Prairie Valley Farm

[IkemanTx]

Well, it finally happened...

My first posted thread on the old “forum that shall not be named” was 4 years ago asking for advise on what to do with a piece of family land estimating a 2020 start date. It is now 2020, and today was the first day of habitat work on the place. I guess my estimates of time frame worked out pretty good!

An intro to the property....

My mother owns 42.75 acres of the original 70 acres passed down (and bought) from my great grandmother. I originally thought this land had been in the family since the 20’s when my great grandmother and great grandfather were married, but after some research it looks like THEY inherited it from my Great Great Grandfather.... who probably bought the place (along with several others) in the mid 1870’s. I grew up hiking, hunting, camping, and fishing on every square inch of this place. Every summer I’d stay with my great grandmother for a couple weeks, most nights of which I slept in the hay barn, and even an old hollow burr oak trunk. To say that I feel a deep personal connection to this land is an understatement.

The farm is in what used to be Blackland Prairie. It’s soils are what the locals call “black gumbo”. Predominantly, Frioton Silty Clay Loam and Whitewright-Howe Complex as the Soil survey calls them. After decades of constant tillage in the 20’s-50’s for cotton and corn, the high ground has eroded to exposed chalk, and the bottom land can get REALLY boggy in winter/spring.

There is dang near zero cover on the place. My great grandfather was known for not allowing even blades of grass to grow in his fence rows.... as such, the only trees that have come up has been in the past 35 years since my mother bought it. There is one small chalk ridge on the south side of the place that was always wooded with burr oaks, white oaks, and post oaks.

I hope to eventually restore the pasture land to an extremely diverse prairie. I am fortunate that Texas has put quite a bit of effort into restoring the Blackland Prairie, and well researched 45 species mix is available if I can find the coin to pay for it.

The shallow land slopes would have historically been savannah, and I intend to restore those to such as well. Post oaks, burr oaks, and chinkapin oaks will be planted at wide spacings on those slopes after native grasses have been established.

This project will be slow, as I don’t have large amounts of resources to throw at it, but I hope to use this thread to document the transformation.


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[IkemanTx]

Today we knocked out some needed prep work before the real work begins...

In the 20’s a road bed was dug against the creek to provide firm ground for equipment to move around when the bottomland is soggy. It acted like a dam of sorts, as it really trapped the runoff from the whole hillside and forced it to infiltrate.
Because of this, sections of the field hold water for much of the winter and spring. The worst area being right at the entrance gate. Today I cut down a small section of the road level with the field, filling a small ditch that had started next to it.

Next up was the creek crossing. There is a 6 foot diameter pipe that acts as the culvert for the crossing, but the top foot of it had been exposed over time with erosion. I scraped up enough dirt to cover it with 14-16” of loose dirt, that ended up being 7-8” packed. I also flared it out quite a bit for better departure angles on equipment so we don’t high center anything. I encountered a plethora of earth worms while moving dirt, one of which was probably the largest I have ever seen. There’s a reason they used to say of the soils “you could plant nails, and sow crowbars”

Then... I mowed the 2.25 acres that will end up being the food plot (plus screening). This field was most recently planted in hay grazer 2 years ago, but VERY wet spring/summers made it impossible to plant. It went a little wild with cockaburs, ragweed, broomsedge, etc.. I figure mowing it low will let everything green up well, and get rid of obstructions to spraying gly to get the plot in. The back 2.5 acres of this field will be left fallow for now.

Once those were done, we decided to start cutting junipers (or cedars as Texans call them). Although native to Texas, they should not occur in this area of the prairie due to the historic frequency of fire. They have been choking out the few trees that are original to the property, and they must go... we got about 30 or so trees downed before it was time to pack it up.

The plan is to continue dropping the cedars in place, let them dry down for a year or two, then burn this 7.5 acre unit. I know it might kill a moderate percentage of the existing trees, but there are LOTS of acorns on the ground to regenerate. Also, I feel like it would really jump start the seed bank.

Hopefully I can get back out with the chainsaw for a couple days after spring break. And I’m chomping at the bit for it to be mid April so I can spray down the plots!


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[IkemanTx]

My plans for this year are to plant a main 2-acre deer plot, a 0.5 acre deer plot with 50/50 Alyce clover and aeschynomene, and a 2 acre upland game bird plot for dove.

The red areas are deer plots and the blue is dove. The yellow is screens I plan to plant. I also plan to break the biggest deer plot up into 2 with a screen most of the way up the middle, stopping about 40 yards short of the north edge. As well as screening the south side from the rest of the remaining field.

