Black Diamond Canyon Kitchen

The birth of Black Diamond Canyon Farm

2011-02-04T13:21:00.008-07:00

In December I officially made the jump from gardner to urban farmer with the purchase of a city business license and the acquisition of a CRS tax-id number. Considering my affinity to a sense of place, I named it Black Diamond Canyon Farm. While I had pondered the move earlier, in a sense my hand was forced by the unwillingness of my bank to cash several hundred dollars worth of NM Farmers' market WIC and Senior Nutrition Program checks, that I had legitimately accepted during the latter part of the farmers' market season, unless I provided a CRS number for them to report it under. None the less, the $35 expense and slightly more complicated personal taxes were little burden considering the many benefits I've gained.

Turning a new leaf; the winter of 2010/2011

The excitement and new sense of purpose in planning this coming years' crops being the first of these benefits. Followed closely by making equipment and supply purchases tax-free, and in-time the benefit of having better branding and merchandizing potential should help alleviate my biggest growing hurdle of 2010-- what to do with all the food I grew when customers don't show up at the market and I'm too full to eat anymore and tired of canning it.

In the months since the final harvest of 2010, I've been more than busy both outside in the fields and inside planning. I'll cover all those activities on the new blog/website, www.blackdiamondcanyonfarm.com, but I'll run down a few of the bigger changes now:

With the blessings of several of my neighbors I've more than tripled the square footage of my growing areas for the coming year.
Submitted paperwork to become Organic 'Registered' by NMOCC.
Planted 2500 garlic plants (12 varieties) and overwintered 1000+ various onion/leek transplants to experiment with cold tolerance.
Purchased a really efficient mechanical seeder and professional grade salad spinner/chiller.
Constructed 6' x 160' of protected low tunnels growing winter greens and carrots (on the recent nights plunging to -21 degrees, the unheated tunnels never dropped below 22 degrees above zero- totally within the tolerable temperature range for carrots and baby asian greens).

2010 Photo Wrap Up

2011-01-04T16:56:00.021-07:00

Honestly, this vegetable is the only one that looks better than it tastes. Enjoy the photo, cuz I don't think I'm growing them again.

After downloading 600+ photos from the last 5 months of 2010, I felt I had to add 17 more photos to this blog even though I've already posted the 'last' post. After selling and growing vegetables, the next two most difficult things were taking pictures of everything as 'real' farm work needed to be done, and then later posting and writing about them; the latter two at times seemed superfluous. Please enjoy.

Even if I hadn't made a dime selling vegetables this year, growing food for family, friends, and Gallupians is figuratively the pot gold at the end of the rainbow. Thank You and God Bless!

My farmers' market table, nearing the end of the season

Northern pickling cucumber harvest next to the endless beet bed

Navajo Copper Popcorn grown from seeds purchased from Native Seeds SEARCH. I've never seen this corn for sale at the Gallup Flea Market (many Hopi and Navajo flint varieties are sold there), and none of my Navajo friends have heard it, but it pops into the most platinum blond popped corn you've ever seen. The plants were about 4' tall with two ears each. Corn borer worm damage is a good sign of organic production.

3-year old Chinook Hop rhizomes flowering and ready for harvest

Celebrity tomatoes

Tomatoes, wire, t-posts, and warming water barrels with their polyester cloak of Agribon row-cover fabric pulled back for harvest. This double 60' row, produced 300 lbs. of celebrity, roma, and cherry tomatoes.

Broccoli is a budding yellow flower, and unharvested, they provide the last pollen bees can find very late into the fall. I couldn't find it in myself to pull these frost hardy plants late into October, as they buzzed with black and yellow everyday, after noon.

Basil hugging Gallup bricks. Perhaps it knows that the pesto blender is near.

Hawking veggies in the late afternoon after the last Gallup Farmers' Market, at half of the market price; neigbours and friends got them for free. Rio stood guard, literally; he had put in the house. I made $300 selling vegetables that day, and was thoroughly sunburnt. The season was over.

The rare and super tasty White King Bolete, an edible wild Porcini of the western forests. DO NOT, DO NOT collect wild mushrooms based upon these photos alone. I learned from a mycologist of several decades.

Not all food grows in gardens, some fly's wild above them. New Mexico Mourning Dove, September 2010

More tomatoes to blanch, then can. I canned half of my 300# harvest, ate or sold the rest.

A huge 'wild' radish found downstream of my gardens in a neighbors sandy garden in a 6 cu. foot wheelbarrow. It was huge, and then chicken food.

Nov 28 harvested ugly carrot line-up, pretty ones went to mom and the neighbors.

Nov 29, the last day of gardening, now I'm farming; cutting the rib from collard greens, the hardiest of all winter greens!

The last 'kitchen' post

2010-11-24T17:07:00.006-07:00

Fall's sweet treat ripening

If your reading this last post, you're either my mom, brother, distant co-worker, or a hapless google traveler who likes fresh food grown in the southwest. Sorry, but this blog ended in mid-August.

There was no reason in particular; but I guess everything in general- restrictive free wifi being most notable. My garden kept growing, I kept selling to customers who became my friends long before the final market, and many, many local food developments continued to blossom beneath the radar of the www.

September harvested Brussel Sprouts long before their frost-induced sweet prime; harvest hindsight is 20/20 ish

Before I sign off from Black Diamond Canyon Kitchen, here's a bunch of the local food developments I'd thought about posting, but didn't. They include the constant improvement/refinement of the Ramah area local-food juggernaut (bee and fruit tree workshops, harvest festival, multiple organic beef, lamb, poultry, and dairy producers- read the Ramah Farmers' Market Beet publication!), Gallup's Walk in Beauty CSA biggest season yet, Steve Heil's organic Navajo Tea available at the Co-op, the new local meat packing plant north of Gallup, abundant winter produce grown by Tom Kazmarek at the Community Food Pantry's 3 hoop houses, and so much more! And not to over-look the garden at my school produced over 250 lbs. of green cabbage, and we made the front page of the local paper again with kids smiling over their own huge vegetables. The cabbage, along with potatoes and onions played a role in 10 school lunches for 420 students!

There is so much 'local food' stuff going on in and around the Zuni Mountains!! Alas, though, I'm not the person to write about this stuff and post it on the web. It's all fascinating, and so many people in this region could benefit solely from the knowledge of all these disparate food-growing efforts, but I need to focus my efforts inward for a while, and so this is the last post of the Black Diamond Canyon Kitchen. While I had originally intended to focus this blog on the greater local-food scene, it ended up focusing on my growing and sustainable/season-extending tricks of growing in the high southwest. So, here's a wrap up of how my garden faired.

The market week following my last post was the high-point of the growing season. By my estimates, more than a thousand dollars worth of produce were sold (or distributed: CSA) at the Gallup Farmers' Market that morning. The market had 11 vendors and my stand (a full subaru wagon load) brought me more than $230! For the rest of the season, my sales and the number of customers at the market steadily decreased as the growing and market season gradually wound down, ending on October 9. The second to last week of the market I remember four of us growers, tables half-filled with produce at 10:30, standing alone in an empty downtown walkway; Gallup's farmers' market needs more customers!!!

This 'La Nina' winter brought us an extra month of the fall growing season, and maybe more in my warm canyon on the north side of town, and as I write this I still have produce in the ground. The numerous frosts and freezes (down to 10.5 at the lowest; tomorrow will dive into negative numbers) have produced absolutely the sweetest collard greens (bitter in summer, like candy in winter), brussel sprouts, and carrots. Green onions and August planted carrots continue to grow under row covers and uncovered arugula proved the hardiest fresh green of the fall- resisting even the hardest freezes and only finally succumbing to the blades of the tiller this morning. Other than the over-wintering onions and carrots, the memory of the 2010 harvest persists in my chest-freezer and 50 quarts of tomatoes and various pickles on the pantry shelves. The end of Black Diamond Canyon Kitchen.

Black Diamond Canyon Farm. I'm opening a bank account for the farm on Friday and all the garden beds have been amended with the 14 cubic yards of manure I bought and tilled in this fall (Then most beds were planted with cover cropping (nitrogen fixing and humus building) 'green manures' of clover, rye, and hairy vetch). Three long rows were planted with 550 onion transplants to over-winter in my east field, and the backyard of the foreclosed trailer-house at 318 Black Diamond Canyon became my garlic trials garden with 2500 cloves planted in 6, 50' rows representing 12 varieties of hard and soft-neck garlic. My remaining winter projects include building a small 8 x 25' green-house and completing the paperwork for becoming a 'registered' organic farm in New Mexico.

So, in the end, I owe and enormous thank you to everyone who read my blog and all the supportive and constructive feedback I've received from the first post to the last; I've enjoyed writing every word of it. I mean it, thanks! Sorry to those readers who felt disappointed by my inconsistent posting. I hope to improve the consistency and depth of my postings as I morph the 'kitchen' blog into the blog of my Black Diamond Canyon Farm. Thanks for reading, and more over, thanks for eating my food. -Kevin

Farmer's Market Ceremonial Style

2010-08-17T15:24:00.001-06:00

Not a truck-farm; a bike-farm this week

This past Saturday the Farmer's Market coincided with the Gallup's 89th Inter-Tribal Ceremonial parade in downtown Gallup. If you've never visited or lived in Gallup during ceremonial week, the event is really big deal with thousands and thousands of visitors in town.

Pickling Cucumbers, $3/lbs

The market manager Carole and Pete of Serendipity Farms gave me the heads up that usually Ceremonial weekend was an off-week for the market as road closures all around downtown make it hard for both customers and growers to get to the downtown walkway. Additionally, most people watching the parade are reluctant to buy produce and then carry it for hours in the midday heat before they reach home. Despite the warning, I and most other growers still braved the crowds and where set up much as any week.

Almost fully loaded at 70 lbs

The twist was how to get my dozen or so baskets of produce down there if the roads where closed starting at 6 am. I decided my trusty BOB trailer would suffice at transporting a much paired down harvest, and so I loaded it down with 70 lbs. of the more valuable by weight produce. Onions and beets stayed home. The select harvest included 30 lbs of zucchini, 20 lbs of pickling cucumbers, and 10 lbs. of rhubarb, leeks, shallots, mint and other herbs. My rolled-up table and bags surely brought the total weight up to around 80 lbs, and I gingerly made it south across the train tracks, and along the parade route to the market just as it opened at 8:30. Most regular customers stayed home as predicted, and I spent most of the day explaining what leeks are. Not the usual customer demographics. Yet with perseverance through the end of the parade and beyond (1:15), I finally came home with and empty trailer.

The Harvest Routine

2010-08-05T18:30:00.006-06:00

35 lbs. of red, yellow, and white

Saturday mornings are a busy time for me, starting now around 6 am (minus a minute or two for mint tea and some oatmeal). So, as the height of the harvest season arrives I think I'll have to start getting up earlier to cut, wash, and load the crops. And, none of this is helped by the fact that I have a penchant for staying out late on Friday nights.

The reason I'm starting to dwell on this is because even with help, I'm yet to really bundle any of my crop together, or make it on-time (8:30) to the market. It takes far more time to prepare the onions/scallions/shallots/beets/herbs, etc I've been selling into pre-packaged bundles, but I think pricing by the bundled (twist tied or rubber-banded together), is more comfortable for the customer, and I would probably make more money. Plus, each sale would be a little quicker during the really busy time of market morning (a line 5 deep isn't uncommon when I first arrive each morning). This has all prompted me to really start a harvest morning check-list (I forgot 3 crops again this past week; the over mature cilantro crop is now coriander seed), and start to experiment which crops I could harvest Friday night, without any detrimental effect to the fresh and local food. Mature onions, peppers and bundled fresh onions will be picked this Friday. Maybe zucchini too, but I'm still experimenting/researching if it changes the sugars/sweetness.

The tall rinsing table

Ouch. My aching back! That's unfortunately my overwhelming thought when I'm finally done rinsing the soil from the crops each morning. And I have a rather strong back; 15 years pedaling a bicycle a little faster than the average citizen and a habit of moving dirt has given me two strong 'back-straps' (friends: if ever stranded in the high snowy mountains w/o food, and I've just died, you have my blessing to eat that choice cut first. Ha. creepy. gross)

30 pounds of beets on the rinsing table (tilted)

But now I have a solution to the problem of bending over too far (low faucet), for too long (40 pounds of onions and beets take a while to wash), each Saturday morning. I built two 8' harvest tables.

Light in the beet's low tunnel

The first table tilts at 30 degrees with plastic coated wire mesh running along one side. This lets me tilt the table while rinsing the roots of plants without muddy water running into the edible green leaves. A cable and pulley system supporting one corner allows me to quickly change the table between flat and tilted from a single corner of the set-up. It's rather high at 36" off the deck. This height leaves plenty of room for 35 gallon barrels underneath to catch the spray used in the rinse. Shelves beneath will offer a shady spot for harvested crops.

The second table will have a lower work surface (32") and a sink plumbed with tap water and rain water through the two sides of the faucet. Both water types have their place in the garden--the anti-biotic (good and bad) properties of chlorine being the difference.

Together these tables should make the harvest and planting much easier on my aging body, allow a higher quality of kitchen-clean produce at my stand, and allow recycling of all the water used to clean the harvest. And, in non-tilted mode, the rinsing table doesn't spill your beer. cheers.

Gallup Farmers' Market Week 4

2010-08-04T21:55:00.008-06:00

Gallup Farmers' Market

The Gallup Farmers' Market is in full swing now being the fourth week of the season, and the variety and quantity of produce continues to grow. The biggest thing right now is more customers are needed (I still managed to sell-out by 10 am, and grossed $130; $40 from WIC checks w/o promised price increases over previous weeks:)! The reason I mention the dollar total is that it represents a lot of food; imagine filling a grocery cart with $130 from the produce department.

My neighbors shopping at my stand

New additions this week included leeks from my garden (along with the dozen or so other varieties of produce i've listed in previous weeks' posts- I forgot collard greens, cilantro, and something else.), the most desired being pickling cucumbers, Santa Fe Grande and jalapeno peppers. Giant rutabaga, eggs, and greens were also for sale from Janet Butlers farm, JB Ranch. She generally arrives between 9:30 and 10.

Sid Gillson, again had a bountiful supply of perfect summer squash and zucchini.

Pete and Jan Douglass continue to bring amazing rhubarb, radishes, and fresh greens among other crops and the folks from Fort Defiances' Sunrise School, again have the most amazing french breakfast radishes-- absolutely perfectly sweet half-cream, half crimson spicy delights.

The heavy monsoon rains should bring a bountiful harvest to all the growers this year, yet the much anticipated tomato crop is growing only in anticipation; several more weeks before the love apples ripen. However, large plants and smart season extending should result in Sid Gillson and I (Sid's shared many of his 'secrets' with me:) bringing in a huge crop when they're finally ready; customers needed!

This weeks' recipes shared by customers at the market and elsewhere were:

Tomatillo, onion, garlic, and chipotle pepper powder salsa. blend it 'til the consistency of guacuamole

New potatoes and sauteed leeks with bacon; a thick thunderstorm soup

Summer squash, anyway and with anything!!

(If you have any I haven't mentioned please list it in a comment)

Psssht. Blog readers exclusive: the summer rains and better/smarter husbandry have brought on the largest flush of shiitake mushrooms I've every grown. Available next week from under the table for those that ask only! I'll take everything left home for myself if needed.) $, TBD. Ha, priceless.

Gallup's 'greenest' burger and fries?

2010-07-30T20:01:00.007-06:00

El Morro beef, potatoes, lettuce, onions, and lettuce from BDCK

So, this afternoon as the cumulus clouds built later than normal and All Things Considered drifted through the house (that's 4-6 pm around here) I grilled up a burger; a really 'green' burger. The meat came from the quarter of beef I bought from Charlie Mallory's El Morro Valley Ranch last fall, and the veggies came from my garden. It could have been made entirely from local ingredients, but I took some short cuts.

The first 'love apples' of the season; container grown

The cheese was from Tillamook (could be local goat cheese), and the bun was from 3rd street (Glen's Bakery makes infinitely better jalapeno topped buns, not displayed in the counters but just ask for one; $0.50 each). The red onion, black seeded simpson lettuce, cherry tomatoes (first of the season), and red potatoes were from my canyon. The latter being a 'wild' planting of potato. I don't remember ever planting potatoes in the bed in which this plant grew, but I must of. Expecting nothing much of potato harvest from beneath the un-tended or hilled-up plant, I pulled the 3' diameter lone bush mixed in with the carrots and shallots. To my utter astonishment, 2 lbs. of huge red potatoes came up with the stalk.

"How 'bout them apples?" is all that came to mind

Some perspective; above and below ground

Tomato season... not yet

2010-07-30T19:57:00.004-06:00

They're coming: ripe tomatoes @ the farmers' market in a week (maybe 2 weeks)

2, 40' rows of tomatoes; celebrities left, romas right, covers off

I finally finished the first round of pruning the tomatoes and tying them up to the strands of bailing wire I strung horizontally over each row. It took more than several hours to support each and every heavy bearing branch with sisal twine, but it was finally done. What i'm to do is recreate a vertical trellis with bailing wire that will support 60+ plants in a more fiscally economical fashion than providing a cage to each individual plant (although, tomato cages are extremely cheap, so is soil, at the end of season clearance sales at our biggest of big-box stores in Gallup right now). The only caveat is that you have to track down each fruit bearing stem and tie a neat little sling around each one. Though time consuming, it's a great opportunity to commune with each plant, which in a normal size garden wouldn't be a problem, but with the market-size plots i'm dealing with takes most of a work day. I've also hung the Agribon19 row cover fabric over all the tomatoes to aid germination and speed the ripening of the fruit. The tomato harvest should be heavy this year, and I've already heard that I'll probably have to have a limit on how much each customer can buy at the market; when it rains, it pours.

