2014 Pig Forage

9/18/2013

The last week was busy with getting about 3.75 acres of land prepped and planted with forage for next year. In a previous post I discussed my interest in ladino clover, and I've followed through with that plan with a few additions.

First, I plowed the soil with the Farmall Cub and its single bottom plow. It did a reasonable job.

Then I followed with my disc harrow. The Cub had inadequate power to pull the disc, so I switched over to my 4x4 F-250 which had plenty of power (I ran into problems in the spring trying to use the truck to pull the harrow because the soil was wet in places and I had inadequate traction. This time, it worked perfectly). After smoothing out the furrows, I ran a drag harrow with the cub to work up a not-too-shabby seed bed.

I decided to use up the rest of the barley I harvested (by hand) last year. Although I had lofty intentions of malting the barley and making beer, I decided to pull the plug on that project after I realized the amount of time and resources that would be required. I had about 80 pounds of barley left, and figured it would work well in combination with clover, plus it would give the pigs something to munch on next spring while the clover was establishing. I started off by spreading the barley with a pull-behind seeder I got for $35 at the local ReStore. Although I thought I got a good deal on the seeder, it was not built for work on moderately uneven ground and disintegrated within the first 30 minutes. I resorted to hand broadcasting the rest of the seed, which actually didn't take me too long.

I ran over the ground with the drag harrow again, and then Jen helped me to hand broadcast the clover. I went with 30 pounds of ladino clover, and 10 pounds of alsike clover. The ladino I broadcast over the entire field, and the alsike I broadcast in the wetter areas (it is supposed to be the best clover for wet areas). The seed cost me about $200 (plus about $50 in fuel and depreciation), and I'm hoping it returns the equivalent of a ton of grain per acre next year, which would give me a net savings of about $1700 over buying commercial feed. I also used organic seeds and am thinking seriously about certifying the pigs organic next year, which means I have the potential to save even more.

I did the a final harrowing after planting last Friday, and here's how the field looked yesterday.

There are a lot of grass clods still on the surface of the field--most were plowed up and dragged along by the harrow. Note that the pumpkins in the foreground were put there by me yesterday and did not magically grow in a few days! Here's another view. The green area behind the pumpkins is the garden areas where the pigs and steer will be moving very soon.

Close up view of emerging barley and clover seedlings. They don't take long to sprout!

And finally, a picture from one of the wet areas in the field. Here, the plow had a hard time dealing with the sedge and rush. Annoyingly, these plants are very unpalatable, but the hardest to get rid of. I planted the alsike heavily in these areas in attempt to get something that will compete with these pernicious plants. I'll also likely need to go through a couple times next year and clip these areas to try and keep the rush in check.

All in all, I'm happy with how this project has turned out. I'm hoping I planted early enough in the fall to give the plants time to establish so that I can get a nice growth spurt in the spring. With luck, my clover will persist for a few years and I'll have made this planting project an economic boon for the farm and a tasty treat for the pigs!

10 Comments

george

9/18/2013 08:52:13 pm

Did you wait after plowing/disking to plant your seed? A lot of that sod looks pretty green in your pictures, it will most likely re-establish.

Barley is great stuff, you definitely got it in at the right time..I just finished planting 20 acres last week and it's already up too. Nice job so far.

Jeff

9/18/2013 11:27:52 pm

I didn't wait. Partly because I didn't know there was a benefit to waiting and partly because I didn't have a lot of time to wait. I did go through and flip over any of the grass clods so that the root side would be on top.

bruce king link

9/24/2013 06:42:13 am

I've found that it is useful to disc the field to cut the sod and chunks up, and then harrow after that. If I harrow before discing it "hides" the chunks of sod under dirt. I usually end up doing 4 passes with the disc.

Rich

9/24/2013 09:16:42 am

The only times I ever plowed was to maintain terraces, I'd usually disc the entire field, wait for a rain, then I'd plow the terraces.

If I could manage to get the plow set up correctly, then I'd usually have the start of a nice clean seedbed behind the plow. If the plow wasn't set up correctly, and I'd made a mess with the plowing, I'd have to disc the snot out of it a couple of times.

After plowing, I'd wait for another rain to get any weeds up, and I'd run a field cultivator over the field.

Make sure your plow is setup right, wait for rain in between tillage passes, and you'll get a good seed bed.

Jeff

9/25/2013 01:26:30 am

So far, everything looks good. Lots of barley and clover shooting up.

In a perfect world, I'd have a chisel plow to break up the soil. My mega farmer neighbors in the Skagit Valley all use a nifty combination chisel plow and disc. They see to follow that with a rototiller and/or bed shaper. I doubt the Cub could pull even a single chisel, so I'm making do for now with the moldboard plow. I don't plan on plowing this ground up again (hoping that I can use precision pig pressure and light harrowing when time to reseed again).

George

9/25/2013 03:19:28 am

Yep we love our chisel plow and disc set up ... works great. Rule of thumb is 10hp for every chisel you want to pull... depending on the type of ground and weight of tractor. I've used as small as 40hp and 4 chisels, but it was a little too much for the tractor as it was light in the front end... got the job done, carefully.

Rich,

What type of plow are you talking of? It seems a bit backward to disc first, then plow....

Rich

9/25/2013 04:49:03 am

I live in Oklahoma and was growing winter wheat on terraced cropland (broad-based terraces to be exact), so whatever I did might not apply to someone growing row crops or vegetables.

I usually disced right after harvest in about June/July so the wheat straw would start to break down. I didn't plow every year and never plowed the entire field, just to maintain the terraces and correct any drainage problems. Sometimes the only way to figure out if I needed to plow was after I had disced, had gotten some rain, and could actually see the terraces draining.

Since I had disced the field following the terraces, the first passes with the disc also sort of marked out the top of the terrace so that I would have a 'landmark" to run the plow along the terrace (with still standing wheat straw, it can sometimes be a pain to follow the top of the terrace).

My plow was a 5-20 moldboard plow (or about 8' wide or so), and I'd plow about 2-3 passes on both sides of the terrace depending on what needed to be done to build-up or maintain the terrace..

In my previous comment, I left out that after I moldboard plowed the terraces, I'd usually chisel plow the unplowed part of the field. Then I'd field cultivate, etc. Before I chisel plow a wheat field, I usually have to disc the field or the chisel will get all plugged up with straw.

So, that's why I usually disc a field before I plow it. If I was plowing a big flat corn field, I don't know if I would disc it first. If I was plowing up a pasture, I might disc it before plowing.

Now, I either no-till my wheat, or I chisel plow, let it sit over the summer catching as much moisture as possible, and then drill wheat with a no-till drill without any more tillage passes.

In a perfect world, I would adopt Colin Seis's ideas, convert all my cropland to pasture, and just pasture crop all my wheat.

George

9/25/2013 09:12:44 pm

AH, thanks for the longer post. I see what you mean now, terrace maintenance is a bit tricky, here in PA/MD/VA I haven't had a lot of time on steep hillsides (luckily) that required terracing, I've mainly done hay work on terraced fields, very little cultivation or plow work.

Isabella link

10/10/2013 02:45:03 am

Thanks for the post! I find it very interesting to see how different farmers prepare for their next seasons.

Bill link

10/12/2013 09:28:26 pm

I expect this is going to give you a great stand. I just broadcast seed onto the areas the pigs have rooted up once they're off the pasture. Works fine for us but wouldn't do as good a job as you've done. The way are gardens are set up we don't have the ability to rotate pigs behind the gardens (although we've started doing that with chickens). I love the concept though.

2014 Pig Forage

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