As anyone can see, our pasture is greatly lacking in superbness. It is covered with weeds that no animal will eat and spotted with millions of those nasty, thorny hedge trees. It works for the amount of animals that we have now, but will not support the animals we hope to have someday. We were told of a program with the USDA that would assist us to improve our pastures by reseeding them. Our main goal when this all began was to have great pastures for the animals without costing us a fortune.
We are a very small farm with no "farm operating" account to do all of this out of, so some help with the cost would be greatly appreciated. The USDA people came out to take a look at what we wanted to do and give their advice on what we should do. There was, of course, an application to fill out and some other paperwork and then we waited. After a few weeks, we were very excited when we were approved for the money to do all of this. We, then, received our contract that told generally what was to be done and what they would pay for each item. There are, however, certain stipulations in how you go about doing all of the work and exactly, I mean exactly, what has to be planted, what type of fertilizer to be used and how much of each.
It has been very dry in Iowa this year and we have been putting off doing this until this fall hoping the rain would pick up. It is no use spending all that money if the seed doesn't grow!
As time has gotten a little bit away from us being busy with everything else going on in our lives, I am now trying to get everything lined up for this to happen. The ladies at the USDA office are very nice and helpful; the problem is knowing the right questions to ask. The lady at the seed store has been indispensable to me! I have spent countless hours on this project trying to figure out who is going to do each part, how much it will cost and when can they do it. I am also "dumb" at this since until now I had no idea what to expect with any of those questions! I am learning, though, and hopefully within the next week we will have the first 10 acres planted. At least with the next round in 2013 I will know what I am doing!
Hopefully everything goes as expected and everyone shows up when they are supposed to. For a day or so I was ready to give up and just deal with what we have after talking with some unpleasant folks, but that wouldn't do anyone any good. I do have a newly gained appreciation for the people that have to deal with all of this all the time and the ones who were very pleasant on the phone with me after finding out I didn't know anything about this kind of stuff and took the time to explain it. Also, there were a couple people that were not that pleasant that will not be gaining our business!
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