The Ice Cream Social

When checking on the place one Saturday morning in July every cow on the farm was found in the gamagrass field border area. It turned out that a Friday night storm had blown a limb across a fence which allowed them into the area a few weeks before we had intended. Rusty Walker had told us that the cows loved this grass so much it was sometimes called "ice cream grass" and this proved the aptness of the nickname. Even sweet feed could not entice all of the cows out by Saturday evening. Janine said that they were all having an ice cream social.

These pictures show how thick and tall the grass has grown in its third season after the prescribed burn in March. Click on the pictures for a larger view. You can also compare the growth from the previous post.

Gamagrass and Switchgrass

This marks the third growing season for our native warm season grasses (NWSG). It has been remarkable how the NWSG has flourished after the control burns. While no quails have been seen or heard, other wildlife has been utilizing the NWSG.

The photo above shows the gamagrass on July 5th. The photo at right shows some of the switchgrass in one of the field border areas at the beginning of the third season following a late winter controlled burn. This is about six or seven weeks after the burn.


Last week several turkey hens were seen exiting the gamagrass. The cows also broke through the fence into the gamagrass and had an unplanned feast. The gama seems to be rebounding nicely from the unplanned grazing and producing even more turkey foot seed stems. We are hoping that the seeds produce even more gamagrass and fill in for an even thicker stand. The picture below was taken in late spring after burning in March.

The gamagrass doesn't grow much the first year. We planted the gama at the first of April. The grass was cut each fall. The burning at the beginning of year three has caused it to flourish. It is shading out the competition.

This shows a couple of views of another NWSG field border area adjacent to a small pond.

Spring 2009

Winter and early spring has been a time for clearing brush piles and planting American chestnut trees in coordination with the Tennessee Chestnut Association. Almost 100 trees were planted, with about a tenth of them being "control" species from a nursery in east TN, and half of the remaining being descendants from a surviving tree in Marshall County and the other half descendants from a surving tree in Sumner County. Trees have been marked according to geneology and will be bred for blight resistance in the hopes of developing a blight resistant strain of native American chestnut in Tennessee. Check out the website for the TN chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation: http://www2.volstate.edu/tnchestnut/Jim%20Newton%20Giles%20County%20Orchard.htm .

Chestnut trees have returned to the farm for the first time since being eradicated by blight in the 1930's. The trees were planted in a ridgetop clearing near the Smith's property boundary. Most of the clearing took place during a cold weekend in January with the planting in late February. Jim, Steve, Jennifer (and friend Hannah), Janine, and Clint Neel worked on the planting. Hill Craddock from UT Chattanooga brought the trees and got the planting started and Jim, Ben, Clint and Steve did the planting.

The cattle and Gypsy have made it through the winter with a minimum of hay. Grazing was feasible for most of the winter months by the use of rotating paddocks and the grass emerged fairly early with some warm days in February and March.

The new pond is filling up nicely. It is probably about a foot or two below the spillway after a lot of rain in the past week or two. Some additional length in the water diversions should help keep it filled. It will be a great asset for grazing in the back pasture areas and the setting is really nice below the NWSG field border and above the hay fields.


Jim, Fred, and Steve and Jennifer were there on Palm Sunday weekend with Beth and her girls (visiting from Kansas on Spring break). The girls had a great time roaming the fields and hills, and Taylor got her feet wet on a hike with uncle Steve.


With the wet weather, we started burning the fallen hickory and oak tree piles between the house and the road. Jim stayed all week taking care of the cemetery , relaxing, and tending the fires, which have just about taken care of the logs and the stumps. Good Friday was a day of severe weather with extremely strong winds which indicated shear markers shortly after passing over the farm. These storm produced pea to marble size hail. Joe Newton's barn along with several others were destroyed or damaged in the community.

The winter and spring has brought some new opportunities to enhance the farm and connect with the community. Hunting season produced some nice bucks for Tanner and Chip with rifles and Chris with bow. The wildlife management strategy is to create an area of sanctuary and cover with stands on the outer perimeter in the lanes of travel. Turkey season is now underway.

The native warm season grass seems to be progressing as intended. Jim mowed the area of gamagrass and new shoots are already appearing through the thick dormant bermuda that was present previously. This in encouraging since the gamagrass seed had just been put into the ground at the same time last year. The bermuda was not eradicated last spring because it was still dormant when the field was sprayed prior to planting the gamagrass. It is expected that the gama will shade the bermuda as it grows. Controlled burning will also help control the bermuda and weeds once the gamagrass is more established. The switchgrass is also becoming established even though weed competition exists. Controlled burning will help these areas as well.


The ponds are in good shape thanks to Jim's maintenance work on water diversion and clearing combined with heavy spring rains. The main pond is running over at the spillway and the surface area of the little pond is much larger than recent years. The new pond in the hayfield should be a real asset for maximizing the rotational grazing this season.

