Planting Grass Again

     How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?  Three I think.  One to change the bulb and two to share the experience.  Or something like that.

    Here’s one for you.  How many guys and how much equipment does it take to plant, or “enrich” 100 acres of grass? 

 

      Six guys, three tractors, a disk and three drills.  That’s how many were involved, anyway.  There was a bit of a rush.  We had a March 14 deadline.

    It all started five years ago when I reenrolled about 200 acres in the Conservation Reserve Program.  The program rents “highly erodible” land from the farmer and takes it out of grain production.  The program began in the 1980’s when farm commodity prices reached record lows (when adjusted for inflation).

      Some goals of the program were to keep the family farmer in business, to reduce commodity stocks and thus increase prices, and to slow down erosion of soil from marginal land and preserve it for a future when grain might be needed to feed the world.  It was a pretty

ambitious program.

      One result (or maybe something that happened concurrently) was a soil-mapping project under the auspices of the Natural Resources Conservation Services, formerly known as the Soil Conservation Services among other names.  Agents took soil samples from every county and district in the nation.  They sampled based on a grid map so that all the farmland would be graded, labeled and mapped.  In our area we had sandy clay and sandy loam for example.  We heard such names as “Vona Sandy Shale”. 

      To be eligible for the CRP program, the soil had to be designated “highly erodible”, a designation not hard to get in this area due to high winds, dry weather, and rare but regular gulley washers.  If nothing else, the nation can now check out the soil type nearly everywhere in the land.

     The program’s attempt to keep the smaller farmer alive was both a populist idea and an attempt to keep the American consumer out of the hands of the Monsantos and Exxon Mobiles when it comes to our food supply.  Such giant corporations involved in food production could have the power to manipulate market prices and put the squeeze to the consumer if they so choose.  At least that is the theory.  How successful the program was at achieving that goal is debatable.

     It had some effect on commodity prices, however, as wheat reached prices of over $10 per bushel in the nineties and again in the early 21^st century.  By comparison, wheat exceeded the stellar price of $5 per bushel in the early 1970’s when we sold tons of the stuff to the Russians.  Of course, one must consider inflation.  $5 in 1970 would buy a whole lot more than $5 would in 2010.  (The CRP program can't take sole responsibility for the rise in farm commodity prices, as there were many other things going on, like corn ethanol production and increased exports due to bad crop years elsewhere in the world.)

      For certain, turning the prairie to grass again kept a lot of soil out of the Mississippi delta or from drifting back to Oklahoma.  In those ways the program was successful.

      Events lead us to enroll in the program in the first place in 1989.  Dad died in 1987, and Mom didn’t want to rely on the farming gamble for a livelihood any longer.  My failure to find gainful employment in Colorado closer to the farm sent me back to Kansas to resume my old job. The siren song of a CRP contract sounded and we bit.

     The first two years of our participation were a nightmare.  All the farm ground had to be planted to a cover crop by some date in June.  The cover crop had to be cut back to around 16 inches later in the fall.  A grass seeder had to come in with drills that could handle all the residue from knocking down the cover crop and plant a mixture of grass before some date in November.

     The next spring, weeds took over before the grass could establish itself, something I didn’t anticipate, but the NRCS boys knew that would happen.  So that summer, the weeds had to be cut back to the same 16 inches as the cover crop the year before. 

     The following spring the grass and clover got the jump on the unwanted vegetation and established a weed-free stand.  Things were a lot easier after that.  For a few years, a summer’s morning was scented by the clover growing all around the farmstead.  There was a mild drawback to that.  The sweat bees loved the stuff, too.  A walk to the mailbox would result in quite a few bites from the little devils.  Long sleeve shirts with the collar buttoned recommended.

       We were offered an option to reenroll in the program in 1998 at a reduced price because all of the work required to establish the vegetation would not be required.  We took that option.  It was about that time the Goodwife coined the term “fake farm” because we had no animals and no crops other than ground cover.  At that point, we still had a variety of grass and clover. 

      Then came the early 2000’s, the driest time I can remember.  An old neighbor took a short leave from the nursing home and went for a drive in the country with his nephews who were farming his ground.  He remarked that there weren’t even any sunflowers in the road ditches, something they did have in the 1930’s dust bowl years.

      One grass beat out all the other varieties during those dry years.  The clover disappeared.

     In 2009 I got a letter from the Farm Services folks saying the CRP program was being discontinued, no contracts would be renewed.  So I bought a bunch of fencing supplies, thinking to graze the grass in some capacity, either as cattle owner or landlord to a neighbor.

