Fall Farm Update

Fall is my favorite time on the farm. The days are cooler and beautiful. The stress of the early season and the weed pressure have eased, and our days are filled with harvesting, getting our last crops in, and sowing cover crops.

Cover crops are one of the main ways that we steward the soil. We disc the field to clean any newly germinated weeds, so the field is open. My favorite activity on the farm is to sow the cover crops. In a group, we spread out along one side of the field, and walk out into the field with buckets, broadcasting the seeds by hand. Cover crop is always sown just before a rain to water the seeds in. Right now we have oats and peas coming up in the north field, all just a few inches tall. The peas, like other legumes such as beans, vetch and clover, can fix nitrogen from the air. They will keep growing until we get hard frosts at the end of October. Although the oats and peas will die back to look like straw, their roots will continue to hold the soil in place and prevent erosion from rain and snow melt. As the oats and peas break down, they will provide organic matter and nitrogen to the crops we plant there next year.