The harvest of giant sweet potatoes from the kitchen garden continues, but, as Farmer Rob explains with some remorse, the harvest should have taken place weeks earlier. Many of the potatoes are way too big, and many of them have split.

Farmer Rob also demonstrated that in every sweet potato harvest, there's at least one sweet potato that looks almost exactly like a rat (including whisker- like roots.)

Renovations to the interior and exterior of the farmhouse continue...

Howell Farm's annual fall festival is coming soon -- October 5 and 6. The highlight of the festival is wheat threshing, with a historic wheat thresher powered by our charismatic steam engine.

But this year, the steam engine needs some maintenance work, and it might not be completed in time for the festival. So what did farmer's use before steam engines, but after the days when their best option was beating the wheat with a stick?

Farmers in the 1800s relied on animal power. Similar to a PTO on a tractor, draft horses or oxen would walk on treadmills or in circles around a gear, and and their movement would power a spinning flywheel. Canvas bands were attached to the flywheel, and the other end of the canvas band was attached to a flywheel on a farm machine, such as a wheat thresher or fodder chopper. As the animals walked, the machines worked.

Farmer Rob has been busy preparing Howell Farm's ring power for duty, in case it's needed to thresh some wheat.

The pig pictured above is eating some ground corn, but the farmers learned yesterday that what these pigs really love is sweet potato leaves.

In preparation for the sweet potato harvest in the kitchen garden, the vines and spade-shaped leaves of the plants were removed. A test potato was dug and it was enormous. (Photo still to come.)

On a hunch that the pigs would enjoy the leaves, Farmer Rob and Intern Virginia threw a huge pile into the pigpen. Sure enough, within a few hours, every last morsel was devoured.

A quick search on the Internet reveals that sweet potato leaves are routinely used in Asia, and increasingly in Africa, to feed cows and pigs. The sweet potato is especially useful as livestock feed in the developing world because it can grow in harsh conditions with minimal inputs:

http://www.ilri.org/node/2759

After a productive few days of plowing, Jim and John (the oxen) have graduated to their next job: pulling the disc harrow across the recently harvested potato field. Potatoes missed during the harvest are still coming to the surface, though at this point many of them are getting sliced and diced.

With Intern Virginia at the helm, the oxen look to be in fine form as they journey through the fields. Once this job is done, it's on to the spring-tooth harrow for more field preparation. Then it will be time to plant the wheat.

In the next field over, Farmers Ian and Larry ended their day of plowing early after only a few rounds. Although by no means are we facing drought conditions, the rain over Howell Farm has been sparse these past few weeks and the ground is now too hard for good plowing.

Yesterday was warm for mid-September—87 degrees and sunny. But today, 70 degrees and overcast, made for a nearly perfect day of fall plowing.

This morning, in the recently harvested potato field, Jim and John (the oxen) are showing vast improvement in their plowing technique. Their first time pulling a walking plow at Howell Farm was August 30, just two days before the plowing match, and their subsequent plowing match performance was less than championship-worthy.

But since then, Farmer Rob and Intern Virginia have been putting in two-to-three hour days with the oxen, and the results are starting to show. An increase in the oxen’s strength and fitness certainly helps, but so does the rhythm of now working on a regular basis. Farmer Rob says the cooler weather is a factor as well. Oxen don't like hot summer days.

This year’s potato field will soon be planted with wheat or spelt, but the plowing is still turning up some healthy looking potatoes that were missed the first time around.

Meanwhile, out in the field that was used for the plowing match, Farmer Ian (the winner of the match, as it happens) is finishing the plowing job with Jack and Chester.

Farmer Jeremy reports that Bill the draft horse continues his recovery from a leg injury, and is able to pull heavier and heavier loads of manure each week. Jeremy doesn’t want to rush the rehab program, however, so Bill might not be use for plowing this fall. Plowing is one of the hardest jobs on the farm for the horses, as well as the oxen, and the farmers too.

The Howell Farm chicken house is not generally known as a monument to cleanliness. (It is, after all, a chicken house.) But today, after it’s yearly scrubbing and bleaching, it’s looking considerably cleaner than my apartment. This won’t last long. The chicks that arrived in the spring are now full-fledged chickens, and they’ll be moved into their new home sometime this week.

Farmer Ian spread the chicken's potent, nitrogen-filled manure across the farm fields this morning, another contribution the chickens make to the farm beyond their nutritious eggs.

A slideshow of photos from the 2013 plowing match by Jeff Kelley.