We bought our farm as a foreclosure, for those who may not remember from last year. Some of the fields had been grazed by a pair of horses, and other areas were hayed for a few years. As best we can tell, no inputs were added because after we took a cut in late July, the grass wasn’t ready for a second cut in September! That is really, really slow.
Soil testing revealed the rest – deficiencies in phosphorus and potassium in all fields, and nitrogen is needed, too. Last year, Matt and I moved horse manure over the mountain from Lowell to spread on our smallest and most depleted field. This spring, as we watched our neighbor’s field grow twice as fast as ours from the benefits of his manure-spreading, we decided to go on Craigslist and see what we could find. We were in luck- folks in Cabot were selling pure rabbit manure!
So Matt and I made five 1-ton trips to spread our second-most-depleted field with bunny berries. We hand-shoveled manure out of the truck to fill the spreader.
Whew! The good news is that rabbit manure breaks down rapidly for a quick and solid nutrient boost to pasture. It’s greener already out there.
