What is going to be my small pasture is currently planted in soybeans which won’t be harvested until late October/November. I know the basic steps of turning this field back into pasture but no idea of the current costs involved. This is in northern Iowa.
After a soybean harvest it is usually pretty flat and nice, I don’t think you will need to till and could just have someone drill seed next spring. I converted an alfalfa field to pasture and the big cost was seed, fertilizer and hiring a farmer to drill seed for me. The cheapest cost was getting the coop to come out when they were in the area to kill the alfalfa that fall. I think it was somewhere between 1-2,000 for 2.5 acres. I actually had a thread about it in 2012 or 2013 if you search. We spread the fertilizer and did weed control ourselves. I did use a premium mare/foal mix for seed from an actual seed company and not a farm store. I had very good results.
Go ask your local USDA agency personnel for advice.
If you are in a wildlife/migratory bird corridor, you may also check with the Fish and Wildlife agency, part of the Department of the Interior.
The Farm Service agency people will tell you who to contact for that.
You may qualify for any many one of the programs where the agency in charge will cost-share with you, generally paying 70% of the cost of the seed and seeding, your obligation to keep that land in those grasses, not to break it up for farming again for ten years.
Or something like that, most programs are based on that, with local differences.
If nothing else, they can tell you what to plant and who does it and what they charge.
No obligation just to go talk to them, your taxes at work for them to help you.
Is it necessary to kill the alfalfa? I was thinking you could maybe just run a harrow over it and then drill seed. A lot of the hay that I used to get was a grass/alfalfa mix.
I had this done 3 years ago, 4 acres in corn and soybeans. Previous farmer did it for free and I bought the seed which was somewhere ~ $200-300. He didn’t pay rent that year so didn’t charge me, I assume rent was a few hundred.
Didn’t think you had alfalfa? Depends whether the horses grazing there have a problem with alfalfa or not. My horses would love alfalfa in their pasture. When I planted, I thought I might have boarders who couldn’t be on alfalfa, so I went with plain grass.
I was just curious to know how you would handle a field planted in alfalfa. The 4 acres I was looking at is in beans, now.
My advisor yold me 20# seed to the acre of grass seed when broadcast seeding, dragging to cover when spreading. This is on worked soil. It came up well, though it would have been better with fertilizing. New ground to me, wet spring, problems getting heavy equipment in on VERY wet soil, so fertilizing has not happened yet.
So depending on seeds chosen, costs will vary on the grass seed. I have used the mare and foal mixes before, got good results with them. This new ground is aimed at grass hay, so I went with a variety of brand-name grass seed types. Two early cold weather grasses, two hot weather grasses. I skipped Bluegrass because it does not get as tall to hay off as brome, timothy, orchard grasses. No fescue. Brome is a late maturing variety, so it is not ready too early, before the other kinds. Great advice from my local elevator guy to aid my choices.
I could not use a drill because bigger tractor does not have live hydraulics to run the drill available to rent. Broadcast seeding was my only option. We rented a large seeder and hitched the drag behind, so things were a one-pass operation and done.
If this was my beanfield, I would wait until spring to plant and fertilize it, take advantage of spring rain to get the seed going well. Farmers will also be planting then, may not be available for you! Plan B needs to be thought of in case that happens.
We decided to withdraw our offer on this property. I was okay with the hassle of having to have a barn built but without any pasture for at least a year or longer the property basically was just a house in the country with no place for horses. On to greener pastures …
Yes, you basically give up grazing most of the summer you plant. You want the roots to be really established before you turn horses out. Also the first year with a new pasture there will be a lot of mowing and weed control. On the plus side you would get to plant endophyte free grasses if that is important to you (was to me).
To answer your question, I have donkeys too. I absolutely didn’t want a bunch of alfalfa. This was a thick field, I didn’t want to be reseeding grass each year as the alfalfa died off either.
Just know that planting endophyte-free seed is not a guarantee the field will stay endophyte-free very long. Wind will carry in seed, pollen, to get regular varieties going in your fields too. I did not want to pay the extra cost of that kind of seed and did not plant it because it would not stay endophyte-free very long.