Carrot ginger soup

2010-07-30T19:55:00.003-06:00

That half-pound carrot I pulled up during the YCC tour of my garden was turned into a heart warming soup during one of these mid-afternoon downpours we've been having of late. The ingredients were: 1 huge carrot, chicken stock, peeled and chopped ginger, shallots, garlic, cumin, salt and scallion greens.
I used a mandolin slicer to break down the carrot, then simmered the bunch (minus the garlic and scallion greens, until the very end) for an hour or so. I used one of those 'blender-on-a-stick' devices to puree it's own pot.

YCC tours the BDCK 'Farm'

2010-07-28T21:15:00.013-06:00

This morning Ella, Tom, and Amy of the Work in Beauty CSA finally succumbed to my anti-scheduling nature and we all coordinated for a long planned tour of my garden. Tom and Ella also work for Gallup's renowned NM Youth Conservation Corps, better known as YCC -- whose employed more than 350 of Gallup's youth over the years building trails,and growing food, probably more things to [woot, woot Karl Lohman]! Being the middle of the work week , Tom and Ella used the opportunity to give a dozen or so of the the YCC gardening crew a tour of my gardens.

Black Diamond Canyon Kitchen's street-side facade

As any good elementary teacher knows, you never talk for more than 5 minutes in-a-row while teaching 8 year-olds, so a rambling hour-plus tour of the garden with like-minded adults and teens left me feeling like I'd being talking for hours. Ha. and I probably had.

Me, talking up broccoli in my Grandpas cut down hip-boots under the shade of a well pruned elm

We covered a range of topics during our walk ranging from soils, nutrients, and watering to plant life cycles, genetics, and marketing, Crop protection, planning, and successional planting were common themes throughout our discussions.

Starting with the carrots, shallots, and sandy soil am

endments, I pulled a half-pound carrot demonstrating the difference in root size between a carrot that goes to seed early with a large showy white flower versus one that resists bolting and grows a large harvestable carrot. Danvers variety in this case.

Three dudes in red and hats; tomatoes and peppers too

We moved on to the 15+ year old apple, pear, and apricot trees planted by the Washburns' years ago. Plagued by borer beetles and my reluctance to use a systemic pesticides they're struggling in the clay soils. Late frosts killed any chance of fruit this year.

Then we looked at the remnants of the snow peas and shelling peas planted next to the warming stone wall, followed by the recently pruned and tied covered rows of tomatoes. Bolting lettuce and spinach in the waterlogged original 8x4 garden was next. We then checked out the water logged maturing onions and radishes I'm about to harvest seed from.

The half-pound start to pureed carrot ginger soup

In the backyard was the fortified chickens, flooded peaches, commitment of perennials, cabbage and friends, lodged corn, pumpkins, neon potato beetle eggs, beat up beet greens, dirty cucumbers, and monster kochia weeds. 2 fox dogs, alert foxes, and no rabbits. P.S. Water timers and shiitake mushroom oak logs soaking in rainwater.

So the 'farm' in the title of this post comes from the inspiration I got from the NM senior WIC farmers' market checks that I accepted last week, addressed to, 'New Mexico Authorized Farmer.' That last word. Ha.

Pruning Tomatoes

2010-07-26T22:20:00.003-06:00

Celebrities: left-side trimmed, right-side dense and wanting

I think that since people have only 4 irreplaceable appendages we have a hard time with the concept of culling anything in the garden full of limbs, especially otherwise healthy branches of some tomato plant we've nurtured since it was wee little one. Who wants their left index finger cut off for the greater good of the others?

But, that's just what tomatoes need: Branches cut; nutrients concentrate in the remaining tissue; fruit swells, then ripens; harvest; we smile.

This season I planted my tomatoes much closer together than recommended, 18" vs. 30", and I'm gambling that heavy pruning of the lateral stems and extra suckers (fruit bearing branch growing diagonally between the vertical stem and horizontal branch), and purposeful staking will produce a consistent and heavy crop of the celebrity and husky red cherry tomatoes. In all I have a 105' of tomato rows planted this year. I took nearly 5 hours to prune and tie the tomato branches to the four strands of horizontal galvanized wire above each row. Most of my tomatoes are also under the protective cover of agribon-19 synthetic row covers. This keeps them warmer day and night, and helps lessen the negative effects of wind and rain on the self-pollinating yellow flowers.

Pruning really is one of the more nuanced skills in the garden. As a relative amateur, I really liked this recent LA Times article on pruning tomatoes; it's among many other great local food/farmers' market articles on the LA Times website. They also have the best Science/Environment bureau reporting of any newspaper in country, in my opinon.

BDCK.com in the local paper

2010-07-26T20:48:00.006-06:00

Over the past two weekends the Gallup Independent sent their reporter, Leslie Wood-Klopfer, and photographer, Adron Gardner to the Gallup Farmers' Market. They published a pretty neat and representative story on the farmers' market on page 2 of the Monday, July 26th edition. Short-handed and covering every story in town, the photographer got a sweet picture of me having a good time selling the last little bit of the 2nd week's harvest. They also mentioned this blog after a couple quotes from yours truly.

Since the Gallup Independent doesn't offer any option for reading the full-text of articles on-line (let us please subscribe, online!!), i'll post the full-text of the article in this same post in several days for those of my loyal readers who live out of town. In the article Ms. Wood-Klopfer covered everything from the Work in Beauty CSA to customer reactions, including some choice quotes from the true local gardening sage, Sid Gillson. The only clarification needed: my 'family' misquoted in the article, consists only of me... and two dogs; 'still working on the rest of it:)

Gallup Farmers' Market Week 3 and Recipes

2010-07-25T17:24:00.009-06:00

The Gallup Farmers' Market really seemed to kick into gear this week. Several more vendors were set-up (7 booths in total) selling a variety of produce, home-made crafts and beautiful clothes, and sustainable living/recycling information. But, the biggest change was the lively groups of elderly people with their $4 WIC Farmers Market checks in hand, right when the market opened! The Gallup Independent also had their reporter and photographer preparing a story about the market. I was without a camera this week at the market.

The senior WIC program; NM is far more progressive than we're given credit for!

As with each week yet this season, I sold 80% of the produce I brought in the first 20 minutes. I love the fact that most of my crop goes to appreciative people who will surely let little go to waste, but discussions with other growers and feedback from customers will prompt me to raise my prices a little in the coming weeks. Though I've said it before, I'll reiterate I don't do this for the money (the therapeutic value of growing food is priceless), it's really nice to have such a fun time trading a dozen produce-filled baskets (a full Subaru wagon worth) for spending money the rest of the week ($72 this week:)

The candy-cane stripped Chioggia Beet- an italian heirloom- 1 of 4 beet varieties i've had for sale

The Saturday morning harvest began again this week at 7:30 and I made it to the market around 8:45 (the second to last grower to arrive, I was stuck with the less desirable sunny spot at the south end of the alley). I would've arrived significantly later, as the growing size of the harvest is taking longer and longer to bring in, if it weren't for the self-less volunteer help of my friend, Jessi- now an expert at rinsing onions, shallots, and beets. Not to mention an infinitely better retail sales manager than myself. Thank you!!!

So, in all I brought 16 different varieties of herbs and produce to the market, including pickling cucumbers and medium yellow dutch shallots for the first time this season. The former selling instantly in 6, $1 bunches of 7-8 small cucs. The latter in bunches of 5 for a dollar. Also for sale was a large head of cabbage ($3), white onions (10/$1), garlic ($1), rosemary, mint, sage ($1/bunch), collard greens, yellow beets, chioggia beets, cylindria beets (2-3/$1), bulls blood beets, cocozelle zucchini (striped italian heirloom), pepo zucs (round and great for stuffing), and male zucchini flowers (4/$1).

One of the best things about this week's market was hearing of how customers had prepared my produce from previous weeks. Here are some of the more memorable (i'll write them down in the future) recipes I heard:

Strawberry, watermelon salad topped with my mint

Zucchini flowers stuffed with braised mutton and rice

Zucchini flowers stuffed with crumbled goat cheese, battered, and fried like a chile relleno

Zucchini squash (large) stuffed with its chopped self, onions, cheese, and bread crumbs

Chioggia beet salad with goat cheese, walnuts, and balsamic vinegar

Mint leaves frozen individually in ice-cubes for a pretty aperitif garnish

The Gallup Farmers' Market runs each Saturday morning from 8:30-10:30 in the downtown walkway between Aztec and Coal street. The market manager is Carole Palmer and vendor booths are $5/day.

When it rains, it pours!

2010-07-25T17:00:00.005-06:00

1550 gallons + 2 35-gallon barrels of rainwater; more falling in the yard

So, suddenly the thing we need the most, rain, has now become the problem. Flooding monsoon thunderstorms swept into Gallup this week. Torrents of rain and scary lightning left substantial amounts of soil and rock in Gallup's streets, the Puerco River flowing, waterlogged gardens, and at least 8" of mud in my peach tree filled gabion dam in my hillside arroyo.

Popcorn flattened by the storm

The downpours also turned my canyon's paved road on the city's north side virtually into a floatable southwest waterway as cascading water lapped over the tops of the curbs and high against the sides of houses in the turn at the canyon's mouth. The soaking rains and strong winds also knocked down most of my popcorn crop as the ponding water turned my clay filled soil, which lacks the structure of adequate organic content, to mud soup.

My hand-dug flood control canal, sweet corn, and 3 rows of potatoes

I'll turn off the automated drip-irrigation off for the next week or more, and wait for the saturated soil to dry enough before tilling the seed bed for fall crops of broccoli, radishes, lettuce, carrots, and spinach. I'll also keep the potato drip lines turned off even longer, as they're prone to developing potato blight when too wet (eg. cause of Irish potato famine).

Gallup's Rio Puerco flowing

However frustrating, the damage to the garden and around Gallup was minimal and definitely insignificant when compared to the devastating effect of storms spawned by the same tropical moisture system that brought deadly raging ash filled floods to Flagstaff's communities below the burned slopes of the recent Schultz forest fire. God bless that burned mountain.

Gallup's future water source? The San Juans of CO

2010-07-23T21:31:00.008-06:00

Despite 2000 gallons of rainwater harvesting capacity (around 9K gallons annually), my garden still grows predominantly from 'fossil water,' mined deep below Gallup by our city's wells; it's something I'm not comfortable with. I'll post a full description of my extensive automated drip irrigation system and an expose of exactly how much city water I use growing food soon. I first posted about my water issues here in 2009.

Which water source will connect to this drip hose in my garden?

I recently spent some time at the source of what could be our future water supply: the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. The water and snowmelt flowing out of this vast mountain range would be carried south from the San Juan river drainage to Gallup and the surrounding parts of Dine via a pipeline. The rhetoric on all sides of this issue is necessarily alarmist, and I have many mixed feelings about the need and effects of the Navajo-Gallup San Juan pipeline. The history of the multi-multi million dollar project is summarized well here. Anyway, here's a brief photo tour of my trip to the headwaters of the San Juan River in the Weminuche Wilderness, specifically the Highland Mary Lakes region; one of our most 'local' alpine lake trout fisheries.

The Highland Mary Lakes

Imitating the trout's local food: (in focus) a size 16 Adams and friends, all tied by me.

The only one of 4 dozen non-native and stunted brook trout I caught that was kept for dinner. What's more beautiful: my new Sage 3 weight, the 'elephant head' flowers, or the fish?

A native cutthroat- caught and released by Stefan

My onions, garlic, thyme, and the little brookie

Trip mates between lakes @ 12,400'- that's me on the left.

Navajo Copper Popcorn

2010-07-19T21:07:00.008-06:00

Navajo Popcorn Tassel

I planted this heirloom variety of native corn on April 10th. It emerged on May 7th. Hopi pintos joined the small popcorn kernels driven into each divet formed by the corn planting stick. Read about the planting by clicking here. Both varieties of seed came from the non-profit seed bank, Native Seeds: SEARCH. Staccato.

Can you see the three different leaves of the sisters?

The corn and beans emerged at the same time, but the former seemed to grow better in the newly manure-amended soil. Last week the tassels began to emerge on the corn that has grown 3-5' tall. That's taller than the expected height of the generally shorter (popcorn) family of Zea mays. The Navajo hubbard squash was transplanted really late, in mid-summer, and may or may not produce a crop. The tall corn shades the sensitive beans, who in turn fix nitrogen from the air benefitting the corn. The squash also loves the bean's nitrogen and in exchange, their broad leaves smother weeds that would otherwise smother the beans, but wouldn't hurt the corn; All for one, one for all.

Gallup Farmers' Market 2010 Week 2

2010-07-19T06:55:00.010-06:00

The 7/17/10 harvest

I'm no farmer. I was reminded of that realization Saturday morning, when once again, I was sleeping my soundest when I should have been up and about in the cool dawn air picking spinach or something of the sort. Instead, it was 7:30 when I finally dragged myself from the covers; 1 hour to harvest and get to the market that opens at 8:30.

Me harvesting (out of frame), Rio scanning for fox/rabbit

Harvesting the produce that wilts the least first, I started with a wheel barrow load of 140 immature white onions (10/$1) topped with the a couple dozen mixed beets (striped Chiogga and classic bulls blood), some already 4" around. The onions went quickly into a water bath to loosen the dirt from the roots and the beets got a cursory rinse.

Citrusy lobed leaves of the nutritious weed Purslane amongst the cucumbers

Next, I grabbed the pruning shears and a large basket for the zucchini and male squash blossoms. Since I'm only harvesting the fast-growing zucs once a week, several of the cute little baby fruit from Tuesday had already grown into foot-long monsters! Yet most were in the preferred 6-9" range. Combining the striped cocozelle with the round pale green pepo zucs, I brought a 20 lb. basket to the market. The edible male flowers I cut (4/$1) buzzed with bees long after I filled a small basket with the 6" golden trumpets.

Collard Greens

Rosemary, sage, mint, and spearmint filled the next small basket. 8 am. Yellow dutch shallots growing in too shady of a bed were pulled next (most of my shallots are elsewhere and triple the size; harvest starts next week) and rinsed. The green leaves imitating a luxurious scallion.

The last three baskets were filled with collard greens, the last of frilly lettuce heads, and the native 'weed' purslane. The latter being a relatively novel addition to salads with a citrusy crunch.

First cabbage head to be harvested

Finally, fearing the cabbage worms may leave me with nothing but swiss cheese like cabbage if I waited too long, I cut the 2" wide stem of a green cabbage and carried the whole plant to my harvest staging area. It measured nearly 4' across with a nice 10" head (I think I got $3 for it). Filling the entire Subaru with baskets of food I was out the door at 8:25! Even without taking up the generous offer of a harvest assistant yet-- a 55 minute harvest! I forgot the garlic at home though.(

Work in Beauty CSA's nice handwriting (and produce)

The market was again full of the early customers when I arrived at 8:45. In addition to the regular Work in Beauty CSA distribution table and myself, this was the first week of the season for market-regulars, Serendipity Farm from Vanderwagon.

Serendipity Farm's early-season table

Most customers from last year would remember farmer Pete Douglass's produce and amazing woodcrafts; real wood toys from only $10!!! Pete also had flyers/maps inviting people to visit their farm in Vanderwagon; what a great chance for kids to see where/how food is grown and beat the Saturday morning rush for their fresh produce. I'll visit him and his wife soon and post a story. Handmade native jewelry was also for sale that morning.

Bull's Blood beets and their greens

Market manager Carole Palmer was out of town and many regulars attended the bee workshop in Ramah, so the morning felt a little less busy than the previous week. Though the number of customers was up from the first week, and with a larger harvest, I made $65 selling out of everything but the purslane by 10:30.

... STILL watching the hills; the best fox dog ever!

The fee to sell crafts or produce is $5/day or $15/season, and as summer crops ripen, more and more backyard growers will come out each weekend. Hopefully, the number of customers will also grow each week. Contrast the low prices at our farmer's market with the squabbles and insane fees the LA Times described at southern California farmers' markets in this article.

Potato Tending

2010-07-16T23:30:00.005-06:00

Ha, fruitless potato beetle fornication; they're dead

Today I finally 'hilled-up' the fingerling potatoes planted in late May. Potatoes grow new tubers off of lateral shoots coming off of the stem growing from the seed potato, and burying the lower portions of the green foliage is a requisite for a good potato harvest. Or so I've read. It provides more stem/branch intersections from which to grow new potatoes sheltered from the bitter alkaloid forming effects of sunlight.

Dark mounds of top-soil prior to tilling and hilling

I planted these potatoes late, and I'm probably hilling them up a little late too. Spending more time with the spuds, I also noticed and killed a half-dozen potato beetles. They make a loud crunch between two rocks and lay these day-glow orange eggs on the bottom of leaves. They squish rather than crunch.

Cultivating between rows of buried 'taters

I planted these potatoes in rows that were a little too raised above the surrounding soil. I've had to add a cheap sandy top-soil mix, tilled with the native clay soil, to the inter spaces between the rows in order to have enough soil to pull up and over the lower portion of the growing stems. The new tiller with a 17" wide tiller box fits perfectly between the rows and makes easy work of the compacted clay.

Who left the gate open?

2010-07-16T22:54:00.000-06:00

So, occasionally we're all reminded of how some people in life have it a hell of a lot harder than we do. I know that's the concept at play when I've lost tillers, turkeys, and wet Carharts to the sometimes sticky, yet needy hands of my neighborhood. I now lock-up the tiller and raise only chickens. The carharts still hang in the sun longer than they should twice a week.

