Farm Life Organic

Field-cleaning

This week is looking to be not only chilly, but rainy, too – typical early October weather, in other words. And so, instead of racing to collect veggies for your baskets today, we decided, under sunny skies, to clean up recently harvested fields in need of a bit of TLC. In order : plastic mulch and drip tape removal, followed by a quick pass with the bush hog to break up the bigger plants, a quicker pass with the harrow and a quicker pass still to sow some rye before the next rains. The sowing of green manure is often accomplished in less-than-ideal conditions. We don’t plan it that way, it’s just that the weather rarely cooperates at this time of year, so more often than not we have to make due with wet fields and mired tractor tires, knowing we have no choice if one considers that that soil left uncovered is subject to wind erosion that can destroy in a single winter what took millenia to create. Tomorrow we’ll likely be harvesting in the rain, but one – we’re used to it, and two – they’re forecasting warm-ish weather nonetheless.