When it Rains, it Pours

Rain clouds over Paonia valley and Lamborn Mt.

On a Thursday morning in early July we all woke to a sound that we hadn’t heard in nearly two months. It was a full-bodied pitter patter of rain drops finally quenching the earth’s thirst. I can honestly say that the coming of rain was one of the most exciting events that’s happened on the farm. For two months we had farmed under the flaming sun, drenching the soil with water so plants wouldn’t wilt and racing against the heat when harvesting. When we weren’t hunting for shade we wet bandanas to cool our necks, dunked our hats in water, and stood in the pathways of sprinklers, all to keep our bodies and souls from shriveling in the heat. And then we were in absolute heaven as the clouds rolled in, bringing not just the usual wind and thunder but a vigorous, blessed cool rain… for four whole days. We splashed merrily in puddles and delighted in the cool air while finishing projects in the greenhouses that had been put off for weeks and enjoying some stress-free harvesting days.

The arrival of rain also meant that we might hear the elusive rain crow – the Yellow-billed Cuckoo – calling from one of the many large trees around the farm. Our ears are perked and we can only hope that this farm’s namesake will make an appearance this summer.

As June came to an end we placed the very last of our vegetable and flower transplants into the field. With our long transplanting days over we’ve now begun full on harvesting and … THE WEEDING REGIME.

Everything we’ve put into the ground since late May has a nice groundcover of knotweed, bindweed, thistle, and grass, and for a few hours every day we tackle a small area and pull these unwelcome intruders from the ground. Some crops go faster than others, like kale. The little transplants we put in a month ago shot up and spread their canopies so fast that weeds struggled in their shade, and with four of us working we cleared out 8 kale beds in an afternoon. Some of the crops we direct seeded, like beets, are grossly intimidating. The beds of red and golden beets need no less than an army to clear them of their stifling weeds, and so far we’ve cleared about 20 feet. So daunting a project are they that we temporarily abandoned them to the faster leek beds. One bed of leeks has already been weeded and mulched with straw – these we will harvest in the fall.

Many organic farmers employ the use of black plastic between and around their rows of crops for this very reason. I understand why they do it – a lot of time goes into weeding and mulching without this barrier. However, rows and rows of black plastic every year on a farm adds a substantial amount of waste to the earth, even from the kinds that claim to be biodegradable. We delight in feeling the bare earth beneath our feet and for that we must weed.

 

Our first bed of leeks, weed-free and mulched with straw.

Delights at Market

In preparation for the 4^th of July, Kerry, Sarah, and I spent a culmination of over 50 hours harvesting flowers last week and packing the cooler to it’s maximum capacity. On Friday, Kerry called the troops in and the ladies took up the challenge, creating the most beautiful and numerous bouquets we’ve had yet. At Crested Butte market on July 3^rd, crowds of friends and families paused on the street, their big eyes taking in the towers and tiers and tables of our bouquets. I am proud to say that our flowers left our tent so quickly in that first hour of market that I didn’t even have a chance to take a photo of the display! Long before market was over we had sold every last one, over 100 bouquets, and late-comers woefully watched their neighbors marching down the street with their living works of art, no doubt wishing they’d woken a little earlier that morning.

As strawberries make a final push to ripen their increasingly smaller fruits, we turn to the farm’s next little delight: raspberries! These brambles grow all around the prop house, and last Sunday we collected enough to fill 13 boxes for market. Our two cherry trees are also ending their fruit production, and Connor harvested a final 70 pounds to sell. We’re not a fruit farm but it’s always a benefit to have some sweet treat among the greens and vegetables; people go crazy for fruit. Our next fruit harvest will be apricots from one of many fruit trees around the farm. 

Kerry cuts yarrow and feverfew for market bouquets

Green and red head lettuces for market

Over 5 pounds of basil harvested for wholesale

Eggplant!

