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Warm & dry = plowing

4/9/2011

 
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The nights are still routinely below freezing, but the days are (finally) starting to feel spring-like.

Our fields here are split between the lower fields, in the flats along the river, and an upper field, by the house/barn.  Even on our little 49 acres, the soils vary dramatically from coarse shale to a fine sandy loam to rainbows of silt loams to a narrow slice of nasty, gooey clay.  Our earliest  fields—the ones that drain out and warm up the first in spring—are adjacent to the house.  They’ve been in hay, though, which means that even though the soil is ready, the fields are full of vigorously growing sod and alfalfa.  That stuff is really hard to kill, and it has to be dead and broken down before vegetables can start growing.

We’d been planning on not putting any cash crops in these upper hay fields this season, giving us plenty of time to transition the sod into annual ground.  Our lower fields, though, still haven’t dried out enough to responsibly plow, so we’ve been itching to tackle the alfalfa so we can get something going.  Last weekend the upper ground was ready, the tractor was in the barn…  and the plow was 3 hours away, sitting in a lot where we’d won it at auction.  We didn’t expect there to be a plow we wanted at that auction, and we don’t own a trailer (we rely on the life-saving generosity of JP and Jody at Roxbury), so we attended the auction trailer-less.  As luck would have it, Luke scored a nice little Oliver plow for a song…  and the next morning it started raining and rained for 3 days. 

A couple of warm sunshiney days dried up the field, though, and this afternoon we finally got into the ground.  We’re both still nervous about the heaviness of our lower fields, but this field next to the house is going to be a joy to grow in. Hopefully it will finally get springy and we can get going!

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Christie
4/12/2011 01:15:41 am

Can you hear the peepers yet? That whole section on the other side of the fence was where our house garden was. When I was little it stretched from the ditch all the way to the barn. I don't know if there is any asparagis still there. It used to come up every year. Also a patch of rhubarb. Last spring I transplanted some of the peonies that grow near the sign and kettle. Dad said that the kettle was a potash kettle. Potash was used to make soap.

Quincy Farm
4/12/2011 11:37:58 pm

There's peepers in the ditches in the flats, but we're not hearing them up here at the house yet. We saw a little asparagus last spring and are hoping it comes back--we're certainly interested in it for ourselves. We'll keep an eye out for rhubarb, too, as we'd planned on putting some in.

Right now we're just itching for the flats to dry out--we were getting close on the field by the river, but we're almost a foot above flood stage today and rising, so I think we've been pretty well set back on that one.

Michael Kilpatrick
4/18/2011 10:34:40 am

nice plowing job!!!

Quincy Farm
4/19/2011 12:50:50 pm

Thanks, Michael. Unfortunately we didn't own a disc yet when it started raining again, so we STILL don't have anything seeded into the mayhem of alfalfa roots out there. We're getting closer though. We might be late, but we're coming, so watch out!


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    Quincy Farm is a family-scale vegetable farm run by Luke Deikis and Cara Fraver in Easton, NY.  We use organic methods to grow the most delicious veggies ever for the well-being of our family, our community, and the flora and fauna that make it all possible.

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