Pasture: Past and Present

Sometimes I get a bit frustrated with wanting everything fixed and improved and made just how I want it and thinking it’s taking way too long to happen.  As I was thinking about what to post on tonight, I decided pasture was a great P word, but I often have pictures of the pasture.  However, there aren’t a lot of people that have followed my progress from taking possession of the farm in March 2010 to know what it was like back then.  So I present to you my pasture, past and present.

Past:  The only thing separating my property from the farm I bought was this fence.  To give my cattle access to all sixty-eight acres, all I had to do was remove that one panel.

There was a ditch forming along the fence line between the two properties.

The fence fell in the ditch.

 Present:  The panel is still there, but it is more of a gate.

I also had to add a lane because the section planted in crops is right there.  The animals have to take the lane to the Back Forty.

I used panels to create my cattle lane, but we had to fill in this ditch a bit.  If we were to actually have rain, there is still a soggy place with a little pool of water.   At some point, we’d like to do a bit more work here including tiling so the water doesn’t cut a ditch again.

Past:  There was a big drainage ditch that cut the entire pasture in half or in several sections would be more accurate.  This is the north border of the Back Forty.  The ditch was huge and uncrossable without hopping from stone to chunk of land to broken tile.  The fence didn’t hold much either.

At one time, there was a crossing to drive across, but water is a very powerful force.

Present: The fence was replaced.  The orange snow fence is where the ditch entered the property.  There is a tile intake there now, and the ditch was completely closed in.

Past:  The ditch continued from the fence and wound through the pasture.

You can see that along with the wide ditch, there was another smaller ditch that cut through to the back fence.  You can just see the Y on the right side of the picture.  The little draw going up the hill was the start of another new ditch.

Present:  From the large tree to the fence and intake, it was filled in.  The tree marks the start of the open ditch through the rest of the pasture.

We reseeded the pasture.  It’s not been easy to get grass established with the bad weather we’ve had, but I hope next year it will be thick and lush.

Past:  Between the two parts of the ditch, it was all swamp.

Present:  Pretty much all of the ditch above from the tree two pictures above to the fence is completely filled in.  It’s been tiled to help the water drain and stay below ground to prevent ditches from forming creating swamps.

Past:  This western part was really bad fence also.  The top corner was swamp.  Really it was a frog’s dream come true.  Of course, it’s not so good for cattle and goats to walk in swamp all the time, and the erosion was cutting ditches.

Present:  The fence has been replaced, and we tiled to help keep the erosion down.

Truly, I hope we can continue the improvements.  Hopefully we’ll add more tile and fill the multiple ditches in to have only one. There’s the possibility of putting a pond in also.  Thanks for taking the walk down memory lane.  I really do feel that we are moving in the right direction in the pasture.

Be sure to visit Jenny Matlock for more pleasing P posts for Alphabe-Thursday.

I’m also linking toThankful Thursday and Rural Thursday hosted by Nancy at A Rural Journal and Lisa at Two Bear’s Farm.

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