The farm's new nemesis: grasshoppers

Tomato Trellising

We never run out of new projects on the farm, and this week our fast growing tomatoes have given us another one! Kerry trellises her tomatoes using string hung from the tunnel's frame. The tomatoes are pruned to three branches, then twisted around their own string so that they are hoisted up off the ground. Some of our faster growing varieties, like the sungold and cherry tomatoes, have branches that are already 3-4 feet long, making trellising them a very slow and very careful project! With help from a friend of Kerry's, we have one row of tomatoes pruned and tied, and many more to go!

Connor, who is supposed to be tying string for trellising ;)

Remember the Prop House? It used to be full of tables with trays of seedlings. Now it's tilled and planted to tomatoes, basil, and peppers!

The Ault Family Visits Paonia

Claire's parents and sister came for a short visit right after the 4th, and we took them up the winding gravel road up Kebler Pass and to Lost Lake. The day was clear and cool as we hiked around a series of lakes high up in the mountains, and we listened to a Swainson's Thrush singing it's spiraling song in the pine trees. We both love and have missed the smells of pine forests and decaying needles on the forest floor, and this hike around the lake reminded us of our midwestern homes. 

Lost Lake

Sun and sunflower

The Longest Days of Summer

As the Summer Solstice approaches we find that we are almost done transplanting veggies and annual flowers into the fields! These last few weeks have been the hottest so far, hitting the upper and 90s and lower 100s without any relief from cloud cover, and a substantial portion of the day is spent irrigating new transplants, old transplants, greenhouses, and perennial gardens. Most days we were running the irrigation gun or tunnel sprinklers constantly, until one day we overheated the pump and electrical system after the water had been on for over 9 hours. Lesson learned - now we are careful to let the pump rest at least once during the middle of the day. 

All plants waiting to go into the ground have been moved outside the prop house, except for tomatoes, eggplant, basil, and peppers. These are hot weather plants, and while the days in Paonia are in the 80s and 90s, the nights reach the low 60s and 50s, and a chill wind blows through the valley every morning. The plants on outdoor tables dry out quickly from the wind in their small containers, and we have learned to check these at least twice a day, watering when needed. 

In the last two weeks we’ve filled more beds with zucchini, cucumber, celery, parsley, and flowers, and thus the far field is now completely planted! Only a few more beds remain out in the field to be filled with annual flowers and zucchini. We will continue to transform the greenhouses as more salad mix goes to seed, planting peppers, basil, eggplant, and tomatoes in their places.

 

Zucchini

The far field, completely planted and being watered with the irrigation gun

Connor and I transplanting peppers into a tunnel

Harvest & Bouquets

Fridays and Saturdays are now being dedicated to harvesting for wholesale and for market on Sunday. We start at 6am to take advantage of the cool mornings and harvest until early afternoon. Friday is also a flower bouqueting day! The ladies of the farm (Kerry, Sarah, myself) cut flowers and ornamental grasses on Friday morning, store the flowers in buckets of water in the cooler, then create $5, $10, $15, and $20 bouquets with other Paonia ladies who come to lend their expertise and artistic talent. The entire afternoon turns into a ladies social event as we merrily bouquet our way through buckets of flowers and catch up on Paonia news. Last Friday we had nearly 10 women bouqueting in the tea house at all times, with others popping in and out, and in a few hours every flower had found a home.

I am humbly new to the skill of bouqueting and so was in charge of creating the $5 and $10 bouquets, learning the art of color compatibility and texture, while watching the more experienced women fashion stunning bouquets fit for weddings and kings (seriously)!

 

Cherry harvest

Simultaneously weeding and harvesting a strawberry patch

Connor harvesting peas

Buckets of flowers wait in the tea house before our bouqueting social event

Rain Crow Goes to Market

At dawn on Sunday morning, Kerry, Jason, Sarah, and I loaded the truck with coolers full of produce and buckets of bouquets in water. As the sun rose over the mountains the ladies drove down the highway out of Paonia, turning onto the gravel road that would lead us over the mountain pass and down into the picturesque town of Crested Butte. The market hosts a variety of vendors, selling everything from produce, herbs, flowers, seeds, and compost, to chocolate, baked breads, herbal remedies, homemade pies, barbecue, and artwork.

Rain Crow Farm has two tents, about 6 tables, and three flower stands. When it comes to market, presentation is everything. We artfully arranged all of the best chards, kale, radishes, turnips, lettuce, cabbages, salad mixes, herbs, sugar snap peas, cherries, and strawberries we had been harvesting over the last two days into colorful tins of water and wicker baskets. The flower bouquets that had been created on Friday, over 50 bouquets in total, were displayed in the front on the three stands and on two tables. I am proud to say that when we were finished, the effect of the many colored and textured bouquets and the pops of red cherries and strawberries amongst the crisp greenery was quite stunning.

The strawberries and farm fresh chicken eggs went first, no surprises there. We were the only stand who had brought strawberries. While we weren’t the only stand with flowers, we did have the greatest variety, and bouquets steadily left their stands in the hands of their new owners. Bags of salad greens and even nettles were sought after, as well as bunches of kale, collards and garlic scapes. Almost everyone left with a bag of peas and cherries each, and by the end of the market every last cherry was gone. Time well spent by Connor and Jason! When the 4 hour market was all said and done, the 8 or so coolers and boxes we’d brought had been reduced down to 1, and almost every bouquet had found a home. A solid first market!

 

Buckets of flower bouquets sit on tables and stands in front of our tent

The following is a passage from the book "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran about the meaning of work, and it's a passage that is lovingly remembered and read each season on the farm when the days lengthen and the tasks seem endless.

"You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

When you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, and to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

And all work is empty save when there is love.

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Work is love made visible."

~Kahlil Gibran

From The Prophet

A tiger swallowtail butterfly warns off predators with its bright, outstretched wings

Enjoying some shade and learning about beekeeping on a day off!

June Journeys

As we move into June, mornings and nights have stayed breezy and chill, but the cool spring days have turned intensely hot, and we roast under the afternoon sun. On our days off we sit in the shade on our porch, protected by the towering cottonwoods and bushy willows. But June has brought sweet surprises, like juicy red strawberries in the perennial flowerbeds. So many strawberries that Kerry has begun baking pies every week to share with friends, and us! It's a rare day that we don't prowl the strawberry patches searching under leaves for the ripest, juiciest, non-slug eaten strawberry!

Cooking in a Solar Oven                 

 Rustic life in Paonia has so far proved to be enjoyable! Showering outside, making countless trips to the barn for water, and even cleaning out the composting toilet twice a month have not gotten old. However, there is one first world amenity that we both miss dearly and that is an oven. Baking has always been a big part of our lives, from making our own bread to pies for special occasions, it has always been a creative outlet for both of us. One day while working in the field a conversation about baking (homemade bagels to be specific) was sparked. Kerry mentioned that they had an old solar oven that had not been used in some time and that we could attempt to bake in it if we were desperate. Well, we were desperate. 

The solar oven isn't complex, it's simply a black box with a transparent lid. To begin, I started leaving it out in the goat pasture all day and occasionally checking the oven thermometer that came with it. After four weeks of experimenting I have only been able to get the oven to reach 225 degrees Fahrenheit. It's been maddening but I think I know why. 

First, the lid is old and three of the four corners have cracks in them. I imagine they let out a tremendous amount of heat. Second, if a cloud covers the sun for even a minute the oven can drop anywhere from 50-100 degrees! Third, I've found that I have to rotate the oven with the sun in order to maximize on solar energy. 
So far I have attempted to bake two items, beans and a crisp. I cooked the beans for 8 hours on a partially cloudy day with a high of 80 degrees. By the time the sun had gone down, the beans were partially cooked and needed another half hour on the stove. The rhubarb-strawberry crisp was attempted on a 90 degree day with full sun (or so I thought). I tried to duck tape the cracked corners but the oven/sun ended up melting the tape. The idea behind starting with a crisp was that there was nothing that truly needed to be baked through. I figured no matter how it turned our we would still be able to enjoy it over some ice cream. After three hours of full sun, large, white clouds began to roll in over the Mesa and the oven began to lose heat rapidly. However, the crisp was nice and hot! The rhubarb was not as soft as I would have liked it but it added a nice crunch factor. This week I am going to try a quick bread and another batch of beans but this time I hope to keep them baking for over ten hours. Still contemplating how I'm going to fix the cracked lid.

