April 2013 – Ruffwing Farms

When we started this venture with farming, John told me that you just plant the berry plants and they grow! “How easy!” I thought, and I jumped on board. He still says that, but he adds…”You plant them, and they grow, then you weed, spray, prune in the winter, mulch, weed, rake, water…and…” Love that guy of mine…he always has a project and the motivation to do it. So, John has been doing ~~the bulk of the work~~ all the work over the winter. But today, I went out and helped in the field. It was a beautiful spring day.

This is what the field looks like now. It is amazing to think these little red sticks will fill out and grow into big, full black raspberry bushes.

John and Chuck are using the tractor to bring the mulch to each row of berry plants.

This is the mountain of mulch they have to move!

I worked in the rows ahead of the guys and raked out all the old canes that John cut out. We have to put them in piles and burn the old canes to prevent the spread of disease if there is any in the plants. I found these Killdeer eggs in one of the rows. They were hard to miss since the Momma was having such a fit at me being even several rows over. Killdeer are so funny. They squawk and spread their wings out like they are injured a good distance away from the eggs to try to get you to be distracted and not harm their eggs. No worries…the eggs are still there.