     I had five or so miles of steel fence posts driven into the ground when I got another letter that said in essence, “Hey, wait a minute, just kidding about that last letter.  Congress has decided to renew the CRP program after all.  Would you like to reenroll?”

     I felt somewhat like the silver ball in an old pinball machine:  swatted uphill by this paddle, ricocheted off that pillar, dumped into a hole and spit out, all the while trying to avoid going down the drain.                              

     I had started fencing, but I wasn’t nearly done.  I had no corrals, no watering system in place, and I had my dad’s love of cattle (I think the only thing he liked about the cattle was eating them).

      I intended to farm two of the best fields after having grazed them for a year.  I could reenroll the other two fields and have a little guaranteed income while I gambled in the wheat business.  While not well-equipped for handling cattle, I did have the old machinery left, some of it in fairly good shape yet.

     When the NRCS fellows came out to evaluate the two fields I wanted to reenroll, they did not like the single grass predominant condition.  As part of the new contract, I had to agree to “enhance” half the fields in the first year, and the remainder somewhere in years 4-6.

     It wouldn’t do to plant one field in year one and the other in year five.  They wanted strips no wider than 300 feet.  The existing grass had to be “discouraged” before more grass could be planted.

     I gave up fencing for a while and turned to tractor and oneway disc.  I marked off 300 feet and took the 820 and two oneways out to try to turn over some sod.  Soon I had unhooked one oneway and was trying to turn sod with one.  I wasn’t able to do that sufficiently.  I called Neighborly.  Most of his farming is done chemically, but he maintains his tillage equipment.  He still loves to till the land with implement rather than chemical.

     His big tractor and tandem disc took about five or six hours to do the job.  A problem was how rough the disc operation left the field.  It turned over big strips and chunks of sod.  I felt sorry for the guys drilling the grass seed.  That had to be a rough ride.

     Five years sped by and it came time to do what is termed “mid-contract management activity.”  I had some options at the outset.  Originally, I signed up  to use chemical to discourage the grass on the remaining strips.  I didn’t like the rough terrain left by the disc operation.  Then I landed in another pinball hole.

     A further goal of CRP is wildlife encouragement, specifically, bird population.  Someone somewhere determined that nesting season for the fowl of the air and field went from mid-March to mid-July.  Therefore, there would be no nest-destroying tillage or planting operation during that time.  I had to have the grass planted by March 14.

     But by March 14 most years, the grass is still dormant.  Spraying dormant grass with Roundup or other grass killer has no effect.  I would have to disc again.  Call Neighborly.

    In late February, snow still dwelt among the dead grass stalks.  The ground was still frozen.  A disc operation would be impossible.  Never underestimate Mother Nature.

    March winds blew.  Snow melted, earth thawed and dried.  Neighborly called and said he thought it would “go”.  I said I’d be there in two days.  When I arrived, I had a yard full of equipment.  The grass seeder had moved in prepared to disc ahead of the drills.  He was relieved to know he would not have to disc, only plant.  He, too, was under the March 14 deadline for all of the seeding he had contracted to do.

     I thought I could tell by looking what strips we had done five years ago.  It was easy to tell during the growing season.  We would do the strips between those strips.  But alas! After the winter snow cover, I had trouble distinguishing the difference between the old and the new.  The best tools for discovering the difference were my feet.  As I walked across that which had been disked five years ago, I would hit clods and drop into divots.  As I walked across the rough ground, suddenly I wouldn’t be stumbling anymore.  I was crossing smooth ground.  Step back and eye the line.  I could see a fine difference in the residue.  Drive in a metal rod to mark the border.

     Finally, I put the “stick” on the front wheel of the 4X4 and marked off 300 feet.  I cross-checked the wheel revolutions with scouting by foot and drove in some stakes.

     The disking started late Wednesday afternoon and was completed shortly after noon Thursday.   Neighborly’s son lined out the tractor’s GPS guidance system so once the first line was established, he could come a lot closer to the 300 feet per strip by following the arrows on his monitor than I could with measuring wheel and foot scouting.

     The planting started about noon on Thursday and was done by Friday afternoon.  There were three men running that operation.  We didn’t run the disc as deep this time, largely due to the wet soil.  The discs plugged up if it went too deep.  The surface isn’t nearly as rough this time.  The boys running the tractor pulling the drills didn’t have near the rough ride. 

      It remains to be seen if the effort of the six of us and all the equipment will bear fruit, or grass seed, or bird nests or whatever.  Experience tells me it will be at least a year before we will know.

       In the meantime, we could use a wet March blizzard.  Please don’t tell any cattlemen I said that.