I would like to say first of all that I am clearly not going to be updating this blog as much as I would like to be able to.  Ideally, I would sit down on a daily basis and tell you what we have done and what it is that we are learning.  So much happens here in one day.  So much is planned to do and much of the time the list and the projects remains incomplete as the sun goes down.  This means, which has been quite a great lesson for me, is that I am going to cut myself some slack and remain realistic about how much can be accomplished in a 24 hour period.  With that said, I am so excited to tell you all of the amazing things that have happened here at Tornrose Farm this past month.  

So the pig situation didn't end up happening due to feeling overloaded by what was before us; the summer garden, the chickens, eggs, harvesting etc.  A few days after we were gifted two Nubian goats.  These two Nubians are fantastic goats.  One is white and the other is brownish.  They are named "Half and Half."  Every day we get between 1/2 to 3/4 gallon of milk from them which we have been making into cheese.  It has been wonderful learning this entire process of caring for a goat and learning to make products.  We have made ricotta, feta and mozzarella.  It seems like soon we are going to experiment with harder cheeses which require more detailed temperatures and the aging process.  I can't wait!  For now, both Half and Half are wonderful teachers and excellent comedians.  They make the most bizarre sounds, sounds that don't really sound like they could leave the mouth of any creature and they are extremely docile, patient (most of the time if there is food before them) and giving.

 The chickens are continuing to grow and of course consume mass quantities of food.  They have not yet begun to lay eggs, but we foresee that in the next month we shall be surprised.  We have been really lucky to get compost from a local restaurant called Poco in Bisbee twice a week.  That has really helped financially and nutritiously.  They are a vegan restaurant, so the scraps are all vegetable matter.  The chickens actually get fed fresh vegetables and fruits at least once a day and have begun to watch us as we come close, with great expectations.  This week we are beginning to work on chicken tractors which will house approximately 25 chickens per tractor.  This will help with the grazing and pasture management, fertilization and our overall food costs as well, as they will be eating the weeds and grasses that will be contained within the tractor.  I will post pictures as soon as the first in complete.  In the meantime, we have been quite privy to hear adolescent "cock a doodle doodling" and see chicken flirting, if you would call it that.

Timothy and I have this great opportunity to take classes with a fabulous cowboy with amazing horse knowledge.  So far he has taught us how to saddle the horse, and other necessities.  So far he has taught us how to saddle the horse, but not how to get on.  So, it came to quite another huge learning experience and curve as I had my first "real" horseback riding helping gather cattle up in the Mule Mountains this past month.  I had ridden before, but never with such talented riders, guidance and with a task at hand.  We brought down quite a few cattle, branded, vaccinated, ear marked and castrated the calves and let them all go into a pasture lower on the mountain where they have more access to water.  I hope this wasn't my final lesson. But certainly a huge lesson taught to me by the horse, herself is that a relationship between rider and horse is mandatory.  It is amazing the communication that happens between the two; both ways.  In one day, and in the beginning of my horse comprehension I often felt like I had made this huge commitment to this creature that I couldn't always and didn't know how to communicate with.  I would like the opportunity to spend more time with horses and perhaps this will help me understand them more.  

Timothy caught a Gopher Snake the other day, which helps us with the Gopher problem here a bit; we hope at least.  We happened to find him out in the southwest part of the internal zone.  He was a great surprise and a beautiful present.  Gopher snakes are not venomous and do not bite.  They eat rodents.  We relocated him to the garden area which we are hoping the snake eats a few of these animals that are making underground highways and snatching our growing food.

