Shade Cloth and Micro Sprinklers

Got a good rain yesterday. Planted and set up about 2 dozen micro-sprinklers.

All four beds with shade cloth were uncovered during the rains. Hopefully this will help germination of lettuces, mustards, chard, tomatillos and flowers. 

Broccoli Harvest

Pastured Poultry in Drylands

These hens have been getting moved on our native drylands pasture at least twice a day ,,,,sometimes four or five!

Hens on a diet of leafy greens, sprouted wheat berries and barley, and organic scratch, no soy whatsoever. 

These three hen tractors can on a good day produce three eggs each!

Growing Food with Water Catchment

This is a February planting of beets, broccoli and lettuce.

Second cutting is going to be great on this patch.

New expanded beds all set up with irrigation from the cistern... Growing here now are potatoes , chard, lettuces, kales, cabbages,  radishes, beets, broccoli, mustards and soon sunflowers down the middle bed with the chamisa at the end. 

Inside view of the far left hoop.

Red Russian Kale 

Potatoes

Early Corn Planting

Blue Corn

Blue Corn plot to be a Three Sisters Garden across the driveway, next to perennial herb garden.

Second Blue Corn plot, also slated to become a Three Sisters Garden

Farming in the Rocky Mountains

Tomatoes getting their first true leaves.

Blue Flax Flower

Hot Peppers: Habanero, Jalapeño, Cayenne

Food Growing Everywhere!

This might be a year where we actually get some strawberries.

Companion planting of spinach and strawberries.

Hauling weeds off to the five hens that aren't on pasture.

Oregano 

We have tons of oregano . 

Parsley

Hoop-Houses for Growing Food Year-Round

Beets, Lettuces and Broccoli

1/4 in. drip in place ready for a pump to deliver water we caught from the sky.

All the broccoli is doing pretty well, including transplants from thinning.

The Four Seasons

This super wet snow came five days ago  

It was sunny and warm just an hour before this photo was taken

We Don't Buy Lemons Anymore

 We have just this one lemon tree and for over a month now it has supplied us with all our citrus needs. So add lemons to the list of things we used to buy at stores or wherever... now we grow them ourselves. We have not bought eggs since we first got chickens almost two years ago, we harvest our own wood heat, tons or veggies in season and whenever else possible. We have slowly shifted our growing efforts to being a 365 days a year operation. Water catchment and irrigation is about to be a full blown, off the grid operation. With an upgrade of a water pump and setting up irrigation hoses we want to get a solar panel and batter hooked up to the electric pump and make that whole system self sustaining. Everything on our small farm is a low input work in progress. The lemon tree is a lot of work but the rewards are immeasurable.

Anyways, enjoy these photos of our lemons all in different stage from a budding flower to a fully ripe meyer lemon hanging off the tree in our living room not five feet from me as I type this .

Building a Greenhouse

Three reclaimed doublepane windows make up each side of this simple A frame.

Growing Food With 75 MPH Winds & No Rain

Living Salad Bar

These images are all from May or early June. It only took us until now to post and publish.

Chickens Don't Just Make Eggs...

...they also make manure.

 We are amending the soon to be herb garden with a mixture of straw, manure and half broken down food scraps. This is a very rich mix and helps hold water as well as bring nutrients to the soil. We are still building up this garden (the one we buried pots in last year and grew chiles) We are planning on planting mostly perennial herbs here.

Earthships

We visited the world headquarters of Earthship Biotecture in Taos, NM. Some cool concepts for off the grid living and sustainable building. We put up a photo album on Picassa here. Enjoy.

More Canning and More Coldframes

 Did four more quarts of some nice yellow and red organic tomatoes. (all free by the way)

All In A Day's Work

This wood was cut, gathered, split (if needed) and stacked all today.

Homemade Dill Pickles

Pickling cucumbers chillin'

Firewood...

...heats  you twice so they say. But I think the guy who coined this one never really cut his/her own.

I say it heats you six times. Cutting, loading, splitting, stacking, bringing it inside and then when you burn it.