Satisfying September

The story of last week was cleaning up and sowing cover crops, humidity and heat, tomato tonnage, forecast rain and its disappearance. The stars finally aligned where time, soil conditions, weather forecast, and empty field space intersected in the space at this place. I love getting fields cleaned up, spent crops mowed and detritus turned into the soil, sowing cover crops, and putting fields to sleep for the winter. It's hard to resist the urge to begin this process when there is so much other work to be done maintaining and harvesting current crops and I've done my best to wait until we have ample time.

In reality we could begin sowing cover crops on some fields as early as mid-July but typically there is so much other more important farm work that we let those fields sit idle until we're ready. Ideally after produce crops are harvested and fields are spent we'll mow, spread compost, chisel plow, sow a cover crop mix, and disc-harrow it in. When fields sit idle they're really still active, but just in the growth of grasses and weeds which need to be mowed periodically. If we're really on our game and soil conditions are right we might spend some time stale seed bedding where we expose soil, allow weeds to germinate, then kill them with some more soil disturbance. Again, this is hard to find the time for in July and August.

All in all probably 15% of the farm was turned over to cover crops last week, say 2 acres or so. It doesn't sound like much but it was a challenge sandwiching that in when the soil dried out just enough by Wednesday afternoon to do the initial chisel plow loosening due to Fred's Sunday and Monday rainfall and seeds can't get sown and disked in until Thursday harvest day afternoon while forecast simultaneously was espousing 2-3 days of rain starting mid-afternoon and it takes a minimum 4 hours to sow the seeds and incorporate them. Phew! We made it and the subsequent failed forecast and dryness probably helped dispatch the weeds and grasses that had been thriving in some converted fields. With Ida incoming midweek it appears we'll eventually receive the ample rainfall needed for proper cover crop seed germination.