The Grass Must Come Out - Let the Tilling Begin!

After a long winter,  we were ready to till up some dirt for our new vegetable garden.  The April rains have delayed this glorious day, but we're happy it finally came!

 This is the area we will be working in.  It is about 28 feet long and 3.5 feet wide.  Our trusty assistant McKinley will be watching over this operation.

 We started first digging up some sod that we wanted to keep to transplant to a dead spot in our back yard, thanks to last year's tent being left on the lawn too long!

 After a slight delay where I bashed my lip open with the handle of the shovel, we were finally ready to begin rolling up some sod and transporting it to the back yard.

Grass and dirt is incredibly heavy!  It took two of us to roll it and load it into the lawn cart for transport.

 While the girls were in charge of putting this grass puzzle together, Husband began the hard work of tilling.

 Because this land was on a slope, it sometimes took two of us to keep the tiller upright.  As you may know, rear tillers are very front heavy where the engine sits, and it wants to tilt when used on a hill.  You must be VERY CAREFUL when handling the tiller, because the motor gets extremely hot.  I've been burned twice!

But the hard work didn't stop with the tilling!  Then we had to sift through all the churned up earth to pluck out the grass clods.  We don't want those sprouting through our vegetables!

It was a long hard day of work, but we can almost taste the cucumbers and tomatoes!