And then of course the garden.  It is amazing how the perspective changes when experience happens.  We had thought that the garden would be the least of all of the energy 1/3 for the community.  Philosophically that sounds really nice.  But how will the birds know when their 1/3 is up?  So, we have tried this shiny tape attached to fish line across the rows which just seems to entertain the birds.  They could care less if the piece of plastic is making noise and is shiny.  The question is:  is there food under there?  We have made small cages for each plant.  If you look at the picture to the left, you will see that there is actually a bird in the non bird bird cage.  We have tried the cds, which fly away as the wind blows.  We have a really unscary scare crow which seems to frighten Timothy and me more when we round the corner and see someone standing in the garden with a shovel-who is that and why are they in the garden?  And we have tried feeding them in other spots around our house.  That works just fine, but they seem to come back to the garden for dessert.  All of this has been a fantastic lesson.  We still desire, however to grow our food and to learn from the process there of.  And then one day, Timothy went out and flipped over a small rock in the garden and found a sunflower growing underneath it.  This flower clearly had the power to live, which sprang ideas.  Why not cover all of our seeds with rocks of sorts, (we are using broken terra cotta planters pieces) and wait for the germination to occur, lift off the covering and spray them with a horrible smelling spray that the birds do not like. So far so good!  Seriously.  We found a spray called "Repels All," by Bonide which is organic but smells just horribly.  It repels, literally all.  It has mass quantities of garlic which the birds specifically do not like and they do not bother the seedlings.  Our okra, sunflowers, corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, etc. are now all growing and the birds, of course are still in the garden, but not nearly as much as before.  Ode to the garden.  Seriously. 
We are now tackling chicken tractors, cheese, goat feet and guinea fowl.  We can't wait to report on our findings.  Until next time.

Peace!

It has been quite a long time since I have updated the blog and I sincerely apologize.  Besides the sheep, lambing season, the garden, farmer's market, the chickens, the wind, dogs,  harvesting, irrigation, company etc.  we have been sitting around twitting our fingers.  In all fairness, I have been trying to figure out how to in the best way possible update the Pachamama Permaculture blog without being too wordy and confusing.  In this post you will see a lot of photographs and maybe less words.  Please do let us know if you want any further description about any of the events.  Starting today, I am going to update much more often to share our experience with you.  Please note that I am going to start from right now and move backwards to the last post.  Enjoy!!! 

 We harvested our winter garden two weeks ago. How satisfying was that?  Super satisfying.  We planted  onions, dill, cilantro, peas, marigolds, a variety of mustard greens, mixed green salad lettuce, red lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, nasturtiums, beans etc. in the end of February.  We had pie eyes as we planted our seeds feeling that they would all grow and flourish and we would have no problems. soaker hoses in all nine of our Zuni bed rows began the "Soaker Hose Incident of 2011."  What we learned is this:  soaker hoses suck.  They are the bain of our gardening existence here in the arid and very silty southwest.  The soil here is extremely sandy and silty which caused daily reperations (the silt traveled down the hoses and made holes along the sides causing tears en route) of the soaker hoses, much to the dismay of the birds who used the hose holes to take a bird bath in different locations daily.  I could literally also see where the hoses were soaking and where they were not due to the plant growth or lack there of. Timothy changed out the soaker hoses and created a drip irrigation system which now works like a magical charm.  We have to clean out the silt a few times a week, but that is it.  What a learning curve that was. And then there was the cover cloth that we put over the beds.  We used the cloth for protection against the wind (A+), the birds (A+), insects (A+) and the cold (F).  These cover cloths on a whole kept the plants safe from the wind, birds and insects however, due to the nature of the universe which we are not in control of nor can we change, the cloths kept the cold air that had sunk into the beds and stunted the growth of the plants. The environment that was created was conducive to growing Bermuda grass but not our winter crops.  When it was realized what was going on we lifted the cloths, changed the hoses and saw before our eyes all of the crops flourish and grow.  I spent the week (yes, a full week) weeding and watering and they...grew.  We found the proper equation for them to be happy.  Without the shade cloth the birds did eat on some of the crops, but we put up cds which scared them off.  It worked really well.   Last week we harvested all of the salad greens and mustard greens and sold them ALL at the Farmer's Market in Sierra Vista. It was amazing and empowering telling people that they were harvested the night prior and answer any questions they had about our produce. We were also published as local food growers in the Sierra Vista Co-op grand opening newsletter.  Huge honor for us to be recognized for the efforts we have been putting forth.  Check out the newsletter at this link and go to the grand opening issue at the bottom.  Flip through and you will see us on page 3 along with Dennis!  http://www.sierravistamarket.com/scoop.php  We of course did not harvest all that we had planted, due to the cold most of the vegetables did not get a chance to grow.  We have learned so much in such a short period of time.  We did dry kale and dill which will be used during the upcoming canning season.   

