Last Thursday, we moved the wagon to a section of the garden I had sown to cover crops last fall. I had sown rye, crimson clover, but a lot of rye grass had volunteered. We set up the poultry netting around a section. Poultry netting is designed to be electrified and very portable.
Perennial rye grass coming up on it’s own can be a good or bad thing, depending on how it is managed. It is a good cover crop that is free and adds a lot of organic matter to the soil when tilled under and earthworms love it but you don’t want it volunteering where you will be sowing spring vegetable crops. It is hard to control via cultivating.
Our problem/opportunity with rye grass in this section begin in 2008 when we mulched potatoes with round bales of oat straw I bought from my dad. Oats and rye grass mature into seeds at roughly the same time, so when my dad combined his oats, the rye grass seed, which is much smaller, passed through the sieve of the combine and ended up in the straw. This is the same section we late planted our garlic a year ago. We tilled in February and planted our garlic, which set up almost perfect conditions for the rye grass seed to germinate from last year’s oat straw. This led to reduced yields and small bulb size in last year’s garlic due to competition from the rye grass. Garlic matures in the same time frame as oats and rye grass, so all that rye grass set seed. I was aware that there would be rye grass in that section this winter and I thought it would be a good mix to the rye and crimson clover but I had no idea it would dominate the section. It choked out the rye, which is really hard to do, and the clover. There is a defining 300′ line, straight as an arrow in this section where the rye grass stops and it becomes pure crimson clover. It is where we switched from wheat straw to oat straw in the spring of 2008 while mulching potatoes.
Friday was going to be the big day to let these girls out on pasture. I had went to Tractor Supply Thursday evening to buy another Zareba fence charger.
It is an amazing device, we have one powering a single wire along the interior of the pig pen and George, Penny, and Stacy respect it.
It can run off a 6 or 12 volt battery supply, including 4 D cell batteries and it packs a punch. How do I know that? The charger comes with three switch positions high, low, and off with off being in the middle. Friday morning, I loaded 4 Duracell D batteries into the charger. Evidently, the unit came with the switch in an on position or I inadvertently switched it on taking out of the package.
The unit was not grounded, but apparently I was and as I shoved the battery pack into the charger, it went live, with my hand firmly on on the top of the business end of the charger. I yelled and involuntarily threw it to the concrete floor of the barn.
It did not break. And I knew it was working….
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