Farm progress

Several times recently I've gone out with the camera to document the status of the farm but I'm so bad at keeping up with the blog that most of the photos become outdated before they get posted. So I'll just give you a summary of what's been going on here the last couple of months.

Here is a shot of the greenhouse in March after I managed to get some greens planted.







In April we were visited twice by students from the UNM Sustainability Studies program. These folks were wonderful to have here and they were terrific help. The first time we planted potatoes, worked on the solar panels, and worked on the rainwater catchment system on the greenhouse.



When they visited again two weeks later we planted the sweet potatoes in the greenhouse and continued the catchment installation.


We really enjoyed talking with these students and their instructor and hearing their thoughts and ideas on sustainability. Here we are discussing the merits of aquaculture.

Meanwhile we have been following the progress of the pig pregnancies with much anticipation.
The girls are very friendly and just love having their bellies scratched so it's easy to get them to lie down for a belly shot.


This is Aelita about three weeks ago.


And here she is just before she farrowed. I know the feeling!


Of course it wouldn't be springtime on the farm without lambs! We have 10 little bouncy lambs on the ground and there is a possibility for a couple more. The lambs have formed a little gang and they roam around together looking for trouble in the early evening. One of their favorite activities is to "hop on pop" in which they jump on and off the ram.


Stay tuned for new piglets, Bear the dog, and a little road trip.

Solar lamb warmer

This is from before Chris' injury but I just had to share this great idea we had back in early January. We had a lamb born to a skittish and reluctant mom and we found it in the morning, chilled and lethargic. Lambs like this need to be warmed quickly so after a warm water bath we set him up in the kitchen with the reflectors from one of our solar cookers, a sleeping bag, and a towel which we used to cover his eyes. It worked wonderfully and the little guy perked up pretty quickly.

Dear President-Elect Obama

I have a confession to make. I did not knock on any doors or make any phone calls on your behalf. When I received phone calls to volunteer for your campaign I politely declined. Instead I spent the last days of this election harvesting the remainder of this summer's crop on our small family farm, planting my winter garden, and caring for the livestock that promise meat, eggs, and milk for my family. You see, over the last eight years I have become so frustrated, disappointed, and angry with the direction of this country that I saw little reason to spend any more time holding signs, writing letters, and making phone calls.

After 9/11 my husband and I, with the support of our families, decided to move onto his father's 10 acre family farm and build a sustainable home. We were terribly concerned about the grossly unbalanced consumption of resources that occurs here in America, the effect that consumption has on our planet, and the future we were creating for our children. We hatched a plan to build our own energy efficient home of straw bales and earthen plaster, using recycled and reclaimed materials whenever possible. We planned to grow the majority of our own food without the use of harmful chemicals and fertilizers. We resolved to raise our own animals for meat, outdoors with plenty of space, and to slaughter them humanely. We installed solar panels instead of connecting to the electrical grid, choosing instead to be mindful of our energy consumption. We planned carefully to conserve water. We planted trees and berries, reclaimed pastures for sheep and cows, and learned how to grow and preserve our own food. This all took an enormous amount of work and sacrifice, and there were many times we wanted to give up. We didn't give up because we felt strongly that what we were doing was the right thing to do and it was our responsibility as citizens of this planet.

Meanwhile, all around us we saw further destruction of our planet and nation, abuse and pillage of our precious resources, more and bigger houses being built, larger and more consumptive cars on the roads, the illegal war that asked us to sacrifice our most precious resource of all, stolen elections, torture, and a government and a people who seemed unable, unwilling, or too distracted to do anything about it. We saw the price of fossil fuels, building materials, and food skyrocket, and we soon realized that what began as the right thing to do was becoming a matter of great financial importance to our family. We doubled our efforts and worked harder than ever to develop our homestead with a renewed sense of urgency. We became much more selfish with our time, choosing to put everything we had into our mission of sustainability. With any time we could spare we shared what we have learned with others. Rather than volunteer for campaigns, we strengthened our bonds with family, friends, and neighbors. In short, we moved away from politics and towards community building. We were no longer primarily motivated by what was the right thing to do. In fact, by the end of October 2008 we were motivated by sheer survival.

Yesterday we contributed to your campaign in the only way we felt we could spare. We voted. And something started to shift. Through all the disillusionment and cynicism I started to feel something strange welling up inside my chest. Was it, could it be.....hope? I hardly dared to believe it, but there it was. I felt hopeful that maybe we as a nation could change after all. I found myself glued to the television, watching the returns come in and reminding myself that I have been disappointed so many times before. I watched the disgust on our local news anchor's face as he announced a Democratic sweep of our state and marveled at how anyone could want things to stay the same. And when it was finally announced that you would be our next president I was overwhelmed with emotion. Seeing that crowd in Grant Park in my hometown of Chicago just blew me away. You have shown us that politics and community building can be one and the same. If nothing else, your election is evidence that we can change.

So I implore you now--please, please don't waste this opportunity. Unlike your predecessor, you seem to have the ability and the desire to understand the great problems that we face. Please don't let your party fall back into politics as usual. Please learn all you can about peak oil and our economy that is utterly dependent on cheap and abundant oil. Help those of us who are taking steps toward a new, local economy rather than helping big business try to obliterate us through unfair legislation that hurts small businesses and farms and gives breaks to the big ones. Unwind all the red tape that your party likes to entangle us in so that small farmers can sell their products directly to consumers in their neighborhoods. Make it easier for people to build their own homes out of alternative materials without fighting the building and zoning office. Restore the rail system in this country. Help us to rebuild our communities, our mom and pop stores, our local infrastructure, and ask us all to grow tomatoes on our balconies, shop at the farmer's market, or keep a few backyard chickens. Make it not only legal to do so but make that the new patriotism. Be a new kind of Democrat and a new kind of leader. Ask us to help. We are willing. I might even start writing letters to my representatives and knocking on doors again.

Chicken Ark

It's our first year raising large numbers of chickens for meat and eggs, and we are using a portable chicken pen for pasturing our birds. Most pastured chicken pens look something like this:



That's Joel Salatin moving one of his mobile pens on his farm in Virginia (photo by T.L. Gettings). Salatin is the best known proponent of pastured poultry and he has recently been featured in Michael Pollan's best selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma.

We are farming in a very different climate. We are in a river valley in a desert. We can go months at a time without rain so we irrigate with river water, using a traditional system of ditches called acequias. So once every two weeks our pastures are under several inches of water for about half a day. This is not compatible with chickens on the ground. Also, we are in a very hot climate. The short, flat design of the Salatin pen would quickly bake our birds. So Chris designed a chicken pen that deals with these problems. He calls it the Chicken Ark. Here it is under construction:



The Ark is built as an A-frame, which allows hot air to escape through the ventilated top and sides as it rises. The vertical component of the Ark also provides for ample room for my nearly 6 foot tall frame to step inside. And there is a loft built in where the birds can sit when the field is under water. The birds have a choice between shade or sun and they are moved every day to fresh pasture where they get their fill of bugs, grass, and alfalfa. This makes for happier birds and much healthier meat, and the pasture gets nutrients without the use of chemical fertilizers. This in turn feeds our sheep and cows with healthy pasture.





Chris has also designed some nice waterers that use a common float valve hooked up to a hose that flows out of a 5 gallon bucket. Fifty birds can drink ten gallons of water per day in our hot and dry climate so it's nice that we only have to fill it up twice a day.



The Ark is heavy but that is also a good thing in this insanely windy place. Two people can move it pretty easily with two hand trucks, and one person can move it if they try really hard. I know this from experience.

Now he just needs to build two or three more of these and we'll be all set!

Pigs do fly!

A week ago Saturday we finally got our piglets! We purchased two American Guinea Hog piglets from a farm in New York and had them shipped to us via air cargo. They are so little that two of them fit into a medium sized dog crate. It was pretty fun to go pick up piglets at the airport!

We chose the Guinea Hog for many reasons. First, they are a rare, heritage breed with a very small number of individuals remaining in the country. They are a breed that originated here in the US and were at one time a very popular homestead pig. Like many heritage breeds, they fell out of favor with the advent of factory farming. They are a lard breed, which is also rare, but desirable to a sustainable farmer because the lard is useful for so many things in the kitchen and on the homestead. They are much smaller than a factory hog, with adults reaching 250-350 pounds. They also have much smaller litters, which is great for us because we have limited freezer capabilities being off the grid so fewer, smaller hogs to butcher means we freeze less meat at a time. They are known for their gentle disposition, easy farrowing, and tasty meat. Best of all they are excellent on pasture. They will graze the grass and don't root as much as other breeds, especially if they are rotated from one spot to another regularly. Still, they can be used to till up a garden if you leave them on it.

We have two females (gilts) to start with because a local friend already has a Guinea Hog boar we can use to breed them. Later we might get our own boar from a different genetic line.

Here they are just minutes out of the crate in a portable pen that we set up for them in our winter wheat paddock. They were chewing on grass before they even came all the way out of their crate!

Managed grazing

Finally, finally we have the majority of our fencing in place so we can really begin to manage our animals on the pasture. Early this season we were able to graze a small paddock of winter wheat, which has now already come back to over a foot tall.



Later we turned the animals into one of our irrigation channels. This is nice in many ways--the channel is not wasted in terms of pasture production, and it does not need to be mowed or weeded. Our neighbors either spray, weed-whack, or burn their irrigation ditches. Why not make it work for the humans and animals on the farm? Of course it takes the right animals and the right fencing to do this. We are lucky now that our cows and sheep are mild-tempered enough to stay put and herd easily. It's easy to keep them busy eating when there is lush grass and clover available.

Cultivating community

This season we have made an effort to invite members of the community to come down to the farm and help us produce food and build infrastructure. We have been amazed and inspired by the incredible response that we have had to our invitation. As Joel Salatin says, people seem to be looking for a relationship with their food and their farmers lately, and we as farmers are definitely looking to reciprocate.

So last Saturday was our second farm work day of the season. On the first day a week before we were so busy that I forgot to get the camera out, but this week I managed to get some photos. We had 8 adults and 4 children here working in addition to the four of us so it was an incredibly productive afternoon. Our main goal for the day was to install an earthen floor in Chris' shop. We were hindered by the fact that our floor material (left over from the house project) was frozen solid at the beginning of the day. This meant that a lot of muscle went into breaking it up so it could be mixed. We also worked on fencing and dealt with a shipment of bare root apricot rootstock for grafting as well as some bare root apple and cherry trees.

The kids were incredible! They were not expected or required to help us, but they really wanted to. Here they are working on breaking up the frozen floor material. These are all homeschooled kids, by the way.



And here they are helping to trowel on the earthen floor and deliver plaster to the trowelers. You can see that the earth plaster that we applied to the walls during the previous week's work day is still drying.




While some of us worked on the floor, others dug out an old bed in the garden and "hilled in" our apricot rootstock. This will keep it alive until we are ready to graft and pot/plant them.



The apples and cherries were already potted by the time I got the camera out, and work on fencing had begun. Here they are taking down last year's fencing, which works for cattle and sheep but not chickens. This will be replaced with a chicken-proof fence to keep our free-range layers out of the new gardens that we will be digging this year.



A crew then took the old fencing and loaded it onto the trailer so it could be distributed around the pasture to create more paddocks for rotational grazing. We decided this year that we don't want to rely on electric fencing any more, mainly becuase we just don't have time to walk 10 acres every day to maintain it. With Chris' full time job and having small kids at home it just isn't practical. So cattle panels cut in half will be the majority of our fencing.



All of the kids joined in on this project. I'm sure the trailer ride around the farm was a big part of the appeal.




Meanwhile, back in the shop the girls and I were cranking out the floor. After doing this a lot I have observed that men tend to have a more difficult time with this job because they get pretty uncomfortable down there on the floor for so long. I'm guessing it has to do with flexibility in the hips. Anyhow, we got everything that we could mix that day onto the floor, which amounted to over half the shop.



It was a great day, and we really want to thank everyone who came out to help. There is nothing like the feeling of working towards a common goal with like-minded folks. We feel truly blessed to have you as part of the farm!

Upgrading our water

We are installing a new, larger DC pump and much larger solar panel for our well. We will be drip irrigating a much larger garden this year and we also want to have backup pumping capabilities for both houses on the property.

Chris' dad is an accomplished welder and made this ginormous post upon which the new panel, with a tracking stand, will be attached. It is very heavy! It took three strong guys to get it into place, which was a bit of a trick because they had to hoist it up on top of the pump house and then drop it down into the hole. They couldn't place it directly because there are some obstacles in the way. It's nerve-wracking to watch, but all's well that ends "well." Ha-ha.

Hello Bonniejean and other lurkers!

I just got your comment about lurking on my blog and I wanted to let you know that I'm thrilled to hear from you! One of our goals is to share what we know about sustainable living, attachment parenting, and homeschooling with whomever will listen so we are glad to know you are out there.

If you like, any lurkers out there can take this opportunity to comment and ask questions. I'll answer them all and I'd sure love to know who is reading.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to share with your friends!

Sustainable foods at the BioPark

Last weekend Chris participated in a sustainable foods festival at the BioPark. He designed an exhibit about home aquaculture which featured live fish and some great information. The kids and I, along with Beth, Kevin, Emma, and Nina, all attended and ate great food. Then we wandered the aquarium and botanic gardens at night, which was a treat.

Here's Eli in the gift shop.



Our spread of delicious food.



The kids exploring the pond.



Here's Chris with his exhibit.



I love this photo of Emma.



The girls checking out the fish.



The little girls.



And the big girls.



And the other big girl making trouble.



And the boy.



The girls got to paint flower pots.



And goof off in the aquarium.






This is Terina's little boy Griffin. He's so big already!



Giddyup ant!



Night owls.



The evening ended with a bit of dancing. It was a lovely, warm summer night with good friends and good food. Who could ask for anything more?