29th August

It is a sure sign of summer finishing and the start of Autumn, when the squash crops are ready

The squash crops are one crop,  that you cannot see how the crop is doing without walking through them.

From the edge of the field all you can see is a field full of huge leaves, this doesn’t always mean that there will be a lot of squash on the plants.

This week I walked through the whole crop, and again like all the other crops we have planted this year,  are looking as good as any other year.

Surprising with the long hot spell of dry weather.

All the farmers around us are complaining about huge loss in yields with the lack of rain,

And when it did rain it didn’t do much, but just ran off.

They are all conventional farmers who rely on sprays and huge machines to do any job.

My John Deere my biggest tractor is really old (vintage old) and weighs with a machine on the around 3 tonne.

These huge tractors that are getting used now, with the weights on the front are around 10 tonne tractors only, when a machine is hooked up and fully fuelled with diesel there is around 20 tonne and more going across the fields.

We never seen any cracks appearing in our soil throughout the summer when it was so dry, and I was constantly going through with the new weeding machine working the soil to kill the weeds, and when it did rain the rain went right into the ground.

But we had been hearing stories from the conventional farmers, and we did see fields next to ours, with cracks appearing after the constant dry weather, and when it did rain, the water just ran off.

Obviously, the huge weights of the tractors and machinery that are constantly working these fields are just compressing the soil, so much, that they can’t breathe, or take in the rain when needed if it has been so dry for so long. Just a though.

Our big tractor is pretty much parked up now and we harvest with hands and compact tractors weighing less than a small car.

One other topic in farming, which is very interesting, and supposed to be very good for the ground and fertility, is no tillage.

No Tillage.  This is no ploughing, followed by no PTO driven machine ( soil not getting rotovated ).

There are new machines that are made for this job, they work the ground and sow or plant the seed in one go, and very very expensive.

But the question is.

Is it better for the soil, or just time and fuel saving.

Farming started with horses pulling ploughs  ???? interesting topic.