How to start a pasture in yard

Its so hard to know where a person is for skill level, and what they are really asking.

If ya explain simple, you are talking down to them.

If you explain some details, ya are talking over their heads.

Always tough to know.

I too was/ am a bit concerned about the cart before the horse, and what you are getting yourself into with the cattle. Most here are in a version of survival, everything needs to pay its way. With 4H cattle, that's a different deal, buy feed, push feed, and it'll be fine, doesn't matter what the costs are. Different answers then.

The trees - you got a lot of them there, don't know what kind, if Christmas or different tree plantings type. Selling a ton of saplings is a job of itself, not sure you realize the time and salesmanship that will take. But maybe you have a nursery all lined up and done deal, like always on a forum just good natured speculation.

Anyhow, here is a well written handbook on pastures, good starting point. No point repeating it when you can easily print out this web site:

http://www.sheepscreek.com/rural/pasture.html

Paul

And I agree with you 100% on the mowing and too many trees to go around! hat is something! Too funny.

Paul

One of my favorite blogs is 5acresandadream. If you go to her blog and go all the way down you can pull up the posts she has about pasture. They are in the process of restoring pasture there, including soil testing, soil balancing, reseeding. Their pastures are beautiful! I plan to model what we do here after what she has done. Very good reading. Not a short term plan, but faster than what we have been doing, which is mowing, manuring, and waiting.

soil ph management, small acerage: when i got my place, i got the soil tested and found that it was about 6 (mildly acid). over the first few years, as time permitted, i went to the concrete batch plant (about 3/4 of a mile away) and got a ton of "rice rock" which is limestone gravel about the size of rice crispies. i have a utility trailer which can carry a ton without straining.
i broadcast the rice rock with a shovel at about the rate of two tons per acre.
i know this is not the traditional way to lime the fields, but i was limited by the equipment i had at the time, and i was only dealing with four acres.
traditionally, much finer particle size lime is used, applied with a tractor mounted spreader. it has to be repeated every few years. but that's for folks with much more land than i have.
the way i did it, it was slow acting, but long lasting. it's a function of particle size. if i look closely enough, i can still find little chunks of limestone in the soil, and the ph is just under neutral.
with the liming, and going on thirty years of mixed native and seeded pasture including legumes (mostly hairy vetch), my sandy loam soil will grow just about anything. drop a seed, stand back!
as a side benefit, broadcasting that much gravel with a shovel gave me impressive shoulder development.