Sunday, November 14, 2010

Succulent Greens

The greens in my coldframe are fat and sassy as winter descends upon us.  Greens like cool weather, but prefer not to be frozen too much.  A coldframe creates conditions that are just right.  I'm amazed -- but not at all surprised -- that so few Americans have coldframes.  There's no comparison between freshly-picked, organically-grown greens, and greens that were picked in some huge California field a week or two ago.  But humans are a conservative lot, and it's very hard to get them to change their behavior.



Here's my greenhouse.  Wearing my rose-colored glasses, I can confidently predict that we'll have more greens than we can possibly use for salads, smoothies, omelettes, etc.  But this is still November, and I'm expecting a major outbreak of aphids by January.  The first rule of homesteading:  "there's always something."

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Eat Your Honey!

Summer is officially over when we stop using our EZ-Ups at Farmer's Market.  The "new, improved" Farmer's Market location lacks protection from the blazing summer sun.  Shade is necessary for survival here, so we protect ourselves with pop-up shelters.  Our spot is 30 feet long, and setting up three EZ-Ups, as well as four umbrellas to keep the early morning sun from cooking our product (it gets seriously hot in New Mexico) is a serious chore every week.  And then we have to take it all down at the end of Market.  The end of summer (usually early October) offers a respite from all this.  Temperatures are much lower now, and the shade from a nearby tree has finally reached our location.  We're looking forward to 6 months of full exposure to the sky.  This will allow our customers to see us better.  We've been in this spot for a year now, and people still come up to us and ask us where we've been all this time.  "Right here, right in front of the Music Box," we always tell them, gesturing to the landmark behind us.

By the way, all this EZ-Up nonsense is an example of America's devolution from take-it-for-granted socialism (a canopy for all) to capitalism at its most primitive (now it's every vendor for himself).




A little bit later we unfurled the umbrellas.  We only brought three this week, and next week will bring only one.  Soon we won't need any umbrellas, and will be grateful to bask in the feeble winter sun.

We've given considerable thought to creating an attractive, eye-catching display.  Our entire display -- the serapes covering the tables, the  umbrellas, and the honey labels -- are all brightly colored to attract the eye and lure customers into our entrepreneural spiderweb.  Farmer's Market is a competitive visual environment, and we do our best to compete.  (Yellow highlighting courtesy of Blogger's malfunctioning software.)




A customer gave us this idea a year or so ago.  Eat your honey, indeed!  Both Laura and I immediately appreciated the humor.  About six months ago we had signs made expressing this noble sentiment, and so far we've had very little response.  Once, a customer took cell phone pictures of the signs.  Another time, a customer offered to buy them from us.  But other than that, no apparent recognition, or at least no acknowledgement.




Here's the other sign, with cute little bees.  Laura demonstrates what it must be like to eat your honey.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

2010 Monsoon Total

Our rainfall for June through Sept. this year was 9.27 inches.  The breakdown was:

Jun   .67
Jul   3.51
Aug 4.39
Sep   .70

In 28 years of record keeping, this year was tied for 6th place with 1991.  Not too shabby, as monsoons go.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Hawk on Windmill

Laura took this picture of a hawk perched on our windmill the other morning.  This hawk occasionally attacks the doves that have been attracted to our bird feeder.  We think it's a young hawk, not quite ready for more challenging game.

Friday, October 8, 2010

My Automatic Greenhouse Drip Irrigation System

This 550-gallon water tank (8 feet off the ground to create a little water pressure) supplies water to the greenhouse, an outside water hose, the orchard drip system, and potentially the guest house.  It can be filled with river water (superior for irrigation) or well water (available during the winter).  Perhaps this winter I will finally install my solar water pump.  The tank is a relatively small 550 gallons because the solar pump can produce only 350 gallons a day, as I recall.  When drip irrigating the orchard, I will be filling and draining the tank every day.  The platform has solid walls so I can store hay inside it.


Control valves at the bottom of the platform.  On the right side are the three orchard drip lines.  The water line to the greenhouse is buried.  This winter, for the first time, I'll have to build a foam housing to keep this assembly from freezing.  Up till now I've been draining the pipes after each use, but this will no longer be practical since I'll be irrigating the greenhouse every day.



Timer and filter inside the greenhouse.  The jog in the water line is to raise the timer above flood level, hopefully.  In the background is my 3000-pound "water wall" which keep the greenhouse from freezing at night. 



Just like the Ark coldframe, the 3/4" water pipe feeds 1/2" T-tape.  The water line at the very top irrigates the greenhouse whenever I irrigate the orchard.  This water is under considerable pressure, and the little bottles prevent the water from spewing across the room.



