Native Grass

Like most farms in Kentucky, the pasture at Chaplin Bend was primarily tall fescue, with some white and red clover thrown in for good measure.  Fescue is great for pasture but lousy for wildlife.  So one of my main objectives for the first year at Chaplin Bend Farm is to replace nearly all of the fescue with better habitat.  About 30 acres in the bottom was killed to make room for corn this Spring.  And next Winter we'll replace about 50 acres with a variety of trees and shrubs.

But my big project for this Spring was to kill another 50 acres or so of fescue and replace it with a mix of native warm season grasses, including Little Bluestem, Side-oats Gramma, Wild Rye and Indiangrass, and wildflowers, such as False Sunflower, Purple Coneflower, and Partridge Pea.  This mixture show create great habitat for quail and rabbits and will also be better than fescue for deer, turkeys, and more or less everything else.

I began spraying a few weeks ago to kill the existing pasture;  this week I planted 53 acres with the new grasses and forbs. I acquired the seed from Roundstone Seed in Upton Kentucky.  The seeder--a Truax Flex II Drill--was provided at no cost by the Mercer County Conservation District.  Here's a picture:

The Truax has a seed box specifically designed to handle native grass seed, which is very fluffy and hairy.  The seed box includes specially designed agitators that keep the seed from clumping up and draw it to the feeder:

Brandon Campbell from the Mercer County NRCS office came out last Friday to show me how to operate the Truax.  Not too complicated really once you understand how to set the seeding rate.

I started seeding early Wednesday morning and finished late Friday afternoon, having planted 540 pounds of seed across about 53 acres.  Lots of hours on the tractor, but thankfully everything worked properly.  I was a little worried for a while that I was going to run out of seed before I ran out of ground, but in the end everything came out nearly perfectly.

Do you know that feeling you have after you've been on the lake all day in a small boat?  Where you still feel the motion of the waves even though you're standing on solid ground?  That's how I feel tonight after 24 hours or so bobbing and rocking on the tractor over the last three days.

Now we hope for rain!