This morning was the second in a series of three farming workshops I have been attending at the Marana Heritage Farm. Thanks so much to Cie'Na and her group for hosting them! Last week was mostly introduction and touring an some best practices discusison for getting larger scale production to market. This week we started to get work done.
We began our day with more introductions and a discussion of our connection to food, with our morning stretch and a cool activity I plan to share with our 4H group. Then we got to learn more soil preparation, along with larger scale seed starting and transplantation of cuttings.
We separated into two groups, one beginning on a tiller, the other beginning with hand tilling and irrigation. The flat irrigation was neat to learn for larger scale work, and I am gla to know these systems are all prety much the same, with minor to major tweaks for different production scale and water pressure.
But our group was away from the tiller first, and we rolled back some sheeting used to solarize away a bermuda grass problem, and learned tilling with the pitchfork and wide fork. The tilling has been running behind schedule around here, because I thought I had to have o time to do it all while I had a tiller rented. But the pitchfork can do it all, and provide a nice workout while I am at it. I didn't realize how easy it was to use water to enable the pitchfork to get deep enough in our Arizona soil, so I am SO excited to move forward without worrying about tiller rental, and with human power rather than burning more fossil fuel!
The wide forks are essentailly extra wide pitchforks you have to use two hands and both feet to drive into the ground. Bailey doesn't know it yet, but there is a welding project in that one for her so I can ramp up production and add the second garden back in next season! Yup, tilling by human power- better for the environment, and very doable!
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