I need some advice and possibly a pep talk. I got a bit of a gut punch today (in a first world problem kind of way). I’ll attempt a bit of background.
I’ve made it no secret that we have essentially zero bedding on our place. I have been working on the small chunks of timber and I have a couple nice little bottom fields that have been loads of fun getting crops to grow, but I am banking on deer coming off the neighbors and getting them to do it before dark is a challenge.
I finally convinced my dad to plant the big 22 acre brome field way up on our North property line to native grass and we were going to fence it as part of the project. There were two tiny fingers with a few cedars and several hedges that gave deer from the North a bit of cover as they traveled off that neighbors onto ours. While that activity was also mainly at night, I had hoped that would thicken and someday be the base for some thicker cover on our place.
We had the brome killed, native grass planted, and the fence built in the last month or two. As part of the fence project, the guy had to cut a couple trees right on the property line. No big deal. Well, it appears dad had a neighbor come in and clear those little fingers. He was all excited to show me, like I would be impressed with it or something. He clear cut everything and stacked them into brush piles.
My question becomes, what to do with the bottom fields. I don’t have the energy or finances to keep doing something like that if my dad is going to make generational changes in the opposite direction for far cheaper on the back end. We went from almost no cover on our place to no cover on our place. I had already planned on converting the field I put into corn this year into clover. It’ll be 2 acres. I am thinking maybe doing the same with the other 3.5 acres field. Thoughts? Plant it and kind of let it be. Basically I am looking for a cheaper (than corn which won’t be hard), less maintenance option to put in place. What would you do?
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