Hay Stocks

With this years hay put up its nice to see that we have a great stock of hay on hand going into winter.  The haying went well and I put up some very nice hay.  May be a little on the high moisture side, but as of today it looks great.  Since the hay is up we've been working on getting the fence replaced down in the back 9ac of the farm so that I can move the cows down there to finish out the year.  Its been both a pleasure and a chore.  With the kids back to school, I've had to do much of the work myself until late in the afternoon when their finally free to help.  I've been able to listen and look at the changing season which has been very nice.  It allows me to make some observations and I've noticed a couple of really interesting things.  One is that when I look out across the fields I've noticed that our farm has a great number of birds flying over it compared to my neighbors farms.  I assume that's because we have a greater number of bugs that are living on our diverse landscape.  I've also observed that this years weed population is significantly higher than past years.  Thistle has been an especially difficult plant to get out of the pasture, but with the amount of clover and other forbs in the pasture I don't want to do anything radical that might knock back the diversity.  I'm hoping that by continuing to increase diversity we'll eventually get the thistle marginalized.