Rain Rain, And More Rain

It has been poring on and off for the last couple days. This is good for the garden and fields, but not for making hay especially baled hay. Despite the rain I have made over 1000 pounds of hay this would be the equivalent of a large round bale or 25 small square bales. One thing that is nice about cutting with a scythe is that the grass can be wet, the best time to cut is in the early morning when the dew is on. Also when hay is done by hand it is stacked this keeps the rain off the hay deep in the stack and then when the the sun shines the outside of the stack dries.

Today I did a little repair on the garden tiller, I replaced an oil seal and put new gear oil in, and put a new tube in one of the tires. So once it dries out it is ready to cultivate the gardens. The corn is growing very well and is up to my chest in some places. Now that it stopped raining I think I'll go back and work on the walk behind tractor that I am fixing up to hopefully sell since we do not use it any more, I do not want the farm to succumb to heavy metal disease.

The corn on it's way to "sky high by the 4th of July" the GMO corn across the road is not even nee high! Thumbs up for OP Wapsie Valley corn!

Input Output The Chemical Way

These to photos look very similar. The first is chemical fertilizer being transferred into a spreader the last is corn being transferred in to a storage bin. The fields across the road have become lifeless from years of this wrong way of farming and it takes tons a chemicals to grow any thing. This morning when the Agribusiness men came out to drive around in their state of the art equipment and spread chemicals it reminded me of how they harvest their corn in the fall.

Pictures of the fields and gardens

The french style garden

a close up of the beds

Potatoes that came up where they were planted last year they look good and no bugs have attacked them.

This is a new field garden. I plan to rotate crops in this area to build up the soil and then let it go back to pasture

Squash coming up in the corn.

I am trying out a few new types this year such as this cheese type squash it is like a Butternut squash but it is shaped like a pumpkin and can grow to 40 pounds.

The Buckwheat and Rye

The Oats and Barley

Another garden this is the same garden in my blog header picture

Another view of the same garden this corner is where I have the ancient wheat trials planted and other vegetables that go to seed their second year such as carrots which can be seen in the lower left corner.

The corn field

Weeders in the corn. The house is not our house I do not want any one to think that because there is a TV dish and true farmers do not have one, they don't have time to watch TV anyway!

Making more Hay

Stacking it on the rack to keep the rain of it

raking it

Finished haycocks

I found a nest of these when I was cutting the hay I let them go I did not have the heart to kill them even though they are eating up the neighbors garden.

Thank you for reading this post you are more then welcome to leave a comment.

Up date on the busyness

We got the gardens all planted and almost all the weeds out, there are eight more rows of corn left to hoe and then the french garden needs a once over again! We are getting a lot of rain and warm wether so the field corn is just about knee high! I will add pictures later of all the gardens and fields.

More Details

Well one thing that is keeping any human body here that has functioning limbs busy is pulling and chopping something that comes up when you disrupt Nature's garden and plant what you think is best. I think you who are reading this have have all ready guessed what I'm talking about if not it is weeds! With over an acre planted in garden stuff it seems like when one garden is weeded the one that was weeded before needs to be weeded again! We like to compare it to the Mackinaw bridge which takes years to paint from one end to the other so when it is all painted it needs to be painted again! By july every thing we planted is tall and spread out and shades out the weeds. But right now if the weed are allowed to gain the upper hand we will never get to enjoy the sight of a well maintained garden in the summer. Well, the rain shower was brief so I am heading out to plant potatoes.

I still exist!

Just a short update of what has been happening.

V E R Y B U S Y !

I will try to do a longer post soon.

I was going to write maybe when is raining and thundering and then go and plant potatoes.

Well as it was in my thoughts there was a bolt of lightning and then it started poring!

So until it stops raining I will try to do a longer post with more details!