‘Oh, the Places You’ll Grow’
Post First Cut
I often tell people you must visit the Moapa Band of Paiutes on the 4th of July. Their reservation is about 40 miles north of Las Vegas, Nev. One of their largest revenue turbo chargers comes in the form of fireworks … the good fireworks.
Hundreds … nay … thousands of people line up to buy mortars, rockets, aerials, firecrackers, and ground displays by the shopping cart load and by the hand truck load. The festival is at least three days of booms, bangs, and the smell of freshly spent gun powder. The number of personal fireworks being launched is so vast that one cannot even tell when the commercial fireworks show begins and ends. It is that intense. Beware, it’s also a great way to get taken out by a bottle rocket.
Overall, it’s a wonderful way to spend the Independence Day Weekend. It’s also a much-needed celebration of harvesting first cut hay. Decompression is good for the body and soul. Once that itch has been scratched, we as farmers must reset our minds, replace those holy leather gloves, and return to the field. What do we see and where do we go?
Optimism is a Choice
To each, their own. Some farmers have pristine fields of perfect alfalfa. Some are growing manicured rows of monocultured forage. I see that many of those bare fields from April and May are now flourishing with summer growth and perfect yields are coming in. My hat’s off and my sincerest compliments to the established farmer and the many years of wisdom to create such beauty and couple it with seasonal timing. It is quite a sight to behold.
Take that vision and compare it to the farm that I take pride in as my work in progress. No comparison, my place has quite a long journey in front of it, but I am not discouraged. I am actually driven to push forward and rule the day … one day. A positive perspective can be simply to look around at what you got and be thankful for such a blessing.
A quote that I like to keep handy is, “when you don’t get what you want, try to think of all the things that you don’t get … that you don’t want.” Life is rarely the catastrophe that we make out to be. Things can always be worse. A bad day farming is still a great day outdoors and an opportunity to do something impactful. So, in the spirit of seeing the glass half full, let’s analyze the fields in my stewardship and see what we find growing.
Avengers Assemble
There are no illusions that my summer season will be anywhere near as smooth as my spring season was. Those cool season grasses made for a wonderful first cut and I only wished that I was able to get more bales into the barn before it rained. Summer temps, sporadic heavy rains, and some kind of unexplained phenomena seemed to awaken both Godzilla and the Kraken.
Chaos was unleashed on the property in the form of a diversified All-Star team of weeds that took up residence. All of the major players were in attendance. Water weeds such as chicory, foxtail, cat tails, red willow, and purslane showed up on the green carpet. I have the dry weeds also in attendance such as sunflowers, thistle (Canadian and Russian), and Philadelphia Fleabane. My MVP of the season is by far – Buckhorn Plantain. It was growing so dense that I thought it was my timothy seeds finally making a late season entrance.
Needless to say, my second cut will be a bunch of bales of cow hay … probably big baled and priced for liquidation. There is still a lot of great hay in those bales, but it’s not my premium product. The goal is to address the weeds that are out of control and get things back in line in hopes of a third cut sprint. This may be a lofty goal, but we must remain optimistic. Part of learning is to fall, fail, get up and fall again. I want to share that things go astray, but if you persist to be better today than yesterday, the efforts are not wasted. So, with that, I will leave you with pictures of where things stand and look forward to great results soon. More to come.