jgohlke
My other hobby
If you've been around a while you might remember my previous visits to the farm. If not, here are the links of the previous posts:
Winter on the farm
Harvest time
I just finished a visit to the farm during planting, so this pretty much completes the full season. The plants start out as seeds in landscapers planting trays like this:
After just a couple of weeks in a greenhouse they (Connecticut Shade) look this:
and the broadleaf looks like:
They pull all the trays and go through them, picking out the sprouts that are ready for planting and leaving the smaller ones to grow for another week or so. All of this is done by hand by the farm hands.
The end up with a stack of empty trays and some replanted sprouts still too little to plant in the fields.
Once they move the big plastic white trays full of sprouts to the field, they use this contraption to get them in the ground.
The planters sit facing backwards with a tray of sprouts. The tractor pulls the planter which has 5 stations. Each station has a blade to cut into the ground, a pair of offset wheel to separate and then repack the dirt and a little hand to stick the plant in the ground. The big jug also dispenses water into each sprout. The guys sit and place a sprout on each hand as it comes around. The tractor goes pretty slow, but even still the planters miss the occasional hand, the guys walking behind pick up the slack by hand.
Here's a sprout close-up.
Winter on the farm
Harvest time
I just finished a visit to the farm during planting, so this pretty much completes the full season. The plants start out as seeds in landscapers planting trays like this:
After just a couple of weeks in a greenhouse they (Connecticut Shade) look this:
and the broadleaf looks like:
They pull all the trays and go through them, picking out the sprouts that are ready for planting and leaving the smaller ones to grow for another week or so. All of this is done by hand by the farm hands.
The end up with a stack of empty trays and some replanted sprouts still too little to plant in the fields.
Once they move the big plastic white trays full of sprouts to the field, they use this contraption to get them in the ground.
The planters sit facing backwards with a tray of sprouts. The tractor pulls the planter which has 5 stations. Each station has a blade to cut into the ground, a pair of offset wheel to separate and then repack the dirt and a little hand to stick the plant in the ground. The big jug also dispenses water into each sprout. The guys sit and place a sprout on each hand as it comes around. The tractor goes pretty slow, but even still the planters miss the occasional hand, the guys walking behind pick up the slack by hand.
Here's a sprout close-up.
:thumbs: 