Looking east.  I'm using the garden hose with fan sprayer to water the new seedlings until they're well established. 



Looking west.  I've planted mizuna, beets, lettuce, spinach, chard, siberian kale, and red russian kale.  On the right side are my three trees:  kumquat, orange, and strawberry guava.  Since the sun is so low during the winter, I can plant vegetables underneath the trees as well as next to the windows.



The fan sprayer has a built-in own valve, but such dinky little valves can leak, which will drain the water tank overnight.  I've learned to rely on a standard 3/4" pvc ball valve to turn the water on and off.

That concludes today's greenhouse tour.  I'm already wondering how I'm going to combat the aphids this winter. 

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Laura with Persimmon Tree

I planted this tree in 1991.  It's an American persimmon (Ruby), which is obviously well-adapted to our spot.  I also planted several varieties of Oriental persimmons.  The trees grew OK, but they broke dormancy way too early.  After several years of being frozen back every spring, the trees gave up and died.  Unripe persimmons are famous for their pucker factor, but ours are wonderful if allowed to fully ripen, which means waiting for them to fall from the tree.  Crops are variable, but some years we collect hundreds of fruits, most of which we eat on the spot.

After I cut down the large willow trees next to the house (the brittle horizontal limbs had grown heavy enough to crush the roof), I decided to replace them with persimmon trees.  The ones I had planted in the orchard grew rapidly, yet matured to a fairly manageable size.  The fruits are an extra bonus.  In 2006 I planted 5 persimmon trees in front of the house.  They have grown much more slowly than the ones in the orchard -- after 5 growing seasons, the biggest one is not quite 6 feet tall.  I think it's the difference in soil type -- the orchard is a combination of sandbar sand and arroyo dirt, whereas the house is surrounded by a motley collection of miscellaneous fill I scrounged from wherever dirt was available at the time.   

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

There's Always Something

This year our cat discovered the Ark coldframe, and decided the loose dirt made an excellent outhouse.  So I covered the top with fiberglass window screen, held down by bricks and boards.  That solved the problem.  The seedlings are up and growing well.  From bottom:  mesclun mix (without arugula), spinach, leaf lettuce mix, and beets (we eat them mainly for the greens, but we'll eat the roots if any of them make it that far).

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

After a Long, Hot Summer

So much for my theory that cherry tomatoes are more able to withstand summer dieoff syndrome.  The pepper plants in the background are doing just fine.


These are my two remaining tomato plants, and even they are partly dead.  Fortunately, we were able to freeze plenty of tomatoes earlier in the summer, and we still have canned tomatoes from last year.  Next year I'll try growing my tomatoes in virgin ground -- the part of the garden that I've always reserved for the winter coldframes.  Since I'm now growing my winter veggies in the greenhouse and the Ark coldframe, I have new garden options, and planting my tomatoes in ground where they've never grown before is an obvious experiment.  I should have some results by August 2011.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Solanum Stew

Here's a tasty omelette, mostly vegetables, with a little egg to hold it together.  The veggies are tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplant -- all of which belong to the Solanum family, the poisonous Nightshades.  It's remarkable how a poisonous plant can produce something that tastes so good.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

New Grass

After killing off most of the cane that had been growing along the river (I got rid of it because it was a fire hazard), I planted a mixture of 7 kinds of tall fescue to provide a ground cover.  I really lucked out -- I planted right before the monsoon started, and strewed extra grass seed across the damp soil after every rain.  We ended up having 8" of rain, timed just perfectly to nurture the newly-sprouted seedlings.  That's the river at the upper-right corner of the picture.


Another picture showing the lush green grass.  Tall fescue makes a clump about 2 feet high, and lives for many years.  Next year I'll plant some bermuda grass seed.  Bermuda grass is a pernicious weed in my garden, but it will make a useful ground cover in this location because it will spread and cover any bare spots.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Falling Into Fall

This is my latest Grasroots Press column:

For the past couple of years I’ve wanted to revive “Signs of the Seasons,” a column I wrote for the Las Cruces Bulletin in 1986-88, but have always gotten sidetracked by more “serious” topics. But obviously, whatever’s going to happen will happen whether I write about it or not. So why not write about something I love?

I have lived literally on the bank of the Rio Grande north of Radium Springs since 1973. As a beekeeper, gardener, and orchardist, I spend a lot of time outdoors, and have come to appreciate “life beyond the shopping malls.” I’d like to share some of my observations of our marvelous area with you.

We had a wet but relatively short monsoon this year – 8.57 inches of rain in slightly over two months. We’ve had six wetter monsoons since I started keeping rainfall records in1982, but in most of these the rainfall was spread over a longer period of time. Remarkably, the climate experts (www.climas.arizona.edu) didn’t predict a wet monsoon this year even as it was happening.

