The sun is shining on the farm, spring is in the air and what we really need is to stay out of the fields. The soil is dry on the surface but a couple of inches below it is still wet. When we get too excited we go out and cultivate wet soil and make a big mess. It happens every year, we learn slowly. Roberto is doing light cultivations to kill weeds in the garlic and other crops. Yesterday I was showing around Sally from the USDA and saw Roberto go out with our big culitvator. Luckily he made only a couple of passes then before heading back to the yard. It was still too wet. Sally came to verify cover crop plantings and crop rotations on our soon to be certified field. The USDA offered us some special grants which were part of the stimulus to encourage and help farmers turn fields to organic production. They have already helped to the tune of $3,000 for a cover crop planting (pasture for the chickens).
We have sown some spring crops and planted others from the greenhouse. Rain is forecast for next week so we will probably wait on planting the potatoes. Sorry there are no pictures at the moment as my camera is missing in action... Nigel