When it rains, it pours!

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.