Plum Thicket Farms

farming

Plum Thicket Farms has/leases 2300 acres of farm ground, 560 acres of which are under pivot irrigation. We are passionate about following no-till practices and utilize cover crops extensively. This part of the world is very sandy and can be dry, so our efforts are directed toward preventing erosion, conserving soil moisture, and building organic matter. Forage crops work very well in our crop rotation, so we plant multispecies “cocktails”, annual forages for intensive grazing. This has the added benefit of allowing us to defer more of our native pastures to grazing during the dormant season (We use a deferred pasture rest-rotation system). We plant sorghum-sudan or pearl millet for fall and winter grazing. We are going to plant varieties that stay in the vegetative state rather than head out so we can mob graze it while it is standing. The corn stalks are grazed and cover crops of rye and vetch are planted whenever possible for spring grazing. We calve on rye in May.

We have an eight year dryland crop that includes wheat, corn, field peas, sunflowers, forage sorghum. Oats and peas for forage, rye for grazing, and warm season forage cocktails for grazing.