Is this your boot?

This time I returned home from a few days at the cabin to find an up-turned and trampled 5-gallon container tomato plant. Next to it lay a cell phone charger and a pair of steel-toed boots.? Not knowing the extend of visit, the dogs and a sharp hand-tool preceded me into the house. Nothing. Sweet. Later on, Ricardo from next door politely told me of a stumbling drunk trying to sleep under my motion-sensor lights the previous night that he called the P.C. on. They left his boots behind, and the tomato will be fine.

Smoked Trout and Pea Soup

2010-07-13T09:15:00.000-06:00

Salt, trout, brown sugar, and water

Ya, so I don't know if these things go together in the culinary world, but it's smoked trout and pea season in my world. The former coming from McGaffey Lake and the latter from my neglected row of peas. This year the trout seem harder than usual to coax into the little blue kayak, most hitting on pheasant tail nymphs as opposed to my tried-and-true sparkly wooly bugger. All home-tied.

Sans skin after smoking, alternating fat and flesh

With the help of a couple generous strangers at the lake and a couple days catch, I finally had a half-dozen foot-long trout ready for the electric smoker at our Cabin 34. After 5 hours of wet brine (salt and brown sugar) and 5 more hours of intermittent alder smoke at 140 degrees, the trout were transformed into late-night lox.

Shucking Peas

The pea-soup was the first I'd made from fresh peas, and despite two people with two open computers at the cabin, the recipe was entirely off the top of our heads; free of on-line help. I sauted garlic in butter, added chicken stock, cubed potatoes, and the bowl of shucked peas. Water plus moderate heat for 5 hours, covered, and we had fresh and tasty pea soup. Perfect on a stormy monsoon afternoon.

The only thing better than the fishing at McGaffey is the mountain biking trails; IMBA TrailCrew visits Cabin 34

Farmers' Market Season is Here!

2010-07-10T17:45:00.007-06:00

My baby Italian cocozelle with flowers on the way to the market

The Ramah Farmer's Market started several weeks ago, and Gallup's Farmers' Market began this past Saturday, July 10th. The market in Ramah is the larger of the two with 1-2 dozen craft and produce vendors, and very active group of volunteers. It's easy to keep up with the numerous events and resources in the Ramah area by reading their bi-monthly newsletter, The Ramah Farmers' Beet. At the height of the harvest season in August, the RFM attracts 350+ visitors/day. My favorite items from there are Windy Ridge goat cheese (look for the lovely Jesse Lee Grey sitting on the south side of the horseshoe with two nondescript coolers behind her table) and the Nolo bait (organic grasshopper-cide) for only $3/pound!!! It runs from 10-1 pm, next to Backwoods Pizza on Ramah's west-end. I'll take pictures next time I head south.

The early shoppers equally splitting up the carrot harvest

In comparison, Gallup's Farmers' Market is no slouch. Sure, it's not as big yet, but each year it is growing and last year's market days had an impressive variety of produce, baked goods, crafts, and information booths. This year's season started on July 10 and will continue through September, I think. A nice addition to the market this year is the Work in Beauty, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) booth where they'll be distributing CSA shares and selling extra produce.

Cynthia of The Coffee House bought half of that day's garlic

After sleeping fitfully all night in anticipation of the first market day, I awoke around 7 ready to start harvesting, only to see that it was raining. On my list of items to harvest where radishes, large green onions, carrots, purslane, spinach, collard greens, baby zuchinni, male squash flowers, mint, rosemary, and the garlic was already pulled.

Top to bottom: Baby finger, Danvers, Scarlet Nantes

The onions, carrots, and radishes took some time to wash and tie into bundles and so I left home at 8:45 without any purslane, spinach or collard greens in tow:( [Blog editing note: I just saw a Lance Armstrong RadioShack ad that said it's not cool for guys over 30 to use emoticons. WTF, and when did he get so awesome?]

Carole Palmer (market manger) and the sold-out table of Sunrise School for Ecological Living, Fort Defiance, AZ

I'm not sure whether the market officially opens at 8:30 or 9, but when I arrived there was already 2 booths set up and already sold out of their onions. Within 10 minutes I had sold all the garlic and carrots. Get there early! Though, Mrs. Butler generally shows up later (usually 10 ish) with a huge variety of produce (this week she had eggs, turnips, cole-crop starts, and woven baskets benefiting the market). Paul and Mary-loo of the Sunrise School had radishes, greens, pepper transplants, and onions grown by students at their school in Arizona.

The CSA crew in a rare moment of chilling

Here are the prices I settled on: garlic ($1/head); onions (10/$1); carrots in a bunch(5/$1); mixed radishes (10/$1); mint ($1/bunch); baby zucchini and squash flowers (4/$1). By 10:20, I had sold everything and made the most rewarding $45 ever! Of course, it's not about the money; best of all I met many great new people and old friends in that shady walkway downtown. In theme, the best over-head saying of the day was, "I don't spell 'profit' with an f."

The Butlers stand

In all, the first market day of year in Gallup went well. The quantity and variety of produce available will expand greatly over the next month as warm season vegetables come into season. Carole Palmer mentioned the WIC food assistance program will be up and running in a few weeks attracting many low-income and elderly customers to the market. And hopefully some of the usual growers and vendors from the Vanderwagon area will return to the Gallup Farmers' Market, opting for Ramah this week. I'll have a steady supply of onions, shallots, and garlic at my stand each week, in addition to the rotating menagerie of warm season crops coming into season.

Garlic Harvest 2010

2010-07-10T16:21:00.006-06:00

That 'root' is wiggling; happy soil, happy plants!

9 months to the day after planting garlic cloves on a warm day in early November, this week I pulled-up my best garlic harvest ever! The soft-neck California white garlic cloves I bought at the La Montanita Co-op to use as seed garlic produced 100 impressively large and pungent bulbs; they're actually as big as store-bought garlic, yet much crisper and more flavorful! Click here to read my November post about planting these.

I had to use a shovel to lift the bulbs intact

After spending the cold-winter establishing their roots, the garlic leaves first emerged in early January. They must be made of anti-freeze....because....well, they didn't freeze on some damn frigid winter nights. In April I gave them a feeding of organic fish emulsion (high in nitrogen for leaf growth). I began consistently watering the two garlic rows in early April. By this point each plant had 8 - 12 leaves and stood 18+" tall, yet if you pulled one to eat as 'green' garlic you'd notice no swollen bulb at the base-- it doesn't start to swell until the summer. As summer approached I selected a couple plants to monitor the bulb growth by carefully removing the soil from around the bulb and checking them periodically. In mid-June, the bulbs were just starting to take shape and I gave the garlic it's last fertilizer, organic mori-bloom with a nutrient content of 0-10-10 (no nitrogen, and lots of phosphorus for bulb growth).

Before rinsing

By late June I reduced the amount of water they received so the soil wouldn't be overly saturated and lead to rotting of the protective white sheath covering the bulb. As the leaves progressively turned brown and shriveled, starting with the bottom-most leaves and then proceeding up the plant, I read everything I could on-line about when to harvest. Most advice on this matter takes one of two forms: either watch the bulbs closely and harvest when there are 2-4 sheaths remaining over the cloves (probably more precise), or , harvest when the top part of the plant (leaves) turn brown. Using the former method, I harvested on July 7th. The upper-most 2-3 leaves on the plants were still green, but the stalks were mostly dry and starting to fall over at their base. The timing must have been perfect because only a couple cloves emerged with their protective sheaths nearly gone (I'll keep all these to eat at home), and all of the others were intact and swollen to their maximum size. I'll sell all of the larger bulbs at the Gallup Farmers' Market this year and cook with the smaller ones.

Topbar Beekeeping Workshop in Ramah, July 17&18

2010-07-10T15:41:00.005-06:00

The great people at the Ramah Farmers' Market (Association) have organized another fascinating workshop featuring another of New Mexico's sustainable agriculture super-stars (I missed the Tooley fruit tree workshop in the fall, but read about it in one of the fall issues of the Ramah Farmers' Beet)! For this workshop they've coaxed Les Crowder out of the Rio Grande valley and mountains of northern New Mexico where he frequently offers beekeeping workshops, and he's coming to Ramah on July 17 & 18. Please call Kate Wilson (RFM manager- 783-4704) to sign-up in advance for this workshop; they really need every interested person/couple to attend as they've barely met the minimum number of students that would make the long trip from Rio Lucio worth it for Les. Browse his website at www.fortheloveofbees.com

If you're unfamiliar with topbar beekeeping, it's promoted as a cheaper, simpler, and more natural alternative to the traditional method of using vertically stacked Langstroth hives. For more info on the workshop read the text in the photo above. To read my August 2009 post about beekeeping in Gallup, click here.

Other local bee/honey news: The Gallup YCC planned on expanding Karl's 3 hives to 12 this year with the honey for sale at the Gallup Farmers' Market later in the season. I'm unsure if everything went as planned; earlier in the spring Karl mentioned the bee colonies would arrive on May 19th. Last weekend I also learned from Kate Wilson that the Zuni High School is keeping more than a dozen hives this year and honey may already be for sale at Halona Plaza in Zuni!

Bragging about Broccoli

2010-06-23T11:20:00.005-06:00

Two of a dozen broccoli heads almost ready for harvest

In my (almost too) densely planted bed of cole crops (cabbage, collards, brussels), the broccoli has done really well this year. In prior seasons I've experienced watching the newly formed flower heads quickly leaving the compact dome we're familiar with from the grocery store, and stretching into elongated stalks each topped with a small yellow flower. They're still edible and delicious, but it does feel really good to finally harvest broccoli that looks like it should.

Low-tunnels in use and under-construction

The difference could be a number of factors with the soil, weather, or variety of broccoli but the most likely difference is using the fabric covered low-tunnel to shade the plants during hot days. I bought the dozen transplants from Holiday Nursery (can't recall the variety) and planted them on April 10th. The clay soil in the bed had been heavily amended with manure early that spring.

Frost and White Peaches

2010-06-23T06:52:00.000-06:00

A June 8th peach blossom!?!

Catching up with old photos, I had to share the rather amazing site of my White Peach still blossoming on June 8th!!! Even with the rather cold spring nights we've experienced this year, that date is long after most varieties of peaches bloom. Most of which happens too early in the spring and a late frost kills the developing buds or fruit. A caveat though, my White Peach was severely water-stressed this spring and looked like it was dead. Only after realizing how dry the soil was in the small gabion-dam orchard did I give it a ton of water, likely saving the tree and triggering the late bloom.

The first Frost Peach

The more reliable peach variety in this region seems to be the aptly named Frost Peach. This variety is one of three different varieties I bought grafted onto a single trunk. The tree (branch) had numerous flowers well into late May, and in early June had produced this baby peach. If it can survive the phalanx of small finches that inhabit my yard, I'll enjoy my first home-grown peach in couple months. Regarding fruit trees in Gallup, my fingers are almost sore from being crossed so much, but I'm really hoping and wishing for this little sweet summer treat.

Hot Summer Days; Cool Summer Nights

2010-06-22T10:12:00.007-06:00

Memorial Day tomato planting (40' row)

Summer 'officially' arrived early yesterday morning, though away from the numerical confines of our calendar it seems like our warmest season arrived more than a month ago. It's been hot! But of course, only during the day; Gallup's incredible diurnal shifts (daily difference between the daytime high temp. and night low) have been expectedly dramatic this month and the NWS forecast is calling for a low of 36 degrees tonight!

Arroyo gazing at the tucked-in peppers/tomatoes

This 50+ degree difference plays havoc with warmth-requiring crops like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers, and I've had to spend more evenings than I ever expected this month pulling the Agribon-19 floating row covers over the 180' feet of row space planted with this sensitive triad. I primarily chose to grow the Celebrity variety of slicing tomatoes, but I also included a half-dozen each of the large yellow tomatoes and husky red cherry tomatoes, and a dozen Roma plants for canning paste. Jalapenos, Santa Fe Grandes, and Poblanos filled the 30' of space alloted to peppers. The large diurnal shift also has an equal but opposite effect on cool-season crops; cool nights prolong the harvest contrasted with hot days that induce the bitter feeling (and taste) of watching the spinach, radishes, onions, and broccoli start to bolt. Having said that, despite a number of weeks with daily high's in the 90's, most of my cool season crops are still producing a decent harvest every other day or so. The snow peas being the least patient, demanding to be harvested just about every day or they'll quit producing at all. I've also been keeping up with the successional seeding of radishes every week or so, and I am about to start harvesting the 3rd planting. The carrots and shallots are growing well, but I haven't convinced myself that they're ready for harvest yet.

A 25' potato furrow about to be filled with sandy topsoil

At the start of the month I planted the 15 pounds of fingerling potatoes I blogged about earlier in the month, and by now the sprouts have emerged and are 2-4" tall. When most of them reach 5-6" tall I'll mound more soil around them, leaving only about an inch of growth showing. These buried stems are where the potatoes will grow. The potatoes filled 125' of row space, and I still have enough seedlings to plant another 25' row of the buttery and nutty tasting gourmet spuds.

Sorry about the long pause between recent posts; needed a mental vacation. I'll post more details about planting warm season annuals like summer and winter squash, beans, and the cucumbers soon. Also something about the various 6 or more legged creatures that my garden unwittingly sustains, and I'm going to try to keep up with and share the many events going on in the Ramah/El Morro area. Again, thanks for reading.

Snow Pea Peas

2010-06-02T13:01:00.004-06:00

Pea with flower adornment

After much anticipation and many fretful frigid nights, the snow peas are flowering and more than living up to fecund reputation. The first day I noticed blossoms and peas hanging on the bed planted next to the warming rock wall, I ate all the peas I could find (12) on the spot. Two days later and the same plants I picked clean over the weekend are ready for another harvest.

Spinach ready for a second harvest in less than a week.

Fingerling Potatoes

2010-05-28T07:38:00.003-06:00

Chitting in the front window

Potatoes should generally go into the ground around May 1st in this region, but I'm still going to plant a late crop of three different types of fingerling potatoes. They should be ready for the farmers' market by mid-August. Harder to find than regular potatoes (still available @ the Holiday Nursery), I ordered 15 lbs. of the Russian Banana, La Ratte, and Rose Finn fingerling potatoes from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply.

First glimpse of light

They cost the steep price of $4.99/lb, but should return quite a bit of that at the market. After receiving a tightly packed box from the growers in Colorado, I began chitting (pre-sprouting) the potatoes by placing them upright in empty planting trays and exposing them to medium light. Normally you would avoid allowing potatoes to green (the color denotes the bitter alkaloids found in the greenery of all members of the nightshade family), but in seed potatoes it helps them get a quicker start once they get in the ground. Something I need, planting at the beginning of June. I'll plant these in a 25x4' row with 3 sandy soil filled trenches in the natural clay soil of the row. Then I'll try not to overwater them, and fend off the grasshoppers with Nolo bait. Fingers crossed.

Radishes, Spinach, and Onions @ the Co-op

2010-05-24T20:56:00.005-06:00

Co-op delivery waiting on the front stoop

Today I learned the Gallup Farmers' market opens on July 10th of this year. Quite a bit later than I was expecting. I was planning on it opening in June so now I'll have a fair bit more produce to sell to the La Montanita Co-op during the early season-- the first snow peas are already flowering. Just in time for a 25 degree night!! Ahhh. Blanket brigade tonight.

I'm getting hung up think months ahead. Just this afternoon I harvested 2.5 lbs of large green onions, 2.5 lbs of bright red radishes, a decent basket of long leaf spinach (oh, it's so sweet), and another ubiquitous basket of baby salad greens. It should be on the co-op shelves by today.

More Spring Greenery

2010-05-21T06:44:00.000-06:00

Young Scarlet Nantes carrot

Long leaf spinach planted in early April

Shiitake mushroom left to its own devices

Shallots grow with many more leaves than onions or garlic

Radishes growing amongst the lettuce

Food Miles

2010-05-20T07:10:00.001-06:00

Sadly I drove this basket to market instead of pedaling

Much of the food selection we have available to us at the supermarket is determined by the practical reality of how and when that food gets to the market. I can now empathize a little more with the growers of those thick-skinned cherry tomatoes and unripe bananas. The problem I'd been struggling with was how to get my lettuce to the Co-op in the freshest condition. Cutting lettuce when it's cold (ie. in the early morning) is much preferable to cutting it during the heat of the day (when I get home from work); it won't wilt as quickly and it's sweeter. I generally leave for work by 7 and the co-op doesn't open until 10. Consequently, I was hesitant to bring more to market.

A serendipitous encounter with the manager of the Co-op at the RMCHS Health Fair (I can't believe one of the main attractions is candy at each booth!?!; Gallup Trails 2010 passed out maps instead!) yesterday solved that. Clearly dedicated to providing Gallup with fresh, healthy, local food, she immediately offered to meet me early in the morning several hours before the store opens when hearing of my concern. And so, there I was a few minutes ago in the crisp morning air cutting the first harvest of my baby red and green lettuce mix-- grown under bed sheets at first, and now under the low tunnel. Cutting a 2'x 2' area of the bed nearly filled half of a bushel basket. I'll also bring down green onions and some radishes later this afternoon.

Not surprisingly, I'm not the only one starting to make a few dollars growing food at home. Check out this LA Times article, Backyard gardens become income generators in lean times.

