Digging the daffodil bulbs

Digging the daffodil bulbs is our main occupation in early summer, we start during the last week in November and plan to have them out by Christmas. This has only happened once but we still persist with this dream. It takes four people to operate our bulb digging machine which is a heavily modified (in the fashion of Heath Robinson gadgets) Port potato digger. Generally strong young school/uni students are employed and our regular part timers fill in the gaps and help with the shed work.

Requires tractor driver (me), one person removing the dirt riding on the back of the machine, another taking off the filled bags and labelling and one walking behind picking up the fall through bulbs. The tractor moves up the row at about 1km per hour.

View from tractor of the dirt, bulbs and rocks that comes up and needs to be sorted before being bagged.

View of one of the piles of rocks we have collected this year. We are in a particularily rocky part of the farm and rather than throw them back we have been collecting them and they will be spread on the access track which is in a rather sad state of bumpiness. These rocks or "floaters" can cause the digging machine to jam if they are the right size to fall through. Only once have we done a full row this season without a jam, very frustrating and tedious and it makes digging slower.

Early rain and then a sunny afternoon, max 25 C min 10 C with 7.6 mm of rain.  We managed 3 rows of slow digging in the afternoon, cleaning bulbs in the shed in the morning, did some office work and more cabling in the house.