Wednesday, April 27, 2011

When does it ever turn out so right?

In our neck of the woods, hardly ever.

Now that Furry Husband is working Saturdays, I told him what I wanted to get done last weekend.  I wanted to re-seed our pastures.

I called Poudre Valley Co-op and talk to their seed man.  Priced out some dry land pasture mix and talked about seeding rate - 25 lbs per acre.  Would be nice to get the equine pasture mix... but we only have irrigation 2x a month in summer and it can be so dry.  No sense spending more money and risking a miserable failure.

Saturday, while Furry was working, I stopped to pick up 100 lbs o' the dry land pasture seed.  Figured we probably had 3 acres to do but the West pasture is pretty thin and I wanted to use more than the suggested rate there. 

Sunday we got up, read the paper, sucked down some morning coffee and headed outside to hitch up our harrow.  Furry Husband harrowed the first of three pastures on our little 5 acre lot.  As he moved to the second one, I started the hand casting seed ... throwing it left and right.  The day was cool,  cloudy, with a slight breeze and that was just fine cuz out it helped distribute seed as I scattered it into the air.

We finished all three pastures in roughly 4 hours.

That night it rained... a good, steady rain with NO wind. 

Monday morning we were all smiles, fist bumping each other and saying how awesome we were.  (as if we had anything to do with the weather)  It stayed cool and damp all through Monday with rain showers... today there is wind but it's not 40mph, more like 15 or 20mph.... think the damp, muddy seeds will stay put for the most part.

And we all wait. 

The horses look out over the pastures from their dry lots wistfully waiting for their summer salad to grow....

8 comments:

hezfiedler said...

Hey Shan - Just Testing something. - Heather

hezfiedler said...

Ok, lol one more test. Sorry - H

Shanster said...

Did yer test turn out ok? grin...

Cheryl said...

Amazing! I can hardly keep a store bought plant alive. Good luck with the gigantic horse salad!!

Anonymous said...

Oh, now that you are done can you come an do mine???? Well, maybe wait a week or so we have had so much #$%&%^#$^ rain here that seed would only float away.

Poor horses probably can't even remember what their feet look like...sigh.

Shanster said...

Cheryl - we'll see if we really CAN successfully re-seed!

mommyrides - It seems like every where else is overly saturated... not us. We are dry, dry, dry. Well cept for this week as of Sunday... for us. Horse pens are dry already tho'. We'll gladly take some of your rain!

Kelley said...

Wow... it doesn't get much better than that!!! I'd take this as a sign of a good summer ahead. : )

Anonymous said...

Shanster: I would love to send you some rain. It's so wet here right now. Farmers can't put seed in, riders can't ride more than a walk outside for fear of slipping, my horses have an extra 5 lbs of mud on each foot!! And out of the next week I think we have only two days that don't forecast rain.
Sigh, can I bring a couple of equines and stay in your area for a bit!!! You know just till we dry out....