A Quick Update and a Week Off

New portal is great! 

Hens

Beets, broccoli and lettuce, collards and more beets recently planted.

Potatoes

Beds with shade cloth; L to R: wild arugula, mustards and kyoto carrots, then sunflowers, tomatillos, marigolds, calendula and hot peppers, then radishes, spinach, chard, beets, broccoli, and more!

Volunteer tomato in with chard.

Cover crop of rye and buckwheat

Planting of Amaranth

Planting of Red Scallions, Carrots and lettuce

Second planting of the Blue Corn

Tomatillos to the left and under shade with micro sprinklers is carrots, lettuce and radicchio.

In the next few weeks we are preperaing this area for a fall planting of more greens, carrots, herbs, beets and hopefully some sun chokes, strawberries and asparagus. We have big plans but can really only move one day at a time..,.. coming soon is a high tunnel greenhouse or two as well as more solar off the grid technology and pasture for more layers. Exciting time to be a farmer.

Calendula in a hollowed pine log and popcorn is tall!

View to the East

Tomatillos and a propped up sunflower

Beans with lettuce mix growing underneath and pickling cucumbers growing up the other side.

These were volunteers!

Carrots, tomatoes and basil

zucchini is lowing this location/ micro-climate, calendula in between plants and radishes all over too. 

New planting of pak-choi, chard, radish and lettuce.

Chicken pasture is growing

herb garden

new roof on the new portal

Birds eye view west of the house

arroyo

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

Farming in the Rocky Mountains

Tomatoes getting their first true leaves.

Blue Flax Flower

Hot Peppers: Habanero, Jalapeño, Cayenne

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 .