The last day of spreading...

We try to end the last day of spreading near the main farm so that it would only be a short trip back for clean up and storage.
Here we are moving on Hwy. 17 from Tsawwassen to the north side of Hwy 99 near the main farm.

Traffic loves to see farmers on the move.




You can see my buddies up ahead. Notice how we take up a right lane rather than all off to the side. It is dangerous to drive on the side when there is not enough room as a full lane. Traffic tries to pass you when they do not have enough room and they will not let you back in to the lane if at all possible. I know, we use up a lane with slow vehicles, traffic hates it but it is the safest method.



We made it to the next field with out too much of a incident. Down the highway we needed to get into the left lane for going over the overpass. No body would let us in...so, Deepa driving the truck towing a spreader just started to pull in to the left lane giving the traffic a choice of either letting us in or being covered with you know what..... they let us in.
We are discussing how come we did not see any vertical fingers......


Play this video and watch for the crazy tractor driver............




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Andrew is getting ready to operate his disc/packer to break up the soil into smaller and smaller pieces prior to planting. He is cleaning out the packer rollers at the rear of the equipment train.







Off he goes now breaking up those lumps.










Notice the tractor he is driving has rubber tracks rather than tires.








Next to follow is the seeding of the fields. In this case Jeff is planting beans.
This field is called Sunny Side because it is located right next to the Sunny Side Nursery beside the highway to the ferries.





Another photo of seeding as a tight turn is made to start the next set of rows.








It is now getting into the latter days of May now. We are into our last day of spreading manure and we must get those seeds into the ground while the weather is good. Seeding is a very exacting operation. One must plant with the harvesting days in mind. It would not be good to have all the fields ready to harvest at the same time.

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I am falling behind

Filling up my tractor with that expensive diesel at the end of the day.

I am sorry that I am falling behind on my publishing. We are just so busy now that we are in the process of selling our house in Kamloops, storing our stuff, working 13 hour days, checking out new places on the Island, etc etc.

I have plenty of items to post and promise I will get at it very shortly.

Field friends...NOT

Yes, it is our Canadian Beaver at work. These photos show some of the destruction of trees that line fields containing drainage ditches.






Well, trees are the food for beavers and they can get hungry as well as anyone. They also dig holes in the ditches damaging the water ways.
It is interesting how the beaver can adapt to survive in this urban farming area amongst the houses and businesses and industrial plants.





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I am now disking

As often happens, one gets moved from one piece of equipment to another. Karl went to operate a polymulcher which follows in fields we have done and gone. It works the soil breaking the lumps of dirt into smaller and smaller pieces in preparation for the seeder.




In this view you can see the disked portion to the left and the un-disked green area to the right which has been spread with manure.
This field is completely green with a cover of weeds. It actually looks like a lawn it is so green. If this was a non-organic field which is regularly sprayed with herbicides you would see very little weeds.
When we are finished working the land and planting takes place, this field will be completely free of weeds, not one will be showing.

Ah....but those weed seeds still in the soil are just waiting to sprout right along with our crops. It is then that the non-ending battle with the weeds takes place. It never stops. Only when the crops are harvested do we slow down the weeding and that is after the soil is turned over one more time and rests over the winter.

Watch the video of the BOUNCING TRACTOR BELOW:






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STILL SPREADING

Yes, it is May 10th and we are still spreading. We are doing well though and are ahead of schedule and the other equipment.

Potato fields are getting planted. I must get some photos of them at this stage. We have been away from these fields so the photo opportunity has not presented itself.....later....





Moving our hoe from field to field.









Filling our spreaders....over and over, again and again.









The field to the right is non-organic. This photo clearly shows the buffer zone that we have to maintain between all non-organic neighboring fields.

Our production area is reduced in size if we have non-organic neighbors.




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rained out

Saturday is a normal work day for us during this stage but not today. It rained quite a bit over night leaving the fields very muddy. If we were to continue as normal (even if we could) we would make a terrible mess and it would be no fun. Saturday was therefore canceled and Sunday is a normal day off (also fields need to dry) Monday May 5th is to be the new start up day.

Sunday was a fair day, no rain and things dried out. Betty and I decide to take the opportunity to do our move from Brent and Shelly's drive way to our (cranberry park) camping area at the edge of the cranberry fields.

This gives me a chance to show a couple of photos of our friends who live in the fields.


Our ever present ducks. While they do munch on our newly planted seeds on occasion they do not usually do too much damage.

We even plant barley in some fields over winter in cooperation
with the fish and wild life branch to feed these friends.








Somebody is always watching somebody. Old baldy here, is keeping and eye on those ducks.

Baldy likes his ducks rare.








These beautiful cock pheasants abound in many of our fields.