The Acre: Take Two

I meant to post these photos a few weeks ago when we finished the second till on the acre. We took turns tilling, Shawn spread some lime because the soil was a little too acidic, and Jack came over to supervise. We got all the tilling done and the beds formed all in one day! We only formed beds on half of the acre, the other half got a cover crop since we won't be planting crops in it until the summer planting.

The Acre

The acre.
This year, in addition to the space we used last year, we have rented an acre. This is both very exciting and intimidating. Partly because our farming technique is almost entirely done by hand. We use the tractor for tilling, and sometimes for shaping beds, but everything else is done by hand. One acre is approximately 208 feet 8.5 inches by 208 feet 8.5 inches - or 43,560 square feet.
The acre is split into two half-acre lots. Yesterday, we went over and marked out the space so we could get to tilling first thing this morning.

This is the view of the lots from the small dirt road down to the property. They are on either side of the trees in the center of the photo.

This pole marks the corner of one of the half-acre lots, before tilling.

And we're off!

We took turns tilling. Its helpful to have two people. One on the tractor and one following behind to pick up rocks. Rocks can break the tiller. I'm excited that I finally learned how to use the tiller! (Thanks, Dad!)

The same pole after tilling. We did one pass on both halves today. After it dries out and rests a little, we'll do a second pass.


We found surprisingly few rocks, but some of them were huge.

The view behind the acre.

All finished! It took about 4 hours.

Both half-acre lots, can't wait to get them planted!