The Kentucky State University farm has been blessed with rain, and our crops are all in the ground and looking good.

We direct-seeded corn, sweet sorghum and soybeans, and transplanted sweet potato slips. Planting and management is done entirely by hand in our 'biointensive' plots. Our 'market garden' plots use no machinery larger than a walk-behind tractor. Our 'small farm' plots are primarily managed with conventional 4-wheel tractors and attachments.

The video shows some of our planting, transplanting, and management activities at each of the three farm scales in June. We have been able to use smaller tractors in the Small Farm plots now that the primary cultivation is complete. We are weeding these plots with a Farmall 130 tractor built in the late 1950s; all other weeding is conducted with wheel hoes, conventional hoes, or by hand-pulling.
The planting and management phases, in June, required much less energy than the soil preparation phase, in May.

Labor (top) and energy use at three farm scales at the Kentucky State University farm, 6 May - 23 June 2008. Bars are divided into soil preparation (black), planting (purple) and management (yellow) components. Each bar is the mean of 4 replicates. Error bars show standard errors of each mean.

Michael Bomford provides research and extension services related to organic agriculture and small-scale renewable energy production through Kentucky State University's Land Grant Program. He thanks Tony Silvernail, Brian Geier, John Rodgers, Joelle Johnson, Monique Marcus, and student volunteers from the CASS program for their help with planting and management in June.