A Harrowing Experience

Today was very harrowing.  Faced with the penultimate task of seeding areas of our field, I had to use HARROWS.  Yes.  Diamond Harrows in fact.  Tied to a log, attached to rope, attached to the tractor.

Now, if i was a real rancher, I'd have a fancier set of hay equipment :A big huge tractor, Discs, a Drill Seeder and a Roller.  The Drill seeder would put the seed right in the ground and cover it up with soil, nice and happily.

But i'm not a real rancher and we aren't set up for 'haying' at Clear Sky.  So I borrowed from a friend what is basically some metal spikes attached to a pole, dragged behind our baby kubota tractor- aka harrows.  It fluffs the soil up a little, you then spread the seed, and drive over it again, hopefully covering the seed.  You also pray you don't rip out all the grass that's already growing.

Well. What an all over the place experience. First I nearly snapped the harrows in half because i had the lead rope too short.  I turned a tight corner and got the big metal spikes caught in the tractor's back tire!  Luckily myself and the machines all got out of that alive.

It was also hard to remember where I had driven over, and where I had already seeded. My expensive seeding equipment consisted of a bucket of seed and my hands/arms swirling seed around, plus my feet/legs moving that apparatus to new areas.  Next time I will need to have a more organised route.  I also snapped the rope at one point turning sharply...I was about to give up out of laziness but finally decided to add a new piece of rope but I tied it WAAAY to long.  The pieces of wood i used to weigh the harrows down also kept falling off...eventually i just let them go and theres probably still one or two lying in the field somewhere.

I wondered if the neighbours could see me and were laughing at my wierd harrowing behaviour.


Lesson 1 for today: Some basic facts of life are so un-obvious to city folk who have never driven tractors or used harrrows. 

Even when faced with ropes and tractor asses and grease and large pieces of metal that look like they could crush you and your mama,  Life must go on!  The seeds must be planted!

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