from the ground up: the sneetch machine

We have three tables of flats in the greenhouse that are overflowing with seedlings at this point. Today could have been our second major transplant of the season. However, we received a mechanical transplanter last week (new, in boxes) and are going to try to put it to use for this transplant and all others in the future.
The assembly has been an ongoing project, mostly for D. E has been helping quite a bit as I've been off weeding onions. I did help for a while today though. Assembling "systems" by means of illustrated instruction with tools is truly a joy for me. Always. ...takes me back to the days of model airplanes.

As of this evening, it (the transplanter) is almost complete.
Back to this in a few...

After a filling breakfast and a morning stretch, I opened the greenhouse and pulled the aforementioned three tables of flats into the sun to harden (-to place larger seedlings outside of the greenhouse for the day to allow exposure to the actual elements, i.e. direct sun & wind). This prepares them for life in the field.

A short meeting/divvying up of duties and I was off to W2 to finish my onion cultivation project from yesterday. 2 - 200' beds left to weed.
As soon as I reached the field I was struck by how green things are becoming...

And our strawberry bed. Already.

Back to the onions. Lucky for me, I got some unexpected help weeding from a volunteer/member. She was fast too. Awesome. Aaaaand she brought tasty homemade biscuits that we actually all took a break to eat (w/ coffee of course) around 10. Then back to the onions... again.
Finished right before lunch so had time to hook up the plow to our mid-size tractor (the New Holland). ..to be used in the afternoon.
We had to plow 8 rows of cover crop under in our W2 field (which was suppose to bare fallow for the season) in preparation for a last minute change of location for early carrots, spinach, beans, herbs, leeks, beets & parsley. They were to be in Y field, but Y's soil has been too compacted with standing water to be workable. E & I measured out our 8 rows and she plowed away... and bumped into this monster (that I then unearthed) in the process.

In the meantime I set-up and ran irrigation for our assorted greens in W1. After this watering (approx 4 hours) we'll want to hold on doing so again for several days as a little bit of surface dryness will force the new transplants to extend their roots further down. If we were to baby them (plenty of "rain") their roots would remain close to the surface leaving them weak and vulnerable.

Plowing completed, we headed back to the barn to help D with The Machine.

This morning: