Tilling the root break

After spending a couple of hours servicing the BCS 715, the Wee ‘Un and I headed out to start tilling the root break. I use a heavy hand hoe to roughly level the field before running the rotary hoe over it to produce a fine tilth. The slope, plus the uneven ground, means I have to wander about, sometimes walking on tilled soil, to maintain control and keep a good line. I then use a push, tined cultivator to break up the compaction caused by my footprints, lift large stones to the surface and clear out grass roots. Even though this field has been ploughed for us, there’s still a lot of hard work involved. In fact, ploughing doesn’t actually lessen the hard work. Instead, it allows us to cultivate an even larger area for the same amount of work. We’ll be out again day after day for weeks, tilling, cultivating, planting and sowing until all three fields that will be down to vegetables are in production. After that, it’s months of hand hoeing to keep the weeds down. It is fun—really!