David and I have been getting a lesson from the old pro’s (Queen and Queenie) about how to work the old fashions horse drawn walking plow. I must admit to being a bit apprehensive about plowing because I have never done it before and there is a lot of variables for doing it well. We have a dealine for getting these fields open and planted and I didn’t even know if we were going to be albe to work the darn thing. 

The ground were opening up is coming out of a hay sod and being planted to flint corn, pumpkins, winter squash and sunflowers. Besides being apprehensive about learning to handle the plow, I was also worried about the act of plowing in itself and the affect it can have on our soils. There is a whole separate discussion involved in that, although I will say that overusing the moldboard plow does have its drawbacks on soil health but if used concienciouslly and at the right time it can also be just the tool needed while still keeping out soils health in mind. In our case I decided that if I was going to plow in the spring, that it was going to be as shallow as we could handle to kill the sod and leave as much of the soil in place as possible to retain soil structure and capillary action while the ground is still cool and wet.  The sod is then undercut, flipped over and kept nearer to the surface so that it can decompose quicker and more affectivly than if plowed deep and buried.

Anyway after all this talk, we did manage to walk some semi strait lines while turning over ground as we had planned. Much thanks to the two veteran horses that have walked a furrow many times before and let us spend our time trying to fix the plow instead of trying to steer them too much.

After some follow up passes with Whisper on his new single horse disc harrow setup followed by the old single section of spring tooth harrow we have a fairly decent seedbed for our first attempts, that means we should be able to get the plantings in on time. Ye ha!