I’ve been looking for possible shifts in the Southwest monsoon rainfall due to global heating, but so far the data are all over the place. Since 2004 we’ve had alternate wet/dry monsoons, varying from 3.12 to 13.25 inches. Our two wettest monsoons were 2006 and 2008, with 11.90 and 13.25 inches, respectively. Some readers might remember the notorious 2006 “Monsoon from Hell” which caused disastrous flooding in Alamogordo, El Paso, Hatch, and Radium Springs. That year, we had 10” of rain in slightly over a month.

There seems to be more of a climate shift regarding the winter snowpack at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Less snow is falling on average, and the springs are getting warmer, earlier. Those warm spring winds cause the snow to evaporate rather than melt, which reduces the runoff. We’ve long taken for granted the elegant simplicity of utilizing mountain snowpack for irrigation purposes. Ideally, the snow accumulates all winter, melts in the spring, and the runoff is collected by dams for summer allocation. However, if the precipitation falls as rain, or doesn’t occur at all, or if the snow evaporates rather than melts, the traditional irrigation model no longer works.

These days, even a very heavy snowpack will provide water for only two years. We no longer have a reserve of stored water; the availability of irrigation water is now on a year-to-year basis, depending on this winter’s snowpack. This is in stark contrast to the 80s and 90s, when Elephant Butte Lake was so full that it topped the spillway twice. One year there was so much water, they released some excess during the winter. I doubt if we’ll experience such a water glut again. In fact, before long I wouldn’t be surprised to see the snowpack fail completely some years, with a total lack of irrigation water for that year. And it might happen this winter – La Niña winters tend to be very dry. At any rate, most Grassroots Press readers aren’t dependent on irrigation water from the Rio Grande, which is not to say that they aren’t utterly dependent on nature somewhere down the line.

Fall is a remarkable time of year. The days shorten dramatically by mid-August, but temperatures don’t decrease as quickly, due to the enormous amount of heat stored within the top few feet of soil and rock. It’s this extra heat that makes autumn weather so pleasant. August is probably the most miserable month of the year, from my outdoorsy perspective, due to the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes. Yet October, a mere two months later, is one of the finest months of the year – crisp cool mornings followed by warm afternoons. And November is even better. La Niña winters tend to be sunny and dry – what I call “Chamber of Commerce weather,” so I would expect this winter to provide splendid opportunities for all manner of outdoor activities.

Autumn is our most colorful time of year. Peak color most years is early November. In the Las Cruces area, the most concentrated dose of fall colors can be found along Highway 185 as it parallels the Rio Grande between Radium Springs and Hatch. Golden cottonwoods, yellow willows, orange saltcedars, and flaming red sumac bushes combine to create a colorful spectacle.

The cotton fields are white unto harvest in November, looking like they’ve been struck by a natural fiber blizzard. But not for long, though, because farmers like to get that cotton harvested as quickly as possible, even running their cottonpickers at night if necessary. No sense tempting the weather, after all, because bad weather is always on the way sooner or later.

The chile fields, in their turn, ripen to bright shades of red. Until recent years, harvesting was a leisurely process lasting all winter, and the colorful fields provided a visual zap during a very brown time of the year. But research showed that both the quantity and quality of the chile was reduced by leaving it exposed to the elements like that, so now farmers like to get those peppers picked just as soon as they can.

As happens every year in late autumn, the waterfowl make like snowbirds and return to their winter haunts along the Rio Grande. Although they tend to concentrate in marshy areas like Bosque del Apache south of Socorro, plenty find their way into our area. Sometimes there’s a flock of a couple dozen snowy white egrets which fly in formation up and down the river about a foot above the water. (The air must be less turbulent there, making flying easier.) They make a beautiful sight as they fly, wingtip to wingtip, bodies reflecting in the water.

The sandhill cranes return from their northern summering grounds. Sometimes you can see them flying high above the river in multi-V patterns, necks outstretched, squonking back and forth to each other. Somehow the cranes epitomize autumn... slow but steady, and sure of its direction – winter is still to come, but spring is just around the corner.

Welcome to the Dry Country News Blog!

I used to put out a magazine called Dry Country News, off and on from 1979 till 1997.  I've wanted to put out a Dry Country News blog for a long time.  Recently it occurred to me that my New Earth Times blog, which I've put out since 2004, has basically morphed into Dry Country News.  So why not start a DCN blog for all the DCN-type material I produce -- homestead happenings, banner cloud photos, monsoon updates, signs of the seasons, etc.?  So here it is.

It will take awhile for this blog to build up an archive.  In the meantime I would suggest the New Earth Times archives blog, which has dozens of posts of interest to DCN readers.