture using a small broadcast seeder that attaches on
to the back of the four wheeler, this four wheeler, which is buried in the barn.
We haven’t used it all winter long and over the winter we have blocked it in.
Erins new high tunnel parts are all in the way, Gilberts old gator is in here along with
another four wheeler and lets not forget the tractor.
Before we can get started we need to move some things around, seems like the old barn
shuffle is a game we play quite often, moving one thing, or 4 things to get to something
you need.
We have limited space to store equipment in the winter and things tend to get crammed
in to tight spots, putting stuff in every little nook and cranny and come spring there
is always something in the way.
First we move the tractor, and with it out of the way we can get out one four wheeler,
then Gilberts little gator can be pulled out and parked out of the way as well.
Now we have access to the fourwheeler we need, and after some more of the old barn shuffle,
I can work it out of its parking spot
and out of the barn and around to the shop where we will start attaching and filling
our seeder.
First though we need our seed, this is a pasture mix, at mixture of a number of wheatgrasses
that do well in our area with a bit of alfalfa thrown in.
The seed we get is all tested for germination rates and this stuff rates at an average of
about 93%.
That’s in perfect conditions of course but we always hope for the best.
While we are in the barn we are also going to grab our seeder which will be attached
to the four wheeler to spread seed out over the field and take it over to the shop to
attach it to the back of the atv.
This type of seeding is about as easy and as cheap as it gets.
I’ve mentioned it before, but when working with yourself, sometimes you have to invent
a second set of hands and this broom will work well to hold the seeder in place while
I go ahead and attach the U-bolts that hold it in place.
Once its all attached we can test the spreader and talk about how it works.
Seed will be added to the bin, then we have this controller on the four wheeler which
controls the spreader, the higher the speed the more it spins and the farther it flings
the seed.
Also on the seeder is the flow control which will control how fast the seed flows from
the bit into the spinning wheel.
There is a handy chart on the seeder which is suppose to help figure out your settings
but I have found that a lot of time they don’t take pasture grasses into consideration on
these small machines.
They are made more for lawn grass seed so we are going to have to experiment to get
our flow rate correct.
We are aiming to put down between 5 to 10 lbs of seed per acre, first we need to know
how many pounds of seed the seeder will hold.
So we get a scale and weigh it out.
Turns out it holds 25 lbs so we can figure on starting on the small lot, which is 3 acres
and we should use this 25 lbs in that area.
Once in the field, we can fire it up and get going.
Adjusting our speed of travel and the rate of flow as we go to hopefully get into that
sweet spot where spreading the seed is going to do the most good.
Over seeding or broadcast seeding is the cheapest and easiest way for us to reseed a pasture.
We don’t own a drill or a seeder that will put the grass into the ground and really all
we need for germination of this seed is some soil contact, which isn’t going to be a
problem out here.
We previously harrowed this ground to knock down a number of the cow pies and loosen the
soil to prepare it for over seeding.
Now all we have to do is spread the seed as evenly as possible and hope for some moisture
to get these little plants started.
As the seeder spins, it throws seed out about 20 feet on either side of the four wheeler,
with this little seeder it can be a slow process, every 3 acres or so we are going to have to
go back to the shop and refill our seeder doing it in the shop to keep the bit of wind
from blowing the seed around.
The areas we are reseeding today are utilized by the cows during the winter, we feed here
and the soil gets pretty hammered by hooves and tractors, by reseeding now we are ensuring
a better pasture for this fall, improved nutrition for the cows when they return from summer
pasture and better soil heath.
The cows wont thank us, but I feel a whole lot better by getting it done.
Like I said earlier weather is moving in, we have rain starting just as we are finishing
up and soon it will change to snow, we are expecting up to 3 inches of snow tonight which
will give this seed a great kickstart, using the weather and timing to our advantage.
Around here the weather can change just like that.
And the weather can change just like that.
Thanks for coming out today for a project that although super simple can pay off huge
in the end, improving soil health, and setting us up for a beautiful pasture later this spring
and summer.
Its live stream week and we invite you to join us on Thursday for another ranch talk
with erin and me.
We have a couple really cool announcements to share with you and of course we will take
you questions and give you answers.
That’s Thursday at 7pm mountain time and we hope to see you there, they are always
a lot of fun.
Please subscribe and click the bell so you can get notifications and don’t miss a thing
from the ranch, calving continues and this weekend we will have a big update coming up.
Until I see you again, have a great week and thanks for joining us in our Wyoming life.