I figure getting food established is the easiest first step, and I will work on cover next. Neighboring properties have some decent cover, so I can draw in from there for the first couple of years.


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[H20fwler]

AWESOME start to your land tour Ikeman! Love the long family history with the farm, that is way cool. The place has a ton of potential and you look to have some really good projects ready to start.
I agree with you, that is the biggest nightcrawler I've ever seen and it is just a pic!

 

[IkemanTx]

I decided that I had derailed the (Un)controlled burn thread enough and decided to move the posts pertaining to my place over to the dedicated land thread. Sorry for the derailment.

Well, after reading through this thread I SURE AM glad the local volunteer fire department will show up to help out for a couple hundred buck donation!!!

Things I have learned...

1) Only burn on perfect weather.

2) make breaks twice as big as I expected.

3) clean-up is just as important as the rest of the burn conditions.

I’ve burned many a piles, but my first prescribed fire should be in the next year and a half. It’s a little daunting.


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Sounds like money well spent!!

bill

Yep!
They won’t actively do any prep work, but they will typically back spray the drip torch line and react to any jumps.

My plan is 3 shredders wide of mowing minimum, and a 4 foot rotary tilled strip dead center in it for breaks. 3 backpack blowers, 2-30gal sprayers on tractors, and a couple 4gal backpack sprayers. All breaks will be open pasture, so little chance of snags. 2 drip torches starting on the downwind side, then flanking lines, then a head fire after the backing fire and flanks establishes a good black break.

There will be a couple hundred dried down cedars in the middle of the 7 acres, so I will tend to those over a couple days and/or put them out if winds are predicted to get high.

Tell me how I’m planning it wrong!!!! I need all the critique I can get!


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[IkemanTx]

Ikeman TX - I think your plan sounds pretty legit. One minor thing I would suggest changing is to put your tilled fire break component right next to where you want the fire to start/stop, not in the center of the fire break. In other words, position your bare dirt, the best fire break of all, right next to where you want the fire to stop/start. Treat the additional, mowed section as a safety valve of sorts. You could also "wet line" the mowed section just prior to ignition for even more protection.

Also, if your fire is a ways out in the future, you can mow in the fall and then time your burn the following spring after green up has begun. The short, mowed fire break area will green up first and provide even more protection.

That was my initial thought, but the tilled ground in the middle was a recommendation from one of the local wildlife biologists who does the burns for the state land. He said he does the backing fire in the short stuff first so there is a good 10’ of black before it hits the y’all stuff. Then, you have 10’ of black plus the 4’ baredirt where no embers can catch, then another 10’ mowed for mop-up. I’ll talk through the design a little more with him before settling on the break design.

Dont know how dry you are but those cedar piles will throw embers a long way

I hope to finish the cutting this month with the burn being either next Jan/Feb, or the Jan/Feb after that.
All of that will depend on what stage of drying the cedars are in. The biologist said you want the needles to be holding well, but be able to give the limbs a good slap and them fall off.
Winter around here typically comes with frequent rains and good burn conditions.


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[Iowa_Dave]

That was my initial thought, but the tilled ground in the middle was a recommendation from one of the local wildlife biologists who does the burns for the state land. He said he does the backing fire in the short stuff first so there is a good 10’ of black before it hits the y’all stuff. Then, you have 10’ of black plus the 4’ baredirt where no embers can catch, then another 10’ mowed for mop-up. I’ll talk through the design a little more with him before settling on the break design.

Hmmm...I can see the logic to that advice. I think the key there would be to execute it the way he said...light the short, mowed area "inside" the break and give yourself a "black zone". I did not mention this, but that is the way I often do it too. I have my tilled(bare dirt) break right next to where I start my burn, BUT I usually mow at least one width of the mower(6') through the grass to be burned(a "starter row" of sorts). I suppose I was not calling that mowed strip part of my break, but considering it more of a safety zone. Another good reason to do this is to keep the heat and smoke down on your downwind side to make it easier on you when you are starting the burn. If I was burning taller material, like switchgrass, I would have 3 or 4 widths of the mower, not 1.

What I would not be comfortable with is letting my backfire go "backwards", being pushed by a wind, across a mowed strip, even if it was to meet a bare dirt strip. I want total control of that fire and want it to be moving forward as planned right away, not backward where something could go wrong. Soooo...depending on where you light it, your advisor and I are probably saying the same thing. I initially interpreted it as though you would start your fire at the intersection of the mowed and unmowed area. Start it next to the bare dirt and we are saying the same thing I think.

