My First Time Ploughing
(and why you should have a go)

It was on the second farm that I worked, in West Sussex, where I finally managed to actually try out ploughing properly. There was never going to be a lot of it, this organic farm was mainly down to grass. We kept pigs, which did their own messy, but thorough, version of ploughing, and as we were planning to introduce growing an acre ‘market garden’ type vegetable plot in to our rotation, it became clear that there was a need for a plough. The plan was to have the pigs break up an acre of grass, and then plough it up in preparation for growing vegetables in the same spot the following year.

My boss had acquired an old 2 furrow ‘conventional’ Ferguson plough to attach to his equally old Massey Fergusson 35 tractor for the purpose. Neither of us there had any experience with a plough though, so he asked a farming neighbour who did, to come and help us get going with it.

I wish I had taken more notes at the time. I hadn’t realised just how complex such an apparently simple piece of kit could be to set up, so I thought I would be able to remember it all. Needless to say I didn’t, but it was, however, a very useful session.

The kind neighbour left the pair of us soldiering on across the one acre field, tweaking this and that, according to what we remembered of his suggestions. Had there been an audience it would have been quite a scene, the two us stopping intermittently to lean over the plough and earnestly disagree about each other’s adjustments, as if we had all the experience of a couple of match winning champions. Then the tractor would move off again, with one or other of us trying to look assured and in control, whilst failing to even keep the furrows vaguely straight.

All the same, I think we were both quite pleased with the result. Not for any virtuosity in the finish, but simply to see the field rendered back into something that looked vaguely intentional. The pigs’ version of ploughing which had preceded our efforts were utterly thorough, leaving hardly a trace of vegetation in the field, but it did look like a set for a World War One film as they had left it.

It was probably fortunate that they had done this first, or the strips of weeds that we would have inevitably left unturned, with our less than perfect ploughing, would have been a problem. As it was, a few quick passes with some harrows and a roller and both of us could see a great blank canvas for laying out our market garden of vegetables. These subsequent actions also had the fortunate effect of hiding all the messed up bits of plough work!

This episode highlights just one of the many attractions of ploughing. That is, that it brings a kind of newness to a place, a fresh start. Lots of the issues resident in the field can be sorted by the plough. Annual weeds are buried deeply, infective stomach worms for grazing stock almost completely eliminated, surface irregularities evened out, and then the opportunity to put a new crop in, grow anything you like (within the limits of the soil and climate).

It can of course be a somewhat illusory fresh start though; sometimes one is just (literally) burying a problem temporarily. A field full of docks and thistles, or one with lots of compacted tractor ruts (or pig wallows!), will look vastly better after ploughing, but all those problems are still there in the field. One has just succeeded in hiding them for a while.

Even so, to the judicious husbandman or woman, it is still a good point to get stuck in and improve things, it really represents the opportunity of change. Pulling inverted docks after the plough is a back-ache causing job, but most satisfyingly cathartic when compared with trying to lift them in established pasture. Buried compaction can be cured by deeper ploughing where necessary, or by growing deep rooting ‘green manure’ type crops which thrust their roots down and open up the damaged layers underground.

Truth is, simply ploughing a field, notwithstanding all the satisfaction it brings, is a super effective way of achieving a wide variety of results in one remarkably efficient operation. To get the best out of it though requires skill in its operation, judicious choice of how and when to use it, and diligence in following through and dealing with the problems it can hide.

Which all sounds a bit serious and intimidating, but I think if you’ve never tried ploughing and you think it might be for you, for pleasure or for utility, I’d urge you to try it. See if you can find someone to show you the ropes and then... just have a go. I assure you, it can’t turn out much worse than our efforts in the pigs’ field all those years ago, but I suspect you’ll be hooked!