Starting out, have no clue

Hello all!

 

My wife and I are purchasing about 70 acres of land in central Virginia. About 20 of it is pasture and about extra 5 of it are in hay production. The balance is woods and a house plus some out buildings.

 

The 5 acres of hay fields is what most locals call hay but in reality it is cow quality feed with a lot of weeds in it. We think it is called a hay field just to get a break on the taxes but for the purposes of this discussion the motivations are not important.

 

A few questions:

 

1) We want to convert the 5 acres of cow quality hay to horse quality hay. Out here orchard and fescue seem to be easy to grow. What would be involved in doing so?

2) The balance of twenty acres of pastures is all down/up hill. Being total beginners - how complicated is it to grow hay on slopes? Seems more dangerous to operate a tractor on that kind of terrain than on a flat field. I am originally from Eastern Europe and farmers used to die like flies from rollover accidents on their tractors. Granted, I suspect alcohol had something to do with at least some of those accidents but still...

 

Where do we learn about all of this? Eventually we want to grow our own hay and utilize at least some of the 25 acres for hay production. We have a few of our own horses but it would also be nice to get the land to pay for itself some.

 

In that direction - is the smartest approach to "hook up" with a hay grower in the area and let them grow horse quality hay on our 25 acres and just split the hay? Seems like it would be the easiest way to learn just by watching it happen and seeing what is involved and asking questions. We would want to be fair and allow the person to do it for a few years (so that they can get their money's worth out of the deal). In such a scenario - what responsibilities fall on us and which ones fall on the farmer? What is a reasonable "split" of hay and costs such as spraying, fertilizing, liming, whatever is necessary to get the quality hay we want?

 

Thank you very much and I apologize for asking possibly stupid questions or making statements that sound uneducated!

Starting out, have no clue