Thanks Billy. My little "plantation" (as Roy calls it...
) is up to 23 acres and if the rain would stop, I'd start planting.
Neighbor was sober and not delusional or ranting. I think he ran out of money for booze...whatever, nice to see him with his act together.
I continue to try to help him, took him a couple of five gallon cans of diesel last week to put in his ancient JD. The fuel pump leaks so badly on it that fuel drips out the bottom in a steady small stream. Not good...no wonder he needs fuel. Nothing like a little diesel fuel in your soil...doesn't seem like a good idea to me...particularly when growing vegetables. Collards, turnips, not sure what else he has in there. Turnips, yuk. Reminds me of grits; if you don't "do something" to it, it's super boring.
However I think turnips are a staple of the poor here. large solid vegetables feed lots of empty stomachs, like potatoes in the old days...and rice in Asia.
I grew up on a 116 acre farm that was mostly woods but we had 30 acres "out front" in two fields. I plowed them with a JD B, pulled a disc over those 30 acres and then later mowed them with a bush hog when the local farmers would not rent the land. Too many deer...local wildflower preserve raised a huge amount of money to fence in their large property and all the deer migrated a mile away to us. Herds of 30+ deer going across the field at time. Reminded me of buffalo. Lot of calls went out to local hunters we knew, since we did not allow hunting there normally. Two groups of bow hunters came in, one totally organized with headset radios, like a deer swat team...
Half of the meat went to charity, half to the hunters. And no more bullets dug out of the side of our home. Luckily a two foot thick stone house...
Now I have about .7 acre of usable farmland, really a giant garden, which each year will be like a blank canvas for me. Not going to do vegetables, too hard on me, but something colorful and tall to block the hideous disaster on the other side, the bane of our neighborhood.
Five large greenhouses, four bare, plastic roofs and pieces everywhere, junk and farm implements on the unmowed lawn, human garbage thrown everywhere, main house uninhabitable, filled floor to ceiling with hoarder junk
and stuff people seriously under the influence just threw anywhere they wanted. Owner lives alone in singlewide behind barn, ancient thing, plastic on broken windows, narrow path with walls of junk three feet high on each side, 20+ feral cats running everywhere, tiny kittens, cat food dumped in big piles in the path, it's just
nuts... so with that sad commentary on one side of our properties, my other neighbor and I, the local fireman/EMT, are doing everything possible to block the view.
My neighbor has about 200 small trees planted in two lines across the back of his property. The adjoining farm really is a blight on the neighborhood. The old guy is truly infamous for his drunken behavior and delusional rants. And then he sobers up and is a reasonably nice guy with sadly a ruined mind and body.
We are what we eat.
So, with that TMI, you can see why this little piece of land is important to me. I finally get to block this mess. Should help market value of my home too.
Sunflowers this year, am open to suggestions for other things to plant. Tall is good, and no special machinery to plant/harvest. The ground is really soft and fluffy after tilling so pretty easy to run a little hoe down a string...like the old days. probably have lasers for this now... Actually my farmer neighbor has an Earthway manual seeder and I am likely to borrow that. I think the corn setting is closest; needs a big hole when you think how large sunflower seeds can be. Or I can do it manually.
Was thinking of something silly like sitting on the back of my garden cart dropping seeds while someone drives the Gravely pulling the cart. Something like they do in the rice paddies. Now I'm getting really lazy...I can push the little Earthway seeder just fine.
The joys of being a play farmer in retirement. It's what I worked my forty for.
And I'll let the real farmers like Farmer do the "decrusting". Whatever that is...doesn't sound good.
