We finished our hay making on the second-to-last day of September, and it was a good thing: the day after we brought in the last alfalfa bales, it became cold and rainy, and the weather hasn't changed much since. After a hot, dry, sunny summer, we have been having a cool, cloudy, wet October. Who knew that the weather could change so much in one day? The high on that last day of bale gathering was 86 degrees, and the high the day after was about 55. It was shocking, to a person from Florida, where October temperatures are often in the eighties.
October has been considerably less busy than the previous five months. The days have also shortened dramatically, as they always do in the fall in Northern places. While we used to start work between five and six, then take a several-hour break in the middle of the day, then work until nine or nine thirty at night, we now start between nine and ten in the morning, take a short break or don't break at all, and go until about five or six. It is almost hard for me to remember what summer was like.
One of our big October projects has been preparing ground for and planting two acres of garlic. We starting plowing in the second week or so of October. We used four horses, two in front and two behind, on a sixteen inch plow, which is relatively wide and thus requires three to four animals in this area's sticky clay loam. The plow worked beautifully, as David has recently figured out how to adjust it to plow evenly and cover surface trash well. It was a real learning curve for me to hold four reins in my hands in order to drive the four horses, but I did manage to do it, and I am sure that it is one of those things that gets easier with practice.
We spent two days spreading manure on the plowed ground, using three teams of horses and three manure spreaders. We used a tractor with a front loader to load the manure spreaders, which is unfortunate in some ways, but made the whole job much faster and easier and resulted in the manure being spread more thickly. We ended up spreading several tons to the acre, which will hopefully result in many large bulbs of garlic next year. We had a problem this year with too many undersized bulbs. Customers will not accept small bulbs as seed garlic (planting stock), which is how the farm markets its garlic.
To incorporate the manure into the soil, we used a large disc harrow, which is so heavy that it goes much better when we use six-up. Contrary to how it may sound, this is not a spin-off of a lemon-lime soda drink; it is a way of arranging six horses to pull an implement. Three horses are driven in front, and three follow behind in back. Getting that many horses caught, harnessed, and hitched is a bit of a production, but it sure gets the work done fast. I got the chance to drive the six-up, and it is actually much easier than driving four-up, because we simply tied off the reins of the back three horses and drove the front three horses. The back three follow along just fine. I suppose this could have been done with the four-up, but plowing requires much greater precision than discing.
Planting garlic requires two steps: popping cloves, and the planting itself. Popping cloves consists of sitting on one's butt for hours at a time, taking apart garlic bulbs, and sorting the small or damaged cloves into baskets separate from the large cloves, which get planted. As you may have guessed, this is not hard work, but it can be uncomfortable to set bent over for several hours at a stretch if you are not that used to sitting for long periods. I actually find popping cloves to be somewhat addictive; it is easy and mindless, and it is also productive. What more could you ask for?
Planting is quite a bit less enjoyable, but we have found ways to minimize the back discomfort of that by doing it cooperatively. We generally have one person drop cloves into the planting furrow, and then one person follow along, crawling (not stooping!) and pushing the cloves into the ground right-side-up. Yesterday, we tried having one person drop cloves into three furrows, and then having three people follow along and push cloves into the ground, and this was just as easy and quite a bit faster. The really bad part about planting garlic is the wet, muddy, cold ground that soaks your knees. Nothing to be done about that, really.
I am leaving in three days, on November 1. I will be sad to go, which is a good sign, I suppose. I told the farmers here that I will not be coming back next year, which I think was the right decision, as I want to learn how other farms work with draft horses. Knowing that I have to move on doesn't make the loss of a place and people that have been important to me for almost half a year very much easier, however. Perhaps I will see at least some of these people again some day, at a draft horse or farm equipment sale somewhere.
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