Farmin'

Have you ever experienced the satisfaction you feel when you watch someone you love do what makes them happy? That is how I felt when Joel hopped up on the tractor and started plowing our own land for the first time. When he was done for the night he came into the house grinning from ear to ear. He is happiest when he is outside digging in the dirt or tending to green and growing things.

As you can see this is a "budget" operation to say the least. Joel is using an old Farmall tractor that he borrowed from a nice man at our church. The moldboard plow attachment is borrowed from a local pig farmer in exchange for any leftover vegetables that she can feed to her pigs. We are also borrowing a disc plow attachment from our neighbor Earl to prepare the soil for planting. Do you see a pattern here?

In case you have an inquiring mind and want to know what in the world a "moldboard" plow is (I had no idea either) I found the following description to satisfy your curiosity:

"Moldboard plows are designed to slice and invert a layer of soil, thus covering the sod and leaving a rough surface. These plows have large curved bottoms called moldboards which attach to a frame. The moldboards have shears along the bottom edge and large curved wings above to turn the soil. "

There you go. I'll bet you feel better now.

I love this picture of our kids. It just speaks "freedom" to me. Freedom to be kids, to run and dig and be as noisy as they want to be. The only downside to such freedom is all the extra baths they have to take. There is always a price to pay. ;0)

Like father, like son.

We are only going to garden about one acre this summer (which is waaay more than we have ever tackled before) but Joel is plowing under the rest of the land too just to keep the weeds down.

Here are the starts that we planted back in February and March. When I took this picture it was still freezing at night making it necessary to cover them with plastic so they wouldn't become little green Popsicles. We are getting a late start with planting but I suppose it's better late than never.