Looks like we're moving on to Plan B for the farm. What was Plan A, you ask?

Disclaimer: this is Sarah's interpretation and understanding of said farm plans. There are probably lots of errors. Deal with it. I'm no farmer and Phil seems to have lost the battle with technology and is no longer posting.

Plan A went something like this:

• Start a 2000 sq ft "kitchen garden" this spring. This involved
  -putting in some amendments to the soil
  -tilling in composted cow manure
  -planting the seedlings Phil started in our spare room
  
  
• Improve the soil on 1 acre for future plantings. This involved
  -getting more horse manure from the neighbors than you could possibly imagine
  -composting horse manure
  -at some point this summer tilling composted horse manure into the soil
  -planting cover crops to help fix nitrogen and lower the acidity in the soil
  -till cover crops in and then plant veggies
  
  Now that the bulk of our house-building consumption is behind us, Phil had the green light to really get going on Plan A. Up until now he'd been limited to the first things on the above lists. It was a little late for spring planting down here, but such is life. Unfortunately, he quickly learned that Plan A was not going to work. At least partly because:
  
• tilling Mississippi clay is hard and doesn't really give you anything good to work with
• our water table appears to be about 5 inches above ground.
  
  So, on to Plan B, which looks something like this:
• kitchen garden
  -till as well as possible
  -plant things like okra which we've been told will grow just about anywhere down here
  
• build some raised beds in which to plant the other seedlings we have
• start lasagna farming, AKA sheet composting, on the acre we want to cultivate
  -this involves essentially raising the ground level up 2 feet...for every bit of land you want to cultivate
  -you layer manure, straw, newspaper, and other organic matter till you reach the desired height
  -once all those materials have composted then you plant right in them
  
  As you can imagine this is very labor intensive and was what Phil was hoping to avoid doing. If you ever feel the need to shove some horse manure, push a lawn mower, or collect leaves let us know. We'll supply the beer!