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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.   

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).

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.