Connor and Claire Live on an Organic Farm: 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!