Using our cows for rotational grazing is one crucial step toward farming for a future. Planting cover crop is another. But…planting a cover crop was a bigger undertaking than you might think.

And we did it! Yes, the newbies got a fall cover crop planted in part of the old hayfield!

It took the help of another neighbor to borrow a big enough tractor, the generosity of our local conservation district to have a seed drill to rent for cheap, and a seed mix shipped across the country (to get what we wanted)…plus cooperative weather.

And it all came together. The week we had the seed drill reserved was perfect weather wise, and it hadn’t rained so the ground was dry. (That meant we didn’t have to worry about tearing up the field with the big tractor.)

The fall cover crop seed mix is wheat, barley, sorghum sudangrass, radish, winterpea and forage turnip. It’s designed to help build soil but also feed our cows.

This mix will put nitrogen into the ground, help to break up the hard clay, and provide our cows with healthy forage next year…if it makes it through the winter.

That’s the big unknown. Our weather can be unpredictable in our valley because we get either warmer or colder than the surrounding area. This seed mix is meant to overwinter. Fingers crossed it will.

We did make one mistake: We cranked up the density too high. We didn’t see enough signs of seed in/on the ground, and it didn’t seem like we were using as much seed as we wanted to.

Turns out we were wrong about that, because once the seeds sprouted, we could see just how close together they were planted. Oops! Here’s hoping they don’t crowd each other out as they grow.

That also meant we didn’t cover as much ground as we could have, but we planted about three acres of the 10-acre field, and we were happy with that. It was our first time, after all, and three acres was our plan.

After our luck held with getting the seeds in the ground, we were blessed again a few days later with just enough rain to cause the seeds to sprout. In the picture above, you can see a radish and grass-like seedlings growing. YES!

Now that we’ve done it once, we plan on doing this every year, even if it means we have to buy a bigger tractor rather than count on borrowing one. Our goal is to be planting cover crops on every field in a rotation, because some pastures will need to be grazed, meaning we can’t plant the whole farm at the same time.

OK, so you might be wondering, “Why didn’t you simply plow up the field and replant it?” Well, that gets into the whole no till approach, which will have to wait for another post.

We were like kids on Christmas morning on this September day. This is a huge step forward for us and our goal to be farming for a future. It was something we had learned about and longed to do, and what a treat to make it happen!

And that’s enough for now. 🙂