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.

The Final Days of Spring

It's now late May! Broad-tailed hummingbirds buzz outside our window and the wind sways the small willow trees and canopy cottonwoods outside our cabin. The willow groves and cottonwoods are a paradise for birds, and we awake each morning to the beautiful western meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, ravens, yellow chats, and warblers (and plenty else we haven’t identified yet!) Sometimes the warm spring days make us forgetful of freezing nights. When one such night in mid-May promised to be below 35 degrees, we frantically worked to hoop and cover all of our new and old transplants. Such love and care has gone into raising each of these plants from tiny seeds, and it’s not worth risking a potential nighttime frost.

Dark clouds roll in as we rush to cover our new transplants and seed beds from the cold

Kerry and Claire make tents for a row of peas

On a farm like Rain Crow, there is no such thing as unused or wasted space. Space for transplants out in the fields is coveted and limited, and where extra plants can be squeezed in, they will be. Leeks grow straight and tall, which means that the empty spaces in between them will either be crowded with eager thistles and bindweed or given to feathery fennel transplants. After weeding and trellising some outdoor peas, we found that the outside strip of the bed wasn’t being used. Thus a little room was found for a couple trays of head lettuce. By the time the peas grow tangled and become truly bushy, the head lettuce will hopefully all have been harvested.

Transplanting Leeks

Squeezing some head lettuce outside a row of peas

Kale transplanting was our first daunting project, and for a few days we filled bed after bed with hundreds of Lacinato, red Russian, and green curly kale plants. The fields are expanding rapidly and are now watered with a gun that connects to a fire hose at different locations around the field and pumps out gallons of water as it rotates.

 

Sarah and Connor transplanting green curly kale

Connor waters in transplants while the gun takes care of the rest of the field

The Desolation of Voles and Slugs

The prop house was full to bursting with every table full and plant flats occupying second level shelves, and tables on either ends of three tunnels were packed as well. Where to put our extra plants? Beneath the tables in the tunnels seemed a good temporary place, but the next morning we walked in to find that voles had feasted that night on those unlucky kale plants. Voles continue to be our greatest nuisance in the tunnels, despite our numerous traps, snakes, dogs, and cats. Sometimes losses must be taken in stride. 

On the harvesting front, it's the slugs and roly-polies that give us the most grief. They nibble holes in turnips and radishes so that half our harvest goes to the chickens, and we're back out in the tunnels searching for shiny, untouched pearls and rubies.

A stunted kale forest, the work of voles 

Slug alert

The desolation of slugs

Perfect ground pearls

Organic fertilizers

Plants at Rain Crow are treated to a powdered organic fertilizer at every stage of their early life. Yum-Yum, a fruit and vegetable (vegan) based nutrient mix is added to seeding soil and bumping-up soil, and we also add a pinch into each transplant hole. Transplants in particular are also dunked into a microbial root dip called Rootwise before being planted. This is the first year that Rain Crow is trying the microbial mix, and already it is evident that plants are overcoming transplant shock faster, and quickly developing healthy outdoor foliage.

Another organic fertilizer used on the farm is called Bio-live, made from animal and fish nutrients. The strong fishy smell prevents us from using this mix out in the fields because raccoons and other animals will dig up the plants, but we use the mix in the greenhouses and in pots!

Bio-Live organic fertilizer. This pot will be for edible flowers.

Microbial root mix

Curly kale gets a microbial bath before being transplanted into the fields

Edible flowers like pansies and nasturtiums are planted in pots for weekly harvest for restaurants.

Evening sun on the mountains

See you in June!