The day's tally

[darwinslair]

So, my tally for the day, 615 am to 630 pm, 450 hills of popcorn, 400' of Arikara Yellow Soup Beans, 200 sq feet of Rostov sunflowers, 40' of German Butterball potatoes, 40' of Dakota Pearl potatoes, 9 grape vines and 2 trellis systems put in (damn, takes a big hole to plant grape vines, root systems are huge) and 11 post holes. Patti set the posts in the ground.

Then dinner, 90 minute drive home, and a hot bath with a gin bloody mary made with spooky sauce bloody mary mix with an extra shot of home made hot sauce.

And now bed

Tom

[opsec]

Was all this work simply time consuming or was it truely back breaking labor?

[darwinslair]

My back is not broken, but perhaps in a lesser man it would be.  <smile>

That time frame has been my saturday and sunday for over a month now.  Today I have to stick around my house until a bit after 9 am, then I am headed out to the gardens I have west of my home.  that one is about 2/3 of an acre, and nearly half of it will be potatoes.  I need to get a planting of painted mountain corn in there as well, hopefully this weekend.  Potatoes need to be done as much as I can today.  Dig dig dig.

Tom

[darwinslair]

So worked from 10 am to 645 pm.  I planted 75 feet of Kennebec potatoes, then 24 different kinds of potatoes from Tom Wagner.  Still a lot more to go.  He gave me a lot!  But that is as many as I could do.  Body is exhausted.


The Kennebec potatoes went into a part of the field that has a lot of rocks.  Took me 5 hours to just do that one long trench, plant, and backfill.  I removed over 50 gallons of rocks (filling 5 gallon buckets, hauling to the rock pile, dumping, then back at it)

So I did the Tom Wagner ones on the lower part of the field.  Much easier.  Many more feet of trench, and no where near as much time.  I think the rest of that top part of the field is going to just have to be planted with things that do not require digging to plant or harvest.

Tom

[opsec]

Farmers must have a machine that digs the rocks out of a field. Are there any farmers close by that you are on friendly terms with? Any machines you could rent at Zodiac Rentals for this kind of thing?

[darkdwarf]

The only rock removal tools I ever found contained half my dna. 

[darwinslair]

Farmers must have a machine that digs the rocks out of a field. Are there any farmers close by that you are on friendly terms with? Any machines you could rent at Zodiac Rentals for this kind of thing?

I think the upper part of the field must have been simply hayed previously.  There are no tools I know of that gets rock out of a field other than sweat and muscle. 

When they "quarry" gravel, it is sorted by grade, and you do end up with a pile of dirt as well.  In that case you are feeding the machine that is sorting it.  I suppose that would work, but not the scale I am working on.  the rocks range from maybe 20 pounds (rare) to the size of a golf ball (most of them) with many in between.

I have heard many stories of kids picking rocks behind a plow that is turning the soil over, including how it seems that every year the field has as many rocks as the year previous.  I can believe it.  We have picked enough rocks from that field this year to make a pile 4' high and 15' long.  When you see all of the walls in England and the tiny fields within them, think about how long it took to pick all of those rocks out of the soil, and know they did NOT haul these rocks from somewhere else.  It is just generations of picking rocks out of the ground.

Tom

[Dame]

The machines are called "rock pickers" and the pick ups on them can be obtained with various sized spaces between the tines (the rake like thing that actually picks up the rock).  Google "rock pickers", they come in a large variety of styles.  And I do not know if they are made for powering except with a field tractor with full hydrolic systems.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Thanks, Dame. Good thing we have so many people who are familiar with specialized equipment.

[opsec]

I knew there had to be something that does that. The human need for one was too great for it not to have been invented.

[darwinslair]

After work last night I met some friends at another friends home.  He is renting a place that has a fenced in 24X 38' area.  He added a couple thousand pounds of composted horse manure and has tilled 3 times to germinate and kill weeds.

We got in 75 feet of 3 different kinds of potatoes, plus got half of the rest of the garden into raised beds.  Will meet again next thursday.  Will be a kind of community garden for some of my friends and a place small enough that us working together can take care of in an evening once a week.

Tom

[Atash Hagmahani]

One benefit of a cooperative gardening/farming effort, is specialization and a sort of division of labor. Some people might have specialized tools that would be expensive for everyone to have. The idea is that you contribute the resources that you have (tools and/or labor and/or seeds and/or land), and take a share of the haul commensurate with the value of your contribution (that could get sticky. Negotiate fairly and carefully).

[darwinslair]

630 am to 4 pm.  20 minute break for lunch.  worked through sunshine, light rain, and small hail.

Days tally:  196 hills of Iroquois White Flour Corn (4 seeds per hill, hills 36" apart, 3 sisters planting) 480 hills of Roy Callais Flint Corn (double planted, 12" apart) 80 feet of Tweed's Greasy beans and built a 7' high trellis for it, and 60 hills of Blue Hubbard squash.

and damn am I tired.

Tom

[Atash Hagmahani]

Other Tom and I transplated about 4 flats of potato seedlings and planted about 140-some hills of potatoes. Gosh, doesn't sound like so much. But we have to document it all as we're going, we got a late start, the properties were far enough apart to require some driving, an gosh I think I'm good and sunburned. 

[Beeherder]

 
Just finished planting a box of Tom Wagoner's potatoes. Three paper bags of seedlings, each planted in separate area but one bag must have had a dozen different varieties. Oh boy, hope this works, never had successful potato harvest here. Used the trench/row planting method leaving one of the areas (two rows of 5 ft) in a depression about 4 inches deep with a pile of dirt to be added when the stems and leaves come 4 or so inches above the 4 inches of soil covering them, the other rows finished level to the surrounding area and may get tricky to mound later, but that's the space available over there near the rhubarb.

Rhubarb will be ready for first harvest in a week or so. Gotta like plants that keep coming back year after year.

You guys work longer stretches than i can but i kinda like takin a break every couple of hours to let the sweat dry. Love that sunshine and dirt it just makes me feel good. No idea why but i like the feeling.