Growing Rocks

Around upstate New York people joke about how we "grow" rocks.  Spend 5 minutes digging in the dirt and you'll understand why people say it!  Putting in the fence last year (and digging lots of holes), I quickly realized that they were completely right.  Now that I've been working in the garden, I'm really sick of rocks!

The garden before I removed the top layer of rocks.

I wasn't crazy enough to think that I'd be able to get all of the rocks out of the garden, but I at least wanted to get the top layer of big ones out before I planted.  And once the garden is tilled I'm going to remove a few more from the bed where I'm going to plant the root vegetables.

The garden after I removed some rocks.

I spent a few hours removing rocks last week.  The second day I even had a friend...I brought T out to graze in the garden while I worked.  It was a great opportunity to do some "green" mowing and work on his stake training as well.

A work in progress.  I used the rocks to "pave" my muddy parking space up by the house!

One very happy grazing llama!

We also spread compost on the garden.  The front-loader on the tractor is a bit less maneuverable than I was hoping, but we still got the job done.  I may need to straighten the pallet fence around my compost pile though!

Lots of gorgeous compost underneath all that hay.

Spreading compost with a very large tractor.

Compost on the garden!

I'm hoping to get the garden tilled (or rather, have my husband till it!) this weekend too!  We got almost 3" of rain on Friday, so it will need a bit of time to dry out first.  It will be so nice to get plants in the garden!