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May Farm Tour Photos / Farm Work Day Info

November 27, 2007

Thanks for the Soil

Farm News
27 November 2007
Thanks for the Soil

Walking around the farm I passed the field that had last summer’s tomatoes in it. It was not too long ago that the field had lines of 6-foot metal stakes spaced every eight feet down the five-foot beds. Those stakes held the string that was allowing our indeterminate tomato plants to grow toward the sky; to heights that were tall enough that when a person was standing in the tomatoes they could not see the hills that surrounded the farm.

Now there is no sign of the tomatoes that inhabited that field less than six weeks ago. After the tomatoes had run their course we took irrigation hoses, string and metal stakes out of the field, leaving the tomatoes leaning over upon themselves; in humps about three feet off the ground. Daniel then made a pass through the field with the flail mower (a lawn mowing devise that is 12 feet wide and goes on the back of a tractor), which devastated the tomatoes in to little pieces of stems and dried leaves that were not more that a few inches long.

The process of mowing the tomatoes makes the job of the stubble disk much more effective. Without long pieces of tomato vine to get tangled up in the disk blades, the disk is able to turn over the top eight inches of the soil, mixing in the old tomato vines and roots - which have now been reduced to organic matter. The first pass with the stubble disk leaves huge dirt clods, sometimes 10-inches in diameter that tell the tail of the hard working conditions the ground was put under. The second pass with the stubble disk reduces the clods a bit in size, but the field is still filled with hard, dry, clods of dirt. In the case of this year the rain came at the perfect time; the field had been ripped open and every drop of rain water was absorbed by these big clods of dirt. This loosened them up and made them easy to pulverize into the fine loam soil that keeps the farm running.

Now Ricardo is completing the second pass with the finishing disk and the field looks beautiful. Behind the tractor the color of the soil reveals the darker color of moisture that will last only for a few hours. I walked into the field and the soil gently compressed under the weight of my feett, leaving my tracts a few inches deep into the soil. Dropping down to further investigate the soils my knees sunk softly into the finished top soil. I plunged my hands into the soil and picked up as much as my two hands could hold. Lifting the soil up, pieces fell through my fingers and the fresh smell of healthy dirt struck my nostrils – I noticed that there were still some clods a couple of inches in diameter but they were soft and crumbled from the pressure between my fingers. To me, this field is beautiful, alive and ready for the rotation of cover crop that would soon be planted into it.

This is the cycle of the fields of soil on our farm. The land is used and slightly abused and then given a makeover to make up for the thousands of steps and thousands of pounds of produce that compacted every inch of the field. Soil is an amazing part of our world that everyone benefits from but few are able to truly experience the miracles that it brings. It is most defiantly worth giving thanks for.

Enjoy your box and the good company that helps you eat it; Happy Thanksgiving. Thaddeus

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