Fall Roundup 2011

Converting a bin

Our field of radishes and turnips

Halloween festivities at the local Good Samaritan center...

Hey everyone, it's been a busy fall on the farm. Since last post Nick went to being overjoyed about harvest wrapping up to being completely bored and tired of digging.

Most of the fields needed to be dug in prep for next year...except the field we are trying a no-till experiment on.

The thought of going no-till on a farm this size is exciting for a number of reasons. First you don't have to dig your field in the spring or the fall. You basically leave the ground alone..which is great when we only have one person farming more than 1700 acres of land.

What we did do with that field is planted a "cover crop" of non-edible radishes and turnips.

As you can see in the picture above, it was a great field and we did great with our "yield." Basically to help the health of the field we planted radishes and turnips and then will dig them into the soil come spring.

Digging is a very tedious job...and also a very boring job. After about a month of digging, Nick was done but had several fields to ditch...again for the health of the field and to make the most out of drainage in the spring.

And don't forget, when living on a farm...there is always projects that need to get done.

We took two of our bins and converted them to "hopper bottom bins"....a project that was very interested to watch and also an expensive project.

We hope in the future to convert more of the bins but right now, we're happy with this years results....as you can see in the pic above.

As the fall season winded down the boys geared up for one of their favorite holidays, that being Halloween.

Last year we were in DC for the holiday so of course the boys wondered if Max would be joining us this year. Although we couldn't work out a trip we had a great time trick or treating with the Winterquist cousins at their neighborhood in Argusville.

With field work wrapping up, Nick spends much of his free time either doing our projects outside or trying to wrangle his paperwork in the office.

On a side note the boys are doing great at school and enjoy going to open gym with their best pal Mitchell who...again...can be seen in the pic above.

We wish everyone a happy, and healthy Thanksgiving holiday!