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

View before any work

Weeds and grasses

Sweet gums, blackberries and weeds

Blackberries all over the property

Overgrown, tall rows

To the left you can make out the old rows that were set up for traditional row cropping, badly overgrown and no suitable for use

Fire ants

Taking first soil samples

Soil video

Showing how much sand is in our soil composition

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.

Her name is Bessie

Everyone's excited

Seeds showed up right after the tractor

"I'd rather be fixing a tractor than building a deck"

New used things always need a little love and Bessie was no exception.

Everyone is learning

Work is more fun with help

A bushhog for Bessie

We strive to till as little as possible, so Bessie's main job is actually to pull the bushhog.

This little trailer is everything to us.

It's our office/bathroom/kitchen and general escape from the elements.

Setting it up

Without this trailer we wouldn't be able to function, and we definitely wouldn't be able to have the kids with us everyday.

We got a whole trailer!

It's a hit

Wildflowers to make the trailer our own

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

My first time driving a tractor

I love driving the tractor, but was really worried about how the soil would respond.

On to the second field

The soil is so sandy kids are playing in it like they're at the beach.

At this point I was hoping we had done the right thing. Places were so sandy I wondered how anything would grow there.

Tractor is a big hit

Blackberry roots were a huge problem!

There were areas completely overrun with blackberries.

Blackberry roots so big they jammed the discs

More than once we had to stop and use a hand tool to remove the roots before we could continue

Fields are starting to look ready

Looking like a farm and ready for cover crops

We had our basic fields and paths established. Now it was time to plant things!

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.