Container Crops

2010-05-19T22:14:00.007-06:00

Containers awaiting soil and seed

So, sometimes I awake at 1 in the morning panicking that I haven't brought in the flats of transplants or handful of containers susceptible to the precipitous nighttime lows of a clear spring night. Most often it's a well placed emotion and i'll don my favorite Patagonia 'dirtbag' jacket and a pair of Crocs and then spend the next 5-15 minutes carrying flats inside or spreading bed sheets over sprouting rows in the sharply cooling night air.

Container Tomatoes

The most strenuous of these middle of the night tasks is carrying in the 5-gallon containers of cherry tomatoes. While strong fingers and back are a pre-requisite for repeatedly carrying 40 lbs. of damp soil around the house past midnight, I've found the determining factor is mustering the gumption to get out of a warm bed. Sometimes I gamble and stay in bed. I've been lucky this year. And yet despite the up-front costs, the benefits of starting some tomatoes and peppers early in containers will come with time. The key is both are perennials in their natural environment and moving large containers of soil around the yard and house, while cruel to the back, effectively simulates theyear-round growing season. And, oh, their so tasty when the first snow starts to fall in November.

Life is the best art: uneaten thai peppers

I've grown cherry tomatoes and thai hot peppers in containers for the past two years (they also grow better in the ground), and brought the fruiting fall plants inside to my classroom. The harvest continued well through October, but I only let the students sample one of the two fruits. The latter being hotter than fire, and so damn pretty I couldn't bear to uproot the plant or harvest the pods (I also had a ton of outdoor grown thai red peppers already preserved). Numerous varieties of peppers and tomatoes have been selected to excel in the confined root space of a large container and offer a great low-cost season extender for anyone with large south-facing window and some commitment. I've read numerous accounts of digging up and transplanting different pepper varieties at the end of the summer to keep through the winter and then transplant again as well developed plant. I've yet to try it. Maybe this year. Another weird container planting concept is the upside-down hanging containers for tomatoes and other indeterminate vining perennials. Check out this recent NY Times article, Growing Vegetable Upside Down. The technique seems to have some salient attributes in certain circumstances like gardens with limited space and problems with soil-borne pests.

Hanging Hops

2010-05-19T06:25:00.001-06:00

The tallest vine is 23"

The historically famous hop growing regions of the world are found around latitude 48, where long summer day-length allows vines to quickly grow upwards of 20' tall. By contrast, Gallup lies around latitude 35, with considerably shorter summer days. Despite this hops can still be grown here. To compensate for the shorter days I've placed my hops in a full sun location and found they grow well even in the summer heat as long as they get tons of water. Second only to very rich and wet soil, I've found the key to having healthy vines is limiting wind damage to the vines and leaves. While frost tolerant, very cold temperatures below 27 degrees, can also hurt early growth.

Rigging up the trellis

After selecting the most vigorous vines to grow to maturity (the others are trimmed and this year I'm experimenting with transplanting the clippings- so far they seem to be taking), they need to be trained around a sturdy, tall, and taught trellis. Professional hop growers use 18' coconut coir twine, known for its strength and rough texture, for the trellis. I just use cotton twine tied to a 13' ponderosa pole. This year I was a week or two late rigging up the trellis, and a strong wind storm seemed to damage most of the leaves on the vines that had already grown to 2' in length. They seem to be recovering well and I hope to have a decent hop harvest in September.

Low Tunnel Season Extenders

2010-05-18T06:16:00.000-06:00

The low tunnel with sides vented open

I'm so excited about my new low tunnels, a small inexpensive version of a green house or hoop house. They'll serve dual purposes: warming the beds on cool nights and either warming or cooling during the day, depending on which crops they cover. The greens and peas will be kept cooler by opening up the side of the tunnels to vent out the heat and shaded by the 85% light transmission of the fabric. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers will be kept warm day and night by venting the sides less.

The baby lettuce and spinach crop should be ready for the 1st farmers' market of the season

The key ingredient was purchasing a 250' roll of 83" wide (almost 7') row cover fabric called Agribon 19. The extremely light synthetic fabric lets light, water, and air through to the plants but does retain enough heat to provide 4 degrees of frost protection on cold nights. To build a 25' low tunnel I used 3/4" plastic PVC pipes spaced at 30" (10 pipes covers 25' and costs around $18. The pipes are bent and fastened to wooden poles (with electrical conduit straps)that run the length of the bed. Once my pipes retain some of their bent shape with time, I may try the more traditional method of inserting the ends of the PVC into pre-drilled holes in the soil. The fabric is then spread over the frame and the two ends are pulled tight and fastened with rope to a deeply driven stake. At this point the fabric will hold it's place (vented open or closed) in up to moderate wind. But we don't get just moderate wind around here so I'm going to run a piece of string or cord over each hoop, trapping the fabric between the string and the pipe. Sandbags will also be used to weight the fabric down when needed. On days when extreme wind is forecast, I'll just slide the fabric completely to one side of the hoops, and bunch it up against the ground with a heavy weight on the top; why fight the wind with nearly transparent fabric. The final cost for each tunnel breaks down this way: fabric $6; pipes $18; pipe fasteners $3; string and screws $3.

Spring Starts Indoors

2010-05-17T07:40:00.013-06:00

If all of life were this simple: soil+seed+water= life

Do we really learn from lessons of the past? In terms of gardening in the high desert, it seems the 'lessons' to be learned are endless, and each situation is just different enough from those of the past to leave me guessing anew each time. The catalyst for this line of thought runs deeper than these little pots, but it does intersect with these huge squash seeds-- after starting 9 flats of various squash, I reconsidered and wished I had waited and started them straight in the soil. Hindsight is 20/20, huh?

Waiting to be tucked in

A few years ago I started tomatoes, peppers, and various herbs inside in mid-February. 6 flats stayed warm, and then illuminated by 3, 4' fluorescent shop lights. All but the peppers grew into respectable starts. However, keeping starts alive in your kitchen for 4 months before they can be planted in early June is far from ideal. Each day I would shuffle the flats around the house seeking the best natural light, and daily misting from above and weekly soakings from below kept the roots healthy. Did I mention this continued for 4 long, long months! In the end they all transplanted well and I had no problems with the starts being root-bound. So this year I'm applying the lessons learned from that year, and I waited until the first week of May to start my seeds; it seems a little late.

A new era?: plastic protects the floor. Ha.

This year I'll have to buy my tomato and pepper starts. The former taking too long to start now, and the latter never grew beyond the second set of leaves in my cold house and inadequate lighting. To start the thyme, basil, cucumbers, and squash I used the seed starting mix recommended by the nursery, Fertilome's Ultimate Potting Mix. It's an extremely fine mix of peat and compost with no wood products in it (great for dealing with very small fragile seed starts), and it completely lived up to its strong recommendation.

immature 'food' on the kitchen table

In the past I've also struggled with how dense the planting media should be when starting seeds. Too dense and the roots seem to start slowly and prone to damping off or rotting. Too loose and the roots get damaged when transplanting as the soil falls apart as you pull the plant from the plastic 6-pack. My technique this year was loosely fill each 6-pack to the brim with soil. Then I carefully banged each 6 pack on the floor which uniformly packed the soil in each cell, leaving an inch of free space at the top. I then pressed each seed onto the top of soil. Depending on seed type (bigger seeds are buried deeper), I filled the remaining space in each cell back up with more uncompacted, fluffy potting mix. Unlike, many cheaper brands of soil that are very dry coming out of the bag, the Fertilome mix was already moist when I bought it, but it still needed to be wetted after planting the seeds. Rather than watering from above which compacts all of the fluffy mix around the seeds, I placed each flat in my utility sink filled with warm water for 20-30 seconds. The potting mix wicked up water from below, wetting the soil and seeds perfectly, but not collapsing the delicate soil structure. Finally I covered each flat with plastic wrap and placed them in the warmest part of my cold dusty cottage. After 4 days the emergence began with the warmest cucumber flats and has continued steadily over the past 2 weeks as each seed variety comes up for light.

'Wild' Mint

2010-05-17T06:46:00.003-06:00

Mint, meet Sandstone

I like to think of any plant that reproduces in the garden without my help as 'wild.' Onions are the ubiquitous 'wild' plant as there are always a number of bulbs that break-off in the hard ground during the previous harvest and then re-sprout the following spring. This year's wild produce includes: lettuce growing in most of the side-walk cracks by my front door (bolting lettuce spread it's seed last year); cilantro amongst the carrots and shallots; corn sprouts in between rows in the back; the 3rd year of parsley hunkered next to thermal mass of the water tank; and several types of mint that re-seeded itself in the waffle garden. I find it interesting to note when these species emerge from soil each year, and contrast that with my usual planting dates and expectations--the 'wild' plants usually emerge weeks before I would have expected them to. Right now, it's the latter on this list that I'm most excited about. The 'chocolate' mint variety came up very early in the spring and was only damaged slightly by the recent frigid night that dropped to 20 degrees for most of the early morning. The only shoots that were adversely affected were those in the middle of the planting square (a waffle garden is partitioned by low rock walls that retain heat), furthest away from the warming rocks. The mint makes an amazing tea steeped with honey, or mixed with loose leaf green tea for a caffeinated version. The connivence of scampering out the back door half-clothed and half-awake each morning to gather mint has inspired me to add more tea producing perennials to my garden.

Death on the Farm

2010-05-16T13:10:00.000-06:00

A peaceful silver wyandotte

I returned home from a field trip to Santa Fe on Friday to find one of the silver wyandotte hen's dead on the floor of the coop. There were no signs of trauma or any obvious reason for it's death. It lay, unmolested by the other hens, on the ground below it's favorite roost and I can only hope it passed away peacefully during the night. Over the course of the next 2 days I would loose 3 more chickens. This time it was the young pullets, and it certainly wasn't peaceful. I had just moved their cardboard rearing coop to the outside run area of the main coop. The old hens were sequestered in the inside area of the coop as their natural T-Rex-like inclination is to kill any smaller or weaker chickens. During their first night in the outdoor run, a fox or dog dug underneath the utility wire fence buried 3" into the hard clay and killed 3 of the 6 pullets. That was the first time anything had tried to breach the fence in a year and a half and it succeeded. I'll have to trench the bottom of the fence in concrete soon.

4015 words about spring

2010-05-12T18:40:00.004-06:00

The transition from plant to food

More mesclun

Welcome to the flock

Thinning the radishes

Early Spring Plantings

2010-05-03T11:16:00.013-06:00

Snow peas before installing the trellis of branches

It's no surprise to long-time Gallupians, but snowstorms in May are to be expected. The moisture they provide is a nice respite from the seemingly constant drying winds of April and May, but the cold night-time temperatures that follow these storms are an early spring gardeners nemesis. That phrase, 'early spring gardener,' is almost surely an oxymoron in Gallup. And yet, I've been steadily planting cold season crops since mid-march with pretty encouraging results- fingers are crossed considering there's still more than a month before the average last date for frost in early June. I posted about the snow peas and onions when I planted them and both are doing great. With a light layer of straw mulch over the soil the snow peas are about 6" high and just starting to curl their tendrils around the cut tree branches (great use for pruned elms) that form their trellis.

The onions are 9-10" tall and amazingly haven't been crushed by the plodding footsteps of the neighborhood dogs (my dogs have self-trained themselves to avoid the beds of fluffy soil and straw:), though it's required me to be super vigilant at keeping the fence gates closed. Next to these onions I also planted some long-leafed spinach and radishes that have proven to be self-sufficient in the cold and are a week or two away from harvest size.

Late-afternoon light on the shallots and carrots

Carrots and shallots were planted next in late March. I've had good luck with the latter; shallots certainly share the 'anti-freeze' characteristics, common to the other members of the onion family. The carrots were planted too soon. I covered them with only a light layer of straw and kept the bed moist with daily watering (carrot's tiny seeds are barely covered with soil when seeded and prone to drying out during the relatively long germination period, and like most root-crops they don't like to be transplanted). After a month, the first sprouts have begun to appear, but it seems as if only 10-25% of seeds successfully germinated.

Cole crops before mulching with straw

In mid-April I planted my cole crops in a clay bed in the back that had been heavily amended with manure. Green and red cabbage, brocolli, brussel sprouts, and collard greens filled the 25'x4' bed. These were really well watered in and mulched thickly with straw. They're all doing great. Next to the cole crops are the beds containing garlic, corn and pintos, and then more onions.

The back-garden beds- notice the shiny new tiller

Also in mid-April I planted a large bed (15'x4') split between mixed lettuce and Bloomsdale spinach. This bed is under a large elm that provides mid-day shade in the summer and should provide young sweet greens for a while after the lettuce in my cold-frame bolts in the full-day summer sun. This bed is covered with light blankets and sheets on any night below freezing. Even nights down to 19 degrees have failed to harm this young crop that should be ready for steady harvesting at the start of the Farmers' market season. I also companion planted this bed with summer peas, partly as a back-up against the potential loss of the greens to frost, partly to provide shade, and partly for the nitrogen fixing benefits of the legumes. Now that everything looks like it's coming through, I'll cull many of the peas shoots for dinner.

The long-bed of summer lettuce and spinach

The last bed I've prepared was for beets. After planting them in clay soils amended with lots of peat moss and sand, I covered the beds very thickly with sheets of unseparated straw. The seeds germinated faster than expected and I pulled the straw off a day or too late and many of the sprouts had gotten 'leggy,' reaching for the light blocked by the straw. Then it snowed for two days and got really cold. This bed will probably need to be re-seeded.

Native Plant Sale and Gardening Workshop

2010-05-03T10:55:00.004-06:00

Are these desert marigolds? Photo from the PSS flyer

Gallup's Plateau Sciences Society (PSS) is holding their annual native and xeric plant sale on Saturday, May 15 at Holiday Nursery, 9-6 p.m. While I like to joke that the only plants I care for are the edible variety, native plants provide many reasons to value and grow them: they're adapted to our climate; take little maintenance once established; consume little water; attract beneficial insects to the garden; best of all, they're absolutely beautiful! Stop by and support this great event.

The PSS is also hosting a workshop by master gardener, Sid Gillson, called The Garden of Eating in Gallup on Friday, May 14. It will be held 1-6 p.m. at the PSS's usual meeting place at the Red Mesa Center, 105 w. Hill.

Planting Leeks

2010-04-26T06:08:00.001-06:00

Leek transplants and their wet life-line

So last year I experimented with planting my first leeks, rather unsuccessfully I might add (planted too deep, in too heavy clay, and way too late (june) in the year). Despite disappointing leeks that were still no larger than a over-size scallion in October, I'm trying again. That's where it gets interesting, I couldn't stop at just a few pots of young leek sprouts when I saw them at Home Depot last Sunday and I ended up buying 6 pots ($3 something each), enough to transplant two 25' rows with around 160 leeks. This year I planted them in a deep trench filled with very rich and well-amended topsoil (lots of composted manure and peat moss).

Trimming the roots back

After removing the peat pot and soil they come in, I cut the tangled mass of roots back to less than an inch, and separated each of the 20+ transplants. After wetting in the soil, I planted each leek by poking a 3" deep hole with a stick and then carefully inserting the plant. A staggered planting grid kept each transplant about 6" from it's neighbor. Books and websites say that trimming the roots and leaves back is the traditional European method, but optional. I found that both are necessary. The leeks with trimmed roots (before trimming they're 5-7" long) are much easier to insert into the planting holes, and the uncut long leaves get blown around in our spring winds much more after planting--inviting stress--than the transplants with leaves trimmed to 3-4" above the ground.

BDCKitchen greens at the Co-op

2010-04-21T20:19:00.007-06:00

The tangy, nutty, crunchy, and sweet shades of green

Despite eating nearly a salad a day and sharing produce with my co-workers/family 'CSA,' the harvest of baby greens from the cold frame has been fast and furious. Yet, not fast enough. The mesclun (traditional tangy spring mix) and black-seeded simpson (lighter green loose-leafed lettuce) I began the harvest with has already grown back, ready for a second harvest. The romaine and bibb lettuce germinated thickly and I have a thick stand of baby romaine hearts that are sweet and crunchy, for now. Fearing it would all start to bolt or bitter (especially the heat in-tolerant Bibb) I finally approached the manager of Gallup's La Montanita Co-op, Alicia, about selling my lettuce in their store. Struggling with once-weekly shipments of quickly withering greens from Albuquerque, she was more than willing to start carrying my surplus in the store. Hopefully, with a local in-town source of baby greens they can keep some of the freshest salad ingredients on their shelves. I'll post about the rest of my early spring plantings soon, but green onions, baby spinach, and snow peas are soon to come.

2 of 3 sisters: Navajo corn and Hopi pintos

2010-04-18T17:57:00.012-06:00

Navajo copper popcorn and Hopi pinto beans

On the 10th I planted my corn. This year it's Navajo copper popcorn instead of Hopi white flint corn (I just don't make my own tortillas as much as I had planned, and Marcy's air popper is effortless) and it's planted a week later than last year. I soaked and planted the little kernels with Hopi pinto beans I've saved from the past couple years harvest. I left the third sister at of the mix (squash), but I'll take the roll of that third sister: week killer. The other sisters provide shade/structure (corn) and nitrogen (beans), in addition to the wonderful edible seeds. The corn seeds I just got from Native Seeds/SEARCH and the beans the same, two (seed) generations ago.

