Hi from NC!

[PaintPonyLvr]

Well, not sure what to say. My name is Paula.

I've been a member of Backyard Chickens for years and have checked out some of their "sister" forum/sites a couple of times. This is the first one I've joined.

We have now been on this acreage, with our previous pony farm name of LP Painted Ponys, since January 2015. We've gone from 24 ponies and 2 horses down to 9 ponies on the property with one leased out. We are concentrating/learning how to change all this sand into usable and beautiful pasture w/o chemicals. The total is 21+ acres w/ about 14 acres in Harnett county and 7 acres in Moore county with just being in the Cameron town "name"... Granddaughters (daughter, SIL, 2 children living with us) going to elementary school in Harnett county. We have about 11 acres cleared/semi cleared and a whole lot of sand.

My eventual goal was to develop trails that we could bring equine lovers (with a concentration on the smaller equine) to drive/ride on with an obstacle course with parts being ridable, drivable or working through in-hand. This has slightly changed - trails are hard to clear at our ages/experience levels and $$$ that we haven't really had just yet. We will get there eventually. In the meantime, we are slowly turning straight sand, non-pasture supporting "cleared" pasture into something beautiful, usable for grazing, supportive of other, sustainable plants. Working on learning gardening, food forest building and edible landscape building. We are learning chicken and rabbit breeding for sustainable meat production for our families (human/cats/dogs) first w/ a possible eye towards marketing later... Eventually I want to have ruminant stock (haven't decided on Goats or Sheep) to graze/milk & pigs as well - for our pork loving sides. Having them help to clear and restore this property to what I envision - but right now, those extra livestock animals are a bit intimidating with lack of time able to be spent doing the rotational grazing, building of infrastructure and just observing the critters since they are soooo totally new to us. Believe we'll enjoy them, just feel need to wait until we have fewer time constraints...

Larry, my husband of 31 + years, is still working full time. In 2019, I returned to work full time and wow, does that change the time you have to deal with growing things, raising critters and building. Especially when most of the family here really ISN'T into the "growing our property naturally" as I am...

It's all a learning process.

Edited to add - Let's see - have LOADS of pictures. Might be easier to link some of our Google Albums than loading individual picture here?

These are two of my favorites though! They were taken with my back to the "barn" in our pony pasture (approximately 7 acres perimeter fenced).



Google albums - I will come back to add more or will add some with individual posts.
Cameron home

 

[Xerocles]

Hi Paula. Welcome from SC. Glad you joined us. I migrated from BYC this year and found this site MUCH more amenable. Sure you will love it here. I am sure @Mini Horses will stop by soon.She's in southern coastal Virginia so you probably have similar climate, topography, and similar soil type. And share a common interest (smaller equine).
Good luck and so happy to see you.

 

[Baymule]

Welcome from east Texas! We are on 8 acres of pure, white, sugar sand. Like being at the beach without the ocean, I swear, I don't know how anything survives on this stuff! We have been here 5 years. We moved from a 2500 square foot brick home on a small lot to a 1500 square foot doublewide on 8 acres and are loving it.

Here is a link to one of my threads, it started out being for one pasture, but has sorta grown to include the whole place. Our place was a HUD repo and sat empty several years. It was so overgrown that people drove by, not even knowing that there was a house here.

Making A Pasture

This is about a one acre pasture in the front with road frontage. It does a fine job of growing my nemesis, green briars. We are cleaning it up to prepare for planting pasture. Before pictures.

www.backyardherds.com

This is my thread with before and after pictures of forestry mulching. In my Making a Pasture thread, you will see what we are doing with the horse pasture now. We are raking up the wood chips from the mulcher into swales to help control erosion and spreading waste hay from the sheep round bale to help hold the soil. I'll be sowing grass seed next month.

Forestry Mulching

We have a 2 1/2 acre so called horse pasture that is thickly wooded. The horses did a lot to trample out trails, but it was still an impassable thicket. I checked into Forestry Mulching, costs are $250 per hour, 8 hour minimum plus delivery and set up. At $2000 per day...….we just kept looking...

www.backyardherds.com

My I Hate Greenbriars thread. LOL

I Hate Green Briars!

I am posting this in Random Ramblings, but if @Sumi wants to move it to the newly created Pasture forum (I am hoping for a forum where we can discuss our pastures) under Herds General, it's ok with me! (pastures aren't just for cattle......) Our 8 acres is overrun with green briars. We have...

www.backyardherds.com

@Beekissed is currently working to improve her pasture and has a lot of information in her thread.

