All photos: Courtesy of Powisset Farm
Meryl LaTronica, Guest Contributor
Powisset Farm
Springtime at Powisset Farm is marked by many things. Cool days spent in the warm greenhouse, music blaring, seeding our first trays of onions, lettuce and broccoli. Construction projects leftover from winter: last year it was building a chicken coop and walk-in cooler; this year it’s putting up a hoop house and building yet another chicken coop. And, time spent tuning up the tractors, hands covered in grease from working under the diesel engines all day. Springtime is all of these moments. But the one thing for me that truly marks Spring and the change from last season to this season is when I plow my first field of the year!
To start with, I love tractors. I love the sound of the engine starting up on a cool March day. I look forward to doing oil changes, filter changes and greasing the points. We have five tractors at Powisset Farm, all of which do different things to help us work our 15 acres in the most efficient ways possible. I’ll save my love and descriptions of these tractors for another post, though. Today I want to talk specifically about plowing with a moldboard plow.
The moldboard plow slices through the fields, pulling soil up and flipping it over to incorporate the material—cover crops, old plant material, weeds—back into the fields. As I drive the tractor down a 400-foot field of newly unfrozen ground, I watch the soil break like a wave behind me. The plowing prepares the fields for the upcoming plantings, beautiful, dark, and full of potential. In March of 2007 I hopped on our little red tractor and plowed my first field at Powisset Farm. It felt strange, beautiful and overwhelming, breaking new ground at a new farm, unaware of how our farm would grow. Starting up the tractor this morning and taking to the fields, I remembered the excitement and nervousness of that March three years ago. Now the fields feel like home; familiar trees, houses and noises surrounding me as I work. But the excitement of the first plow of the season never goes away and it always marks the moment that I know Spring is here.
