The ranch we own is 10 acres. Five of those acres are alfalfa hay. Due to the fact no one has been living at the property full time for many years, our next door neighbor has been maintaining the pasture. He is a career farmer and as a favor he’s been mowing down the field and baling the hay for sale. Because our field has been neglected the hay isn’t worth very much and can only be fed to cows.

Here is when being “city people” didn’t pay off for us. As we were looking at the house we just thought, wow! A pasture of hay! Let’s buy it! However, after talking to our neighbor we’ve already learned so much about the maintenance of the field. He farms hay and since we wont be there full time for another 3 years, we will be signing a lease with him to restore our field to it’s proper condition. This would mean he will do the work to the field in exchange for any profit from the sale of the hay. This way we wont have to worry about it for the next five years. Three of those years we wont even be living there and the next two will be us settling into the house and chores of the property.

Ok, we looked at this and thought, neat! We have some hay! What we see now is lumpy, weedy, sparse hay. It looks like crap, I can see that now.

So, seeing how I can’t ever leave good enough alone, I added a little something to our “agreement.” I said I wanted to be there every time he did something to the field. Being that I am a visual learner I figured what better way to learn to farm, than by doing it! I want so much to know how to maintain the pasture that I am going to learn hands on over the next five years. I’m going to learn how to seed, irrigate, cut, and bale hay! I understand that may not be exciting to every one reading this, but I am beside myself with excitement! I never want to stop learning. I love physical work, and at some point we’ll be able to make a few extra dollars selling our hay! Besides, a beautiful pasture looks better and the lack of weeds is better for everyone on the street.

Here is the pasture next to us. Our neighbor restored this pasture a couple of years ago, and this is what ours is going to look like.

I’m really excited about learning how to farm alfalfa hay, and I’m excited that our pasture is going to beautiful. I’ll be sure to show you every step.

First up: Laser leveling.