Not all fun and games

Well, I haven't been posting much because it has been an absolutely brutal spring. First, it was so cold and rainy that all our crops are still, literally, 3-4 weeks behind schedule. Then, we are having a disease problem with the greenhouse tomatoes we worked so hard on. It seems that the disease problem is a fluke thing, most likely brought on by some bum seeds, but still, it will significantly reduce our tomato yield this year, and it is a blow. Then, our truck had some engine trouble requiring a four-figure repair. And then this past week it has been so hot and humid, it is hard to sleep, let alone work outside all day.

So instead of writing a post solely about how crappy it has been this spring, I decided to wait until I had something positive to add, and I came up with this post about our new-to-us Farmall International Cub.

Ours dates from the early 1970s, which makes it almost brand new, at least by Cub standards. It is a cultivating tractor, which means it acts as a huge mechanical hoe to physically disturb the soil and uproot weeds. Cubs were the standard cultivating tractors for about 50 years because of their high-clearance and off-set engine design.

Our Cub has two sets of hydraulics (rear and belly mounted), which raise and lower racks of metal tines. The tines can be adjusted to match up inversely with the rows of veggies in each bed, and then the tines are lowered slightly below the soil level. As the tractor moves forward, the shovels and sweeps attached to the bottom of the tines disturb the soil and kill the weeds. The off-set engine allows the driver to clearly see the rows of plants below the tractor, which makes it easier to keep the tractor on line.

Here are the rear tines set up to get weeds in the rows between each bed.

We are only at the very early stages of figuring out how to use this machine, but already, the implications are a little staggering. This tractor will radically improve our weed control, and radically reduce our weeding labor.

So, the Cub is something positive this spring, and I am sure the summer and fall will have more positivity to balance out the rough patches. Now that I am thinking about it, another positive is the awesome farm crew we seem to have put together, but I guess that will need to be another post some other time.