Believe it or not, it's planting time. Well not actually for most things, but it is time to seed spring oats for spring grazing or forage harvest. Man was I ready. After a long cold and wet winter, I have admittedly been itching to get some seeds in the ground. You all know we raise a lot of forage for the dairy cows and for our beef herd. If you follow along here really close, you'll know that I have been making baled silage "baleage" for several years. As I have gotten better at that process, the cows have grown to love it. Baleage is forage that is baled at around 50% moisture (so not dry hay) and wrapped to be in an oxygen-free environment. The lack of oxygen allows the grass to "culture" rather than rot. Similar to all the lacto-fermented foods that we enjoy. The final product is more nutritious and palatable for the cattle. Now that we have the process under control, we are experimenting with different grasses. Historically we have made baleage with ryegrass, which is an excellent option and grows well in our area. However, ryegrass only grows in one season of the year and we were looking to produce baleage in multiple seasons. Last year we had pretty good results with some sudangrass and millet in the summer. We'll be doing more of that this year. The spring oats are a new experiment for this year but could fill in nicely in the spring on some ground that didn't get planted to ryegrass in the fall. I'm happy to say that I was able to get all 20 acres planted on Saturday before the rain rolled in on Sunday. So those seeds are now well watered in and should be popping little green shoots out of the ground in no time. You can tell I was excited to be working in the field because... I forgot to even take the appropriate selfie. I guess I'm a little rusty. The included picture is a photo of the actual variety of oats that were planted. With any luck, ours will look similar to the photo in around 45 days or so. Happy Spring!
