Growing Grain for the Fall Fair

The "Luxton Antique Farm Equipment" Club, a division of the "Metchosin Farmers' Institute" has a partnership with the "Joseph Lohbrunner Community Farm and Bird Sanctuary", (part of the TLC "The Land Conservancy"), to grow a field of Barley grain to use during demonstrations at the Luxton Fall Fair. The Club has a collection of antique farm machinery on the Luxton Fairgrounds and meets every Wednesday evening to maintain equipment and plan for demonstrations. This "Community Outreach Partnership" is greatly beneficial to both groups. The club is able to use some of the functioning antique equipment to show how crops were produced in earlier days, and the "T.L.C." has reference to the years of practical knowledge and some equipment to assist in the production of crops at the historical "Lohbrunner" farm. The following photographs are recording the progress of the "Barley" crop we are growing this year. Click on the small photo to see the full size.   

Mowing   Antique Equipment Club member Dave Wallace is mowing the tall grass in the field in preparation to plow. This field had not been used for the past two years and the grasses previously used for hay have grown quite thick.
Rototilling We decided to Rototill this field to break up the larger lumps.
Seeding Dave is using a hand operated broadcast seeder. For a such a small field this was found to be quite quick and effective.
Rolling Next the seed is pressed into the soil with a large steel roller.