Fall is, of course, one of the busiest seasons on the farm. But harvesting crops isn’t the only thing that keeps us busy as the temperatures drop. Fall is also the time to prepare the fields for spring planting; tillage work, repairing terraces, and especially building up the nutrients in the fields.
Plants naturally soak up the nutrients in the soil to help them grow, leaving fewer nutrients for next year’s crops. Throughout history farmers have dealt with this in various ways. The Egyptians had the Nile, which over flowed its banks, leaving new silt to plant in each season. In the Bible farmers were given instruction to let the field sit empty once every seven years. Today’s farmers have the resources and knowledge to replace nutrients like you see in the pictures here.
This is Daddy, unloading lime with his dump truck. Lime changes the pH of the soil, helping the plants maximize the fertilizer. Not only does this create good crops, it also important for sustainability. That’s a buzz word we hear a lot, but around here it means we improve the land so someday it will provide for our son’s family, and his son’s too.
After Daddy made his lime pile the local Co-op came out with a team to spread the lime across the fields. First they brought out this small loader which was used to pick up the lime from the pile and dump it into the compartment on this conveyor belt.
Then the belt picks up the lime and dumps it into the bed of the spreader truck.
When the truck is full it heads to the field to spread the lime from a spinner at the back.
The lime is soft, like powder, and floats behind the truck.
Just one of the jobs keeping us busy this fall!
Daddy's Tractor 
We use lime also with our chicken coop to keep down disease and in the yard to help the grass and help process the ‘poo’ into the soil. Since we have been using it the grass is better and the coop seems healthier 🙂 So great for all sorts of things 🙂
Good to know! There’s still some in a small pile behind the barn!!
Glad to be of help 🙂
Enjoyed your post!