Planting stick and seeds, ready for planting

After tilling up the garden bed, I quickly plant the seeds through the dry crumbly surface layers and into the deeper layers still moist from the winter snowpack. Navajo and Hopi varieties of corn are known for their ability to emerge from up to a foot of planting depth, though most literature I've read about these Hopi varieties details that they are usually planted in sandy soils. I've found the un-wetted soil fluffed up by a rototiller, despite having considerable clay content, must be similar to the untilled sandy fields of a traditional Hopi farmer. Seeds have little trouble emerging from deep within my canyons soils. I plant 2 corn kernels and one bean seed together into these deep moist layers of the soil with a traditional Navajo corn planting stick. With one hand and two strokes I create a depression, drop the seeds, and pack them into place. Crumbly soil falls into the hole, perfectly covering the seeds as I retract the staff. My planting stick was graciously given to me, along with a host of other garden tools, by the previous owner of my house, Ms. Begay. It's handle is worn to the shape of a strong hand, and it's point smoothed by earth-- both ends crafted perfectly by use long before I ever lay a hand on it.

A timeless stance

Nothing I know would plant these seeds better than this timeless piece of cottonwood.

UPDATE: The first sprouts emerged around May 7th.

Peach Blossoms

2010-04-18T17:14:00.009-06:00

Loring Peach Blossom

I have 3 peach trees, and yet 5 varieties of peaches. The numerical discrepancy is because one of the trees has three different varieties grafted to a single root stock. The most vigorous of the bunch, the Loring peach, has already begun blooming. Check back to this post to see blossom dates of the other varieties and I'll post again if I actually get any peaches this year.

The arroyo orchard and gabion dam

Inspired by the Navajo's cultivation of peaches in Canyon de Chelley, I planted the three trees as bare-root stock several winters ago. I'm still looking forward to the first peaches, though this years bloom is a sure improvement over last year's single flower. Fearing the choking clay soils that seem to plague the 15 year old fruit trees in my backyard, I built a small gabion dam across the small but steep arroyo that flows through my backyard. After filling the dam with a sandy mix of soils, I armored the front with rocks. In 3 years, I've only seen surface water flowing down the canyon a handful of times, but the trees seem to love their sustainable home-- I water them only once a year in early June. Groundwater flow through the alluvial fan deposited by the arroyo takes care of the rest of the year.

Asparagus Season

2010-04-15T16:45:00.005-06:00

The first shoot of 2010

The heck with the groundhog or tax-day, the real harbinger of spring has arrived! Asparagus shoots came up overnight in all three of my beds planted with the herbaceous perennial. I was surprised at how synchronized their emergence was since they're planted in quite different soils, microclimates, and their ages differ by 15 years.

Zuni waffle garden of asparagus and a few other perennial herbs

I planted a couple dozen 2nd year rootstock 3 winters ago (best Christmas present ever!), and so I'm looking forward to my first full harvest season, as you can only harvest in limited quantities the second year, and none the first. The other 2 beds are much smaller, but filled with persistent asparagus planted by previous owners, yet with regular feeding, they're still productive. Last fall, after clearing off the dried stalks of last year's full grown asparagus 'ferns', I fertilized the Zuni-inspired waffle garden with well composted chicken manure and leaf mold. Blowing sand from the adjacent 'beach' provides the perfect mix of rich and sandy soil amendment. I'll harvest the shoots before they're 7" tall and turning woody, for the next 5 weeks.

The Cabbage Patch Kids

2010-04-10T18:25:00.008-06:00

The first harvest on it's way to the kitchen, and the harvesters!

UPDATE: In all we harvested 200+ lbs of cabbage, 50 lbs. of potatoes, and 100 yellow onions from the Chee Dodge garden this year. Not bad for a garden I left largely unattended that summer. The harvested vegetables played a role in over 10 school lunches for 410 students, with the highlight being a cabbage stew that used all the potatoes and onions, and helped secure a $40,000 grant for health initiatives at our school, some which will go to expanding and funding the garden well beyond the confines of my limited pocketbook. Some of the cleaned cabbage heads weighed well over 10 lbs. We also made the front page of the local newspaper, and prompted several PTA's at other schools to ask their principals why they didn't have a garden.

Don't tell the janitor!

The original post follows:

Ms. Witt's little gardeners getting the mulch just right

After spending nearly two weeks administering a grueling standardized test to 9 year olds, when it was done last Friday I spent the day with my second graders and the third grade as they planted the first 2010 crops in our school garden. I've grown squash, corn, and tomatoes randomly with classes in the past, but this year, with the addition of new and energetic staff at the school, the Chee Dodge Nanise Garden may finally reach towards it's potential. We have a fenced acre of land, easy access to well water, and a covered carport that will transform soon into the Outdoor Classroom. A PNM grant in 2005 paid for fencing the 1 acre garden, though the main fence isn't yet rabbit-proof.

They even made their own beds

The second graders had prepared their onions by soaking them overnight in water. They felt familiar and a little let down when the onions they were promised didn't quite live up to the similar and familiar Amaryllis bulb I revealed early this winter and now grows tall in classroom science lab. With some technical difficulty (scissors) they prepared their 4 x3 array to guide their planting of the red, yellow, and white onions.

204 'precisely' placed onion sets

The third graders planted 60+ Bonnie '50 pound' cabbage starts that are sent to all third graders in this school district. They arrived at the school unannounced and a couple weeks too early for planting (it dropped below 12 degrees on two nights since). I kept them at my house until the weather was right, and the testing over, before we planted them. We prepared the 25' beds (one for each of the 4 classes) by tilling the soil and forming a wind barrier on one side of the row. Then I tilled the bed again and the students excavated a long trench that we filled with a little manure and several bags of bagged top soil. The students planted their starts and then the drip hose was laid alongside the stems and covered with the sandy topsoil. We mulched it all with hay (soon to be covered with compost and finally topped with straw).

First blossom of the year: Apricot

2010-04-10T18:04:00.004-06:00

Beautiful bees and blossoms

The apricot tree must somehow know that the weather forecast for the coming week shows night-time lows only in the lower thirties. Perfect for cool weather crops like brassicas (cabbage, etc) onions and peas, but too early for fruit to survive the inevitable spring freezes that are still to come this spring (into early June on average). Anyway, regardless if it bears fruit or not, it's an amazing show of white petals to watch, usually dancing with heavily laden bees. The latter so occupied and friendly that you can almost pet them. I have 3 varieties of apples, 5 varieties of peaches, and this apricot tree. I'll post the dates when each blossoms.

Botanical Interests seeds at Holiday Nursery

2010-04-07T06:08:00.002-06:00

Botanical Interests Seeds

The awesome gang at Holiday Nursery have out-done themselves again! They've begun stocking relatively 'local' seeds from Botanical Interests seed company in Broomfield, Colorado. In addition to huge selection of vegetable, herb, and flower seeds in stock-- many varieties are organic, too-- custom orders (of sufficient size) can arrive in just 3 days. The seed packets have beautiful artwork on the cover, but the really neat thing is the packets are also printed on the inside with a host of detailed planting/growing/harvesting/preserving information for that specific variety. I've already had great germination results from variety of radishes, lettuce, spinach, and peas. They also have the rare yellow and striped varieties of beets!

The inside of the seed packet

The nursery has also received their spring shipments of seed potatoes (Yukon gold, red lasota, russets, and Pontiac reds); $1/pound and Cory recommends planting potatoes on May 1st. Red, yellow, and white onion sets are also available at $2.25/pound; plant those now. Please stop by and support our local nursery!

Peas, hydrated over-night and mixed with nitrogen-fixing innoculant

Hops

2010-04-06T10:13:00.007-06:00

2010's Chinook Hops (3" tall)

On April 2nd the first of the Chinook hops emerged from their cold, soggy wine barrel home. Planted two years ago, the Chinook (think IPA brews) variety shares half of the barrel with a rhizome of the Centennial (think Pilsner) variety, and both have proved to be one of the most eager and vigorous perennials I've ever planted. I'll supplement the warming thermal mass of rocks ringing the barrel with a blanket on nights that drop below 25; I've also used christmas lights in years past to protect the early emerging shoots. When the chance of frigid cold nights passes, I'll cut all but 2 or 3 of the strongest vines (then about 1-2' long), and encourage them to start climbing the 10' string trellis. Throughout June and July I've seen the vines grow more than 2 inches a day! In more northern climates with longer summer day lengths, hops grow to more than 20' tall. In August they start to set flowers at the top of the vine, and I've usually harvested in early September.

The hop barrel's new growth

Originally, I bought five varieties of hops from Victor's Grape Arbor in Albuquerque (Victor orders hop rhizomes of various varieties for sale each April; $4 each) with the intention of experimenting with which variety would excel in our growing climate. Poorly planned transplants killed off 3 of the varieties the first year, and the Chinook variety has always been the strongest of the remaining two. However, I can't really attribute it's good health to being better adapted to this region, as the Chinook rhizome was also the biggest (and already sprouting) one I bought that year. It's first season it grew over 8' tall and produced a harvest of flowers that filled a gallon zip-lock bag.

2009's slightly disappointing vines

As the price of hops increases every year (there was a world-wide shortage in 2008), I've intended to plant a permanent row of hops (the constantly growing rhizomes much prefer to be in the ground, than trapped in a barrel), but another season seems to have come without me committing another portion of the garden to this vining perennial.

After the initial fermentation, hops stick to the top of the carboy

NM Game and Fish

2010-04-01T20:16:00.012-06:00

McGaffey Lake Dam: Did this gentleman catch any fish?

April 1st marks the start of New Mexico's fishing and hunting seasons. Anglers need a new fishing license for the 2010-11 season starting today and hunting application are due in Santa Fe in less than a week!

A McGaffey Rainbow

Ice fishing on McGaffey Lake is definitely over, though this year it never really started--2' thick ice capped a 5' deep lake that seemed strangely devoid of fish. We were 'skunked' numerous times this winter fishing the shallow water, but I know fish were alive at the start of the winter because I caught what we call 'the last fish' through the ice in December. None followed. The dam has a 5 gallon/min leak spilling into the wet meadow below.(

Bill and I on McGaffey Lake in early '09

Regardless, NM offers abundant fishing opportunities ranging from stocked trout and musky in the lakes, picky bruisers on the San Juan, and wild wilderness trout in the Gila, Jemez, and numerous other mountain chains throughout the state; there not easy, but they are there, and very tasty. Around here, you'll need a Navajo Nation license to fish the lakes of the Chuska Mountains called Whiskey, Wheatfields, and Tsaile, all favorites of my student's families. I tend to fish elsewhere;) Buy your license locally at Wal*, California Supermarket on Hwy. 66 and Ford Canyon, or my favorite, get both NM and Navajo licenses at T&R Market's gas station on Hwy. 491 just north of town. Worms too, if that's your thing.

Mesquite-smoked Zuni Mountain Elk

Big game season starts with getting your permit application in by April 7th. Get it in, there are no over-the-counter deer or elk licenses in NM! You can now apply online, but that doesn't seem to improve the odds. Bill smoked the roast pictured above, and John Masci harvested the young cow elk at Rice Park this year on a private land-owners permit. The NMG&F website says 150,000 people apply for 50,000 permits; I've drawn a blank four years in a row. Sadly, according to a recent print article (sorry, no link) out-of-state applications have a much better chance of a successful draw than in-state applicants (they pay more, and 20% of the harvest is set aside for them). Turkey are pretty much the only 'big' game with an over-the-counter license and the spring season starts April 15.

Least Favorite Tool: the !@#$% tiller

2010-03-31T10:56:00.012-06:00

The rented BCS 722 Harvester

So the curse of the blog has struck again! Last Friday, as I prepared for a busy weekend of preparing the raised beds for spring/summer plantings (they have to be tilled before the soil dries brick-hard) the tiller broke down again. This time is wasn't the motor, but the bearings of the fly wheel which engages the tines. C & L Saws was closed most of the weekend, and I'm still not sure if the parts are replaceable on such a cheap machine. The same day, I also noticed potentially terminal cracking around the hitch on my rusted 30 year-old trailer. Hauling manure and mixing it into the soil was looking like a nearly impossible proposition. My checkbook came to the rescue. Saturday morning I went down to Big Mike's and made arrangement to rent their BCS tiller for the weekend ($106 to rent; $3000+ to buy). Picking it up by 1 p.m., I had that awesome machine all weekend!

5 yards of fluffy horse manure

That just left the problem of manure. I'd exhausted my collection of previously collected and home-grown manure and needed quite a bit to blend into the largely un-amended native soil of my large backyard gardens. Checkbook again to the rescue. Holiday Nursery has a nice stockpile of well composted (with some green nuggets) horse manure for $20/cubic yard. I bought 5 yards worth (a dump truck holds 7 yards), and the guys at the nursery promptly delivered it to the driveway. With the standard in-town delivery fee of $30 and tax, I paid $140 for a healthy load of crap.

The tilled field before shaping into raised beds

The counter-spinning rear tine tiller was amazingly efficient, working in about a 1/6 of the time of my regular rototiller, I was able to save most of my energy for the task of hauling 48 full wheelbarrow loads of manure to various parts of the garden. Even with my best upper-body fitness of year from dozens of miles of cross-country skiing this winter, I was exhausted and in bed shortly after dark on both days. In the end, I had prepared the soil for 9, 25'x4' raised beds and felt the substantial hit to the checkbook was well worth it.

'Wild' (last years) green shallots saved from the tillers path

Transplanting Rhubarb

2010-03-31T10:28:00.005-06:00

Blanched leaves eager for spring, sun, and some leg room

I'm not the biggest fan of sweet pies like rhubarb, but 2 years ago I couldn't help but pick up several packages of dormant (dry looking) rhubarb root-stock at the nursery. I had just finished re-reading a book about turn-of-the-century life in the mining camps above Telluride, CO (elev. 10,000+), Tomboy Bride by Harriet Fish Backus, and was intrigued that this leafy perennial (the leaves are poisonous!) was winter-hardy even in that extreme environment. Gallup's cold winters and spring nights should be no match for this tart vegetable! My mistake was trying to make these perennials portable. Contemplating a possible move in the future, I planted the roots in several large pots. They came vigorously to life that spring, but have always produced abundant but very skinny shoots and leaves. So, after two seasons of confinement, I decided this was the season to give them a permanent place in the garden. The small waffle garden in the backyard is where I've decided to plant most of my perennial herbs and vegetables, a perfect home for the rhubarb. The transplant went well with seemingly little damage to the burly roots, and the emerging leaves (blanched yellow from lack of light while the pots were stacked over the winter) are unfurling more each day.

The transplant stage is set

Favorite Garden Tools

2010-03-24T11:05:00.006-06:00

My 3 favorite tools at work

As the number and size of my garden beds expand, and the labor pool--me and two dogs-- remains the same, I've really come to appreciate several of my trusty garden tools. All acquired locally, I don't think I could do without my wheelbarrow, pitchfork, and rototiller. The wheelbarrow has self-explanatory utility, a common 6 cubic-foot Tru-temper, was bought from Holiday Nursery at 1214 E. Aztec Ave. Spending a couple extra bucks to buy from a local dealer paid dividends when they gave me the contractor tip of installing a thick sheet of plywood below the pan to give it extra strength and longevity when hauling rocks. Keep in mind you'll have to buy 4 longer bolts to reach through the 3/4" plywood.

Partly composted leaf mold and straw

The pitchfork is the newest addition to my stable of hand-tools. It's turned out to be indispensable for handling compost and manures in the clumpy stages before in decomposes into soil-like particles best handled with a shovel. I picked mine up last fall at Big Mike's Sales, Rentals, and Service at 606 E. Hwy 66 in Gallup. It was made in-house out of square angle iron and has 3 tempered tines. You have to add your own handle padding, but the best part is it only cost $8!!!

The tiller without the removable wheels

I have a love/hate relationship with the rototiller. It's invaluable when breaking up clumps of soil and mixing in soil amendments, or chopping up compost and manure. However, the noisy, polluting, and temperamental 5 horsepower engine has had me pulling my hair out on more than one morning. Luckily, Gallup has a great small engine repair place, C & L Saws at the corner of Maloney and 2nd street. A basic tune-up runs $30 and an overhaul $110. Unfortunately, the cheap Briggs and Straton motor on my machine needs the latter just about every year. If you don't own one, you can save yourself the headaches and just rent a great self-propelled 8.5 HP rear-tine BCS tiller from Big Mikes for $107/day. Pick it up late on a Saturday and you can keep it until Monday morning for a single days rental fee.

Lettuce Cold-frame Update

2010-03-24T06:15:00.001-06:00

Fr. to Bck: Mesculun mix, Black-seeded Simpson, and Green Onions

I just ate my first harvest of baby lettuce and green onions of the season. The cold-frame has worked well at keeping the freezing night-time lows (as low as 9 degrees) away from the plants. On nights below 20, I throw a fleece blanket over the box and turn on the light, on warmer nights, closing the lid suffices. Though, as the sun has crept further north in the sky each day, the abundant side windows of the frame, have turned the cold-frame into a hot-box some afternoons. Fearing bitter lettuce, I've added a shade-screen made from fine window mesh of another old screen door to the front. Reaching 4 feet tall, this screen mutes the sun just enough from 12-4 each afternoon, and keeps the soil surface temperature in a more temperate range. When the sun exposure makes the location of the cold-frame too warm for lettuce, I'll use the box for growing out seeds started in 6-packs for transplanting. I've also just seeded a large conventional bed of lettuce and spinach under the mid-day shade of a large elm tree.