Holistic pasture management/farming.....

....anyone doing it? Through the Lord's leading, I had started some of these methods over the years and even here recently (found, by God's design, how much seed and fertilizer there is in mulch hay and started scavenging for it to spread on this nutrient poor soil)without having knowledge...

www.backyardherds.com

I suggest that you start your own pasture thread, with plenty of pictures, to chronicle your journey. You will get plenty of support! It makes me feel good to review where we started to where we are now.

Have you researched what grasses do well in your area? Here the summer heat is so hot, the sand heats up and fries the budding grass roots. Humus is our friend and sand has none. The only grasses that hold up to the heat and grazing are Bermuda, Bahia, Bermuda, Bahia, Bermuda, Bahia and did I mention Bermuda and Bahia? I actually have decent winter/early spring pastures, but alas, they burn up by May. Clovers and rye grasses do well in cool weather for me.

I gave you lots to read up on, hope it helps!

 

[WildBird]

Welcome Paula! I'm on BYC too! Please consider checking out TheEasyGarden and SufficientSelf (You can find links at the bottom of this page), they're great too!

 

[PaintPonyLvr]

Baymule - it was actually at least 2 of those threads that I "lucked into" that caused me to join with the realization that this set of forums was where I needed to be. Better late than never, but I sure wish I'd been over to this site when we moved in.

Towards getting humus - we feed on that pasture with round bales. Yes, some is always wasted. But here especially, I've considered that a good thing. The wasted hay, mixed with manure and urine, mats up and composts down in place. It does take a while, but then grass(s) DOES GROW. Each time our hay guys deliver hay, we now try to move them about in the pastures. Next load in the one paddock, will have hay bales (probably all 3 in a line) along the fence back up towards the front of the paddock behind the feed pen. I will try to show previous pics.

Currently, all pony related stuff is within the 7 acre perimeter fenced pasture, but we have a lot of variance in that pasture as to what grows. When we first moved in, I had the "boys" paddock in the front along our fence line. An open area that is not fenced and then the JR mares were in the back paddock. Now it's a bit of mixed up sexes (no stallions) with no ponies at all on the larger, open pasture and perimeter areas. Each paddock along the perimeter is 30' off that fence. The outer/back corners are angled - allowing more room to maneuver equipment and an area to work ponies/horses if necessary. I hadn't gotten the other side of the larger pasture fenced at all - we/I was planning on doing a larger one split in half w/ gates between. One side has the well/pump house in it and the other backs up to the feed pen in that pasture that is close to the shed row barn. We have a 60' round pen some what in front of but to the left of the shed row barn. The shed row barn consists of 3 stalls - one very tiny width wise that I've always used for feed storage (& currently has 2 - 100 gallon rubber maid tanks to use as chick brooders since no longer work for water). The middle stall is holding A LOT of pony equipment - saddles, bridles, harness(s), 2 carts, grooming tools other buckets/tools not in use, The 3rd stall, probably in the middle as to size, holds about 150-175 small square bales of hay when I fill it. That's with me stacking it up to the rafters and still leaving a bit of room to move around on the floor, too, so the bales can be pulled out/down and used. Next to the shed row barn is an 8x8' chicken tractor become permanent coop that currently houses a quad of Rhodebars. Beside that are our 2 stock type trailers - one a 1969 Hale w/ no roof and the other a 2012 C&M trailer from OK (purchased new, off the line). Behind the "Barn Coop" is an area now sectioned off w/ old, portable corral/livestock panels that house two hutch rows of rabbits and some bags of rabbit/chicken/pony manure that I will plant with herbs this spring. Behind that are two more 8x8' tractors that have become permanent coops to a quad of FCM (both black & blue) and a trio of CLBs. Next to them was 2 smaller pens, 1 with CP attached to keep new born Shetlands from rolling/crawling out making new moms frantic, made of 10' blue economy panels. Currently, those two pens are not in use and are partially disassembled...

What I had in January, crop up in a lot of areas - both in open sandy areas and in the more fertilized areas - was a red type weed - that in the past the ponies have not eaten. In our other pony paddock, the (not sure where I was going with this when I was called out...)...

My biggest problem is I struggle to even identify grasses that belong in my hays and figuring out what is growing live - yes, right! no. I will start my own "pasture" thread, LOL. Put a lot on this one, will probably transfer it to the new thread w/ pictures...