The soil down here is clay, hard clay. The soil in the original community garden area had been built up somewhat over the years, but the rest of the area was going to need some serious help. John dumped a ton of aged horse manure on the entire plot, and then added a bunch of rotted straw. Then he took a rototiller mounted to the back of a tractor and tried to work it in. The ground was so dry and hard that he was only getting about a five inch depth.

Time for the big guns! John hooked up the disc harrow to the bigger tractor and worked the soil. With that he was able to get a bit more depth, anywhere from eight to twelve inches.

My plan, or at least my desire, is to do no-till from here on out. Once we have the raised rows in, I want to continue to build the soil with compost, manure, and cover crops.

We have a pretty serious rabbit population out on the farm, probably due in part to declining coyote populations. The garden had always been fenced in, and kept the critters out, but this year they had found a way in. It was time to redo the entire fence. Tracy, Jillian & I ripped out the old fence, retrenched and buried new fencing. As you can see in the photo above, the fence comes out a good half foot and was then buried. This stops the rabbits from burrowing under the fence since they’ll come up to the fence, try to dig down and under, and they’ll hit more fencing.

At the west end we needed to put in corner posts, and boy… digging post holes in hard pan clay is a chore. Jillian and I had a workout taking a rock bar to the post holes so we could get them 20″ or deeper.