In grade 11 (1976/77 1.5 years after moving here), I was involved in disking the sod down, picking rocks and reseeding it to some kind of pasture. I will guess fescue, alfalfa and at least one kind of clover. After high school I went to engineering school. And other than the
yard around the house getting a zillion kinds of trees, nothing has been done to the land since 1976. No pesticides, no herbicides, no fertilizer, no grazing, no haying. It has just sat here. I've got aspens (mostly) and willows (somewhat) and wild roses volunteering all over the hay field and pasture. I harvested almost 1
acre of hay last year, baling it with a plywood and 2x4 baler I built based on a North Carolina pine straw design. I've got to buy a scythe to do that this year, as it is too hard on my lawnmower to make hay that way.
I have 50 pounds of tillage radish and another of crimson clover to try and work into strips. No equipment to reseed the farm on the current budget.
Being so close to the Rocky Mountains, we get little rain. I think our long term average was something like 16-19 inches per year. A big chunk of that is snow. The land is brittle. I have trees and dead grass lying on the ground for 10 years or more, and there is little or no rotting. My
fence posts have been in the ground for more than 40 years, and I've never seen one replaced. The land is really heavy in clay, because we were a lake bottom in the last ice age type thing. Higher up the hill, there are gravels and stuff.
The only trees I have are trembling aspen and willow. WIllow maybe 25 foot tall at the most, the aspens might get to 60 if there are a bunch of them. But all my neighbours are cutting down there aspen, and a stand of 20 feet of aspen doesn't stand up to the winds we have here (I live 5 miles downwind of a 100+ MW Wind Farm).
I want to set up wind
shelter to protect the land, as the aspen won't work. My dugout has no protection from the wind. I want to start putting in nut trees and more
fruit trees and berries. I want to have some pasture for some animals (not horses) and some hay for winter. And then I have ideas about robotics and cereal farming. I want to raise flax (which was grown in this region long ago) for the fibres. By robots. But, I did automation at a nuclear reactor in the past, and I know a lot about computers (including GIS).
But I can't just wave a wand and get more rain.