I used to walk a property with a soil probe and feel confident I understood what I was buying. Changed my thinking completely after picking up a 120-acre parcel in 2019 that had gorgeous test numbers but was hammered pasture ground hiding under a thin veneer of recovered grass.
Turns out the previous owner ran cow-calf pairs at nearly double the sustainable rate for over a decade. The soil structure was shot. Compaction down to eight inches. Earthworm counts near zero. That pasture took four years and real money in rest-rotation and amendment work before I trusted it to carry even light grazing.
Soil tests measure chemistry. They don't measure biology, structure, or the abuse history baked into a piece of ground. When I buy land now, I want grazing records, carrying capacity history, and ideally a conversation with whoever custom-grazed the place.
The county FSA office sometimes has historical data if the seller cooperates. Title companies won't tell you any of this.
Anybody else found a way to reconstruct stocking history on properties where sellers weren't forthcoming?