Grain paddock for the chickens

I spend a lot of time reading up on homesteading topics over the winter, and this year I fell in love with buckwheat in the abstract.  But as I experiment with the crop in real life, the scales are falling from my eyes.  In our vegetable garden, buckwheat failed as a cover crop in our dense clay soil, and I'm not all that impressed with its progress in the grain half of the chicken pasture either.

I opted not to irrigate in the forest pasture despite a moderately dry summer since I want to eventually grow trouble-free crops that can be planted and then forgotten about.  The buckwheat doesn't enjoy this decision --- every afternoon the plants wilt and look very sad.  They bounce back overnight, but the chicken pasture buckwheat's growth is slower than that of the later-planted buckwheat in the irrigated garden, even though the chicken pasture soil is a well-drained loam enriched with copious chicken manure.

Unfortunately, our old field corn seed didn't even come up, so our droopy buckwheat and some beans are the only plants currently growing in the grain paddock.  In retrospect, I wish I'd planted the whole area with oilseed sunflowers --- next year!