Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Monday, August 13, 2012

Buh-limey, Waiting for the Rain

This looks like a foggy day, but it's lime in the air instead of moisture.  (And sad little dogwood that looks like it might have died of thirst)

Tom sent some soil samples to some university to get tested and the results were that we needed lime and certain fertilizers added to the soil to grow better hay and choke out the weeds (theoretically, I'm doubtful that any amount of hay or grass growth will choke out weeds).  Tom searched for weeks for someone to apply the lime - one big outfit told us they are only applying lime in the winter because they're too busy applying fertilzer right now - he finally found a man nearby that would do it and he got the application scheduled.  Of course, his equipment broke down and we had to wait several more weeks for him to finally show up.


We were curious as to how the lime would be applied to the fields.  Turns out they just dump it with a dump truck.  They hauled tons of it in from somewhere in an eighteen wheeler with four large dump things on it.  They look kind of like those big commercial trash bins like are out behind stores or apartment buildings.  If you look close, you can see them in this picture.  By turns, they were each dumped into a regular dump truck.


Then the driver took off across the field with the tailgate of the truck loose and flapping. 


As he zoomed around the lime fell out the back and onto the ground.  It was pretty windy so a lot of it blew around before settling.  Our neighbors probably got a fair amount of lime on their fields.  We're glad to share.


The fields were white. 

And as we wait for the rain to water it in, the wind blows.
















2 comments:

We Love Texas said...

This looks very high tech to me. We got our soils sampled too but haven't done anything with the results yet.

Mosaics said...

We finally did get the rain we needed. I just hope all the lime didn't blow away before it was soaked in. Next up...fertilizer.