We are now working on the summer garden which will consist of: the three sisters (a variety of corn, beans, and squash), melons, dill, basil, parsely, oregano, chives, cucumbers, sunflowers, nasturtiums, marigolds, eggplant, okra, peppers, and tomatoes.  As of now we have the cucumbers in, which have already sent up a small shoot, and dill, Hopi and bi-color corn and sunflowers.   With all that we have learned from the winter garden, this summer garden is going to provide us with so much to harvest.  I will surely keep you posted.  

 

The lambing season began back in January and continues to happen.  To date there are 51 lambs, 41 ewes and 2 rams.  This last Friday we got the chance to help shear, vaccinate, ear tag, skirt the wool and band the tails and the testicles of the sheep. This was an all day event that involved loading up the sheep at the farm and taking them on a 6 mile annual journey to the ranch.  There a cast of nine adults and two children spent10 hours performing all of the necessary tasks.  Then all of the cleanly shaven sheep took a return trip home.   

And now, my friends, we will comment on the chickens.  Yes, we still have 88 of them.  Yes they are growing by leaps and bounds and yes they eat like we are starving them.  A short story and explanation.  Chickens should be eating 4% of their body weight per day. Therefore, a two pound chicken should be eating 1.28 ounces per day.  Unless you have our chickens.  We bought them a self feeder a few weeks back and put in the 40 pound bag thinking that it would last the six days that we calculated for the food requirement of this number of chickens.  In one and a half days the food was gone.  They had consumed all 40 pounds and wanted more to munch on.  Needless to say, chickens are not self-regulating in their diets.  And remember a two pound chicken last week is now a three pound chicken this week.  Do the math again!  They are back on track and growing at a more reasonable rate. 

The transition from the winter to the spring has been quite blustery and at times quite frustrating.  At one point, Timothy stated that wind offers nothing.  It doesn't offer the precipitation that we desire, it does not help with the plants, it does not feed the animals.  It simply dries out the land, our skin, carries away the top soil.  Many a day we have given up, due to the wind and surrendered inside against our will.  The wind here is fierce and uninviting.  No one likes it.  Not even the fat chickens; they hide inside the coop all day waiting for it to pass.  We wonder when the wind will blow itself away.

Once
I spoke the language of the flowers

Once I understood each word the caterpillar said

Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starling

And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed

Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets

And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow

Once I spoke the language of the flowers

How did it go?
How did it go?

