2021 The Beginning

We signed our farm lease in May of 2021. The land was fallow and overrun with invasive grasses, sweet gum and blackberries. It had no electricity, irrigation, facilities, or storage. We took the rest of 2021 to get the land ready for growing in 2022. Each gallery represents a major project. It's pretty amazing to see what we accomplished! Click on each slideshow to see the full pictures.

Raw Land

Farm Outline

The yellow line shows the land we lease, about 3 acres. The red line is the area we have in production, just under 1 acre, and the red square is the area we have in cover crop for the next several years, just over half an acre.

Video of land from day 1

Shows sweet gum trees and weeds

First Steps: creating fields

Our land was fallow but had been farmed previously. There were long, high rows that ran the length of the main acre. That wouldn't work for the design we had in mind (several fields with roughly 100 foot rows, and we wanted to amend the soil with as much organic matter as possible. So, we used the tractor to smoot out the existing rows and created pathways in between each field.

Necessary Equipment

We did not have any of the equipment needed to farm at this scale, or to transform the fields from fallow to productive.

Our "new" 1948 Ford 8N

Steven's grandpa had one just like this!

Holy smokes we have a tractor

Bringing home the tractor made the farm way more real.

Erosion/Flood Control

The water moving from above us washed through our fields, causing erosion and damaging the fields. We trenched to direct the water toward rain gardens which slow the flow as it moves toward the irrigation pond. Since doing this the water has stayed out of the fields

First passes with the tractor

We used the discs to smooth out the existing rows, trying not to go too deep

First section done

Mulching

Our soil contained very little organic material, it was mostly clay and sand. Luckily there was aged mulch on the land, and we were able to move it into our fields.

Just one of the mulch piles we moved

Another mulch pile we moved

The mulch pile were located on the land above us, and our neighbor was happy to have them gone!

We rented a backhoe

In order to change the flow of water we used a backhoe to shape and widen the existing waterway above the front fields.

The beginning of the waterway and lots of fun time in the mud

Water running off the two big "mountains" of dirt above us was a huge problem for this side of the farm

Adding 90 yards of compost

We added as much compost as we could afford. We got 3, 30 yard loads delivered, and tried to spread it evenly throughout 7 fields.

First cover crops

30 yards of compost first thing in the morning

They couldn't fit the bigger truck into our land, so we got three of these delivered

Everyone's excited

One of our first goals was to get cover crops on the fields. We used buckwheat first, and then cereal rye, tillage radish and Austrian winter peas. We broadcast the buckwheat and used a really cool seeder for the rest.

Test Crops

We'd done research and soil tests, and but we knew we couldn't get to truly know our land until we grew crops on it. It was getting late in the season to plant much. We decided to plant two fields of pumpkins, hoping we'd have something to sell in October. We also planted small rows of some of our staple crops, tomatoes, peppers and corn.

Pumpkin sprouts

The pumpkins started out great

Building a shed

We had no storage for all the farm stuff: fertilizers, row covers, tools, etc. And we had no shelter for our larger equipment. So, we built a shed.

Bessie in her new home

We used as many materials we already had as possible, including this corrugated tin.

Family/farm wonder & joy

Farming keeps us connected to each other, nature, and constantly learning. It was one of the best decisions we've ever made. Here's a look at some of our fun from 2021.

Love this punch seeder!

Specifically designed to be used in no till conditions, it allows us to plant directly into whatever we need.

Dump and go

Building first irrigation system

In mid 2021 there were still significant delays in manufacturing, and the system we needed was backordered. But we needed some sort of irrigation, so we built a small, temporary system for the fields we had in production.

Getting water out and up

We had to set up a system that could pump water out of our irrigation pond and up 250 feet to the fields.

This little pond pump we got to start us off.

Check out a video of our first 6 months on the farm here!