Tilling the Soil

This week Adam is working on the wheat field. He needs to get the wheat in the ground by the end of September. This first preparation of the soil is the most challenging. It's been in grass, with animals grazing, for years.

At last the ground is dry enough to till. The wheat field lies in front of the bee hives.
Before tilling he had to mow the area one more time with the push mower to get the grass as short as possible. Otherwise the grass wraps around the tiller blades, making tilling quite difficult. As it was, the grass was still a challenge.

You can see on the left the taller grass, then a strip of mowed grass, then the once-tilled area.
And around the edge of the square is grass yet taller; all of it will eventually become a growing area for something. But right now he's focused only on the wheat.

When he's mowed and tilled the entire square, he'll till it again the other way, perpendicular to the first tilling.  It's quite exciting! We know farming (even on a very small scale) is fraught with failure and unexpected setbacks. We've watched my brother and sister-in-law in West Virginia work so hard for so many years on their farm, with beautiful results. But it's never, ever easy.
Update on the orchard foray:  Adam got a nice case of poison ivy on both legs. He's so allergic. He knew better than to go in there this time of year, but I tempted him by hacking back some of the verge. Oh well! He'll be off to the doctor today.