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| Examining Blackland Prairie Soil in Garden |
I'll discuss Kettlebell training shortly as today my muscles are glowing from the Garden Workout. As mentioned in an earlier post, I like to get a lot of my exercise in non-traditional ways. Today, the workout consisted of planting four rows of potatoes, which using the straw bale method isn't massively strenuous, and I turned soil using the broadfork to prepare a little over 120 square feet of garden plot. Every year I tackle garden bed preparation over small chunks as performing such a task over the entire 1000 square feet of garden would lead to exhaustion, blisters, and massive muscle soreness. Although I have considered renting or buying a rototiller, I find that manually digging and turning the soil provides a great workout and somehow makes my soul feel good.
Sometime last year I stumbled upon a youtube video of someone preparing soil using a broadfork. That tool immediately caught my eye as it is quite efficient in preparing beds without as much strenuous work as using a shovel to turn soil, or the noise and soil pounding intensity of pulverizing the soil with a rototiller. So in January I purchased a broadfork from Valley Oak Tools as their video of how the fork was constructed showed great thought in dealing with the stresses involved in forking soil. In the video below you can see a bit of how I do the work. I forked the soil in two passes, north-to-south, and east-to-west, the latter being much faster and easier. It took 40 minutes to prepare that 120 square foot block of garden soil. After I prepared the soil, I furrowed two rows with a hoe into which I planted 80 yellow onion sets.
What I love about garden workouts is my muscles glow with that touch of soreness that lets me know they've been used properly, and I get the added benefit that, God and His weather willing, my garden will produce a harvest of food. To me, there's no comparable secondary benefit to the gym or jogging and thus the double joy of a Garden Workout.
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