reseeding

 I just finished seeding about eight acres in the pasture that was standing in ragweed.  I used a bushel of oats with six lb of a good forage rape from Barenbrug.  We had winter fed hay there in 2021 and expected to see a return to good grass this year.  But this is often enough not the case on our farm.  I don't want to back off of pasture feeding due to the wonderful efficiencies-no manure to haul, minimize tractor use in winter, and so forth. But it is becoming apparent that it is very easy to damage a poorly drained highly clay soil such as ours with heavy traffic even in winter.  There really is no such thing as standard one size fits all grazing advice.

It may be good for us to regard that winter feeding area as an opportunity to produce a good annual crop of forage, followed by a return to perennials the following spring.  This would involve some heavy tillage, which is not great, but it may be just the thing for this problem.  Of course, a good annual crop of forage assumes that it is going to be planted well before the end of August.