 

[IkemanTx]

[mention]Iowa_Dave [/mention]
Your and he are on the same thought path, just different description. I don’t expect the grass to be too tall. There is a lot of Bermuda grass and fescue in the mix, and it has been overgrazed for a couple decades. It is currently about as tall as felt... one of the main reasons of ditching the grazing is the lesee has been overgrazing it drastically.

He isn’t paying anymore, but we are letting him hay the north side of the place so the place meets texas’ agricultural tax exempt status. That will save a LOT of paperwork trying to rush it into wildlife exempt the first year. I plan to have it in a wildlife exempt status in the next 2-3 years, and we can use grazing and/or haying as management tools as needed after that.

This 7 acre burn unit will probably be the first spot on the place I begin to restore Blackland prairie. I will have to go slow with that process, though, because the mix I want to use is a HIGHLY diverse 46 species blend that’s $350/acre seed cost alone. Not to mention 3+ glyphosate sprays, seed bed preparation, and drill rental.


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[IkemanTx]

Well, I couldn’t resist any longer. I went ahead and built another 2 acre mix on GreenCoverSeed’s Smart Mix app... this one for a dove plot. I haven’t gotten the shipping quote, but so long as it’s not crazy, I will still put the order through.

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[IkemanTx]

I spent the day, Wednesday, working a chainsaw on the farm. I burned through 5 tanks of gas with a high of 88. Wire myself out, that’s for sure.
I got a good bit done, though.

The neighbor put his horses on for one last grazing before food plots go in a few weeks from now.

Also, the wildflowers are starting to pop. This blue indigo is probably my favorite.

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[H20fwler]

Nice vid! You have been busy.
Like the flowers, cool to see varieties from the south.

 

[IkemanTx]

Nice vid! You have been busy.
Like the flowers, cool to see varieties from the south.

The flowers are just getting started around here.
I was really encouraged by the numbers of native broadleaf plants on the chalk hill. I may have to roundup spray the deeper soiled sections, due to them holding onto several non-native species. At the very least, that will reduce the number of acres that I have to seed with natives!

I am more than a little frustrated that my father let the neighbor rancher graze the property this spring. I know it is only a few weeks of grazing, but I really needed an ungrazed spring to see the species makeup before deciding wether or not to spray down the first area I intend to convert back to prairie. I had been intending to convert the 7.6 acre unit with all the cedars being cut, so it may be a good excuse to wait until after the prescribed fire (winter 2020 or 2021 depending on dryness of the dead cedars) before deciding on a plan of action.

There is a 2 acre unit on the southwest side of the property that might be a better test bed for the prairie rehab anyways. Slightly deeper soils, with some good water retention. (Possibly too wet on rainy years) It would be a lower initial cost anyways. There is also 2.75 acres I could add to it that is just south of the food plot, I hadn’t really decided what to do with that. I was kind of thinking switchgrass for the cover, but I know it won’t be bedding as it stays very wet. So, the prairie mix with a smidge extra switch for the cover could suffice.

Either way, I have quite a bit of work to do in the next few weeks to get everything planted. I have to cut in and build a barbed wire gate, spray 4.5 acres, and till/plant those same 4.5 acres. That may be a bit difficult to choreograph while maintaining social distancing during this pandemic crap. My parents spend quite a bit of time with my grandparents, so I don’t want to spread CoVid to them. My grandparents wouldn’t fare well with their underlying comorbidities. All the equipment is theirs... tractor, sprayer, tiller.... even the truck to pull such a big trailer. Maybe I can have them load everything up so I can drive it off into the sunset. Haha.


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[IkemanTx]

I didn’t take any pictures today, but my son and I got out and sprayed the total of 4.5 acres that makes up the 3 plots. I figure I will till and plant the weekend of the 25th, weather permitting.

I only have 2 days of work left for the month thanks to the “shelter in place”, so I am flexible on the timing this year. I might have to get out and finish up the chainsaw work next week in the interim.


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[IkemanTx]

Planted the plots yesterday.
11 hours of work, and one HECK of a sunburn.
I underestimated how slow the tilling process would be. The plots really probably needed a second pass as chunky as the clay was, but we just didn’t have it in us to run a full second day.
The dove plot ended up at just under an acre, instead of 2, because the lower lying section was so hard the tractor couldn’t maintain RPM’s no matter how shallowly we tilled.

My sone and stepfather helping me out.

And the horses the neighboring rancher was SUPPOSED to have off the place no later than Saturday......

