Hot Pursuit of Smokin' Grass

Pasture renovation on a horse farm is serious business. It is seriously yawn inducing in those who don't have horses, or own a yard yet. I remember a conversation in late college with a friend who had gone to her first party with People Who Now Had Property And/Or Children. It was the maiden voyage of conversation tag lines not being some variation on "So, what's your major?" She was both horrified and stultifyingly bored at the main topics: prices of heads of lettuce and kinds of lawn grass. I don't know how she survived long enough to tell me about it.

I began to grasp how difficult grass growing in the shade can be on Prescott Street's vast quarter acre (including house). Two enormous oak trees, a holly, a black walnut, a pecan, a dogwood, assorted other trees, heavy acid compacted clay soil, and Western exposure on the front yard, combine to make getting a stand of grass similar to winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning.  Now that I have more experience on Fat Pony Farms, I think I finally know how to fix it.

Here, the land was allowed to lie fallow and unmolested for at least 10, possibly more like 15- 20 years, if the size of the poison ivy is anything to go by. As a result, old aerial photos of open pasture are now shade forest, with some spectacularly large trees. The back had a small pine plantation coming up. And we had lots and lots of invasive 30' tall Chinese Privet (aka Ligustrum) and several acres of vibrant poison ivy. Plus some 8'w x6'h x40' long junk piles. Not much in the way of grass. Which is only important if you happen to be a hungry horse.

Adding to the complexity, we wanted to preserve and increase native wildlife habitat, and we had the two horse extremes:  one very hard keeper ("This food doesn't agree with my sensitive palette" Miss Charlotte) and one extremely easy keeper ("So are you gonna eat that?" Mr. Dublin).  I began to research grass varieties and forage management in earnest while we worked hard on landscape removal to gain area in which to grow pasture.

Emotions: We were happily surprised when bush hogging with the generous loan of a friend's tractor resulted in latent grass popping up. YAY!  Grossed out with the sheer quantity of ticks the privet hosted.  Elated when our experimental first pass with endophyte-free fescue with our itty-bitty spreader produced a two foot wide green ribbon of grass meandering through the property.  Grimly determined to mix Round Up at a concentration high enough for jurassic poison ivy removal. (Some of those vines had to be cut with a chain saw. No mere loppers were big enough.) Delight that landscape removal and tree pruning were actually going to WORK. Exultation at the incredible quantity of wildlife and grass increase this year over when we got here in 2007.

There will be more on pasture later, but that will have to wait for when the intended audience snaps out of the coma induced by this episode.