And so it begins.....

We've had such a mild winter and now early spring that we are getting started in the field.

Sign of an early spring.  Two weeks ago Matthew and Alicia went for a hike on Crab Creek and they brought back this buttercup for me!  I planted it in a rusty lard bucket.

Reynald, Alicia and our new employee Tyler, have been working hard the last two weeks cleaning up some waste land that is part of the property that we bought.  It was an used equipment boneyard, lots of huge rocks, and a deeply washed water ditch.  I'll post more photos of the renovation later.  For now, here's a glimpse of what they have been doing.

More photos of this project to follow.  Imagine a junk pile of rusty, unusable equipment, huge rocks and a very deep drainage ditch.  That's the before.....this is the after!  A nice flat bottom draw with very little elevation drop.  The water will delta and soak in, instead of rushing away to the creek.  Reynald is in the big dozer, Tyler in the smaller one and Alicia is running the road grader.

 My grader girl!  Not surprisingly, she caught on to this finesse job super fast. 

The new property has been in CRP for the last 15 years and we intend to crop it.  Tuesday I began a tillage operation using a Turbotill.  This is a piece of equipment that we rented from a neighbor.  The idea is to slice the grass roots so that they break up a little easier with further tillage.  I finished this job yesterday and we're all pleased with the result.

We rented this piece of equipment from a friend of a friend.  It's called a Turbo Till.  It is designed to slice through sod and/or roots without too much disturbance.  The back basket gangs smooth things out.

A little closer look at the wavy disc blades and the churning, smoothing basket gang.

Another look.

This is what we are trying to break up.  Last fall Alicia and Reynald ran the deep till sub soiler through the grass.  This implement makes a narrow cut in the soil, 14" deep to allow maximum water penetration and break up compaction.  We do this to all our winter wheat stubble ground in the fall.

This is what it looked like after we ran the Turbo Till.  We like the job it is doing.

Today Alicia started running the cultivator and Tyler started on the harrow.  We are working the ground that we will be planting to spring crop. 

And now Alicia is running the cultivator over the ground that I Turbo Tilled.  I didn't get a photo of Tyler running the harrow but he did!