Jennifer (with Jim's help) is doing the yardwork and maintenance at the Noblit Cemetery. She is planning to use the money she earns for a horse corral. Gypsy has made it through the winter nicely staying in the front pasture area with access to the pond and the barn shed. Jennifer has had several friends spending the weekend on a number of occasions.

Native Warm Season Grass, Timber Management, a New Pond, and a Horse named Gypsy!

Timber has been selectively harvested and thinned at the advice of Rusty Walker (Giles Co. NRCS) and Donnie Barnett (Timber Mgt. Consultant) in preparation for continuation of fencing improvements. The logger was Billy Bivens from Revilo in Lawrence County. We were very pleased with the Donnie's valuable guidance and Billy's performance in the logging even though we were hindered by wet weather.

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Billy used his bulldozer to dig a new pond in the back hay field. This is part of our NRCS contract. At the moment the pond water level has stabilized. It may take some time for the clay to totally seal. A small diversion has been cut to begin to divert field runoff toward the pond.

The new access road into the "back 40" has been seeded with KY31 and creeping red fescue. The road/trail is part of our longterm management plan and has given us the ability to manage and monitor the timber/ wildlife areas of the farm (about 75 acres).

• 900 seedlings have been planted between Feb 15th and March 25th. 300 walnuts, 100 yellow poplar, 500 white oak.

• Boy Scout Troop 514 from Clarksville spent 2 days working on several environmental oriented merit badges. The scouts were able to experience timber cutting in full operation. They thought the knuckle-boom was cool. 300 white oak seedlings were also experienced by the Scouts using dibbles. (A dibble is a small shovel designed for seedling planting)
  

• We have acquired a single point plow which will be valuable in creating drainage ditches and water diversion terraces. Pond terrace repairs will continue to be an emphasis due to ongoing drought conditions.
  
• We have completed about 2/3 of the 900 foot contract section.
• We have plans to continue on the contract fencing the first week in June. (20 rolls of barbwire have been purchased.) Plan of attack is to do the perimeter fence first and then come in and section it off.
• Jennifer did a good job sowing fescue on the pond over spring break. As of May 25th the grass is coming in nicely.
  

• Our contract with the NRCS calls for planting four acres of native warm season grasses(NWSG). These grasses that are beneficial for wildlife and for managed grazing. We have planted Eastern Gamagrass and Cave-in-Rock Switchgrass which we bought online from sources in the midwest.
  
• Eastern Gama grass. (Let it be said that we do everything the hard way.) We could not swing a corn planter and our planting window was quickly closing. As an alternate solution we ripped a row about every two- three feet with a middle buster plow and planted the gama with a garden planter. Steve bought some peroxide(35% which he diluted to 15%) online and soaked the seeds in the solution for 18 hrs and we started planting the first week in April. We planted one acre the first week and 2 acres of switch grass. The second week we finished the gama grass. We planted both the gama and switch grass in some of the logging areas. Due to the rain amount this year, we are going to have problems with weeds. As of May 25th the Gama was popping up in rows. (A quarter in foreground for scale)

• The switchgrass has tiny sprouts which are difficult to distinguish from fescue. They have started slowly to appear. We are hoping for more germination with the warmer weather.
  
• Spraying -The entire farm has been sprayed for weeds by a professional sprayer. This includes the Joe Newton portion. This combined with the spring rain is going to have a huge impact on the rehabilitation of the grazing areas which have seriously deteriorated over the last decade or so.
  
• Rotational Grazing - We have been rotating the grazing for a year now. This was a lifesaver during the drought last year and is another big factor in the rehabilitation of the pastures. For the moment we have less cattle on the fields and a lot more grass. Hopefully the grass will soon be cut for hay which will be a hedge against drought this summer should that occur. It is our goal that all hay used on the place be cut from our own fields to avoid the importation of weeds which has occurred during past seasons of mismanagement.
  
• Lime- Bennie has collectively applied 90 tons of lime to our pasture and Joe's pastures.
  
• Fertilizer- Jim spread a small amount of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on the hay field ridges in hopes of enhancing the forage and hay production.
  
• Pond- At the moment the pond water level has stabilized. It may take some time for the clay to seal. A small diversion has been cut to begin to divert field runoff toward the pond.

Jennifer now has a horse named Gypsy! She is a very happy and excited girl. We expect she will want to spend even more time at the farm this summer with her horse. Gypsy is the first family owned horse on the farm in almost 60 years. Happy Trails to Jen and Gypsy!

• This completes the spring update. Temperatures are expected in the eighties for the entire week and it looks like summer is upon us as we enter the Memorial Day weekend. We will get back in a few weeks, hopefully with word of lots more progress.