In the field of opportunity . . .

it's plowing time again, again.

Yup, been down on The Farm, working my butt off for the last couple months now. For the uninitiated, I grow vegetables with a friend of mine who lives on about 5 acres. Years ago, we were near-neighbors, when I lived down the road just a bit on six acres. I grew a bunch of stuff and used to jar much of it. I shared jarred and fresh vegetables with Farmer Tom's family, as we had sons who were close friends.  When I was, um, displaced to a smaller home, without the land to grow stuff, Farmer Tom brought me in for expertise and manual labor, and we're been growing stuff together for years. He's the carpenter, I'm the grunt and gardener.

Anyway, we started in late January, building new bed boxes. We had eight last season, but five had to be replaced. We actually built six new boxes, so we are bigger and better than ever. When we started, we tore out the rotted boxes and were left with only the two boxes at top center, plus the asparagus box, which is out of the picture. The unpainted boxes -- six of them, although it is not all of them are in yet in this picture -- are some of the new ones.

We got all the new ones put in eventually.

Then we started filling them with dirt. That's a lot of dirt, people.

Here's a view of all eight dirt-filled boxes, plus the asparagus bed in the background to the right of Farmer Tom's tractor.

A closer shot of the boxes to the right (south):

Last week, Farmer Tom was building the trellis from which to suspend our irrigation system:

That stuff's all done now:

I rented a tiller to expand our squash/zucchini bed, which is ground level. It started out kind of small:

Wound up about twice the size:

If you have never operated a five-horsepower tiller that is not self-propelled, I really don't recommend it. I also tilled a bed for onions. Here it is, with the fence posts that we put in today. Onions are already in:

Got the fencing up. That's Jeb the Wonder Dog in the background.

We've got a bunch of stuff in already. These are beets:

Same stuff, different angle:

We have peas, spinach, swiss chard, onions, and garlic in the ground. The garlic is in the small beds to the right of the big beds. Asparagus is starting to come up, as are the beets (obviously). Tomatoes are likely to go in soon. Beans are a few weeks off, as are peppers (hot and bell) as well as squash and zucchini. As the cold-weather crops age out, we'll put other stuff in. Not sure what yet. Come August, we'll start putting in the fall crops -- broccoli, maybe brussels sprouts. Stay tuned. Like the title of the post says . . .