February 2023
We had some unusually warm weather days this month and the earlier spring and late fall plants begin to respond. Beneath the dead stems of the light brown grass you can see the underlying green growth begin to take over. It won’t be long before it is time to get out the bush hog and trim the tops of the early flowering plants to make way for the grass.
February 2022
Not much has changed from last month except for a gathering of cut material from washing down the impressions toward the lower part of the pasture. This clear day shows the greening of the grass over the weeds a bit more than last month in January.
February 2021
I began working on the pasture in February of 2021 with the idea of bush hogging down the weeds to make room for the grass to grow. A neighbor down the road was interested in cutting the pasture for hay for his cattle and offered a profitable solution for both of us. Little did I know that my idea of keeping down the weeds would take much longer than previously thought without using any herbicides, fertilizer or plowing. The idea was to keep down the flowering weeds by removing cutting down the flowers before they produced any seeds to broadcast. This worked well for the plants with tall stalks but the bush hog needed to be lowered even more. Regrettably, the pasture is full of armadillo holes and this causes a problem when the tractor wheel drops into one and pulls the bush hog down upon the ground removing all plant life.
Here are some photographs of the pasture before the initial bush hogging.
It must be said that the pasture was a potpourri of plants where you could find plenty of edible and medicinal examples. The land dips into natural culverts where you can see the effect of water drainage and capture by the type of plants that do best in the variety of environments. Perhaps it would be best to leave a section as it is since it took many years to achieve the variety.