I have a column(char) in a data frame. The column consists of data that is formatted this way: 

```
df <- c("Apr 19 DBH", "Apr 19 PPA", "Apr 19 MI", "Apr 19 Total") 

```

I want to separate the Apr 19 from the following characters, creating 2 columns:

```
Date       Prod
-----------------
Apr 19     DBH
Apr 19     PPA
Apr 19     MI
Apr 19     Total 

```

I can `substr(df, 1, 7)` into a column, but then still need to separate out the characters after position 7. 

I thought `separate` would be a good solution, but the `sep =` looks to require a string of some type. I only have spaces, and in this case, I have 2 spaces. I could probably paste a character into the string and the separate on that, but feels clumsy. Can you separate by only a first character position? Or is there a better way?