Planting Rye Grass

In preparing for the winter, we plant ryegrass so the cows can have some green grass to eat on when the rest of the bermuda and bahiagrass dies off with the first frost.  Ryegrass is highly nutritious and provides an alternative to hay.  The first thing I do is mow the grass in the pasture where I'm going to plant it very, very short.  I do this so that when I overseed the ryegrass, the seeds hit the soil where they can germinate and take root.  Here is the portion of pasture that I will use as the ryegrass paddock this year:
 

Here is a shot of the land before I mow it short

I use a regular old lawnmower for the job since I'm not mowing a large area and the majority of the tall stuff is brittle seedheads that the mower can handle pretty easily. 
 

Nothing runs like a deer?

Here is the work in progress after mowing 1/3 of the paddock at a high deck setting on the lawnmower.
 

Makin' hay while the sun shines

This shows the completed job once the paddock has been cut at the highest deck setting.  When I was almost done, I scared a big cottontail out of the tall grass.  You should've seen her run!
 

Maybe I should send some of this to Les Miles.  He likes to eat grass.

If I was to seed it now, the ryegrass seed would never hit the ground with all the hay.  In order to get that all up and out of the way, I begin raking (again, who needs a gym membership?) and Russ hooks up the trailer to the lawn tractor and begins bringing loads of hay to add to the stalls in the barn.  You can see the red barn in the distant right side of the photo.  By the time he gets back from dumping a load, I've got another ready for him.  And so it goes until nightfall.
 

Homemade hay the old fashioned way

Here is a big haystack ready for transport to the barn.  One stack fills up a trailer-load.  We made many trailer loads to the barn. 
 

Hay fever!



Russ with tools of the trade

Then I lower the deck setting on the lawnmower and mow the grass down to ground level and rake it all up again and repeat the process of hauling hay to the barn.  This makes excellent bedding for the animals, especially in the winter when it is cold.

 

Making the second cutting

Once that is done and the grass is really short, I begin planting the ryegrass seed.  I've gotta tell you, this is a small scale, manual operation, but it works for our homestead (and our budget).  If you look very closely in the center of the photo, you can see the spreader slinging out the ryegrass seed.


Seeding ryegrass

One of the last things we do is put up temporary electric fencing to keep the cows off of the ryegrass until January - March when, if the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise, we'll have a lush crop of ryegrass to turn the cows onto for an hour or so each day.  You don't want to leave them on it long as they tromp it down and are really wasteful.  Ryegrass is also very rich and will give them an upset stomach if they eat too much.  Since some of you may be eating, I won't go into any more descriptive detail.  You give the picture, I'm sure.  The electric fence partitions off the ryegrass paddock and allows us to ration it. 

Russ is stringing out the hot wire as we race the fleeting sunlight

I attach the "jump wire" to the perimeter hot wire to energize the strand separating the ryegrass paddock from the rest of the pasture.  I pick up a blade of grass and touch it to the polywire to test it and can feel the electricity pulsing once per second, confirming that we're "good to go."


Shock therapy

On the opposite side, I quickly fashion a hook to hang the reel on the post by the gate.  As darkness falls, I think our work here is done!

Reel fun

I checked the weather and we have a 40% chance of rain tonight and tomorrow.  It would be wonderful to get a nice rain to push all the ryegrass seed to the ground and begin the germination process.  After that I have some chicken litter that I'll broadcast over the paddock to give the seeds a jump start.  Our ryegrass crops have been less than abundant for the last two years, so we're looking forward to a good crop this year.  Daisy, Rosie, Magnolia and Stryker are too!