We are lacking broad leaf in our CRP nesting ground.  Broad leafs like alfalfa and clover are important to provide bugs for early nesting pheasant chicks.  We have good grasses now and we mixed alfalfa with the grass mix when we planted in 2015 but it didn’t come up.  Either poor seed or planted too deep.  Alfalfa and clover like to be planted around 1/2′ deep.  Our no-till drills we use have a hard time planting that shallow.  That’s why I’m replanting now while the grounds froze hopefully to keep it shallow allowing for a finish depth of 1/2′ or 3/4′ deep.  Should work.  The soil around the blade tracks should wash a little from snowmelt and rains this winter to cover what seed left exposed.  Hopefully everything pops up when the soil warms up next spring…  Just in time for nesting!

We are almost done with sunflower harvest.  They are wet across the state this year.  It raised havoc with our pheasant hunting this fall.  Many birds are in the crops.  Although we limited each day, we were unable to hunt a lot of strips holding wild birds due to the standing sunflowers next to it.  There is no easy way to hunt sunflowers unless you are 7′ tall.  They hang over in the rows and hit you in the head or chest.  Birds love them!

Thankfully we leave sod along the fences to get somewhere and hunt when its muddy.  Otherwise it would be a disaster trying to get around and getting stuck. Some places you just can’t get there and walking cropland is a mess. Our strips of switch grass we plant keeps you clean as well.