Tuck Away Farm

Tuck Away Farm

Two buddies curiously watching me as
I take their picture. They are
spending the afternoon in
one of the sacrifice paddocks.

Spreading Manure

Wetlands

Grazing

Coming back from Spreading Manure

Mud Creek

Overview:

Tuck Away Farm consists of 80 acres which is broken up into pasture land, paddocks, a wooded area, wetlands, and farmed fields.
Tuck Away Farm is comprised of a mixed group of sport horses which are used for english disciplines like the hunter/jumpers.
The max number of horses the farm can hold is 10, and that number fluctuates as boarders come and go as well as mares that are in foal.

Management Practices:

Manure is spread out on the farmed fields and gets turned back into the soil as the farmer that rents the lands plants or tills the soil.
Pastures are fertilized about once a year with a commercial fertilizer for horse pastures.
Pastures are also mowed to keep the weeds from taking over about once a month to every two weeks.
Paddocks are used as 'sacrifice' areas so that pastures do not get over grazed. Pastures are therefore very healthy and lush, so much so that horses need only go out on them for half a day.
Tuck Away Farm is has a very dark clay soil that is ideal for farming as well as pasture growth.
They also drag the pastures and paddocks regularly to break up manure.
Horses get wormed every six weeks and different wormers get rotated in to control parasites.
In the future, they are thinking of turning their hay field into a pasture so that pasture rotation could be initiated.

Bedding:

Tuck Away Farm uses pine shavings for the stalls.
They have tried straw, which is hard to handle and pick out;
shredded paper, which falls apart when it gets wet;
wooded pellets, which are super absorbent, pretty economically, but not comfortable for the horse;
and rice husks, which are very slippery but very absorbent and dust free.
They had not heard of hemp bedding.

Surface Water and Wetlands:

Mud Creek runs through the property as well as two wetland areas.
Tuck Away does not have any ground water problems.
When they were designing their pastures, they made sure to fence of the wetland areas so that the horses could not get in them or up next to Mud Creek.
But, on either side of their property there are pollution sources. On one side, the land is farmed right up to the creek and on the other cows are allowed right up to and in the stream itself.

Environmental Considerations:

Considered that what is good for the horses is usually good for the environment.
When they moved into the farm, it had stood empty for a few years and before that had held 20 mares and 4 stallion Arabians. The land had had time to recover from this very intense use and now seems to be very productive.
Pasture management for the pasture that is continuously grazed is Tuck Away's biggest challenged in the management area.
Tuck Away also considers suburbanization to be one of the biggest issues for the smaller horse farms in the future.
Tuck Away sees horse farms in the area being squeezed onto smaller and smaller pieces of land and the city coming out to them.
Manure disposal will be the biggest issue in the future for these farms.
A suggestions would be for more and stricter laws about how many horses can be kept per acre.