10/10/2026
When you look across a pasture, hay field, or crop field, it’s easy to overlook what it took to make that land farmable. Somebody cut the trees, dealt with the stumps, and worked the ground. Often, that work happened generations before any of us were born.
Here at Grimshaw Farms, we’re getting a firsthand reminder of that process as we turn this remaining five-acre section into pasture.
Old aerial photographs show part of it being farmed back in the 1950s, while another part was already wooded. Some of this ground is being reclaimed after decades of growing up, and some may not have been open for much longer.
Originally, I planned to leave it alone and run a straight fence line past it. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to put that ground to work. Five additional acres of pasture will give our sheep more grazing room close to the house, where I like to keep them during lambing season.
We started by mulching the smaller trees and brush. Then our friend Eli at Reedy River Forestry Mulching & Land Clearing LLC brought in his excavator to tackle the bigger trees and stumps. Modern equipment makes an enormous difference. What once meant years of cutting, grubbing, hauling, and waiting for stumps to rot can now move along in a couple of weeks.
But getting the trees down is only part of the job.
The brush piles still have to be burned, the remaining debris needs time to break down, and the ground will need to be disced, leveled, fertilized, and seeded. We’ll plant ryegrass as a temporary cover to help hold the soil while we work toward establishing fescue pasture next year.
We could push the process faster, but I’d rather give it time. There’s a lot of mulched material left to decay and return to the soil, along with ash to spread after the piles are burned. My goal is productive ground that will grow good grass and support healthy sheep for years to come.
And this is only five acres, which took about two weeks to clear. It gives you some appreciation for the families who built entire farms with axes, animal power, and a lifetime of work.
Eventually, this will look like another ordinary pasture. These pictures will be a reminder of what it took to get there.
