Crop Management

I've been doing some research about crop management.  I want to grow teff for my hay crop.  Everything I've read says teff is similar to timothy hay, which is really good feed for horses.  Considering the number of horses in our area, that's a great cash crop if we decide not raise many animals ourselves.  However, teff is nitrogen intensive.  It sucks nitrogen out of the soil, just like corn does.  And I've been planning to not grow corn for precisely that reason.  So for a day or so I was starting to wonder if teff was a wise choice.  

Ah, but there's good news.  Amaranth, a seed crop I also want to grow for it's seed (high protein seeds, nutritious leaves) is also a nitrogen fixer.  That is, it puts nitrogen into the soil.  Grown in rotation with teff, amaranth will restore what teff takes out.

And there's more.  I also want to grow quinoa.  Guess what?  Quinoa is also nitrogen intensive.  But I want to grow lots of beans and beans are, yup, nitrogen fixers.  

So it looks like we'll have a five field rotation system.  An N taker, and N fixer, an N taker, an N fixer, and one lying fallow every year.  Giving one field off every year also helps the land recover from the demands of nitrogen takers.  The fallow field I'll turn out my nurse cows on because they can make enough milk to feed babies on rough forage.