 Hi, I'm Norm Haley with Alabama Extension, and I serve the northeastern corner of the state for natural resources management as a regional extension agent. And today I'm standing on the site of the Graham Farman Nature Center here in Jackson County, Alabama in the very northeastern corner on an old field management demonstration site that we're installing. This was previously a mountainside pasture, fairly steep terrain, and it's almost completely dominated in cool season of fescue grasses that were used to feed the livestock. In this area, it's not been used in several years, it's just been maintained by mowing primarily. So we're going to revert some of this cool season carpet grasses into some of the more beneficial natives grasses and forbs that would be a lot more suitable for the wildlife that we have here in the area. And this demonstration is primarily focused on wild turkey and white-tailed deer. That being because these old field management sites, these restorations, what we call these early successional vegetation types, are very beneficial for these game species that a lot of our clients and land managers are working towards and liking to see and ultimately harvest for the most part. So when we talk about old field management, we have these carpet grasses, whether they're cool season perennials like our orchard grass, our brome, and the very common fescue like we have here in front of us today. Or whether they're warm seasons, being Bermuda grass, Bahaya grass, Dallas grass, things along those lines. We come in, we actually spray out the carpet, we've done that this fall. That's a great time to do that for the fescue after a few frosts. You'll come in with two quarts of glyphosate and a pine surfactant and you'll get a really good control that way. If you're looking to control some of those warm seasons, the Bermuda, Bahaya, and Dallas grass like I mentioned, that's much more of a May and June timeframe. And those chemicals can vary on those varieties. Usually a mazapyr will use that on Bermuda grass. It's very tolerant of other pesticides. Whereas the Bahaya can be controlled with metal furan or four to five quarts of glyphosate and Dallas grass can be controlled with a mazapyr or three quarts of glyphosate. But these old field sites are very beneficial. The reason we're restoring them in terms of wild turkey, they provide a lot of good nesting cover for the hens. Lots of good brood rearing cover and brooding habitat for those poults we're trying to get up and raise for next year's hatch and to maintain and even grow the population. These early season grasses and forbs will provide cover and lots of insects for those turkeys to feed on in those early life stages and throughout their life for that matter. And also lots of soft mass strutting areas, things like that. As far as whitetail deer go, it's fantastic fawn rearing cover, good cover for the fawns to escape predation. Great bedding cover for whitetail deer produces lots of browse and soft mass and food. So there's all types of benefits for these old field sites. It doesn't take a lot of equipment to install these. Of course you'll like to have a vehicle, a UTV side by side four wheeler is a really good choice for lots of these areas. However, of course, if you've got a tractor available, that's fantastic. But even an old pickup truck, depending upon the site, can easily move back and forth and spray as needed. A 25 gallon spray tank is great. Of course, the bigger tank the better, but we can get by with these small tanks. You just got to fill them up more often. And then here we have a boomless nozzle, which does very well to be somewhat portable, fairly inexpensive. There's a nice job of spraying out to a swath of about 15 to 20 feet. A backpack sprayer does good for spot spraying. And then also, as you can take this wand here, you can pop the hose off the boom sprayer, put the wand back on, drive around a spot spray as you needed. Like I mentioned, we sprayed this back in the fall. I didn't have a marker die in at the time. You know, bouncing around the old field pasture, you can lose your place pretty easy. And I've certainly done that. You can probably see a few green spots out here. I'm back here in very early spring looking to spray out these areas and really have a nice old field site for these deer and wild turkey and many other wildlife species for that matter to come back and benefit from. But we're not talking about coming back in and disking and planting, you know, native forb and grass varieties. Just by killing off this fescue, you'll begin to see the seed bank respond naturally. And many times, the species that are beneficial for wildlife are there. You just have to uncover the carpet, essentially. You can see how thick some of this thatch is, too. A good idea to come back in and burn this off as we get the opportunity to do that before our warm seasons and our forbs really start taking off. We'll come back in here and burn some of this thatch off and really expose some soil and some seed bank. So it's some of the more beneficials. We have some obvious, you know, broom sedge already in here. Very stark contrast there. As you can see, some briars popping up throughout the field, even before we'd sprayed. So there's some good stuff here. It's just a matter of, like we say, uncovering the carpet and letting it respond naturally out here to do some spot spraying, picking up from where we left off in November. And we'll just tidy those up and begin to see what vegetation response we get from there. And it's a matter of coming back out then and making sure that you're getting some beneficials and leaving those in place. And if you see some non-natives or some fescue popping back up again, you'll just simply spot spray those until you get something that you want. We'll follow back up with this site. We'll show you some of the regeneration that we're seeing, some of the trouble species that will pop back up, and also many of the beneficials that we'll begin to see. And with early succession, you have to maintain that succession. Very many times, that's maintained by fire. We've actually left a strip of the fescue here, too. In terms of maintenance, as far as a fire break, we may come back in and actually put in a more beneficial fire break of clovers and more of your food plot type species, some of your green brows that will maintain somewhat of a natural fire break. But you've got to come back in and reset the succession very often. It might be every single year, depending upon your management goals, or it might be that six to eight years if you're managing for that big, thick, nasty deer bedding cover like many folks are lacking on their property. So it depends on the species you're managing for, the goals that you have in mind, but when you take these old field sites that are dominated in the carpet of cool season perennials or warm season perennials, non-native, non-beneficial grasses to wildlife, you can really improve your property and your overall habitat quality for the wildlife you're looking to manage.