Hi All,
Just discovered these forums a couple weeks ago, and I am impressed! This is what I've been looking for on the internet.....
I just bought 40 acres of beautiful ridgetop
land in the driftless region of SW Wisconsin. 20 acres tillable, ringed by 20 acres of woods. The tillable land has been in a conventional corn/soy rotation for the past 15 years or so. Luckily, last year was a soy year. My job keeps me on the road most of the year, so turning this land into a self-sustaining homestead is going to be a bit by bit process.
My plan for this spring is to plant
hay on nearly all of the bare tillable land. Eventually, I see having only about half of it in hay, but I figure for now I would rather have 20 acres of hay than 10 acres of hay and 10 acres of queen annes lace and wild parsnip..... Here are my questions for the forum:
-I'd like some advice on what sort of a mixture I
should plant. We plan on having a couple of goats and a flock of chickens in the next year or two. The soil has a decent "crumb" to it already, easy to sink a spade into, mostly clay. The farmer who had been farming it tilled as little as he could.
-How should I plant it? My partner and I want to see just how much we can do without the help of fossil fuels, so we would like to broadcast the
seed by hand. I have heard that this can be done when there is still a little snow on the ground (to help see where you've cast), and that a few freeze/thaw cycles will work the seed into the ground. My worry is that I will just be throwing birdseed out there......
We have been living on a friends homestead for the past few years, raising goats, chickens, turkeys, and about an
acre of vegetables, but we have zero
experience with hay (besides buying it and feeding it to the goats!).
Thanks in advance, I'm really looking forward to learning from and contributing to these forums.
Elliott