Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Just tillin' away the time.....

What a gorgeous morning on the farm.  I tell ya, mornings like this are what it's all about.  Just a beautiful sunrise coming up over the place being surrounded by farm sounds-like the chickens coming alive-really makes a man like me wonder what all those folks in the big cities are thinking.

So Joel has this field he has been preparing now for a few years and this year he will plant it.  When I say prepare I mean build soil structure to the point where he has something great and can start planting.  A lot of soil guys will tell you that what you have for soil is what you have for soil and there is nothing you can do about it.  Well that isn't true.  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes maybe you could B.S. me into believing it, but I have witness the contrary.

Originally this field was unfit for growing anything.  True to Maine soil it was filled with rocks and unworkable.  So he took the last few years and turned it around through a process of nutrients and compost.  The land has done a 180 and now it looks really good.  From what I can see it is just as great as the field I worked in last year.  Of course there are still a few stubborn rocks left over of good size.  We pulled a honker out of the ground this morning.  I worked for 1/2 hour by hand trying to get it to budge with no luck, so Joel took the tractor and popped it out.  I called it an iceberg if you get what I'm saying.  Only the tiny tip of it stuck out.  What a friggin' monster it was.
Above is a pic of the dirty old back breaker.  Holy ol' sakes!!
So we spent the morning chasing diesel fuel and tilling.  I think we will be planting for sure next week. 

Above is a vid of the tilling going on in the new field.  After tilling we will go over it with the bed maker (raises the soil up into a raised bed style row) then plastic mulch.  Thanks for reading!