Story of our field

Blue Bison LLC started in spring of 2019, when Ben and Bekah approached Ben's parents about converting a 1/2 acre of former pasture land into a garden to grow vegetables and flowers to sell.  The field had been idle for about 10 years and prior to that had been used as a cow pasture for decades.

  Unfortunately, the extreme amount of rain in the spring of 2019 made production of any crops impossible as the land was saturated throughout the entire spring.  Therefore, we spent the summer of 2019 in preparing the land for the next year.

First, we mowed the tall grass down and raked all the grass into a large pile.  Our 4 girls helped and spent many hours raking all that grass off of the field!  They hope to not do that again for many years...

Next, a farmer friend plowed the field for us, as a start at killing all the quack grass in the field.  We followed that by planting buckwheat, to help kill the quack grass by out-competing it and enriching the soil.  The buckwheat flowered into a beautiful field (picture at right).  Then - WE CUT IT ALL DOWN!!!!  This was sad, but necessary.  It put the nutrients from the buckwheat back into the soil during the next step, tilling.

Tilling was hard.  A half acre is about 200 feet by 120 feet.  We tilled, and tilled, and tilled for a couple of weeks.  My dad helped with his tiller for part of the field and we just kept at it until the entire field was tilled.

Finally, in the fall, we planted clover as a cover crop.  We did this for two reasons.  When we till this under in the spring, it will add Nitrogen to the soil.  Secondly, we will till 4 foot wide rows with 2 foot rows of un-tilled land in between.  Once the clover fills in, this will provide a walk way to be able to work the rows or beds and will be much less muddy after rains.

After all the hard work in 2019, 2020 was the first year of production.  We had a small number of seasonal subscribers and over 40 families that made at least one purchase of vegetables or flowers.  The vegetables were delicious and the flowers were beautiful.  It was an exciting first year!

Also, during 2020, we had an additional 3/4 acre tilled and seeded to be able to expand the business in 2021.