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Thursday, June 21, 2012

First Days in the Field

Yesterday, for the first time, we took our little tractor out into the field and started tilling up soil. We had already divided the future vegetable fields into 10 half-acre strips (see left) and were eager to seed a new cover crop mix onto one of those strips. Our friend Kelly Harding, who is the farmer at Cherry Grove Farm just down the road from us, very kindly lent us a tractor-mounted rototiller, which proved to be just the right tool for turning in the cover crop of rye that we had planted earlier this spring. So, in spite of the heat, we took turns going back and forth across the 350-foot long field until we had a nice seed bed for the cover crops. We came back in the evening, broadcast oats and clover seed, and then rolled the whole strip with a cultipacker in the hope of giving the seeds good contact with the soil and preserving a little moisture. We've got our fingers crossed for good germination.



Tilling...



And more tilling...



And more tilling...



And more tilling...



Halfway done.



Ready to pull the cultipacker.




Finished seed-bed.



We noticed a that a killdeer was very eager to attract our attention as we worked, so we look around for her nest and found it close to the edge of our half-acre strip. It was really miraculous that we hadn't stepped on the eggs when we were laying out the fields. We flagged the nest clearly, so we won't accidentally disturb it in the coming weeks.

1 comment:

  1. Congrats! I wish this was at Lawrenceville when I went there. How neat! I look forward to hearing more as you progress. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete