keepin' it local

not only is our main heat source, wood harvested from the very local five acres we live on, but our dogs have been on a local, raw, and organic diet for longer than i can remember.

manure is good for plants

alpacas are funny, curious creaturesyoung ones:

Planting Garlic

we are still alive

just to update after almost a month, we had a few out of town visitors and have been very busy around here. almost ready for next season, wood shed is half full. and everyday that it's nice enough i continue to get loads of wood up to the house. this might be the year i get all the dead trees cleared up.

getting stuff done, ready for winter

truck emptied, next i am gonna put up plywood inside the walls, hang tools of it/ protect the metal a little.
just a few logs still needing to be bucked:

pest management

future greenhouse/ coldframe:
got these two double-pane french doors on freecycle and have two more coming my way. that is already a twelve foot long panel/wall eight feet high. should grow some tasty winter tomatoes. or whatever we decide to do with it.

canning salsa

canning pot:

king harvest has surely come

house in fall:

building stuff..

nice first harvest of corn:

growing our own food from harvested rainwater

tomato harvest from just the other day, also got summer squash (cocozelle) and nasty tasting chicken feed cucumbers, and one pie pumpkin and one amber cup squash.

SUNFLOWERS!

The big harvests are just around the corner.

many silvery fir tree tomatoes in today's harvest wagon:

Day off to the river..

Blue skies:

getting lots done in the summer heat..

maize

ripening tomatoes and harvesting hops.

garlic braids curing.

long time no blog

berry patch:

harvesting hops, potatoes and finally some rain!

new potatoes!!

update on the last few weeks:

winter squash growing past blue corn and scarlet runner beans:

some nice sunsets.

sunset the other night:

blessed with rains

life at the Spotty Dog Farm

our awesome geranium with three flowers going at once!

irrigation with harvested rain

Y-valve off our 275 gal. toteirrigating the three sisters garden yesterday evening:

spotty sign

our sign as of this morning:did pretty well today

rainwater harvesting

we made rocket pops. two flavors, pom-lime on the outside and orange-mango on the inside.

re-directed rain water

Spotty Dog Farm

4-way


3 gpm

our first farmer's market!

irises we cut for market:

a full day.

this was all today (the "day off") after we went to the DMV twice, got a new SS card and finally new drivers lincences .. also Becke got a new cell phone for the first time in like five years.

living-room/ green-house is emptying out as we plant more and more seedlings..

tomatoes planted, onions and basil.

greenhouse emptied out.. down to just the wide short table. then we can use the taller eight foot one for vending at market next week.

planning on cutting irises to sell at market also. we have nice white and purple ones. sage and mint are also possible first harvests. radishes are in a slow but close second.

all gardens built, maize planted, irrigation evolving

went to the alpaca ranch two times in the last two days to amend the three sister's garden area.

many hands make light work.

this tiller did weeks of work in a day( four hours last night and two or three hours this morning.)

busy, busy bees.

just an expression...no hives yet (thank god, couldn't even imagine that on top of everything else we've decided to do this season) picked up our friend at the train station in Lamy last week and got some good pics:

water holding capacity UP!

here is our new water container. went and picked it up this morning. holds 275 gal.

snow day in April!

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This blog is going multi-media. I fed the pig some kitchen scraps this afternoon and brought along the video camera. I am told she will be ready for slaughter ever sooner that originally thought. Good stuff.

spring projects: berry patch and hop trellis

for the past week I've been taking care of the landlord's pig and nine chickens.. good times but i wouldn't really want to do that every single day, although the eggs are nice to have..the pig is pretty high maintenance..she was constantly tipping her water pail into the muddy mess. a few hens for laying would be no problem though.


look at that dinosaur egg!

harvesting snow melt

cilantro and flat leaf parsley

progress

had to put a name on the papers so we decided on Spotty Dog Farm. what do you think? we heard a lot of suggestions and this one was the best. By Saturday we will have turned in the complete application (15 pages ) and paid all dues and then stuff just needs to grow! kinda exciting and frightening all at the same time. we just kinda comfortably fell into this. just let it ride.

spring has sprung!

both these photos i took with my camera phone, so the quality suffers..but becke took the camera with her to california for the next week, so any work/ progress will be documented by said phone till next wed.

more projects completed and seedlings

speckled roman tomatoes as of a few days ago:

here they are today with the walla-walla onions:

check a few off the list

put up a new screen door for summertime. used all the old hardware from the old door

some seeds started...

two trays of green chiles and one of the longer type tomato and three rows of our own sweet pepper seed

....onions, tomatoes (only the romans) still two other varieties, and "cross your fingers" peppers

farm-house portrait

photo by: Antone Dolezal

new travel blog

you can follow us on all our trips, large and small at our new travelblog:

http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/alex-and-becke/

new garden plots are well underway.

three sisters plot:

didn't finish at all today, but got like 90% of the fence up, and the reclaimed chicken wire was really tangled and pretty short in some sections, but we are taking a slightly different approach this season.