The beds are pulled in perfectly prepared soil using a tractor and this weird thing (that's the real name for the attachment as far as I know) that gets pulled behind it. Oh - I'm sorry - that's what I call Trey who rides on the weird thing sitting down to push the bed maker into the dirt. The machine is really quite impressive to watch. It lifts the dirt to build the bed and shape it, lays irrigation tube along the top of the bed and under the plastic which it also rolls out and tucks back in as it drives along the rows. Trey says it's a lot of work riding with your hands behind your back and that it is exhausting at the end of the day. I'm sure it is - I get a cramp just looking at him - but imagine what it'd be like if we didn't have this machine. About a week after we pull beds - the plants arrive and are planted. It's really neat to watch.
Of course - my afternoon was spent taking a few pictures of the men working and then enjoying the rockers on the front porch and a few apples with mom and my sweetheart. She finally learned to appreciate raw fruit this year... at the very end of fruit season. Oh well - that's another reason to look forward to spring!
Anyway - I show you these old pictures to tell you - I have no current pictures of the field - but it is currently covered with fabric (we call it row covers). They were put on with good, old fashioned muscle and man power (and some woman and teenage power) in January to serve as frost and freeze protection for the plants and also to force the plants into an earlier bloom and growth as the days start to get warmer. It is a lot of work to pull these covers b/c they're long, heavy and it's always windy when you have to mess with them - so we hope to not have too many cold nights after we remove them.
So - there's your fall/winter strawberry lesson for the week. More to come - and hopefully more pictures also!
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