The routine has once again changed, and we are no longer spending hours in the prop house bumping up and seeding, but out in the field transplanting everything under the sun (in both senses) into fields. We’ve transferred literally hundreds of collards, chards, broccoli, bok choi, ornamental grasses, head lettuce, endive, parsley, and flowers outside.

Can't seem to plant in a straight line today...

Lavender, peppermint, and anise hyssop in an outdoor perennial bed

Sarah sets up the gun on chard, just transplanted.

 As salad mix bolts and goes to seed in the tunnels, we pull it up by the pounds, compost and fork the soil, and transplant eggplant, basil, flowers, hot peppers, and new salad seeds. Thus the greenhouses are slowly transforming from bushy salad beds to neat vegetable rows. 

We moved the new gypsy greenhouse (the one we put plastic on in April) so that the kale, chard, carrots, and salad greens that were inside are now outside. In the empty greenhouse we transplanted at least 8 different varieties of tomato, along with some basil and sweet peppers. Most of the tunnels are still on overhead sprinkler irrigation, but soon everything will be transferred to drip irrigation, starting with the new tomato tunnel.

A short time lapse of us moving the gypsy tunnel

Clearing out a bolted salad section in one of the tunnels for new veggies

Transplanting eggplant

Eggplant and purple basil interplanted in this section

Transplanting tomatoes in the now empty tunnel

Weeding Season!

The plants we seeded in the spring are stretching their leaves towards the sky, but so are the thistles, wild lettuces, and bindweed, and the weeds are doing it faster! A couple hours a day are thus dedicated to weeding, beginning with the towering, prickly thistles. All weeds go to the goats, who are feasting and growing fat on thistle! These beet beds have got it bad right now, but as soon as the beets have clear access to the sky, they will spread their leaves and shade any more weeds still waiting to emerge. 

Thistle in a beet bed

Some serious, thorough weeding of beet beds occurring here. 

Bouquet season has also begun, still small but quickly growing. Flowers and perennials of all kinds are bursting out of their buds, like purple alliums, blue thistles, white, red, and pink dahlias, orange and yellow calendula, blue delphiniums, red and pink godetia, pale peonies, and spotted lilies. Kerry and Claire have begun collecting these blooms as a regular part of the vegetable harvest, and arranging them into colorful bouquets to sell.

On the last weekend of May, Connor’s sister Jenny and her friend Elizabeth showed up at the farm after many days of driving. They had both recently finished their junior year in college and clearly needed a break. What better way than to sleep in a tent and live rustically? We showed them around Paonia, brought them to the outstanding local taco truck, did some hiking in Gunnison National Forest, and did a fair amount of relaxing on our cabin’s porch. One day we traveled to the town of Ouray, CO about an hour and a half southwest of Paonia. The magical San Juan Mountains surrounded us as we hiked a six mile trail (the Perimeter Trail) that zigzagged in and out of national forest land, the town itself, and cascading water features. After the hike we retreated to our first clothing optional hot spring outside of the town Ridgeway. It was a beautiful outdoor hot spring surrounded by trees and mountains, was incredibly freeing, and Claire and I would suggest the experience to anyone. In the end, Jenny and Elizabeth stayed on the farm for five days, volunteering for a bit, exploring Paonia, and even traveling to some National Parks in Utah. We were so grateful for their visit and glad they made it home safe!

Gunnison national forest hiking

In the shadows of the San Juan Mountains, on the Perimeter Trail outside of Ouray, CO.