On April 19, my dad asked me, “ready to plant oats?”. I was thrilled but freaked out! Thrilled because I’ve been bugging him all winter to give me the opportunity to add a different crop into our rotation and to plant some oats. It also meant that he was giving me the green light to transition the 27 acre field next to my house to organic. A big step in the opposite direction of a conventional farming.

I was freaked out because he sprung his decision on me quick and I had to make some very fast phone calls to get my oat and alfalfa seed and organize the drill and disc. I didn’t get the seed I originally wanted, but I got what I needed. It was a good thing too because it was the day before Easter Sunday and we had a window of opportunity to plant oats. It rained and was cold for the next month.

It took a good 2-3 weeks for the oats to come out of the ground. When they did, I found some areas that weren’t planted. They were partially drilled in the dark with no GPS, so it literally was a shot in the dark. So I ended up with areas like this:

So a few days ago, my dad’s cousin Doug, and I went out and seeded oats and alfalfa by hand then pulled an old harrow behind the Ranger to incorporate it. We hope it got seeded and it comes up. I cannot spray any chemicals on this field anymore, so the better the coverage of oats and alfalfa the better it creates competition for the weeds.

This 27 acres is my experiment into organic farming. Weeds will take more and different efforts to control. I’d like to eventually experiment with cover crops and intensive rotational grazing on it too.

Below is a bucket of alfalfa seed I was flinging out by hand.

Above is the oat and alfalfa seed sitting on the soil. A good rain would help incorporate it too, but rain was spotty that day. The night after this photo was taken, the temps got down to freezing.