-Shel Silverstein

We woke up to wind blowing this morning.  This means that it is only going to get more windy as the day progresses.  How do I feel?  I feel reflective and irritated.  I feel like the wind blowing.  I feel like it is time to take a moment to reflect on everything that we have gone through these past months.  Most of it has been amazing.  Some of it has been down right heartbreaking.  I admit it-this has not all been sunshine and butterflies.  Sometimes it down right sucks;  as the wind rips right through us, or as the cold creeps into our bones, or as the plants won't grow, or struggling for answers when we have creatures dieing and we need advice, or there is no more hay and we know the livestock is already starving, or we get sick but all of the organisms need to be fed, or when we just want to throw our hands up. It sucks, for instance when we find dead creatures that we have created a bond with; the bond of life which leads concurrently-sometimes too soon to the bond of death.  These little ones know something that we do not-they have passed to the other side before "we" believe it is time.  This morning Timothy found little Sparky, a lamb born three days ago whose mom and twin also died, dead in the midst of a pile of hay.  Sparky had really had some nice influence on our first bummer lamb "Baby," or really whatever you would like to call her.  Sparky introduced her to the herd and gave Baby that realization that she too is a sheep.  Sparky and Baby traveled around the pastures together.  It was super sweet seeing this friendship forming.  Now what?  Baby is back to the fence line waiting for human interaction.  Damn.  And then the garden.  Who am I to plant a garden in the desert?   I really struggle with this. Seriously, I cannot support the big box shops 100% nor expect that we are going to self sustainable here where it hasn't rained for months.  Recently we were invited to Sycamore Ranch to learn to brand cattle.  The rancher, Bill MacDonald and his family have owned and run this ranch for over 100 years.  Bill stated that in recent years his ranch was a complete oasis.  This year, he laments that if it doesn't rain they may have to stop operations.  He has never known this extreme lack of precipitation.  And we look at what is happening around us, with our hands up in the air in complete surrender.  We have no control over what is in our air, water, dirt and the fighting against Pachamama continues-and it feels like we have no voice.  We have no say in what is thrown into our ozone and either rains upon us or not at all.  What does one do?  Do we turn blind eyes at what is really going on, or do we continue to plant seeds and hope for the small green life sprout from her knowing of the super unnatural procedure of watering in the desert?  I do remember Scott Pittman stating in our Permaculture class at Sustainable Settings, Carbondale, Colorado that the answer is in the problem.  But what if the problem is this: {Some} people don't care for others, people are run by money and greed, people don't think about the long term affects of their actions so when something like a nuclear power plant explodes it should make us wonder why it was created in the first place---to save MONEY.  Did it save money?  How could it have if so many have been ill affected by the radiation oozing across the planet and into our food chain, water cycle, and universe?  Why do we continue to create and construct such things when we know clearly that the future may be grim if it breaks, or if there is a natural disaster nearby.  What is it about our US government and money?  How come there is money for yet another war, but not enough to take care of its' citizens health or education?  I believe my taxes went into the weapons being used in one of the three, if not all of the countries we are currently in war with.  I did not choose to have my money go there, I was never asked.  It is time for us to look a bit more reflectively at this, at our heart's words and feelings.  It is time for all of us to take action if we haven't begun already.  Educate yourself, empower your being, act as you believe is right and make your own opinions.  Believe in the power of good.

I do see hope and beauty in many of the people we have recently met and the places we have visited.  Mentioned above was Sycamore Ranch where Timothy and I learned the amazing art, if you will of branding.  It is not pretty and quite frankly it is not nice.  I certainly would not want to be a calf, but I did learn the many positive outcomes of the entire act of branding.  In a time span of three minutes, max, a calf is caught, dragged, brought to the ground, branded, castrated if a bull, ear tagged, ear marked and immunized and then let free.  I swear these people have it down pat.  We branded 122 calves that day and then they were set free to graze in the mountains.  We appreciated the experiential learning that day along with the explanations to all of our many questions.  We are very thankful for your time and patience! 

We traveled across the border to Agua Prieta where a man named Jose has begun a program called Dougla Prieta Trabajan.  This amazing organization has united Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora in many facets.  One of these facets is through permaculture, where we were asked to come down and look at the site and give suggestions.  Timothy and I were amazed.  How wonderful that in the midst of a city, there is the beginnings of site that is utilizing the permaculture principles.  Agua Prieta is a dirty city, as most are and they have many challenges that they have faced and will continue  to.  The fact that some have forged ahead believing in nature, pachamama, health, beauty, serenity in the midst of it all made me really  be thankful to be a part of this project.
 
We said goodbye to Ellen and Jackie who are our colleagues from the Permaculture Institute training.  Both these lovely women gave us two weeks of their lives to  be a part of Pachamama Permaculture at Tornrose Farm.  Their energy, sweet love, ideas, projections and determination helped us so much.  Along with them, was Xavier, a WWOOFr from France who was fantastic.  We loved his care and concern for the animals along with his personal touch on all of the projects he did.  You all have a place back here at Pachamama.
And we took a day off.  Yes we did.  Well kind of.  Yes, we fed all the creatures, made sure everyone was well (Momma ewe died that morning so we had to take her to her final (sort of) resting place) and drove to Turkey Creek in the Chiricuas.  We layed in the sun, watched butterflies, admired the flowers, listened to the water, had a lovely picnic, climbed along a perfectly fallen tree, talked, watched our crazy dog play in the ice cold water, napped in the forest and reconnected with Mother Earth and each other,  in a new place.   It was a much needed day, which we realize now we have to have more of. To those of you who are teaching us, whether you are the tiniest little lamb, the most blustery wind, the most prickly pricker, the meanest cowboy or the first spring ladybug.  Thank you.  We will carry your lessons with us.