Back in the day when most farmland was cleared for agricultural purposes it was tilled right up to timbers edge or too wet to plow areas, the goal was to maximize tillable acreage. If you stand back and look at those edges or walk them you can see that corn, as an example, never develops to full capacity or yield at those borderlines, based on shaded or moist conditions- on our property you could walk back several rows before you saw fully developed ears. We started putting field border edges along our ag fields in these nonproductive areas about two years ago, 30’ wide running the entire length of the field. We planted the borders with clover, rape, bedding grasses, oats etc. – it really creates a funnel and highway for wildlife. We run a bean/corn rotation, I prefer to hunt over beans but when we have standing corn the bucks feel content to step out into that edge during daylight hours, with protection on both sides, they browse on a smorgasbord of legumes, corn or beans. It was an easy project complete because it converted land that was previously tilled, had a balance PH and didn’t contain a lot of weed seed. There are probably numerous other benefits you could derive from reducing solid/wind erosion, helping pollinators, etc., our focus was whitetails.

Excellent! Really cool. Seems like locally they will plow under cattails on dry years just so they can get stuck when it's wet next year. Nice to see conservation minded farming still exist.

Great idea.
Wish more farmers would do it.

Great job. Wish they would do that here. My wife’s grandad has a farm and he’ll clear everything to the creeks and property line to plant. Would love to see them do stuff to benefit wildlife in addition to getting crops in

I run my 4-wheeler through the bedding grasses and set those tracks with CR's in the fall without worrying about entanglement- no different than a logging road, the yotes like to travel that border edge corridor, I can set and check from the field edge so that allows me to cover a lot of area fast and not disrupt the set locations. We have two points that I'll drop dirt holes or step-down set in and the border edge has opened up more set location opportunities.

I like the idea of the shorter clovers/ grasses bordering the woods. A couple of farms I hunt have tall/ bedding grasses around them and the deer seam to avoid them. I hunted over these areas and the deer will walk in the beans and corn over the tall grass

Good on OP for thinking of wildlife more than the bottom line.

I would note that he will have to do some maintenance on these areas, especially the ones along woods or they will become woods and he'll have to do it again loosing more field/edge.
It doesn't take long and small trees and brush will start popping up in the grass and even faster in clover.

That tall grass is ideal for a fall or early spring burn. For wild life I suspect late spring would be best. But the last picture in the woods opening definitely will need burning. Allow the fire to burn into the woods as far a it wants to run. This will create a even larger edge effect with more grasses, sedges and forbs on the forest floor. Mowing will not have the same effect.

I have 2 small (about 2 acre and 3 acre) fields in tall grasses/forbs. The deer do follow trails thru them. But deer follow trails in all types of environments especially when just moving from place to place. When browsing they will wander in the thicker stuff. Like all animals they will expend as little energy as they can while moving around. They do bed down in late fall early winter in the tall grasses. I have seen many beds and kicked them out of theses areas several times.

I burn my land and the deer do love some freshly burnt over land as soon as the fresh growth starts up. It always starts faster and sooner than unburnt areas as it warms up quicker due to the blackened soil debris on top.

The native Americans knew this and burned the land for many reasons this among them.

Very Great idea

All the legumes are within 20 yards of a bow stand and the beddings grasses are located in front of plum thickets and alders for bedding areas. Most does bed right in the grass during crop season and the deer continue to dig for the rape in mid-winter