Farmer Jayne

A long stretch of unusually bright and rain-free days is supposedly coming to an end tomorrow, so it was time to tackle fertilizing my leased pasture. Last year Frank, bless his heart, fertlized it by using a walk-behind spreader over all 4 acres! So this year I opened my big mouth and asked if I could borrow the neighbors pull-behind spreader and they graciously consented. Wow, what a blessing that was to be able to just ride along and get the job done in about 2 hours.


This is the field looking to the south. The horses like to rest in the shade of the treeline at the southern edge of the property.


This is from the same spot in about the middle of the long pasture looking north toward our house. There is a driveway between this leased field and our own property that you can't see except for a little on the left. The red shed is our pumphouse and garden shed. The gray thing is our mobile home. To the left just out of the frame is this pasture owner's large shop onto which he had previously built a nice pasture shelter that the boys (Bailey and Little Bit) share nicely. We are very thankful to have found a pasture so close to our house. We will be able to pasture the boys and the donkeys there for a couple of months this spring to let our winter pasture at our place get fertilized and rested. This will happen in early April.


The actual task of fertilizing went fairly well except for one thing pictured above. Molehills!! Molehills from gigantic, mutant moles that push dirt up into big mounds that are tough to drive over, let alone pull the spreader over with its narrow wheel base. I am happy to report that not once did I dump the contents of the spreader, but I came very close. I liked that from the seat of the lawn tractor I could actually reach the spreader bucket and stabilize it if I needed. But the darn mole hills slowed me down and made my spreading uneven, which drives a person like me nuts.


This is a happy picture showing an EMPTY spreader. I can't count how many times I made the long trip back to my van to open another bag and refill it, but my math actually worked out pretty well and I had only about 3 inches left in the bucket when I completed the field. I went back over some of the more grazed down spots to use it all up. I purchased the fertilizer from our local farmer's co-op. They recommended 21-7-14, so that's what I got. It worked well last year so why mess with a proven system!


Here is a close up of the finished job. I sure hope I applied it in the right quantity! This is actually about as thick as the application got; some spots don't have as much. Maybe one of my farmer friends from Draft Horse Village can tell me next time we chat (Hi Ange and Kari especially!), although there is not too much I can do about it now! I am looking forward to seeing the grass get healthy and long and ready to feed my crew until the end of summer. I love being Farmer Jayne once in a while. Maybe someday I'll get to drive a real tractor!