A few years ago, when I read Edward Faulkner’s Plowman’s Folly, I was sure that I would never plow a field. However, that idea, like so many of the ideas I developed while cultivating my interest in farming, has fallen by the wayside. As soon as I decided that I wanted to grow some of the grain I feed to the pigs I knew that I would need to use a moldboard plow in order to do so, at least once to break the sod. British dairy farmer Newman Turner in his books Fertility Farming and Fertility Pastures minimized his use of the moldboard plow by only plowing when he needed to break a sod, which was only once every four to six years (I can’t remember how long his rotation was). In every other year, he just disked the field, which he found produced an adequate seed bed. This seems like a good compromise to me.
About a week ago, I decided that I just wasn’t going to be able to get the corn in this year. I would have to wait until next year. I have been spending a lot of money on farm stuff this year and I just can’t afford to buy a plow. The other day, however, I was talking to my neighbor and he offered to let me borrow his 100 hp tractor and four-bottom plow, and I accepted his offer. I don’t really like borrowing equipment because I am always worried about breaking it, but I really wanted to get the corn in. If I were growing the corn for grain, it would be too late, but since the pigs will be hogging the corn down, I don’t need the extra time it takes for the corn to dry down.
Yesterday, I plowed my first field. Plowing well takes skill and know-how, neither of which I have, so the field is pretty pathetic, but at least it is mostly turned over. I will have to run over it a couple more times with the disk than I would have had it been well plowed, but, again, at least it is plowed. Because it has rained a bunch in the past ten days or so, I had to stop plowing short of where I had planned because one end of the field gets a bit wet, so the plowed area is about a half an acre less than I would have liked.
There are at least showers predicted for the next ten days or so, so I don’t know when I will actually get the corn in the ground, but at least I am one step closer.