Baby greens make any sandwich greener; condiments from the co-op

Home-grown farmer's brunch of eggs, onion, garlic and mushrooms with a salad on the side

Soil Fertility

2010-03-22T19:53:00.008-06:00

Thankfully Rio chose to rest in the leaf mold mound, rather than the chicken poop in the foreground of the 6'x25' compost mixing bed

My biggest challenge in the ever expanding garden is building/encouraging healthy and productive soils. The native soils of Black Diamond Canyon and most of Gallup are heavy clay that's prone to compaction when watered and difficult to work (brick-like) when they dry out. Consequently, I'm constantly adding organic matter, sand, and gypsum for balance. The latter in an attempt to reduce the 'stickiness' of the inevitably high percentage of clay that will always remain in my garden beds. Anyway, the main thing is the organic matter, partly for the nutrients, but mostly for the structure and resilience it adds to the soil. Over the past several years I've added straw (too slow to break down/nutrient poor), sphagnum moss (too expensive at $13/bale), and trailer-loads of brown leaves hard to find/collect-- my favorite leaf producing trees and leaf catching fences in and around Gallup are a closely held secret). I've also added endless bags of $2 mushroom compost from Home De*, organic steer manure from the Holiday Nursery ($4), and chicken manure/kitchen compost from my own coop. And yet, my soil still leaves my wanting.

Dusty but rewarding crap

Luckily, I recently got some advice from Tom and Ella of Connections/CSA. They use manure (horse/cow/anything) gathered from local corrals to improve their soils. The decomposing hay and manure adds desperately needed porosity to the soil, and while the nutrient content may vary with different degrees of freshness/decomposition the slight potential to over or under-feed your plants is more than off-set by the long-term soil structure benefits of tilling manure into your soils.And so, after cleaning out my coop this spring and collecting leaves last fall, I'm on the hunt for sources of manure. Cow Town and M&R Trading Post on 491 have great corrals to empty. The 2 vets in town have corrals, but I avoid them fearing medications in the poop, and then there are an endless list of coworkers with livestock eager for a free barn-hand. There's plenty of manure in and around this town!

The pint-sized powerhead 550

Until I've developed the soils of my dreams, I've used compost tea to deliver nutrients/fertility to my undernourished and compacting soils. Compost tea is made by soaking compost or good soils in aerated water in order to encourage the beneficial bacteria, micro-organisms, fungi, etc (everything good in soil grows better with water and air) to multiply. The compost goes into a pillow case (loose compost will clog any pump/airstone) and the air is usually supplied by an aquarium pump supplying an air stone that diffuses the air into fine bubbles. The problem with that type of air pump is you have to get a pretty big one (expensive to buy and operate) to push any worthwhile amount of bubbles deep into a bucket or barrel, and then the airstones constantly get plugged. I've found a better solution is to use another aquarium tool: the power head. Powerheads are basically a submersible pump that uses the venturi effect to suck air into the out flowing water-stream. I've found they're much more efficient at delivering lots of oxygen to the water and rarely get clogged.

35 gallons of 'bubbly,' on the right.

Native Seeds SEARCH order

2010-03-19T14:14:00.004-06:00

Navajo's believe that spring begins when the first thunder is heard on one of the four sacred mountains, and today, a day before the equinox, a loud storm swept through Gallup. Spring is definitely here. In tune with the season, my seed order from Native Seeds SEARCH also arrived today! NSS is a non-profit organization in Tucson that is dedicated to collecting and preserving indigenous varieties of crops, native to the Americas. I've ordered from them before, and been a member since 2007, and while slightly expensive, the results have never been disappointing. This year I ordered 3 varieties of winter squash (Navajo Hubbard, Navajo Grey Hubbard, Penasco Cheese) and a variety of popcorn called Navajo Copper. Most of these varieties were collected on the Navajo Nation (the Hubbards originally came from the 1901 Navajo Nation Fair in Shiprock) and have been grown-out and preserved by NSS. The NSS website/catalog describes the background and location of each seed variety sold, enabling gardeners to chose varieties that best suit the diverse growing conditions of their corner of the Southwest. In the past I've mostly stuck to Hopi and Navajo varieties, but have also had really good luck with blue corn and squash from other NM locales like Velarde and Penasco. NSS limits purchases to 3 packets of each variety, and provides free seeds to Native Americans.

Shitake Mushrooms Deep Freeze

2010-03-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Logs #20 and #28; white stuff is mushroom spawn

One of the biggest challenges with raising shiitake mushrooms from oak logs in the southwest is maintaining the high humidity of the midwest or Japan, where the cultivation technique is common. The internal moisture levels should be kept above 35%, but lacking a wood-moisture meter I follow the advice of trying to keeps cracks on the end of the logs at less than a 1/16" wide. In the spring, summer, and fall this means monthly soakings (for a day or two) in rainwater, but in the winter it's much easier; just bury the 40" logs in the deepest snow bank and forget about them until spring arrives.

What happened to the snow pack?

Eventually, I'll build a small mushroom shed to provide high humidity and protection from the drying winds and sun, without all of the physical effort and planning my current process requires. Remember, if your planning on starting your own mushrooms in oak logs, winter is the only time to harvest the logs and 'plant' the spawn in them. However, unlike established logs that can be kept beneath a cold blanket of snow, newly planted logs need to be kept warm and moist while the initial spawn-run occurs (about 6 months long).

Planting onions and snow peas

2010-03-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

Planted sets before smoothing over the soil

Last week I planted 300+ mixed onion sets and a package of snow peas during a lull in the El Nino storm-track (since returned). The soil along a rock wall with good southern sun exposure had warmed to around 48 degrees, and I couldn't wait any longer to get the first (non-cold frame or garlic) crops in the ground. I may be gambling with the inevitable spring cold-snap still to come, but I plan to harvest all the onions as young scallions, and plant onions to grow-out to full size in a different bed (with more summer sun exposure) later in the spring, so these were spaced only a couple inches apart.

Snow pea 'seeds'

The snow peas are my first attempt at this cool-season legume, and a package of organic seeds from H.D. (Both the local nursery and ACE hardware were sold out of snow peas; evidently I'm not the only one in Gallup who knows of the frost-hardiness of this rare vegetable suited to Gallup's frigid spring nights) planted a 20' row. When they sprout I'll build the necessary trellis structure. Last year around April and May, as I waited patiently to get all my summer crops in the ground, I was more than a little jealous at the numerous reports of abundant snow pea harvests from around town.

Rio contemplates a life with snow peas

Winter Lettuce Cold-frame

2010-03-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

2 week old sprouts reaching for NM sky

Nothing beats the crisp crunch of salad greens to balance out all the preserved meat and dried carbohydrates of a local winter diet-- actually, nothing really beats a salad at any time of the year. But back to late winter. Unfortunately, the co-op's greens aren't always that crunchy (please become a member and buy more frequently!) and the organic boxes of salad at the big stores aren't cheap in several respects. Either way, this time of year I can't get enough fresh leafy greens in my body and I find a convenient way is to grow your own.

The warming mass of the rock wall and neighbors garage

So in that theme, I recently remodeled my window-topped cold frame boxes of the past several years into a single, taller cold frame, the general dimensions of a storm-door. To be 'green,' and conserve some cash, I built the frame (the older ones had both broken their windows- at my errant hand.) with 100% recycled materials I had on hand (the screws were new, but recycled from a previous projects budget: the wood came from mom's old fence, the windows and glass panes I seem to collect cheaply without purpose, the storm door came off my house, and soil with my hens compost finished off the materials list. The storm door has clear windows on all but the western 20% of the lid, a large glass window fills the eastern end, and two slim windows fill the front, southern-exposed side of the box. The box, with diligent daily opening and nightly covering with fleece when below 20, keeps the soil temperature around 62 degrees, compared to diurnal fluctuations of between 42-52 for similar unprotected soil.

62 degree warm Romaine roots and sprouts

I planted various varieties of lettuce on Valentines day, including Bibb, Romaine, Black-seeded Simpson, and the ubiquitous Mesculun mix- colorful when young, and. . . exotic, almost scary when it bolts! First raking a rough micro-furrow pattern with a tined rake, I broadcast the seed, and smoothed over the low furrows with my palm. Within a week, the seeds nearest the 40 watt light were sprouting, and all the rest within the next week; the warmth really helps. I also planted 100 onion sets to harvest as scallions for salads and soups along the back wall, painted white for higher reflectance and an attempt to lower daytime temperatures. The latter triggering the bitter onset to the lettuce's bolt. By the time I post this, the tallest green onions are 5".

2010 Eggs

2010-03-04T18:00:00.002-07:00

The lighter colored egg is a minute old

This week, my flock of five 2-3 year old hens came out of their winter egg-laying hiatus, and filled the first egg carton of the season. They stopped laying eggs around November, and I decided that unlike last year, I wouldn't light their coop with a compact florescent to stimulate laying through the winter. It works well, but I felt that these older birds certainly seemed to need to take a break. Though I'll admit, before they started laying, and wondering if they ever would again, I had started to eye the canning recipes for old hens. Old, tough birds being the perfect poultry to withstand the cooking rigors of the canning process (1.5 hrs. at 240), without just turning to mush. But, for now, with regular daily eggs, they've secured their keep in the garden for at least another few months.

Cows in Black Diamond Canyon

2010-03-02T21:16:00.005-07:00

Cow Town, USA?

It's not the first time that cattle have wandered down from the hills north of town into my neighborhood along Wilson Ave, yet it was still a surprise to see them and the dog catcher at the end of the road last week. After 30 minutes or so to gather their posse, the animal control guys, ranchers, a couple cops herded a dozen or so cows back up to N. Country Club road and north along the mesa to the GAMERCO land with the grazing lease. I first saw the urban cows a couple years ago when I came home one summer evening to find them in my backyard (without planted gardens that year) munching on 4-wing saltbush and ripening wolfberry. Just as I began to shoo away the herd, the clearly winded dog catcher jogged around an adjoining building and as he continued to herd the cows up the steep slope, seemed to hesitate and struggle with whether or not to ask the question, if these were my cows. He did. And I replied that I only wished so. I felt proud just to be asked the question!

But, the full story is I have a history with the dog catcher. The same guy, who lives just a block down Wilson, had visited the year before, with his full rig and a coworker, to inform me that my front-yard free ranging flock of 9 hens, 5 guinea foul, and a turkey violated Gallup's rules that limit pets to, "three cats and three dogs." He gave me 2 weeks to slaughter or get rid of them, which I did with most of the hens, but I kept the guineas and the turkey till later that fall and never saw the guy again. I also kept them out of the front yard, and have never raised those tough, incredibly loud little African birds again. That turkey, a huge tom, was stolen Christmas eve later that year, the night before it was to be served. Not the most successful start to raising poultry, but I've kept at it. A little more successfully than that first year. More on that later.

Leeks, at long last

2010-03-02T20:47:00.003-07:00

With an extended break between snow storms, the disappearing snow cover has allowed the bright days to warm the soil and reveal the last vegetable to harvest from under the deepest snowbanks in my garden; the little leeks.

I kept these transplanted leeks in the ground from spring through winter with the hopes that they would fatten through the late fall, and perhaps grow-out to full size early this spring. They've shown the incredible 'anti-freeze' properties of all alum (onion) family members, but I was still surprised at how healthy these plants did in their lightly mulched beds. However, as the soil warms and plans for this season's garden start to come together, it became clear that all but a few of the leeks (the lucky ones are interspersed with my perennial bed of young chard) are in beds I have different plans for this year and need to be harvested soon. They'll be a wonderful fresh vegetable addition to a number of early spring dishes/stews and yet I'm also excited to see how the few remaining leeks grow-out through this spring, and just maybe grow to a respectable size.

Short Ribs from El Morro

2010-02-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

Prime Beef

Tonight I braised another pair of short ribs from El Morro Valley Ranch (see their add in the Gallup Journey, and support local, organic, and ethical producers with your dollars!) Olive oil, shallots, garlic, red wine, tomato/red chile sauce, and these two incredibly marbled and meaty ribs (1.14 lbs) went into the little enameled dutch oven for 3 hours at 300 degrees. Served with rice, it's damn sweet red meat. Literally.

Cabin 34's Rosemary

2010-02-13T20:08:00.008-07:00

Every growing season I try to plant numerous herb-filled planters--clay or plastic 5 gallon pots-- this year rosemary and sage dominated. . . tasty, yet, I definitely miss the parsley and thyme that also filled several pots last winter. With a half-dozen rosemary plants thriving in my windows or waffle garden this year, I had to bring one of my kitchen center-pieces to our cabin (Bill, Jack, and Lloyd are my revered cabin-mates!) in the western Zuni Mountains, at McGaffey, NM. No need to worry the 8000' elevation or days without occupancy, rosemary seems to endure frigid temperatures and dry soil amazingly, so it will surely thrive up there in the cold, dry air; plus, Cabin 34 (on old 10th 'street') never drops below 30 degrees with our newly installed southern windows.

Our hand-shoveled 'trail-head' at McGaffey and the hauling sled

Too, Early Garlic?

2010-02-13T18:58:00.009-07:00

Last week, as the snowpack retreated in the backyard, and warm days despite frigid nights, triggered inch or two tall garlic sprouts to make themselves known. After 5 or so days exposed, including 2 nights of lows around 13 degrees, the outermost leaves seem to be damaged, yet still growing. I'm going to mulch a little deeper on most of the 2 beds, but I do fear that this store-bought garlic-- Christopher Ranch @La Montanita-- while eagerly fertile, may be growing a little to early for Gallup's highly contrasting diurnal shift in temperature, emblematic of the dry, high Colorado Plateau; hopefully I'm wrong.

Winter Squash

2010-01-24T20:26:00.015-07:00

2009 Butternut and Spaghetti winter squash

For many centuries one of the only fresh vegetables in the Americas at this time of year was the hard-shelled winter squash. Easily lasting through the winter and well beyond, (I have several Navajo hubbard squash that have lasted through a second winter- I'll harvest seeds and try to eat them soon; look for a post) these squash were a significant contribution to the world food-stocks when early explorers brought seeds back to the old-world. Along with corn and beans, squash forms the symbiotic triad called the "three sisters" of the new-world. Corn grows tall, shading and fed by the nitrogen-fixing beans, and squash vines spread and smother weeds around and between the mounds of corn and beans.

Two of the 'three sisters' during the summer

This year I planted summer and winter squash, separately in five large clumps. Each 3' mound was planted with three starts from the local nursery and vines spread 5-10' in diameter. The summer squashes did great and I enjoyed plenty of yellow and zucchini squash (fresh male squash flowers were the delicacy of that season), but the winter squash struggled; in October I brought in a couple dozen small-ish butternut and spaghetti squash. This harvest paled in comparison to the previous year's harvest of various Navajo winter squash, grown together with it's two sisters, and all from seed from Native Seeds/SEARCH. Next year I will definitely return to the traditional method of mixed plantings and local seed stock.

Winter Lunch

As my 'cold-cellared' (on a bed of Gallup bricks at 45 degrees) stock of winter squashes steadily disappears, I recently grabbed two butternut squash for a winter-themed lunch. I roasted the halved squash at 400 for 25 minutes, sautéed onion and garlic, and then blended the lot with chicken stock. The puree was then simmered with milk for a while. However savory, the delicious, creamy, and healthy squash soup --topped with a crunchy fried sage leaf-- was still out-shined by a good friend's grilled-cheese with sharp cheddar, brie, portabellas, and a touch of pesto. Yum! And more than enough calories for a great snow-day ski adventure.

Hope Community Garden Update

2010-01-24T20:01:00.005-07:00

Looking East over the future raised-beds and cold-frames of the Hope Garden

Over the past couple months Blue Sky Builders of Espanola, NM have made steady progress on the community/demonstration garden project at the Community Pantry in Gallup. The perimeter fences have been built, the retaining walls of the garden beds built, and four rainwater harvesting tanks installed. The later coming just in time to capture the winter snowfall- all four tanks were filled to the brim (around 10,000 gallons) and over-flowing, yet no valves or plumbing had been installed (a hard thing to do when fighting so much water pressure).

On my 1500 gallon rainwater tank, I lost a full load of water the first winter it was installed when the 2" ball valve cracked during a week of sub-freezing weather. Insulation and an electric pipe warmer have since solved that problem. However, if I had chosen a more sun-exposed location for the plastic valve, I doubt I'd have any problem, as is the case at the Hope Garden's tanks. Three of the four cold-frames they've planned have been fitted together, still waiting their protective plastic covers and rich soil. I'll meet with the Community Pantry staff soon and post an interview on the specific status of this great project.

The Seasons Begin Again

2010-01-17T20:11:00.008-07:00

So it feels like the sun is coming back north again.

Both the garden (over-eager garlic shoots have already made a fruitless/frozen appearance above ground) and I can anticipate coming out of our cold, rejuvenating dormancy. Yet, as most second-graders know, despite the occasional feeling to the contrary, it’s us who are on that elliptical route around the bright sun. Either way, it’s warming both our gardens, and hopefully my fingers to keep this we(b-log) going; so thanks for returning.

Just as is the Native American cuisine this time of year, through this winter I’ve mostly been eating stews of many varieties: Lamb and late potatoes, green chile/beef, red chile/anything (All with garlic, and seasonal veggies and canned at 14 lbs. for 1.5 hrs). Frozen Zuni Mtn. elk and El Morro Valley beef have also kept many of my friend's crock-pots full. Thanks for sharing guys, and thanks to all of you who are supporting local growers. (El Morro Valley Ranch is in the Gallup Journey!)

Coming up in this season I’ll post about my egg-less hens/gallup’s chicken prohibition, frozen leeks, perennial rosemary, The Hope Community Garden, local restaurants w/whole foods, NM-grown at the Co-op, cold frames and year-round crops, Native Seed/SEARCH, Julia and Julie, geo-thermal tiliapia aqua-culture, Kitchen Impossible/Food Network in Gallup, historic produce production of the Zuni Mountians, Gallup’s awesome CSA, Navajo a'chee sausage, the incredible local foods of the Gallup Flea Market….and then more.

