50 pounds of rye seed in the ground!  (Actually, I gave Kayla about four pounds, so I guess I can only take credit for 46.)

Where did I fit all that rye?  Since my oats went in early this year, most started to bloom in late September, so I scattered rye seed amid the oats and had Mark weed-eat the latter down.  (You can see the result, several weeks later, in the photo at the top of this post.)  Meanwhile, I planted rye in the beds where crops like tomatoes and squash died after our first frost, and in empty soil left after digging the fall carrots.

Of course, I still had rye seeds left after all that, so I started moving dirt around.  I posted here about my gully terraforming experiment, and you'll need to visit my chicken blog this week if you want to read about the swales Kayla and I dug in the newest pasture to create tree alleys (and about the cute box turtle we found in the process).  All of that digging created bare soil, so I topped it off with rye and finally hit the bottom of the bag!

Of all our cover crops, I feel like rye handles wet soil the best and produces the most biomass, so planting a full bag of rye feels a bit like investing in an internet startup company --- a little bit of effort for (hopefully) a lot of return.  I'll report in the spring about whether the rye I planted latest (November 1) covered the ground adequately, and about whether I have any problem mow-killing it before our summer crops go in.