The Pasture Project

Ok folks, the update that has been needing to happen for quite some time now...

You have been reading my elusive references to the pasture project.  This project and effort have been huge.  So much time, energy and work have gone into this dream that is so close to fruition.  Oh, it feels so good to be so close!

It all started a couple of years ago.  (I first made reference to it here.)  We were in need of the removal of a few hazard trees on our heavily forested landscape, and from there we decided that it was time to plow ahead on our dream of more garden space and pasture. Since then we have surveyed our property, cleared an acre, burned mountains of brush, chipped thousands and thousands of pounds of both hardwood and softwood branches, moved and stacked hundreds of felled tree trunks, bucked and split tens of cords of firewood, put up a robust perimeter fence, hung gates, dug a pond, and completed our first round of mineral and nutrient amendments and tilling.  Phew!  Oh, and, you know, had a baby smack in the middle of it all (plus homeschooling and jobs).

Little helper

laying out the string lines and fence posts

Posts in

 I suppose "cleared" is a relative term here.  An area which, a couple of years ago, was so thickly and densely overgrown that it was literally impenetrable and extremely unhealthy is now open and still thinly treed with strong and healthy Big Leaf Maples, Western Red Cedars, Douglas Firs, and Red Alders.  I'd say there are still at least 40 or 50 trees standing tall and strong within the fenceline.  I was not joking when I said it was overgrown and dense!  It's still crazy to me to look at the space as it is now.  There were parts of it that I had not even really seen or walked on before because I just couldn't get to them.  Now, it is open and accessible and going to be put to very good use.

The back pasture area - notice there is no shortage of trees!

One of three drive gates, plus the fence is stretched!

The space is pretty much exactly an acre and will be split up into two main pasture areas (which will be further split into smaller rotational grazing paddocks) and a new large garden.  We dug a good sized duck pond in the garden zone for our newest adorable farm friends, the ducklings, who we hope will keep the slug population down to a minimum.

Burning brush and stumps for days and weeks.

A dream come true!

It's definitely challenging to be at the size and scale of gardening/homesteading/farming (whatever you want to call it) that does not really require owning equipment like a tractor and all of its helpful implements, but is also exhausting to get done by hand.  That seems to be exactly the spot where we currently reside.  We've been both renting and hiring equipment, and doing A LOT by hand.  Holy moly, have we been doing so much by hand.  Things like spreading 1500 pounds of amendments over an acre by hand with a five-gallon bucket and a yogurt container (!), removing millions of sticks, branches, roots and rocks with our muscles and wheelbarrows, and pulling out roots and stumps.  Luckily for us, the weather has granted us a small miracle in the last few weeks and given us enough dry days to get the final push finished that needed to happen before tilling could take place.

Too bad Jade's little toy tractor can't quite get the job done!

Believe it or not, our area historically has droughts every summer.  We get non-stop rain and drizzle for 9-10 months out of the year, but from about the first week of July through the early part of October we get little to no rain at all.  That being said, it is rather imperative to get the pasture seed down by early May in order for the grasses and herbs to have time to get established before the drought hits.  Our goal was to get it sown mid-March, but that was impossible with the weather and the sheer volume of work that needed to get done first.

Mountain of logs

And bucked logs waiting to be split...

So, at this point, we have one more round of spreading amendments and shallow tilling to go.  I'm not a huge fan of tilling, but we need to get the amendments worked down into the soil so they can work their magic.  We are just doing a very shallow till with the tiller set at a "float" mode that allows it to just sort of float along the surface of the soil and bounce over tree roots.  Our amending had to be spread out over the course of two applications because some of the minerals will bind to each other and become unavailable to the plants if applied at the same time.  Our hope is that we have another dry spell sometime around the end of next week that allows us to spread and till.  Then, finally, a couple of weeks later... down goes the pasture seed!  Woohoo!!!

While I could continue to ramble on and on and on about this project, with all the details and excitement, my eyes are crossing as I try to type this and I desperately need to go to bed.  I hope to add a lot more info as things continue to progress.  If you have any questions or particular areas of interest, please hit me up in the comments!