2017
OCTOBER 2017: Lovely weather but a cold wind on Saturday evening! Nanci, Fernando & family, Ginny, and Lisa & William came out, and we prepared a dinner of steak, calabacitas con chicos, corn on the cob, and pumpkin pie from the farm, filled out with Spanish tortas and salad, eaten around a lively campfire tended by Rodolfo and Elena. Pumpkins and more corn were harvested too.
On a personal note: Katherine finally got the white gunk off the windows. And had a great kayak run from the farm down to the state park on Sunday, in the $25 kayak she picked up at the thrift store Saturday morning!
Leading up to the next third weekend
That's it for the season, folks. Third weekends at the farm will resume in March, probably 17-18. May we all have a restful, restorative winter.
SEPTEMBER 2017
Katherine spent a quiet and peaceful solo weekend at the farm. September is just the best time of the year! She mowed the upper two terraces ("eras" in Spanish) and half of the corn in the lower terrace, and was delighted to find that the buffalo grass planted with Marta in June near the trailer is growing beautifully and has outcompeted the dreadful kochia weeds--she'll plant a lot more buffalo grass next summer!
Robin's pumpkins are doing well, and the cantaloupes may be OK. Good rain meant no irrigation was necessary.
A flock of 30 or so magpies provided a lot of entertainment.
9/13: Chicos ready for some good winter soups!
AUGUST 2017
The plan for the weekend per se pretty much broke down. Too many mosquitos. Lots of rain, though, so not much need to irrigate. Robin and Katherine took turns about weekly going out and checking on crops.
Leading up to September's third weekend
The corn was at its peak around September 1. Robin did a heroic job harvesting and blanching (i.e. boiling for 5 to 10 minutes) and freezing several dozen ears. And she got great green beans, lots of zucchini, and some cucumbers. Katherine, the following week, harvested several dozen more (partly at night with a headlamp!) and blanched and dried two batches. The first batch didn't dry fast enough and started to ferment, so ended up fed to Gary's chickens. For the second batch, she dried them for several days in a low-heat oven, and did succeed in making some tasty chicos, though not as many as she'd initially hoped.
JULY 2017
Care for the corn and other crops, and maybe play in the river. For more excitement, the fourth weekend in July is always the annual Fiesta de Santiago in Villanueva: a horse parade Saturday morning after Mass, game booths in the afternoon, and music and dancing at night.
Weekend summary (after the fact)
Robin and Jake weeded up a storm, with some help from Katherine. Irrigating the field prior to weeding was crucial: muddy, yes, but weeds could be pulled. Especially in the rows. Robin did another ebird submittal, and Katherine will try to figure out how to get those onto this site.
Katherine and Christine and Jamie explored the village during the annual Fiesta de Santiago. We spent a lot of time in the church, actually, with its lovely adobe construction and the amazing colcha-style embroidered tapestries documenting village life and history that line its walls. A meal (frito pie) in the parish hall, some dancing, watching the horses come in and get their blessing from our Nigerian priest...it's always a good party.
Fiesta, several years ago, in Villanueva
<-- 7/25 after weeding in rows, then tilling between them
--> 8/9 corn stunted but tassled out and silks on ears
7/11: Hands-On Heritage summer camp: 70 corn-weeding, pasture-irrigating, bosque-exploring kids, with adventure-loving adults bringing them along! And a goat.
JUNE 2017
We did plant corn! Brad, Patty, Marina, and Lilia plowed 9 furrows, and planted two. Jake, Robin, Darcy, Katherine, and Marta planted the rest. Make a hole every foot along the side of the furrow, put in two seeds, then a dab of leonardita (a nutrient), and cover it up. We irrigated at the end, making four cross-furrows to speed things up.
Katherine and Marta also cleared the shady spot among the trees above the terraces, built a beautiful biodynamic compost pile, studied the soil using chromatography, and Marta brought blessings and contentment as she sprayed the perimeter of the property with a biodynamic preparation. And Raymond escorted the cows back across the river to their home pasture.
Leading up to July's third weekend
Ambrosio watered every two days, and when Katherine returned after 10 days, all the corn was up, 2" tall! Also up were the beans, melons, squashes, etc. that Robin planted in the NE corner of the lower terrace.
On July 11, we should have a school visit by about 60 4th through 8th graders from El Camino Real Academy.
6/18: Irrigating <--after planting grass and after planting corn-->
6/27: grass is doing well; compost is blacker than this looks, and moist; low terrace corn is 2" high, so I cultivated between the rows and irrigated. Robin's cucurbit and other seeds are up too.
MAY 2017
We didn't plant corn. Robin and Katherine set up irrigation along the top field, so a pasture can be grown there. And we tried to plow the low terrace where we want to plant corn, and we irrigated it and closed up gopher holes. We checked on the new cows, and we had a lovely bird walk.
Leading up to June's third weekend
Neighbor Rudy used his tractor and backhoe to disk and corrugate the top field, and level the low terrace and repair the flood damage to the high terrace. Marta and Katherine built a compost pile and planted grass in the top field and house yard.
APRIL 2017
Lovely and gentle green. With water in the acequia, after the community acequia cleaning three weeks ago, we were eager to get water on the fields. This involved flushing several families of rodents, with their homes, out of the 8" pipes bringing water from the sangria, and replacing lots of gates on the gated pipe, but we got the top half of the pasture watered, and the terraces too. On Sunday, Easter, we had a bit of an Easter egg hunt up on the hillside, with the added drama of Katherine landing on a prickly pear. Good farm talk around the campfire with neighbor Steve. And some small fencing jobs, down in the lower pasture.
In the weeks since, other neighbors fenced in the lower pasture along the levee, and for the next few weeks we have a herd of 14 sweet, year-old heifers chomping away down there. The birds are out in abundance. Recent sightings of a resident roadrunner, and a family of great horned owls with fledged young.
--Robin, Dennis, Michael, Byrne, Natalia, Katherine, Jake
MARCH 2017
There were seven of us for dinner Saturday night, and a bright campfire and some nice music, as we burned piles of dried weeds. Saturday the entire acequia "enfrente" (the 500 feet belonging to this land) got dug out and cleaned: an amazing accomplishment! Several of us even fitted in a picnic lunch down by the river. And fixed the plumbing leak: so grateful for the return of hot showers!
Sunday we focused on mowing weeds so the coming winds will clear the fields. Things look so much better, especially with all the new green showing up. Several of us girls took a nice walk up to the "atarque" (the irrigation dam a mile upstream), oggling horses, cattle, sheep, and fields along the way.
--Robin, Michael, Byrne, Natalia, Helio, Melvin, Katherine