Beaverdam

[Foragefarmer]

I guess I'll get started on a property tour/blog of my place.

The background is I own a 294 acre farm in Central Virginia. I inherited the farm when my mother passed in 2003. It is an active cattle farm and carries about 80 cow/calf pairs at any one time.

I thought I would start with a video coming down my driveway to the yard.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Like your place already just from the driveway alone. In my mind any truly good place needs a driveway of that length!

 

[Cedar Ridge]

Love it.

 

[Foragefarmer]

So I have said in another thread that I have been fencing off all the creeks on the farm. So here are some of the plan maps I can find. They all contain the driveway for a reference. I cant seem to find the other ones.Maybe a little more searching.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Like your place already just from the driveway alone. In my mind any truly good place needs a driveway of that length!

It is about 7/10ths of a mile. It takes a lot of gravel. I have been working on the stretch between the first and second cattle guard and it needs 3-4 loads.

People that are not sure where they are start to get nervous about the second cattle guard and turn around at the corner. I have seen it time and time again.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Did some mowing and bush hogging today. Decided to clip my range out while I was at it. And if I am going to mow my range I might as well do a little shooting.



I am pretty proud of this swinging target. Made from old bush hog blades. It is pistol only but holds up fine even to .44 mag..



Bench is at 200 yards.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Raining today so I went out and checked a few things. Frost seeded clover is really doing well in this field.



I had a thread on the QDMA forum on how to make a hay bale blind from cattle panel. Can you spot the blind? It has been a great spot to hunt out of over the years.



Little help.

It is a good problem cutting the honey suckle out of the windows every fall.



Millet field is starting to germinate. The millet isn't for the deer but in the fall it will be planted to rye, crimson clover and maybe vetch.





Field one is the field with the clover and the hay bale blind is the top red blob and the other is where the other photo was taken and is another stand site. Field marked with the 2's is the millet field.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Sorghum is coming along.

 

[Mennoniteman]

I love the place. If you're thinking of selling..... Seriously, that's a great idea for pistol targets, I'll need to try that. Nice fields, are some crops or just wildlife?

 

[Foragefarmer]

I love the place. If you're thinking of selling..... Seriously, that's a great idea for pistol targets, I'll need to try that. Nice fields, are some crops or just wildlife?

Ha! I was talking about things with my neighbor friend the other day; we bounce stuff off each other, and his comment was "it is easy to look like you know what you are doing when you get a little rain."

All cattle pasture of one sort or another...

 

[Foragefarmer]

Sorghum is jumping up now

 

[Foragefarmer]

Killing cool season sod has surpassed expectations. This small field is next to my sorghum planting and was sprayed with gly in March. In the first pic you can see the killed sod through the regrowth. But the wing stem, iron weed, yellow iron weed and milkweed are all head high. Pokeweed is head high as well.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Killing cool season sod has surpassed expectations. This small field is next to my sorghum planting and was sprayed with gly in March. In the first pic you can see the killed sod through the regrowth. But the wing stem, iron weed, yellow iron weed and milkweed are all head high. Pokeweed is head high as well.

View attachment 7786 View attachment 7787 View attachment 7788

You've got a deer habitat jungle going on there. There is food and cover aplenty.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Yeah, I need that cover it is the short pole on my place.

 

[CTM1]

That is a very piece of land!

 

[Foragefarmer]

Sorghum is looking good after having suffered from a short but intense dry period for part of the summer



This spot I sod killed with gly last spring has really come along in ironweed and tick seed sunflower.

Really happy with my sod killing behind my creek exclusion fences.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Planted 14 acres of rye into millet field. Just grazed the millet to the dirt and no tilled the rye into the millet stand. Have gotten good rains and a frost to nip back the millet. Got a good stand started and 1.5 weeks in 30 geese were in the stand. Had to chase them off.

 

[Foragefarmer]

These are the fields marked with a 2.

 

[Foragefarmer]

Hunted the Rye field for the first time last night. Saw 7 deer. 5 antlerless and 2 spikes. I was hunting the point in the photo above with the green line that runs left to right and has 455 next to it. Had three mature does come in hopping and skipping. No fawns with them I might add. Once they got settled I snapped a pic of one. They were really chowing down.



A friend hunted with me and I put him on a pinch point on the north end of the property that has been productive over the years and he saw 9 deer. 5 bucks the nicest being a 14ish inch 8 pointer and 4 does. He was happier than in the morning when we hunted his place and he saw nothing. I saw 2 does and a 14ish inch 8 pointer. It didn't help that his brother was hunting a large James river bottom crop farm in the morning and killed a pig of a main frame 10 with split brows.

 

[Foragefarmer]

The rye is doing well.