Tilling the market garden area – year one.
This farm has been great learning experience. Each year we try something new and get a little better. Our goal is to be able to grow most of our own food. We will get there one day, but are currently quite a distance from that goal…
We got a few vegetables planted, but had trouble getting the water hooked up on the field. A few local vendors offered to get us going. The first plan for irrigating our garden and pasture came with a $38,000 price tag. A second vendor did a little bit better, bringing the price down to $14,000. It still was not going to work. We direct seeded into the field, but after the weather start getting warmer, the rains stopped and we still could not get water – we decided to abandon that site for now. We had a lot of tomato and onion transplants and a few random seedlings that I thought we would lose if they had no water.
We started a second garden on the hill behind the house. The water hose would reach if we use 2 one-hundred foot hoses.This site was closer to the garage and it was a lot shorter walk when I forgot a tool. The soil was not as good as the soil on the field. It was a heavier clay and we had to add organic compost to the mix. We rented the same type of tiller we used earlier in the spring, but the clay was too hard to cut through and the tiller just bounce across the top two or three inches. We use a water hose and shovel to dig the rest. We broke up the chunks, back fill with compost and mixed the whole thing together.
Picking up seed
Frog Eagle Farms 