It seems like the first year of alfalfa you question why you planted it at all. Then the second year comes along and you realize why it can be such a powerful tool. Total of around 4 acres of alfalfa with another 2 acres of clover adjacent and strips of annuals coming in.
The word from the neighbors is there is a lot of deer around, more than the last 5 years. We are not seeing them like they are but there are some. Good turkey and grouse numbers too. The fruit trees are honey crisp, state fair, red barron, zestar, and crab apple. Things are looking good as we also installed a 1/4 mile of fence along our southern boarder to shape deer movements.
We are zone 3, I think you would be fine where you are at if you are the same zone. Alfalfa takes a bit to get started, the first year you think it is a bust, but if you have at least 3 acres and you have a few years it is worth it. The only downside I see is that some neighboring farms might have 40 acres of alfalfa and it is hard to compete with that.
What did you use for fence?
It is an 8 ft deer fence, essentially. 12 years ago when one of the neighbor's property was getting sold there was a real chance that it was going to go to a developer and a road was proposed to be installed on our boarder. In response my grandfather installed 1.25 miles of 8 ft high fence totally blocking off what would have been sub-divided and the road. That never happened and it was sold to another user. But, the fence ended up really helping our deer hunting because it both created some sanctuary pockets and funneled their movements. In the last 6 years we removed a bunch of the fence as it was not needed for it's original use. Unfortunately when we removed the fence it negatively changed the deer movements and created a perfect funnel for our neighbors but made our property very hard to hunt. My grandfather, at 92, re-installed some of the fence this year so we have just under 3/4s of a mile of 8 ft fencing. Now, we believe, the fence is in a perfect spot for us to hunt our property effectively and not push every buck straight to our neighbors.
