Let the Cropping Begin

A week ago, one of our kind farming friends came and ploughed up half of one of our fields for us (we exchanged for goose eggs and cake!). Sadly we don't have a horse and an old style manual plough so the job had to be a mechanised one - actually not sadly but gladly because even the tractor took a while and two passes to turn this uncultivated meadow into workable land. But workable land it now is and we hope to grow the food needed for our animals here. The boys and I have now planted up 5 rows of potatoes - that's 100m of manual hole digging - and yesterday I got in two rows of pumpkins and butternut squashes. The last items are an experiment as they were saved seed from last year and the squashes at least were from an F1 hybrid. Still, they cost nothing so we'll see what we get. Here's hoping for some rain!

I have to say that working a field is SO different to working a little vegetable garden. The field area is 20m x 40m, almost quarter of an acre, and seems like MILES when you're making seed drills. Then there's watering. At the moment the water supply other than the heavens is a fair distance away and we don't have enough hosepipe to reach so I have to do it all by watering can. An arduous job. I'm only going to do it at the planting stage, then mulch them, then leave it to nature. Fingers crossed.