Tag: Grass Seed

Harvest harvest harvest

We have been rolling along over here in St. Paul. We started harvest early this year, we didn’t get much to any rain since early April so that really sped up the maturing of our crops.

We are on a pretty good stride of the middle of harvest right now. Most days are the same, combine, fill trucks with seed, feed the people, try to stay cool, haul the trucks to the cleaner, rinse and repeat.

The beginning of harvest was a little insane I’ll be honest. We started combining crimson clover at the same time that we started cutting our tall fescue which happened to be at the same time as the good old St. Paul rodeo.

So our days started at 2am with cutting grass, moving on to 11am combining, 7:30pm rodeo volunteering or watching and finishing off that long day around 11pm.

With of course the inevitable crying family member because there weren’t enough games played (Auggie), not enough carnival rides ridden (Millie), too much food eaten (Hoot), ready to be home (Matt) or just plain damn tired (me!). Don’t get me wrong though, we do a good job of having a lot of fun too!

Not sure when we slept that first week but I know I am not the only one to be happy to be in the middle stride of harvest!!

We will finish tall fescue this week and then get the combines all cleaned out for perennial ryegrass. A week or so of that will finish our grass seed harvest for this year. Next up green beans, wheat, radish & filberts!

Baby Grass Seed Scouting

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in the Willamette Valley! And when you get beautiful days in November it’s usually the best time to go and look to see how the fields are doing.

We have planted a number of perennial ryegrass seed acres this fall, referred to often as “baby fields”. And as my husband Matt likes to say, “Baby perennial ryegrass is always looking for a way to die!” What he means is that when perennial ryegrass is just starting out it makes for a delicious meal for both slugs and geese, and when they attack they can decimate acres and acres in just a few days. So we often go out to make sure as it’s coming up that it’s being protected as best we can.

To tell you the truth as we headed out across the field it didn’t look very good. It just looked like a lot of open soil with no sprout. Which isn’t ideal when you’re trying to get a field to grow.

But we didn’t let it worry us too much. This field wasn’t planted too long ago and we knew that it should just be starting to sprout. So with a closer inspection, this field is actually doing quite well as it just starts to come out of the ground.

That’s what we call the start of being able to “row up” a grass seed planting. And the good news is that while we found a few slugs, the bait that we put out a week ago is still protecting the grass as it sprouts. And as far as geese it didn’t look like they had found it yet, so we will continue to scout for them as they fly over and more than likely also start to spot the rows of tasty grass.

We also saw a lot of worm castings which is a sign of good soil health. You can see in this photo all the small dry bits of soil, that is all from worm activity.

These fields will need to be protected through the winter from the slugs, geese, and kept clean from weeds that will inevitably sprout through the dormant and growing season. Before harvest next July we will be out scouting our acres every few weeks, if not everyday depending on the conditions in the fields. Today was a beautiful day to get this done, I’m sure my rain coat and muck boot wearing days aren’t far away though…this is Oregon after all!

FRED Talk in the Field

Oregon Farm Bureau has been reaching out to members to do FRED talks. FRED stands for Farming and Ranching Every Day.

I had the opportunity to chat with Anne Marie Moss with the Oregon Farm Bureau about all sorts of things ranging from Covid 19, to grass seed, to blogging all while out in a grass seed field on a beautiful sunny Oregon day!

Click here to watch my FRED talk!

Personally my biggest takeaway is, when choosing a “tripod” for your phone while on zoom, a spray boom that slowly goes down while you’re talking is not recommended. Mostly because by the end of the conversation you will basically be doing a squat and your legs will be sore. 😂 #hindsight2020

But seriously, I really appreciate all the work that Oregon Farm Bureau has done to be creative and help still keep us farming and rolling along. You can see all their other FRED Talks here. And also Like them on Facebook to stay up to date about farming and ranching in Oregon.