Category: Fieldwork - Page 21

Rototilling results…

15 Apr 200913 Apr 2009 by Mike (tfb)

My first post title was “Pounding away,” but that sounded too brutal when it comes to garden soil. Still, that’s what we’re doing, what has to be done to stay on a reasonable planting schedule. Rototilling chops up the turned-under strips of sod into smaller, more easily digested pieces. The pic shows the result of one pass of the Kubota compact tractor with 48″ tiller. It’s still pretty rough, you can see clumps all over the place.

A quarter acre is getting this treatment, enough for the earliest direct-seeded crops. Hopefully, we’ll have the rest of the field disked well before it’s needed. Meanwhile, one or two more passes with the rototiller, hand raking, spreading a healthy amount of compost, and we should be ready to go. A rough and ready hay field-to-veggie garden conversion that should work out fine. As always, we shall see!

Soil inspection

2 May 200910 Apr 2009 by Mike (tfb)

A sunny, still chilly, fairly busy outdoor day. Did some test tilling this morning, with the Kubota compact tractor and 48″ rototiller. The solid ground hasn’t fully thawed out, but the plowed area is already nearly 50°F (10°C) at 6″ (15cm) deep. So I thought I’d have a go on a 30′ (9m) strip, to see how well it’d chop up with the Kubota.

The full plan is for disking—big plow, big tractor—by Peter down the road. That would break up the moldboarded strips, finishing up with the little (but mighty!) Kubota. But between the weather, and unexpected things happening, you never know when a date with off-farm machinery will fall through.

I want to get the early stuff—spinach, garlic (yes, have to try spring planting this year), onions and so forth—in as early as possible. So we’ll probably be prepping an area with just the Kubota.

In the afternoon, Andie (aka Andrea, aka Max) dropped by for the first time, to check things out. She’s finishing up school, and planning to spend a couple of days a week for the summer, learning about small-scale farming the hands-on way… We strolled around, Andie tried out some seed starting with a tray of arugula, and we chatted.

Everyone’s first visit to the farm is a bit different, and there are all kinds of reasons why people want to get out in the field. This time, a good deal of the conversation involved university, graduate studies and the like, along with…tiny farming. It’s good to have an idea of who you’ll be working with, both ways—a comfortable, interesting fit really makes a difference in the tiny farm experience!

This season, there’s a bit of a blog plan: to show a lot more of the people side of the market garden! Today, as often happens, I forgot to take photos while we were actually doing stuff, so right at the end of her visit, Andie checked out the freshly rototilled ground, and I snapped an official Her Day 1 pic. The soil looked good, it’s a clayey loam (pretty much like at the old farm), with the sod breaking up nicely, and Andie seemed happy with the prospects, so we should be checking in again with both real soon! :)

Grass vs moldboard

7 Apr 20095 Apr 2009 by Mike (tfb)

The hay fields were plowed late November, the sod sliced and flipped over by the moldboard, burying the grass so it gets no sun and exposing the severed roots to winterkill. A quick, bold, chemical-free first step in preparing a large clearing for crops. In the couple of garden sections I’ve started like this, it’s been quite effective, but given the slightest break, the grass is ready to come back…

Moldboard plowing—peeling back the land—is usually big-tractor work these days. It takes a lot of energy. If you happen to of soil as a complex living web, an intricately choreographed dance of life taking place mainly in the top 6″ (15cm) or so—sounds good to me!—one look tells you that moldboarding is pretty intense and destructive. Done excessively, with big, modern machines, it is a proven soil killer, encouraging erosion and other unhelpful things. For the tiny farm, this is a one-time-only deal, to start off a new garden area. It’s just the beginning…

Fieldwork: Day 1

2 Apr 200931 Mar 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Sunny and quite warm (not as chilly as Mel’s deep-winter-ready, ear-flapped headgear might suggest). Probably 50°F+ (10°C) in the sun. Not the first nice, dry day this season, but this one became this farm’s official first fieldwork day of the year, just like that. We were only out for around three hours (including a walk to check on the beehives—there are some bees!—and the creek), but got a lot done, so it definitely counts as work in the field!

First, we selected a spot for the greenhouse, moving it from where we’d originally planned, to a more sheltered, overall all more PLEASING site. Pound in stakes at the roughly measured-in four corners, and admire the spot. The stakes are graphite tent pole sections Bob got at a yard sale long ago; flagged with orange surveyor’s tape, they’re great field markers. Normally you can just push ’em in, but here, Mel is using a mini-sledgehammer (above), because the ground is still frozen from a couple of inches (5cm) down…

Next up, sort all the hoophouse pieces. The steel ribs and braces are on the right. There’s a surprising amount of wood involved, and that’s now divided into what goes where. And then, we dumped all the hardware out of the barrel it’d been moved in: a bucket of assorted, screws, nuts and bolts, plus springlock (wire that attaches the plastic to the frame) and aluminum springlock channels.

A surprise find: the last five potted wintergreen plants (Mel is chosing some to take home). I’d put them in the barrel on top of a bunch of parts when we were moving the greenhouse, and forgotten them there. After spending an entire winter totally exposed outdoors, and the last couple of weeks tumbled down into a barrel full of wiry metal, they’re still alive and looking cheerful. Tough and pretty. With minty berries…

And so, the return of the greenhouse is underway. The GH is sorely missed and really needed! Just gotta wait till the ground thaws, so the area can be tilled up and the 3′ (0.9m) t-bar anchors that keep it from blowing away can be driven into the ground…!

The great WARM outdoors!

20 Apr 20226 Mar 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Ahhh, yes, THIS is what warm weather feels like! For the first time this year, the temperature topped 60°F (15°C), with a hazy sun and a gentle breeze. We’ve had some melt-off days already, but this one tastes like spring! Usually, there’s a day like this sometime in February, so it’s been a long time coming, and makes me wonder how even crazier the rest of the weather will be. No worries…today feels great.

The photo is a good to-do list for when real spring comes and the ground is dry enough to work and get around on. There’s a jumble of spare lumber taken from the barn when we cleared an area for the new seedling room—it needs to be sorted and stacked, and some of it will be the new chickenhouse! (Only patches of snow are left on much of the land, but I’m sure it’ll be back before it’s really gone.) The abundantly overgrown grasses that partially surround the barn and border the moldboarded garden areas is a big clean-up job. And, up the slope, the Kubota compact tractor calmly waits for after the hired-big-tractor disking and the compost spreading, when we do the final tilling of the garden beds. Coming soon. Cool!

South slope waiting

3 Mar 200925 Feb 2009 by Mike (tfb)

The promising south-facing slope is there, plowed and waiting! After the last melt-off, we quickly went back to freezing temperatures day and night, and more wall-to-wall snow cover. A couple of days ago, a bit of chilly rain cleared things up quite a bit once again. Today, it’s frigid!

Strolling on the new field

19 Feb 200915 Feb 2009 by Mike (tfb)

With the sun setting on a long day of packing and unpacking, we took a walk along the frozen ridges of the moldboard-plowed fields. The plowing, custom work by the organic beef and grain farm down the road, happened on the very last two of days before the snow and cold took over last November. The timing couldn’t have been luckier. One big step towards the new market garden. Well, after all the waiting and work-up, it feels great to be here!