I'm guessing the orb is either a snowflake passing by, or the spirit of my Grandfather watching over the harvest.
This was a few years ago when we tilled our row middles. For decades, we spread manure from our beef cattle in the row centers in the Spring, then disced, rototiller, dragged, etc., for a while, then planted cover crop to provide some traction. That year, I sowed rye in the centers and then the rain stopped. It never took right all summer, and was very sparse by harvest.
Since then, I stopped the tillage, opting to compost the manure in a pile for an extra year and spread on top in the Winter just before a snow. The smell is far less objectionable and the sod remains much thicker than before.
There is a benefit of having open soil when late frosts threaten- the open soil gives off heat better than grass, and can help keep buds from freezing. Last year we had a really late hard freeze, May 8, which wiped us out, but not even irrigation or the smudge pots of old days would have saved us.
We used to hand-pick a half acre of early, Fredonia table grapes, fancy pack and take them to the Benton Harbor Fruit Market. Grandpa always bragged that that half-acre could pay the property taxes every year. Getting help for such a small plot ripening right on Labor day weekend got to be too much, and we switched those rows to Concord when I was in high school.
Harvesting machines for grapes and then blueberries began in the late 1950s and became popular in the 1960s around here. Prior, nearly every farm had an acre or two, but never 50 or hundreds or thousands. But then, nearly every farm still had a cow, chickens, some pigs, etc.
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Today's Featured Article - The Day Mom Drove the 8N - by Brian Browning. My Dad was wanting to put in a garden but couldn't operate the 8N and handle the old horse drawn plow he had found and rigged up to use with the tractor. Well, he decided to go get Mom out of the house and have her drive the tractor while he walked behind the plow. You got to understand that while my Mom is a hard worker who will always help whenever she can... she had never operated farm machinery before that day. Dad got her out there, explained how the clutch was the same as in our o
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