Toiling and tilling

I've been working in the back field. We have about four acres of level land there. I think it has been used for pasture and one previous owner told me he tried to grow corn. We're working towards a large propagation area for vegetables and goat pasture.

The soil is not full of clay. That's to good part. It's pretty sandy, not a lot of organic matter, certainly not any depth to the soil. It is going to take a lot of amendment to make it productive. That's some nicely aged cow manure in a pile on the left. We spread a layer of black plastic to smother that area on the right. We let it cook for about a month under the August sun. It did a pretty good job on the vegetation.


The next step was the scarifying blades on my box blade. I used it to break up any roots. I was also working on an area of pasture that needs remediation after the logging. Partly because it got torn up. But we also have a infestation of evil weed. It's a climbing vine, an alien evasive from Italy called black swallow wart. The pasture is on the perimeter of the field and the logger pulled a few trees out of it. And with his skidder, it didn't seem to take much effort.

This is what the ground looked like when I got done with the scarifying blades. I decided that even after the boxblade, there are too many roots to till. I didn't want to risk my new tiller on the first day.


Those are the tines of the tiller. It did a great job on the soil, breaking up the sod, cutting roots.




Here is the results of my tilling.

Logging aftermath

Just a quick post as it's still cool but going to get hot today. And my laptop threatens to over heat in this weather...

And for Granny Miller, I'll talk about the new pasture grass first.

After the logger got done, the upper field that he used for a log landing was pretty scuffed up. The chains on the skidder had dimpled the ground, dragged logs had churned it and there was some litter from the logs laying around. But it really wasn't too bad. It was still reasonably smooth. Not lawn smooth, but pasture / field smooth. And the skidder chains actually did a pretty good job of preparing a decent seed bed and tearing up the wood litter. And, surprisingly, the equipment had not overly compacted the soil. I moved the biggest debris pieces but that's about it. Above there's a typical area as left by the logger.

In mid June, I got around to scattering some pasture seed. I went with a brand name pasture mix called pasture perfect on the recommendation of my local feed store. I would have liked to seed with native grasses, these are mostly from Oregon, but I really felt compelled to get some thing on the ground now. I will continue to research native grasses, though, and may seed other areas with more local grasses.

To seed, I simply hand spread the seed and then knocked the soil around with a leaf rake to get better soil contact. It wasn't optimal, but I was able to get the seed out there in advance of a couple of days of rain. And the dimpled ground left by the skidder chains accepted the seed well. I wasn't sure how things were going to go and I was worried that it might be too dry, but a week later it looks like we have had pretty good germination. And the temps haven't been too hot and dry. With a little luck these seedlings will take root. Here's a shot of the seedlings carpeting the scuffed ground.




















The old road was impassable to my full size van because of steep grades, gullies and it was too narrow in spots. This the road as the logger left it. Reasonably smooth, no ruts. Pretty nice, I could drive a sub compact car in and out of there. But that's really just sand and some clay. I knew looking at it that a good rain storm was going to make a mess of it. I have been waiting impatiently to get some gravel on it to protect it from runoff.




There are some structural problems with the road as it is. The profile of the road allows rain to run down the road, gathering volume and speed. Just as important as the gravel, I need to provide ways to get the water off the road and absorbed into the ground. Otherwise, this is what happens.

That's a 18" deep gully. The sand has been carried down the road an emptied into the intersection with the town road at the bottom of the hill.

I don't have access to any heavy equipment at the moment, so I dug some quick check dams with a shovel. They are just slashes going diagonal across the road. The idea is to move a little bit of road bed down hill, just enough to form a 4" deep trough with a minimal grade to get the water to the side of the road and into a catch basin. I'll be trying to get the water to absorb into the ground in those catch basins rather than running in a ditch alongside the road.

The road is pretty ugly right now, those check dams are pretty rough and would not withstand traffic. When I have more power at my disposal, I'll do some serious road work trading the hand dug checkdams for "broadbased dips". A broadbased dip is the same idea as the check dam with wider dimensions that allow a vehicle to travel over them without forming ruts that breach the downhill side of the dip. I'll also try to broaden the profile of the road so the steepest grade becomes a little more gentle. And then I'll add gravel. Gravel will be the icing that holds it all together.