One step closer to spring...

On this rainy/sleety/snowy day in mid-April, I decided to think spring!  We have been itching to get things going on our garden, but when the snow was just about melted, we got another foot of snow. So we sat back and did some more planning.  When the snow finally melted the second time around, we just had to wait for it to get dry enough to till....that and we needed the tiller.  Anna's dad has a tiller that he's had since they cleared the land that their house is on -- so roughly 35+ years.  He brought it over to let us borrow it and then told us we could keep it since he hasn't used it in 5+ years.  Yesterday was dry enough, and with the forecast for rain for the next few days we had to take advantage of this window of opportunity.

We knew that the existing garden beds had good soil, but we weren't optimistic about the state of the rest of the field.  Our reasoning behind these suspicions were that the field is covered with thistle, and we've read that thistle likes poor nutrient soil.  We did learn, however, that lupine is a nitrogen fixer, and we also have a lot of that.  That bodes well for our soil. :)

We were also expecting some pretty huge rocks in the garden, but we were ready for the challenge. We pulled back our tarps, marveled at the growth underneath -- turns out plants like warmth. ;)  They weren't too pleased with the lack of sun, however, and were looking quite anemic. We were pleased with the results of our little experiment.

You can clearly see where the tarps used to be.  For those who are wondering -- still old tractor.

Once we started tilling, however, we couldn't have been more pleased!  The soil looks dark, rich, and beautiful.  With the exception of a couple huge rocks, there were only really small rocks.  

See how good and rich it looks?  We are getting more and more optimistic. 

Anna is a tilling machine...or at least a tilling machine operator. She rocked it!

We decided to do a couple passes on this first go to help break up the weeds -- we're also using this opportunity to try to level the garden a bit.  It isn't too sloped, but one end is a bit steeper than the other.  Also, our garden plan isn't going to be shaped in a rectangle, but for this tilling operation, it was easier.  We're going to work out the final shape of the garden with sheet mulching and shovels.

Farm manager, reporting for duty.

The supervisory crew. Olive is still afraid of the tractor, which is OK with us!

Oliver, obviously, is not afraid of the tractor.

Our plan is to only till the garden this first year, then we're going to use sheet mulching and directed plantings to enrich the soil.  One thing we're going to to be fighting with for a long time is day lilies.  They may look nice, but I don't really want them in the middle of my veggie garden.  Our property is certainly not lacking in the day lily department, so if you want some, let us know!

The finished, covered (mostly) project.  You can see where some of our transplanted apples are as well (the dark circles of compost further down the field).

Both Anna and Olive are happy that the tilling is done. 

While the soil we turned up looks pretty good, we're getting our soil tested just to see what we're going to be starting with this year.  We took samples from the garden, the orchard, lower down in the field, and the terraced beds behind our house (future home of insect and bird attracting plants as well as herbs).

From the top left, clockwise -- orchard, terraced beds, garden, lower field.

We feel so good now that the garden is tilled -- it's like we're one step closer to the beginning of spring. Now we just need it to get warm enough to plant all the seedlings we have growing in the basement.