The answer is blowin' in the wind
The recent prepping of a half acre field introduced me to a somewhat unexpected challenge with weed cloth - wind.
In September, with the help of my grass seed farming friend, Zach, I burned the field to kill the weeds. Controlled field burning is a common, and sometimes controversial, practice in Oregon. It's used to both kill weeds and to reduce straw, left from combining, to ash which can be absorbed into the earth. And, it's amazing to watch - hundreds of acres up in flames and then done in minutes (I admit, I like burn season). My little burn wasn't nearly as impressive, but still exciting.
After the burn, the soil was tilled and I spread dolomite lime to increase the pH. We don't have the proper spreader for lime, so I improvised - throwing 500 pounds of dolomite from the back of the truck by hand. Really, it only took a few hours and wouldn't have been bad at all, except the guys across the road were also spreading lime on their field with a gigantic tractor that can do hundreds of acres in a few hours. I saw them sitting on the back of their truck watching me and I knew they'd have a story for their wives at dinner - some crazy chick spreading lime out of the back of her truck by hand! This is not the first time our little farm, in the middle of huge grass seed and Christmas tree farms, has been the source of amusement for our neighbors.
Finally the weed cloth. I marked out the rows, 24 each and 110 ft long, and we began rolling it out. Nothing too difficult - get it straight and pin it down every 3 feet with U-shaped clips. It's a lot of bending and stooping, but four of us finished in a day. November came and so did the wind -30 mph wind. The weekend of our Autumn Market, a bit of cloth pulled up, then some more, until long sheets were just whipping around down there, hanging on by four or five clips. Over Thanksgiving and my dad and I repaired the damamge - more clips and closer together. Looked great and I was certain it would last.
It did, until the wind returned over the holidays. More weed cloth streamers whipping around right where anyone driving by could see. Comments from a few neighbors and I knew folks were watching and waiting to see if it would just blow away altogether. A few weeks ago we pinned it down again. And, this weekend the winds returned... so far so good.
In September, with the help of my grass seed farming friend, Zach, I burned the field to kill the weeds. Controlled field burning is a common, and sometimes controversial, practice in Oregon. It's used to both kill weeds and to reduce straw, left from combining, to ash which can be absorbed into the earth. And, it's amazing to watch - hundreds of acres up in flames and then done in minutes (I admit, I like burn season). My little burn wasn't nearly as impressive, but still exciting.
After the burn, the soil was tilled and I spread dolomite lime to increase the pH. We don't have the proper spreader for lime, so I improvised - throwing 500 pounds of dolomite from the back of the truck by hand. Really, it only took a few hours and wouldn't have been bad at all, except the guys across the road were also spreading lime on their field with a gigantic tractor that can do hundreds of acres in a few hours. I saw them sitting on the back of their truck watching me and I knew they'd have a story for their wives at dinner - some crazy chick spreading lime out of the back of her truck by hand! This is not the first time our little farm, in the middle of huge grass seed and Christmas tree farms, has been the source of amusement for our neighbors.
Finally the weed cloth. I marked out the rows, 24 each and 110 ft long, and we began rolling it out. Nothing too difficult - get it straight and pin it down every 3 feet with U-shaped clips. It's a lot of bending and stooping, but four of us finished in a day. November came and so did the wind -30 mph wind. The weekend of our Autumn Market, a bit of cloth pulled up, then some more, until long sheets were just whipping around down there, hanging on by four or five clips. Over Thanksgiving and my dad and I repaired the damamge - more clips and closer together. Looked great and I was certain it would last.
It did, until the wind returned over the holidays. More weed cloth streamers whipping around right where anyone driving by could see. Comments from a few neighbors and I knew folks were watching and waiting to see if it would just blow away altogether. A few weeks ago we pinned it down again. And, this weekend the winds returned... so far so good.
posted by trina at 11:20 AM
1 Comments:
Well, 50 mph winds this weekend have me beat... I guess we'll resort to rocks
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