EQUIP Funding - Homestead Wisconsin - Meat Delivery

The lower pasture is done!

Did I really just get to say that?!

To give you a little background if you’re new to the party, this spring our farm was the recipient of EQUIP funding - a grant program through the USDA. The grant was for establishing pasture on our 18 acres of tillable land. It was such an incredible blessing to receive the funding to grow our operation several years before I'd even dreamed it possible. I owe a HUGE thank you to Marie who continues to help me navigate these pastures as we work to restore grazing to this land.

establishing pastures

In April I worked with our neighbor Allen, to prep the lower 18 acre field for seeding. Last season it was a corn field so there were a lot of debris that had to be mulched in order for the seed to have a good chance at establishing.

After the field was prepped dad and I spent a morning spreading our 500 pounds of seed using a broadcast spreader mounted on Lil' Blue (my tractor). It went smoothly except for one bump and a few band-aids... sorry dad...

It couldn't have been a much better growing season, calm and frequent rainfalls speckled with days of sunshine. It was about a week and I started seeing baby alfalfa, and by the end of the season the field had good establishment on all but the sandy hillside.

fencing

Fencing this farm has been quite a project and the lower field was no exception. Old fence-lines that hadn’t been touched in decades needed to be cleared, old posts pulled and well worn wire that needed to be removed. Then it was back to planting posts, only 1/3 of which however are wood posts. I decided based on advice from Marie that we’d use composite posts for the wooded areas. That way when a tree comes down there is a slimmer chance of having the wire and post break, making mending much easier. I did leave a small property line with t-posts that were in good shape and straight so I’m hoping that stays nice for many years.

On the lower field I on a high tensile wire fence instead of the woven. It’s a cheaper fence to install and without the risk of highway I felt good about trying something different. Another perk is that the high tensile fence really disappears so our view is wide open. Since this field is most of our view from the farmhouse I wanted to make sure and keep things clean and open as much as possible.