BTW...I want you to know that your videos are far better than your view counts indicates. Keep up the great work... it'll come.

This fella perty smart, hopefully his channel takes off🤠

Great video... you're on the right track. As noted, I would avoid NRCS programs as much as you can. Take the input but not the obligations with their money. That's just me now. That said...I had an 8 year old stand of alfalfa on a piece of land that I aquired 2 years ago. It was in rough shape. We did not spray out the alfalfa. We no-till-drilled 3 different specifically chosen annual cocktails since then...no spraying, no fertilizers. Beautiful crops. We could have baled it but we're committed to the process of preparing our soil for the eventual perrenial pasture & put our money where our mouth was. We brush-hogged it all down 2 of 3 times the other time the snow knocked it down. Our intent was to graze it off but this didn't happen. The last cocktail was cereal rye, winter triticale, winter wheat, collard greens, turnips & hairy vetch. It was amazing with large rye heads up to my arm pits... I'm 6' 2". Not a weed in sight while growing & far less afterwards. CR & trit are alleopathic which did it's job but is why we had to mechanically terminate it fully. Finally, we felt it was ready last fall & again no-till-drilled with 5" furrows an 11-way cocktail of perrenials last fall. This cocktail is symbiotic & also successive. This year we will finally have full measure irrigation for the first time in years. We plan to round bale (cut higher though) 1x to help accelerate the root strength & growth. We think it will finally be ready/strong enough for rotational grazing for cattle & sheep this fall. The baled hay will be used on this land via bale-unroller to winter feed never leaving our land. It took 3 years of input, labor & faith to get to this point but it's looking fantastic. No more annuals on this land while we own it & no more sprays or fertilizer. Less dependency on irrigation. We believe it will also be much better on both years with full water & years with less water & better stewards with what we have. BTW, we live in the high desert 🏜 of SW Colorado.

Very informative! Thanks!

In Nebraska, most of the Natural Resource Districts have no till drills that can be rented. Check them out. Without drilling, plan to double or triple your seed cost for each pass. That mulch on top of the ground is your best friend in getting seed germinated. Consider broadcast seeding now, and then feeding CRP or grass strip hay on the ground spun out just as thin as you can to work the seed in and supplement the cover.

Doing a lot of the same things on our place. Have quite a bit in EQUIP programs. I looked at no till drills as well but I'm couldn't find anything reasonable. Ended up buying a Brillion seeder. For the no till, I've just been using my regular JD grain drill and it works pretty good. Ive got about 100 acres of oats i planted over my sudan hay and it is doing really good.

Practical Farmers of Iowa had a video series about small grains on KZfaq years ago, and I think there was something about broadcasting grains like oats, rye, wheat, and a mix called succotash (oats, peas, and barley?) in one of their videos. There are parts of the country where people broadcast wheat or rye after fall harvest and use a vertical tillage tool to incorporate the seed for either a grain harvest or a cover crop, so I would think that disking and broadcasting would work just as well. If you could find a conventional drill it would work to drill into a disked field, it might also work without any tillage depending on how rough the field was. Farmers are experimenting with interseeding cover crops into corn by modifying conventional drills to plant between the rows, using a conventional drill to plant your summer mix into an oat crop should also work. It's also common to broadcast ryegrass and rye into soybean and corn fields as a covercrop, broadcasting your winter mix into your summer mix in early fall should work the same way. After your summer mix winterkills or is grazed the rye will start growing.

Thanks for the video. I’m doing the same thing too. I started in fall 2021 on corn ground. I’ve been watching a lot of KZfaq videos, and Greg Judy is my to go person on most videos. Also, Russ Wilson is really good too. I wouldn’t disc or till anything. It is one of the worse things you can do. I’ve been reading books on Dale Strickler and read of all Greg Judy books. The first year I planted 7 of 20 acres of hairy vetch and cereal rye with an old Farmall steel wheel drill. The seed was just sitting on the ground since it is regular grill. It worked great for cereal rye but ok with hairy vetch. If I gone back again, I would have frost seed clovers February/March 2022. I was planning to plant the rest with cover crops in the spring along with perennials pasture seed too. By end of April of 2022, I needed neck surgery so it got delayed until fall 2022. Then, fall 2022 I no tilled my rest of my 13 of 20 acres future pasture with crimson clover, triticale, hairy vetch, red clover, buckwheat, oats, and perennials pastures seeds. It grew some in the fall because we had lack of rain. Then, in the spring 2023 the pasture grew some more from the snow melt besides the oats and buckwheat I was hoping the pasture would have taken off but a drought stuck so the pasture was very short until we got rains in August and September. The 7 acres that was cereal rye and hairy vetch was very thick so I knocked it down in August 2022 with the no till drill and planted oats, buckwheat , red clover, winter peas, crimson clover. The cereal rye and hairy vetch took over since it reseeded itself. By December 2022, the cereal and hairy vetch was a foot tall. We didn’t have much snow until Christmas week. Then, the January and February the snow melted and the deer came in and mowed it off. By spring came, the 7 acres looked like a golf course green because it was so short. The cereal rye and hairy vetch exploded when it warmed up in the spring 2023. I was hoping to have my fence done but with the drought it was hard to put fence in the ground. It felt like I was pounding post in concrete. Then, I got part of the fence done so I put my animals in there by fall 2023 and fed hay in there all winter. I have so much hay in about 1-2 of the 7 acres. It probably won’t grow much pasture but in the following years it will be unbelievable. The 5 of the 7 acres the cereal rye was dry but the red clover was awesome. The hairy vetch reseeded itself again when we got the rains in August so it was growing. By December 2023, the cereal rye is growing from more rains in December and warmer than usual weather. Now fast forward until now, the cereal rye, clovers, and hairy vetch is coming back. I’m planning to plant 4-5 acres of native perennials pasture in the January/February of 2025. I’m going to plant a summer cover crop this summer and graze it off hard before planting the native perennials. I follow Greg Judy method of MOB grazing. I’m pretty new at this but I’ve learned a lot too. I started in summer 2020 with 2-3 acres MOB grazing in my yard.

Seeding...... why not buy yourself a IH endgate seeder ? They cost around 200 dollars. and the wagon another two hundred dollars. I see them all the time at sales. Throw the seed in and drive ! Then... cultipack it or double harrow it. Finished ! Another option... talk to a local coop....ask them to calibrate the spreader down to 10 wide spreads ? This way the grass "seed" flies far enough to cover the area ( 10 foot ) Might have to buy / add some fertilizer as a filler but its a good idea to fertilize new grass seeding anyway ! The coop mix the seed in with the fertilizer and dump it in the spreader. I use this method all the time.. Its quick using a truck !

Speaking of soil management, what did you decide to do about the erosion in the woods on the back of your place.

Check with you local NRCS or FSA office, they usually have no-till drills that they rent.

I'm certainly no expert, but that all sound like a whole lot of work and expense. I'd steer towards a more simple approach, something like farmer Pete describes in this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kJmqfK9zxM-nfqs.html