So that was my weekend. Phoebe and Nell came down with me as gophers. The actual contribution on their parts was pretty minimal, but they stayed out of my parent’s way which was good because they had a full-house at the B&B (http://roundbarnfarm.com/) and though the fence is not fixed yet, all of the beds there have been turned over, and hopefully the weeds from last year have had the roots killed.
Admittedly, this is never going to be a war I win. All I can do is keep them at bay long enough to get a crop each year. There were sections from last year where plantings were lost in the weeds and abandoned by me due to time available. This year I cannot spend as much time as I did last year, so it is going to be more of a concentrate of corn which can grow above the weeds.
The only actual physical planting I did was with Nell, of 7 rows, in a 15X40′ bed of Painted Mountain flour corn. Going in this early will create weed issues, as the native grasses will sprout about the same time the corn does. I marked all of the rows with twine so I can find them when I come back to weed and till again with a cultivating tiller.
Physically I am hurting too much to say more. Wrestling around a walk-behind tiller for more than 9 hours yesterday has left me pretty much an invalid today. Parts of my body I had forgotten even existed between last year and this year are screaming at me, and I am self-medicating with wine to try to calm the muscle spasms. Curious, in a kind of morbid way, how I am going to come out of this.
