Seeds of Hope

After weeks of hitching my horses whenever the weather and my schedule cooperated, we finally planted sweet corn with the hope of yielding a delicious crop.

I'm a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. We have been busy right through the Pandemic. This meant working on our sweet

corn project in the evenings.

 Karma and Karla got a workout as we tried to break up our plowed ground. We should have plowed this area last fall. However, last fall was so wet. If you look closer at the photo below you can see the thick slabs of soil that dried out before I got a chance to disc them up. All said, I hitched these girls 6 times to prepare the soil, and the 7th time we planted sweet corn.

My brother-in-law planted corn with a modern-day John Deere planter (In the photo above) while I disc up my plowed ground with horses.

We added a harrow section behind the disc. The harrow combs the soil, smoothing everything into a better seedbed. (In the photo above) In the lower right corner of the picture, you can see the lines where the disc rolled over the clods. In the lower lefthand part of the picture, where the harrow refined our work.

We passed over the rough sections many times before the ground seemed ready.

Then Karma and Karla brought out our little two-row John Deere planter. All of my implements are the style used in the early 1900s. It amazes me that they are still functional even though they are around 100-years-old.

Working with horses and antique equipment gives me the sensation of time travel. I feel somehow connected to the past and those who used these very implements over all the years.

My old John Deere planter is designed to cut a track, drop kernels, and gently pack the soil closed. The wheels are flanged perfectly for closing the soil over the seed.

Now everything is planted, in hope of a good harvest. These pictures were taken several weeks ago and now our sweet corn is emerging. However, this growing season hasn't been ideal and the stalks are small. I'll share more later.

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