Again, thanks for coming back to my blog. Kevin

Planting Garlic

2009-11-22T16:17:00.007-07:00

California Late White Garlic

"It smells like stew." That was the best description of garlic I've ever heard, and it came from one of my 7-year old students. We were exploring the color, shape, and aroma of garlic as we prepared for planting a row of the pungent staple in our small school garden, and I was struggling to give context to this unfamiliar food. Unlike, other vegetables like carrots and potatoes that children often encounter whole, garlic is the seldom seen, but invaluable, stage-hand that makes almost every meal savory. It's also one of the few crops that can actively occupy a garden row over our cold, cold winter months.

The cloves rehydrate in rainwater before planting

Garlic cloves need a long cold -near freezing- period in order to trigger healthy growth in the spring, and so it's planted late in the fall. The roots quickly take hold after planting, and then wait patiently under the mulch and winter snow until the spring sun begins to warm the soil in April. Strong, frost-resistant leaves quickly emerge and take advantage of the winter moisture still held in the soil, requiring little to no additional watering--it's for this reason that garlic is one of the best suited crops for our dry climate. The young shoots are called green garlic and have a flavor similar to, but stronger than, scallions. However, the over-eager harvester will be disappointed that the clove at the base of the plant will look much like the ones planted before winter. It's not until late-May or June that the clove begins to swell and multiply into the stinky rose we all love.

The cloves are properly spaced before a quick push into the soil

There are two general categories of garlic; hard-neck and soft-neck. The latter being the common California White garlic we see in grocery stores and braided into ristras. In addition to the aesthetics of the beautiful braids, it's primary attribute is it's long storage life. The former, hard-neck garlic, is the true prince of the family. Growing larger cloves and having a wide variety of flavors and heat profiles, varieties like Spanish roja and German white command top prices at farmers markets' and in seed catalogs. Hard-necks also give the timely harvester the gourmand treat of spicy garlic scapes-- the beautiful swan like flower spikes that emerge when the cloves begin to swell. These are cut to encourage large clove growth. Unlike previous years, I procrastinated ordering my garlic, and with Thanksgiving break (and a trip to Pittsburgh) fast approaching, I resorted to only planting soft-necks this year, which I purchased at the La Montanita Co-op-- caution: regular

grocery stores often sell garlic treated with a growth inhibitor. Breaking apart each clump, I planted the large outer cloves and saved the smaller inner cloves for cooking. About 2 pounds of garlic yielded a 100 large cloves and were planted in 40' of row space, 4" apart.

Hope Community Garden

2009-11-08T18:54:00.009-07:00

A cold-frame and rainwater tanks awaiting installation

The large tan and green building at the corner north of the Miuramira over-pass is a common sight to most Gallupian's, but few know that within that building, in addition to a professional USDA kitchen, meeting rooms (both available for a modest rental fee), and immaculately clean warehouse, the Community Food Pantry collects and distributes over 3 million pounds of food each year to two of our nation's hungriest counties. It's a fact; Mckinley County ranks as one of the hungriest (food insecurity index) counties in America. All this on a budget of $300,000-- at a modest $1/pound of distributed food, thats a 10:1 return on contributions.

Jim Harlin's Community Pantry

Starting next year, the harvest of the Hope Community Garden will be joining the massive poundage of NAPI potatoes (Navajo grown with the water of the San Juan, just south of Farmington), bartered Arizona lettuce and vegetables (traded for potatoes), and Wal-mart surplus that's given away each year. With a $250,000 grant, the Community Pantry is building a vegetable garden, complete with 4, 20'x30' cold-frames for year-round produce, and a large demonstration dry-land field of indigenous corn, beans, and squash. But, as Executive Director Jim Harlin starkly pointed out during the tour, serendipitously arranged by WNMU, while the garden will grow an impressive 14,000 lbs. of food each year, that dramatic number represents only a drop in the bucket of their annual distributions and less than half a semi-truck trailer of food (40,000 lbs); the real unit of food measurement in this hungry county. Gardening space will be available for rent to the public, and much more could be developed on the 2+ acres of undeveloped land owned by the Community Pantry in the years to come.

Excavations for the retaining wall supporting the above-ground beds and cold frames

Please, support The Community Pantry with your labor and/or checkbook! Also, buy 2 turkeys at T&R Market in Yah-ta-Hey, (my school's business partner!) for $0.49/lb, and donate the second to the food pantry to feed local families this Thanksgiving. Also watch for The Food Network's Dinner Impossible host Nigel filming his show at the Community Pantry's demonstration kitchen during this December's Red Rock Balloon Rally.

Beef stock

2009-11-06T00:21:00.009-07:00

At 6500 feet, 13 1/2 lbs. of pressure = 240+ degrees

With the high-pressure canner I bought this summer and 30 lbs. of beef bones from El Morro Valley Ranch in the freezer, I had to make my own version of all natural organic beef stock this past weekend. I started with a bike ride to the coop for organic celery and carrots. They had both. The next stop with the BOB trailer was The Water Store for 4 gallons of purified water, and then back home, slowly.

5 pounds of thawed beef bones

I browned batches of the bones in olive oil, and then, with about 15 lbs of the bones and gravy, I filled the stainless steel brewing kettle with nearly all the water. After bringing it all to rolling boil, I skimmed foam from the top for about 10 minutes. I simmered the bones alone for about 3 hours before adding a pound each of the celery, carrots, and onions, a handful of bay leaves, whole peppercorns, sea salt. Then everything simmered overnight. In the morning I carefully skimmed and set aside about an inch of fat from the surface of the broth, and used a slotted ladle to remove all the solids. After heating the cans and lids to 180, I filled 6 quarts with the rich smelling broth. Using a fine steel mesh sifter I was able to filter out all of the particles of meat and vegetables, and was left with a uniform dark tan broth.

Removing the jars after waiting the hour or more it takes the canner to depressurize

The Ball Blue Book calls for 20 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure for stocks (a considerable difference from any meat stew recipe which is processed for 120 minutes or more). In Gallup at 6500', to achieve the safe temperature of 240 inside the jars, I try to keep at 13.5 lbs of pressure. The pressure weight on the Presto canner I bought is set for 15 lbs, so I adjust the big burner on the stove to around med-low to low to keep that pressure, and adjust frequently to keep it above the minimum of 13 lbs. and the over processing (higher temperature) of 14 lbs. and above.

Red Chile Sauce from 'scratch'

2009-10-29T19:36:00.006-06:00

The first snow on the last red chile

My one true goal for the the garden this year has been achieved; I grew everything needed for a batch of New Mexico red chile sauce. A favorite recipe for this NM staple comes not from the Red Chile Bible cookbook, but former Santa Fe chef Mark Miller and his Coyote Cafe cookbook (the current menu at the Coyote Cafe- different owner/chef now-, and the plethora of bad reviews on-line, give little justice to the seasonal and regional recipes in this great book).

Ready for roasting

You start by seeding the red chile pods and dry roasting them at 250 for a couple minutes. The pods are then simmered in water for 30 minutes. Roma tomatoes and garlic cloves are blacked over a gas flame, and an onion is sautéed in a little oil. The now softened chiles are pureed with the tomato, garlic, and onion. Oregano is always added, but I left out the cumin this time. Up to a cup of liquid is added to the puree-- chile water if it's not too bitter. Finally a ladle full of sauce at a time is pored into a sizzling hot cast-iron pan with beef tallow and stirred constantly for a minute or two. Using about half of my red chile harvest-mostly sandia and espanola varieties- I happily canned 4 pints of my from-the-ground-up red sauce. The charred tomato skins and garlic add a savory smokiness to this comfortable winter staple of NM.

El Morro Valley Ranch- 2009 Beef Quarters

2009-10-26T14:59:00.014-06:00

Eating high on the 'hog'

Charley Mallery and Rebecca Allina rolled up to Jack’s place in Gallup, just as the sun set last Wednesday, with a gooseneck livestock trailer that still smelled of their grass-fed, organic Black Angus cattle. Animals that now filled the coolers partially-covering the long ribbed floor.

Rio, Charley, and Jack inspect the cargo

They had just driven down from picking up the load of meat, USDA packaged and flash frozen, at Sunnyside Meats in Durango, CO --dry-aged for 3 weeks! A 120-quart cooler, a decent river-trip size cooler (36x21x18”), just barely held the 120 lbs. of frozen beef. Jack and I, each buying a quarter ($120 lbs. x $4.50/lbs), opted for a couple extra pounds of optional beef liver, and I graciously accepted 25 lbs. of bones to boil into beef stock.

The final resting place for this Black Angus

The quarter was an equal proportion of every cut on the cow and I marveled at the beauty and diversity of the meat, half wrapped in paper, and half in clear plastic shrink-wrap as I filled most of a mid-size upright freezer. The cuts ranged from filet mignon and brisket, to stew meat and ground beef, and everything in between, literally, but no tongue, perhaps that’s in the ground beef. )

Eating lower on the animal

As if their ranch’s growing reputation needed bolstering, be sure to check out the cover photo on the Sept/Oct issue of the Ramah Farmers’ Beet to see Rebecca and Charley’s first-place winning harvest display at the Ramah Farmers’ Market 2009 Harvest Festival. Wow and thanks!

Beckett Roasters: Gallup roasted coffee beans

2009-10-26T13:15:00.005-06:00

You’ll soon see his coffee beans for sale around Gallup at places like the La Montanita Co-op and Camille’s Side-walk Café, but the freshest coffee around, roasted daily from green beans, is already available from Travis Smith of Beckett Roasters. Custom roasting on Gallup’s south side, Beckett Roasters sells their broad and growing selection of coffee beans in ¼, ½, and full pound ($4, $7, $12 plus tax) increments. Match your purchase size to your weekly consumption and maximize the recently roasted flavor of your coffee. You can even choose your own level of roasted-ness—Regular City for me.

Contact Beckett Roasters through their website: http://beckettroasters.webs.com and support the newest addition to Gallup’s local food sources. Oh ya, the beans, when ground and brewed, make the whole house smell like you’ve been roasting coffee in your own home.

Gallup-grown Pear and Poblano Chutney

2009-10-19T19:41:00.006-06:00

The peppers and pears

The lack of a late spring freeze on the Colorado Plateau this year has led to bountiful fruit harvests all over the region and here in our frosty morning town. And so when a friend dropped off a bushel basket of bosch pears, grown in the Hill/Green region of Gallup, the first preserving recipe that came to mind was a gingery sweet pear and poblano chutney.

The Gallup Trails 2010 annual party in McGaffey gave us the perfect opportunity to try the recipe on a grand scale. We peeled and peeled and peeled the pears, without a peeler, and then seeded and charred the poblanos over the grill, finally we diced it all with fresh ginger, garlic, red onion, and a few hot peppers from the garden (jalapeno, bird's eye, and thai). Simmering in white vinegar and brown sugar for 4 hours, delivered a tasty sweet sauce to accompany the banana leaf-wrapped pork shoulders beautifully pit-roasted (fired by oak from 4-7am) for 11 hours by Mike S, Jake G and the GT2010 kitchen crew. Bill's tamed, yet still kicking, habanero salsa puree was said to give the chutney some zing, and in return, the chutney gave some cooling relief from the fiery hot orange peppers. In the end, all the sauces where gone mid-service, and 6 picnic-cut pork shoulders (whole bone and skin), a huge brisket, and two turkey breasts disappeared into the crowd of cyclists and Gallup Trails 2010 member/supporters within an hour. The local home-brewing competition, won by Brian Culligan's #4, washed it all down, and greased the dance floor for the southwest's best bluegrass: The Back Porch Band!

Rhubarb

2009-10-19T18:48:00.004-06:00

Rhubarb hugging the rainwater tank

The second Rhubarb harvest of the season is drawing near, the first of which was cutting half of the first vigorous stems in the early spring. This harvest looks to be the largest yet--a half bushel of 1/2 to 1" stems, some turning red. This is the second year of growing five plants from root stock ($3.95 a plant at Holiday Nursery), all of which are in 3 to 5 gallon pots. The pots bought me time in deciding their eventual placement in the garden, and learned a little more about the water and soil needs of this hardy perennial; they'll go into the corner plots of the waffle garden of perennials where the asparagus roots failed to take.

It took me forever to decipher the tongue-in-cheek mid-western saying of, "think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?" See, in the arid regions of the world, rain comes sometimes in flooding torrents of rain or hail, damaging many of the large leaves of rhubarb and squash type leaves; Or, I thought, as I had bought these plants as rather dried roots, more slender, but similar to a preserved tulip bulbs, maybe they needed to have a dry dormant period to return vigorously each year? In the end, jokes on NPR's Prairie Home Companion and an old miners account of life high above Telluride, CO gave me more context, and then, growing these beautiful plants for two years now has showed me they love as much water as you can give them.

The rainwater tank is half-full at 600 gallons, but I'd still love to wink to Racheal during a steady downpour and ask if she thought the rain would hurt the rhubarb.

late season vegetables

2009-10-08T16:00:00.012-06:00

Brussel sprouts

The rows of corn, chile, and tomatoes have now been reduced to the rusty orange, tan, and red hues common to our sandstone and coal formations around here, and common to both I guess, they speak to a prior era of lush green growth. Each day now, the more recent palate of those colors sheds a few more rattling dry leaves and reveals the scaly dark stems to the fall winds. A few chile that had matured enough--ripened and red or nearing red--still hang like a NM postcard come to life. Though, many of the fruit, poblano and chile, that were still growing and green by the time of the first freeze, seem to have been irreversibly damaged by the abundant and swelling ice-crystals within their watery cells. Those chiles are now a pale soggy semblance of their ripened brethren.

I've digressed long enough in remembering the native vegetable garden behind the house, the aim of this post was the cold favoring vegetables of my front gardens: green onion, radish, chard, collard greens, mixed greens, cabbage (green and purple varieties), broccoli, and brussel sprouts. Plus a few hardy herbs like mint, rosemary, and sage.

Northern lights chard

These plants benefit from the physical protection and thermal mass of the neighboring houses when the cold dry air begins to snake down Black Diamond Canyon from the mesas to the north; I've found a 2-4 degree temperature differential between the exposed rear gardens and the front gardens. Though, more than the location of their garden beds, the season-extending benefit of these plants comes from their genetics. The brassica family (e.g. cabbage) seems to be filled with some type of natures anti-freeze. I'm especially thankful for the longest possible growing season due to the hour or so less of direct sunlight that hits my gardens during the growing season due to the depth and high walls of the narrow canyon, and the under-fertilized clay soil I forced all the under-sized brassicas to grow in this year.

Sage and rosemary

Using the biological control NOLO Bait for grasshoppers this year has really improved the appearance of my cabbage and brussel sprouts. The latter being a favorite of my local grasshoppers; I lost my entire crop of brussels sprouts- three stout plants- to the little creatures last year.

Storage and purple cabbage

Poblano Farewell

2009-10-01T22:59:00.007-06:00

Mid-season indication of the bountiful harvest to come

Planted on June 9th as 6" starts I nursed for over a month before planting, sadly, tonight the poblanos are dying as ice crystals swell inside of each watery cell of those beautiful peppers of Mexico--a result of the thermometer plunging into the low 20's. Alas, as they proved to be the most fecund pepper in the garden for a second year in a row; 12 plants yielded 3/4 of a bushel of juicy, broad 3-6" peppers.

A bee covered in zucchini pollen methodically explores the Poblano flowers

Here in northern New Mexico, perennial Poblanos are doomed to live for only a single year of what could be many in a warmer locale--I had to apologize to the peppers this afternoon as I removed their protective plastic cover and heating lights that had extended their season for an additional week and a half. More than gaining additional growth in the fruit, the cheap cold-frames spread the harvest out over a couple of weeks and made the processes of drying (ancho the name becomes), pickling, and freezing a little more manageable for one.

First Freeze; end of the season

2009-09-30T22:30:00.006-06:00

Fall of 2009

Tonight the growing season will come to an end. A fast moving cold front has been preceded by the predictably strong winds gusting to 50 mph today ahead of the frigid air, and the low is expected to be 30 tonight and 19 degrees tomorrow. The chiles, unprotected tomatoes, and squash met their destiny last Tuesday (September 22) when the temp dipped to 31.5 in my canyon, but tomorrow will be the curtain call for all but the hardiest cabbage, brussel sprouts, and fall greens i'll cover through the brief freeze in hopes of a few more weeks of temperate daytime temps.

Tomatoes: Red or Green?

2009-09-30T21:46:00.006-06:00

Harvesting under the tent

Growing tomatoes is easy; harvesting red tomatoes in the high desert climate of Gallup, is not as straight forward. In my experience our cool early fall nighttime temperatures inhibit ripening of most varieties of tomatoes, and without some intervention, most gardeners are left with far more green tomatoes than red when the first hard frost inevitably comes at the end of September.

Reliable cherries

The big exception has been cherry tomatoes that ripen beautifully without any heating aids; I planted 18 starts in a 30' row this year and harvested over 20 lbs. of sweet cherries. This year I used a medium-weight polyester gardening fabric over my 6 stunted Sweet 100's, that were loaded with green fruit. They quickly began producing ripened tomatoes and the fabric held the daytime temperature around 90 degrees and added 10 degrees to the nighttime low.

Doubled-up 1 mil plastic ($2.77 for 10'x20') and an incandescent lamp warmed my pair of roma tomatoes that refused to ripen.

