FARMING IN THE FOOTHILLS
No Easy Task

Recently a heavy disk loosened the soil. Here, Ernesto is doing some skilled tractor driving to scrape the soil flat behind the disk. He had to deal with sideways drift of the scraper due to side-fall on the hillsides.

Eduardo is following the scraper with our heavy roller to push the cobbles down into the soil and create a flat surface. The roller will be used repeatedly because cobbles tend to "float" to the surface as the clay in the soil expands and contracts with moisture.

The end product is a flat surface that is satisfactory for nut farming. Rock removal will be an enduring project on this land. In this picture you can clearly see that we are dealing with different soil types. Unfortunately, cobbles are characteristic of both soils.