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[IkemanTx]

Well, I swung by the farm and noticed that some of the more drought tolerant species had started to germinate... even with a week without rain! Now I am glad I went with such diverse mixtures... at least something will make it, even if it is t deer food!
It looks to be Thursday/Friday at the earliest before rain hits the farm again. The real decent percentages for rain don’t show up until next tuesday... 16 days after planting before rain.

If the forecast had shown a dry spell, I would have held off on planting. Hopefully all is not lost, but there sure has been a lot of crow, dove, and pig activity cleaning the plots....


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[IkemanTx]

Update...
we ended up with 15 days without rain immediately following planting. Both days forecasted for rain the week I planted fell through, and everything turned to rock hard clay crumbles. After 15 days, we got about 0.5”, then 4-5 days later we got almost an inch, and finally we spent about the last week and a half getting good rains on the farm. That puts us, now, at 5 weeks after planting.

The dove plot looks AWESOME. It ended up being much smaller than I planned due to much of the area being saturated when we planted.

The main plot looks abysmal. It looks like it started to germinate with the residual soil moisture at planting, and dies with the subsequent 2 weeks of hot and dry weather. It looks like the mustard, brassicas, safflower, and sunn hemp are effectively the only things left.

The 50/50 Alyce clover and Joint Vetch plot is weedy, but starting to grow.

The forecast looks to be turning dry for the next week or so.... hopefully this isn’t the case, because the top inch or of soil is crusted and cracked already. I REALLY need to figure out a way to go no-till ASAP. This ground just can’t handle extended dry periods, and holds too much water in wet periods.

The cedars are drying down well after being cut. I’ll bet they are ready to burn by February. This burn unit will be 7 acres... 3 of which is cut cedars. It should one HECK of a fire.

The 7 acre unit the cedars are in also has a surprisingly diverse variety of wildflowers and forbs.
I am up to no less that 20 wildflower species for the year already, and I’m not a skilled identifier.

Below is the smaller of the 2 creeks on the place. This will be the north fire break (looking south) for the 7 acre unit that is first scheduled to burn. I am thinking of making this location an alternative creek crossing, as this spot is down to bedrock and would only need approach and departure dirt work done. No worry about getting stuck here.

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[Rit]

I spent the day, Wednesday, working a chainsaw on the farm. I burned through 5 tanks of gas with a high of 88. Wire myself out, that’s for sure.
I got a good bit done, though.

The neighbor put his horses on for one last grazing before food plots go in a few weeks from now.

Also, the wildflowers are starting to pop. This blue indigo is probably my favorite.

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My kids would be in heaven they absolutely love horses. They have been begging me the last few years to get a horse.

I have been on the chainsaw a lot the last few weeks all day long with highs in the 80s. It’s tough work but I sleep well after.

 

[H20fwler]

Update...
we ended up with 15 days without rain immediately following planting. Both days forecasted for rain the week I planted fell through, and everything turned to rock hard clay crumbles. After 15 days, we got about 0.5”, then 4-5 days later we got almost an inch, and finally we spent about the last week and a half getting good rains on the farm. That puts us, now, at 5 weeks after planting.

The dove plot looks AWESOME. It ended up being much smaller than I planned due to much of the area being saturated when we planted.

The main plot looks abysmal. It looks like it started to germinate with the residual soil moisture at planting, and dies with the subsequent 2 weeks of hot and dry weather. It looks like the mustard, brassicas, safflower, and sunn hemp are effectively the only things left.

The 50/50 Alyce clover and Joint Vetch plot is weedy, but starting to grow.

The forecast looks to be turning dry for the next week or so.... hopefully this isn’t the case, because the top inch or of soil is crusted and cracked already. I REALLY need to figure out a way to go no-till ASAP. This ground just can’t handle extended dry periods, and holds too much water in wet periods.

The cedars are drying down well after being cut. I’ll bet they are ready to burn by February. This burn unit will be 7 acres... 3 of which is cut cedars. It should one HECK of a fire.

The 7 acre unit the cedars are in also has a surprisingly diverse variety of wildflowers and forbs.
I am up to no less that 20 wildflower species for the year already, and I’m not a skilled identifier.

Below is the smaller of the 2 creeks on the place. This will be the north fire break (looking south) for the 7 acre unit that is first scheduled to burn. I am thinking of making this location an alternative creek crossing, as this spot is down to bedrock and would only need approach and departure dirt work done. No worry about getting stuck here.

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Everything looks great!
I am ready for dove season too...really like the wildflowers too.

 

[IkemanTx]

Did a walk through on the place.

It got a little long, but figured id keep it all in there.

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[S.T.Fanatic]

Where does one get an invisible selfie stick?