Canning tomato sauce

After a month of enjoying fresh tomatoes the remainder of the fruit joined chile, onion, and garlic from the garden in becoming 8 concentrated pints of tomato paste/sauce.

Green Chile!

2009-09-30T21:00:00.011-06:00

Red or Green?

Green chile is the staple food of New Mexico for good reason; it has incredible versatility in the kitchen and thrives in harmony with our weather and soil-- our governor even proclaimed Native Chile Week during the third week of September-- local Badlands Burgers of Grants, NM won the first official Green Chile Cheeseburger competition in the state; I never liked the Owl Cafe's greasy little burger anyway. This year I planted Sandia, Joe Parker, Big Jim, and Espanola varieties of green chile. All bought as 8" 6-pack starts from the nursery, with the intention of drying most of it as red chile.

Late monsoons tease the green chile toward the frost

The Sandia's took off early and grew large, respectable bushes, but the best variety this year was the Joe Parker; bred at the world renowned Chile Pepper Institute at my alma mater. Drying them to red has been difficult and I'll post again in October with my results.

144 starts, 4 varieties, 2 50' rows of green chile

My plan for putting-away a year's worth of green chile was to buy a couple bushels of Hatch chile and have it roasted at one of our grocery store chains-- in college we bought green chile this way from the farms we had ridden past on training rides all that season. I brought the roasted chile home to sort and freeze in vacuum sealed zip-locs. Though it's debated throughout New Mexico, I prefer the method of removing the charred skins after thawing.

I packed three grades of chiles: perfect rellenos, mostly whole, and mostly shredded. A really cheap zip-loc vacuum pump packs it all in tight.

Shiitake Mushrooms

2009-09-18T16:31:00.006-06:00

The September shiitakes and NM blue sky

Shiitake logs number 1, 4, 17, and 23, are 'fruiting' this week. A half dozen mushrooms of various sizes are poking above the waterline as the logs soak in the cool rainwater of recent storms, and a dozen more 'pins'- indicate a decent sized harvest is coming, if I keep the conditions just right. The combination of a couple long, cool soaks in rainwater (4 and 3 days within 2 weeks), and cooler night-time temperatures awoke the logs from a long dry dormant period in the shade this summer.

The beautiful lace-covered cap of a fresh shiitake

Each of the Gambel Oak logs, 40" long and bearing numbered aluminum log-tags--PBR can and nail--were harvested in the Zuni Mountains during the early winter of 2007. 35 logs took tens of hours of repetitive work that winter. Each required drilling 60 grid-spaced 3/8" holes, hand packing the sawdust-impregnated spawn, and finally capping each hole with 400 degree beeswax. For the first 5 months of the initial spawn run the logs needed to be kept warm and moist--not the easiest thing in the southwest. But with monthly soakings in the tank and keeping them inside and wrapped in plastic for fruiting, the logs have done well. Harvests of couple pounds come staggered throughout the year.

A 7" shiitake

I used 5.5 lbs. of sawdust spawn of the WR46 strain of shiitakes--1 of a dozen different shiitake varieties--from the amazingly helpful people at Field and Forest Products. They also sell spawn for morel, oyster, winecap, reishi, maitake, and lions mane mushrooms, as well as all the supplies and tools to get started or become a grower. Oh, and they taste amazing!

Native American Bread at the Gallup Flea Market

2009-09-12T18:21:00.007-06:00

Zuni and Acoma Pueblo sourdough and sweets

Among the many great local foods at the Gallup Flea Market-- N. 9th street, 8-1 pm every Saturday of the year-- are the bountiful varieties of Native American breads from Zuni, Acoma, Santo Domingo Pueblo, and of course, Navajo red-clay ovens of a dozen or more vendors. White sourdough loaves, cornhusk wrapped 'kneel down bread,' fruit pies and turn-overs, and the ubiquitous fry-bread are the predominant characters.

Jimmy Paywa's display at the flea market

You have to try all of them at some point, but my favorite is the traditional Zuni sourdough, uniquely shaped for tearing off and dipping in stew, from the Paywa family in Zuni. Their ovens are open for visitors (Wed-Fri), just look for the sign on the right of the main road as you drive into Zuni -- Sourdough goes in the oven around noon on Friday, followed by the fruit pies. Interestingly, all of the half-dozen bakers I spoke with said they used Blue Bird flour from local Cortez, CO.

Hurricane Jimena brings the 'Monsoon'

2009-09-08T17:23:00.004-06:00

After the storm

Just as the Albuquerque media began to run stories on the rainfall deficits across the state (-3.66" YTD in Gallup), the remnants of Hurricane Jimena drifted across the western mountains of NM, and a steady rain fell on Saturday afternoon, September 5th. My rain gauge of sorts is the tank that collects water from the front-half of my roof. Using the following formula from Brad Lancaster's Rainwater Harvesting, 0.7" fell in Black Diamond Canyon: 300 gal. / (708 sq.ft roof X 7.48 cu.ft/gal) = 0.7 14" --i've converted the final # into inches from feet, and added 5% lost to collection inefficiencies.

Pickling peppers and cucumbers

2009-09-06T18:20:00.007-06:00

The sharp smell of white vinegar fills my kitchen as I prepped the hungarian yellow peppers and cucumbers for their briny baths.

3 small 'bush pickle' cucumber plants with cardboard-stiff 5" leaves produced 10 pints of dill pickles in the first harvest- 3 pints packed with the salty sweet broth of the peppers. These pickles, all packed with a head of dill from the garden and most with a bay leaf, rosemary sprig, mustard and black pepper seed, will need to age for 6 weeks before eating.

A flat of hungarian yellow peppers (36 starts) cost $22 from the nursery this spring and produced a dramatic display of peppers-- stubborn to refute gravity and the poor soil. I brined them for 24 hrs and then pickled a dozen pints in vinegar, garlic, and sugar. No rest period for these; they're damn tasty. hot, too. And at least another harvest before the first frost.

Local Lamb

2009-09-02T21:40:00.007-06:00

The leg of a local lamb

My favorite locally owned full grocery store is T and R Market in Yah-ta-Hey, NM (5 miles north of Gallup). In addition to supporting my elementary school and the local community for decades, the Tanner family sells great meat products, including exclusively American raised lamb, often NM local, in fresh whole cuts.

Lamb's favorite herbs from the garden

Last weekend I bought an 7.75 lb. leg of lamb ($4.89/lb.) to roast over mesquite. I boiled the bones for stock (5 quarts) and also canned most of the lamb I didn't immediately eat (6 pints). I canned several pints of sliced meat with stock, and the rest with a curried chutney I made from home-grown green chile, apples, and green tomatoes.

My first butterfly

Apple Harvest

2009-09-02T20:32:00.006-06:00

Black Diamond Canyon's 2009 apples

My garden includes 8 apple trees of different varieties, ages, shapes, sizes and health. Some are old, some tall, some broad, some struggling, most sour, and all beautiful sweet wood. Gallup's late spring freezes often claim my apple blossoms, but not this year, the last freeze never came and I have apples.

Two of the 15+ year old 'Washburn Era' Apple Trees

Despite that upbeat theme, only 4 of my trees produced fruit, and most from the old skinny tree I usually over look. I harvested most of them a little green or just ripening when the flocks of migrating songbirds began feasting on each of the ripest fruit; 12 lbs of various sized fruit filled my basket and pantry just in time.

The rare ripe apples that eluded the birds

No Monsoon!?

2009-08-30T00:39:00.009-06:00

Gallup: "Abnormally Dry"

Official government validation of what my water tanks have already told me; the soaking monsoons of July and August never arrived in my canyon this year (3.66" below normal YTD according to KOB-TV Channel 4). The USDA publishes a monthly drought index and map of the state. The western portion of Mckinley County is categorized as Abnormally Dry, the first ranked stage before 4 stages of drought. Rain fell often in the higher mountains in July, but no soaking moisture has fallen on my garden since the second week of June (0.8"). Scarcely, 100 gallons of rainwater collected in my cisterns during the past two months. My dry-land farmed row of white hopi corn is stunted and withering--starkly different than my drip irrigated rows of the same planting, and the garden has been surviving on minimal waterings as I watch the cumulus clouds build fruitlessly each afternoon in anticipation of something more than shade. And yet, nothing.

Hopefully, the growing El Nino in the Pacific will bring us a strong storm track this winter.

Gallup Farmers' Market

2009-08-22T08:45:00.006-06:00

August 29th Gallup Farmers' Market

Get there early! I rode down to the Gallup Farmers' Market shortly after The Splendid Table ended this morning. Earlier than I usually get down there. And good thing; many of the greens were sold out before the market even opened at 8:30!

An $8 bag of local groceries

Nestled in the morning shade of the downtown walkway on Coal St., a half-dozen growers were set-up when I rolled in at 8:15. A line had already formed at the Serendipity Farms (Pinehaven)table, and the last of the mixed lettuce was being rationed out, so I decided to start at the Work-in-Beauty CSA table. They had great looking swiss chard and bountiful large zuccs. I bought a bunch of chard with 4 of the 32 quarters I brought with me today. Next to them were the Vanderwagon couple selling sourdough, white, and honey-oat loaves; all baked using home-milled flour from our local breadbasket region of Cortez, CO. I bought a $4 loaf of the sourdough and was excited to hear that they have found a local source of wheat from Ramah. They also sell really neat planters made from recycled car tires. Finally, I joined the line for Serendipity's produce, with an eye on their fat carrots and beets; both crops fell to grasshoppers in my garden this year. The salad greens were long gone ($4/gal. bag), but they still had a couple bunches of beets, carrots, turnips, and chard remaining when I passed over my final quarters. Two more people in line behind me indicated that the Douglass's would be sold-out before 9 am. Get there early!

This August 3rd Gallup Independent article has general information on the regional farmers' markets and some of Brian Leddy's great photos.

NM Local Organic Chicken Feed

2009-08-13T21:18:00.010-06:00

Raising hens for egg production has steadily become part of my daily routine over the past several years-- my current flock of 5 hens lay about 2 1/2 dozen eggs per week. But, i've always thought about the ethical compromises I make by buying my chicken feed from the great local guys at Navajo Feed and Seed on Gallup's north-side. The thing is, it's Purina brand Layena pellets ($18/50lbs)--50 lbs lasts about 4 weeks with green compost from the kitchen. It's not produced locally, nor is it organic. And so I was really excited to see this advertisement in the August 09 edition of the La Montanita Co-op Newsletter.

The Co-op's food-shed distribution system will pick up the feed in Northern NM and deliver it to the Gallup branch of La Montanita on the regular weekly truck. Whether your buying higher protein egg-layer feed or scratch feed, a mix of grains like corn, milo, rice, etc.-- candy to chickens -- the price is 80% higher than the Purina stuff. Damn. But it is local AND organic AND supports the Co-op. Triple whammy! I'll have to order some. And i'm really interested to see if any increases in the quality/efficiency of the feed --like buying good dog food; they eat/poop less-- make this local, planet-friendly alternative to Purina Layena any more attractive.

From My Garden: Summer Asparagus?

2009-08-12T21:07:00.008-06:00

An August shoot of asparagus

Asparagus is one of the most time-sensitive crops in my garden. For 6 weeks in the late spring, muscular shoots draw moisture from the snow-melt still stored in the soil and force their way upward to find light. These pale white shoots, supple enough to eat raw, emerge through even the driest, crusty clay soil. When they do find sunlight, nutrients stored in the large perennial root force the shoots to green and grow rapidly. Each day, shoots can grow 6 inches or more, and the folded triangular bracts common at the tip of asparagus start to elongate into branches with the growing stalk. If you miss the harvest for a even a single day, the stalk turns woody, and unharvested, these shoots grow into a 3-5' fern-like plant.

Feathery 'leaves' and flowers of mature asparagus

Life cycle, meet farmer. Mature plants are usually harvested for 4-6 weeks starting in late April in my shadowy canyon. My most productive asparagus bed was planted 15 years ago by previous owners of this lot and still has enough vigor to indicate at least another few productive years. A couple of years ago I also planted 40 root-crowns in my waffle garden of perennials. I've yet to harvest any shoots, but interestingly, this bed of young root stock has continued to produce new shoots throughout the summer. In contrast, the older asparagus bed thrives on the original stalks that are allowed to mature after harvesting ends in late May.

Gallup's Bee Finder, Beekeeper: Karl Lohmann

2009-08-07T12:16:00.017-06:00

Karl invited Racheal and I over this week for a tour of his permaculture garden and beehives in the juniper hills of Gallup's outskirts. We came away inspired and more determined than ever to start keeping our own hive. And after our peek into the hives, Karl predicted the first good honey harvest in three years.

In the midday heat-- a preferred time for opening a hive -- Racheal and Karl donned the light fabric suits, mesh veils, and gloves common to beekeeping. After using pine-straw smoke to calm the bees, we looked at honeycomb in the top two supers, separated from the brood supers below by a queen excluder. Karl quickly shed his gloves as he started working the hive, Racheal forgot to put hers on, and I risked it without a suit or veil. I did fine until the camera drew me in close and I forgot to watch where I was exhaling-- inviting a bee into a predictable pattern: "First they buzz you; then they bump you; then they sting you." Karl's words echoed in my head as a bee repeatedly bumped my head while we closed the hives back up. I started dancing. Lucky, that bee only got to second base and we all came away without a sting.

Karl simulating a forest fire

Karl has been beekeeping in Gallup for 20+ years. First learning the craft as his father's beekeeper's assistant-- a smart prerequisite, it seems, to beekeeping-- he's provided Gallup the valuable community services of swarm removal (bee finder, bee keeper), apprenticing new beekeepers, and occasionally maintaining community hives that fall into disrepair.

A frame full of capped honeycomb

People need bees, and honeybees need people now more than ever. The unexplained Colony collapse disorder continues to decimate honeybee populations worldwide. Backyard apiaries like Karl's are a first step to countering this decline and helping maintain genetic diversity in wild honeybee populations, in addition to the more obvious pollinating and honey-producing benefits.

The amazingly busy bee space between frames.

High Desert Leafy Greens

2009-07-31T16:31:00.014-06:00

Maintaining a bed of leafy greens in the garden to pick from nightly, is one of the tasty convieniences of home gardening. They grow quickly, have simple feeding needs (nitrogen!), and are one of the first spring crops on the kitchen table. But, here high on the Colorado Plateau, our spring-greens growing season is limited by cold nights and hot days.

Mixed greens behind young leeks

This is how the broad diurnal shift in temperature (difference between daily high and low temp; 60+ degrees during spring in Gallup) really limits a long season for traditional leafy greens- when winter seems over, the days get hot. But clear nights, well into June, let the daytime heat stream into the atmosphere, even to the point of freezing. These frigid night-time temperatures delay the start of planting (without a cold-frame or greenhouse), only to see hot, windy, and dry days in May and June, push the greens to bolt and turn bitter. This year we had an unseasonably wet late-May and June, and so the farmers markets in Gallup and Ramah still had sweet greens of all varieties well into July. In my garden in Gallup, the lettuce greens usually quickly turn bitter, but I've had great luck in years' past maintaining a cold-frame of baby lettuce throughout the winter with nightly heating with an incandescent light-bulb and daily opening of the glass lid. This year I put my greens planting space into Red Chard and Bok Choy. Both great in stir-fry's when mature, but stay consistently sweet when young well into a hot summer. This interesting NPR article described a new study on the dramatic importance of consuming healthy fats when eating vegetables and greens to maximize nutrient uptake.

Home-grown baby chard-- with insect damage -- and local goat-cheese salad

This was my own recipe, but this huge NY Times food article, practically a cookbook, has 101 salad recipes to find a new twist on traditional favorites.

El Morro Valley Ranch: Local Organic Beef

2009-07-28T22:02:00.015-06:00

Somebody que up Leonard Bernstein's rousing symphony Rodeo IV: Hoe-down. . . BEEF- it's what's for dinner! Aah, but tonight it's different. My main course wasn't crowded into a small feedlot as a teenager and fed yummy corn, followed by anti-biotics for it's upset tummy. No, corn and drugs didn't turn into bland fatty meat in this steer. See, tonight it's local range-fed beef. Healthy, lean, dry-aged beef, high in Omega-3's and ingrained with the natural flavors of the native blue-gramma and sage it was raised on, is on my grill tonight.

Photo of their brochure cover

I met the rancher, Charlie Mallory, selling his beef just a few miles from his ranch, at the Ramah Farmer's Market in early July. He and his wife cheerfully sold frozen cuts packaged at a licensed processing facility. Ground beef ($4/lb), Sirlion ($9/lb), and T-bones ($10) jumped into my basket. Quarter sections of an animal(about 60 lbs. of equally distributed cuts @ $6/lb = $360) will be available around August, but reserve ahead of time. This seems to be resonable pricing for local food produced on the small-scale that allows for humane and observant care of the animals and land. I'll try to post again later after visiting his ranch in person.

This interesting Wall Street Journal article describes how the down-turn in the economy has reduced demand in the high-end beef market, resulting in lower prices and more wide-spread availability of prime cuts and grass-fed beef. It's in market conditions like this that local producers like El Morro Valley Ranch need local customers more than ever.

So how did the sirloin taste? Perfect. Moist and smooth even when cut with the grain. Salt, pepper, and a searing hot grill for a couple minutes was all it took to have a great meal. Sauted home-grown brocolli and baby yukon potatoes, topped with rosemary chevre from the Windy Ridge Goat Dairy south of Ramah completed this all-local ranch dinner.

El Morro Valley Ranch

P.O. Box 250

Ramah, NM

(505) 783-4521

elmorrovalleyranch@gmail.com