Below is a shot of what the field next to the barn has looked like since we got here. We reckon it’s been at least two years since it was mowed.

Here’s another shot. The field is on the far side of the fence.

But just one hour with a tractor and a bush-hog, and here’s what it looks like now:

The little red-leafed tree you see in the shot above was growing in the weedy field. Issa used an online tree identification guide to determine that it might be a black walnut. Then again, there are a gajillion of them growing by the road, and I wasn’t under the impression walnut was that common. If it’s black walnut, that’s a pretty lucky break for us, although we’ll have to keep the pigs from uprooting it if we want to find out what it grows into.

The tractor work was $40 an hour, and money well spent if you ask me. We had planned to till the entire half-acre field and then plant a pasture mix tailored towards hogs. We only plan to have two pigs next year, and they won’t need the run of the entire field, but we figured better to plant much of anything to give the weeds some competition! It turned out that there was some really nice fescue under there, so we left it on the ground in most of the pasture and only tilled about 1/3 of the field for the hog-tailored pasture mix.

Here’s a picture of Issa spreading the pasture mix seed on the tilled ground.