What's New at the Farm? Finally Some Field Prep Work

Seems only last week I was complaining about how wet it was. Well, I'm still complaining – not that there's much anyone can do about it. The standing water in the fields has disappeared and we're able to get some field work done. It's about time as we're prepping and planting all at the same time.

Here's a shot of a small field we created when we dug our irrigation pond back in the 1980s:

When I started here, this spot was covered in ground hemlock. We cleared it and moved the topsoil from the pond site here and to make a field. A few years back, we removed some nearby pasture pines and now have a small, sunny and workable field. We're preparing to seed chives and parsley and also to plant the asparagus trial.

The Big, new field is dry enough to work now as seen here:

Here we're applying lime, Sul-po-mag and Micro Start 60 pelletized chicken manure. This field will be 95 percent tomatoes this year. After this photo was taken, the field was chisel plowed and left for a few days. Once the sun comes out again we'll bed it and lay plastic mulch.

This photo is of field 13 which will be all peppers this year. Here we've tilled the beds and are getting ready to bedform:

The top of this field is lettuce, potatoes and broccoli, shown here freshly irrigated as the lettuce transplants are small and perform better with moisture every couple of days:

Here's the Movie Palace 1 field being plowed after a liberal layer of compost has been applied to an actively growing cover crop of red clover:

The field on the right will be pumpkins this year and the field on the left will be peppers, tomatoes and lots of squash, pumpkins and gourds this season. The left hand field  is MP 2 which has been spread with lime, sul-po-mag and pelletized chicken manure and is now being harrowed to incorporate the soil amendments and tear out some grass:

Lots of field work being done now to get ready for the bulk of the transplanting, which starts in earnest next week. I'll take some more photos for next week; until then enjoy the planting.
Brian