Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Choo-choo tractor


Today was a new experience, a local amish man came with a tractor and 'steamed' our garden!
The purpose of this is to kill off all weeds, and weed seeds and allows for (hopefully) months of a weed free garden. It's an old time thing farmers used to do to their tobacco beds. This farmer built his steamer this year, so it's new for him. Rod's dad lined this up for us.
The boys enjoyed watching and helping shovel dirt around the pans to keep steam from escaping. It took approx. 2.5 hours to do our garden. There were 2 pans, that were laid down for 10 minutes to steam, then they moved them to another section.
Adam had the idea to get our candy thermometer and see how hot it got. We stuck it in underneath the pan and it read 170 degrees. I imagine it was hotter then that. We made hard boiled eggs underneath the pans in 10 minutes :)
Such an interesting experience. This post was titled, Choo-choo tractor because that's what Clay called it! (or in his language - "goo goo gracker")

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