YCC tours the BDCK 'Farm'

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.