Monday, May 3, 2010

Spring Tilling with the Jeep Tractor

Yes, that's my 94' Jeep Wrangler with a set of discs tilling up some sod around one of our cherry trees for new planting beds (more on our permanent bed designs in a future post). Last November we bought a 3 point hitch that is part of the "Dirtworks" system from Kolpin Powersports. Since we're working with narrow permanent beds and "forest farming" areas, we're not plowing up acres of field at a time, so the smaller scale attachments (called Category 0) work perfect for us. And since the system attaches via a standard two inch receiver (with some additional bracing) it was easy to use our existing farm vehicle.

We tested the chisel plows and disc attachments in the fall, and the rows that we broke up are so much lighter and dryer than the surrounding soil. Our field has been used primarily for hay over the past few decades, and the soil is compressed, heavy clay, with lots of rocks (hence the stone walls popping up all over the farm). But the Kolpin pops on and off the Jeep pretty easily, and we've been able to plant over an acre of berry bushes and trees in the past two weeks.

We'll post more about our adventures with the Jeep Tractor soon.