Equipment on a family farm never really dies - it just goes to sleep for a while.

And occasionally - when that thing it does better than anything else is just what you need - you wake it up again.

My grandfather's rod weeders and my father's hitch. Awakened from a decade's quiet slumber. Cautiously aired tires, oil and grease; they need to warm up before they work again.

With a lurch they pop out of the weeds that half bury them. Cranky and creaking, but willing to be coaxed.

I walk them across the farm, frequent stops to check for stuck chains and hot bearings.

We arrive at our destination, a fresh disced field awaiting the smooth seedbed preparation that only this machine can give. I lean my weight back on each rusty handle, dropping them back in the ground my forebears did a hundred times before.

I throttle up, watch rusty iron submerge beneath loose soil, doing what it was made to do once again.

I take a picture, and send it to my dad. He tells me to keep an eye on the chains.

I do.

#familyfarming #pdxeats #seattleeats #bbga #localgrains #regenerativeagriculture #knowyourfarmer #cascadiagrains #locallygrown #wholewheat #sustainablefood #familyfarm #flourambassador #homebaking

Sunday and the end of spring work in view:

Spring is the season of frenzy on the farm. Of everything happening at once, and the steady ratcheting feeling of falling behind.

Until at last, you are done.

Today is - hopefully - the last of 34 days of almost unceasing work. The only gaps being bad weather, down equipment, and one day sick with the worst fever I've ever had, at the worst possible time. The days abutting spent sweating and shivering in the cab, putting seed in the ground.

Sometimes friends outside of farming wonder why all the rush. Why we can't just work a schedule like the rest of the world does.

The answer is that everything in Nature happens in a season, and within each season are agronomic windows when a task may be done successfully. A bell curve arcing from too soon, through perfection, ending in too late.

Mother Nature decides when each window opens and closes, and in spring about six of them overlap. Each one opens slowly, in the frosty mornings of March. Then accelerates on lengthening days and warming soils to the fateful April day, the very hour, when it is slammed shut.

We must make hay while the sun shines indeed.

So as I sit in the tractor and watch the end of the last stroke hove into view - it is a welcome sight indeed.

#familyfarming #pdxeats #seattleeats #bbga #localgrains #regenerativeagriculture #knowyourfarmer #cascadiagrains #locallygrown #wholewheat #sustainablefood #familyfarm #flourambassador #homebaking

The glory of a wet winter in full bloom. Native grass, painstakingly restored on the canyonland of the farm.

It's a pleasure to see it thriving, and to walk with a crew through the endless swishing heads, eliminating the very last of the rye that has infested from years ago.

#farming #nativegrass #regenerativeagriculture #agrarian #notill #knowyourfarmer #cascadiagrains #locallygrown #familyfarm #soilconservation