Pie Four Tractorista

I can't believe we are at the end of May already! We spent the majority of our time this week in our Pie Four Field, preparing for planting by laying plastic with the tractor, and actually planting more delicious tomatoes!! The first half this week we saw some hot temperatures, one day in the 90's, followed by some cold and rainy weather that took us all by surprise. Richie turned 23 on the 23rd this week, celebrating his golden year in birthdays. We got a solid picture of him with the crew digging trenches for irrigation lines- the perfect way to celebrate, right? We also had our working member volunteer day this Saturday, and some of our awesome CSA members showed up to help us plant tomatoes and fertilize and prune our orchards. 

This week was definitely a most awesome week for me, as I was given the chance to drive the tractor with the plastic layer for the majority of the week on our Pie Four Field! I worked with some incredible crews of our interns behind the tractor to help me get through it, and did not kill or maim anyone in the process. Except for a few muddy low spots, the field is done! I didn't get the tractor stuck, but there was one moment where I had to raise the trailer to get out of a really wet area and left behind a huge muddy hill under the plastic. We called it the Baby Dinosaur, but alas, our boss Isaac wouldn't let us keep it. The field is flat now and we are busy planting away! Here are our pics of the week.

May 20

What better way to start the week than by sharpening your machete in the car with a
rhubarb leaf hat over your visor? I can't think of one. Lots of little odd jobs
today, including our mainstay of cleaning up the rhubarb fields.

May 21

My awesome afternoon crew, Megan, Ian and Ken, activating their shovel power
 behind the plastic layer. Megan and Ian we behind me in this beast for eight
hours today, with Ken on it for about six. Bomb crew.

May 22

View from the top...Well, view from the tractor anyway. Awesome awesome day,
one of my most fun so far! And look at those straight beds, and perfectly
spaced dirt piles! Note directlyoff the nose of the tractor are two dots...
Issac and Alex, watching my progress.

May 23

Oh yeah! Richie's 23rd birthday. Here he is with the trench digging crew; Jacob,
Elena, Lucia and Tanea behind him with their shovels. Gangsta.

May 24

Gorgeous afternoon spent planting Taxi and Valley Girl Tomatoes east of the
rhubarb. Katie and Isaac in the foreground, Alyssa, Tanea, Ian, Eric and Shaun
in the background.

May 25

Ian on the tractor seeding carrots, driven by Oscar. Our job was to make sure the seeder
didn't get jammed or bogged down by rocks or debris.

May 26

Elena with two of our great working CSA members, Claudia and Sherry, planting
tomatoes. Thanks for volunteering your Saturday to help us out!!

Bonus Foto(s)

Definitely a few great bonuses this week too good to pass up...

Alfalfa freshly baled on the way to harvesting some fresh spinach Thursday afternoon.

Katie, our crew leader, planting some Valley Girls!

And finally, when you have a week as great as this one was, who can resist a little breakdancing freeze to finish thing off right!

Thanks Katie for capturing this, and doing the tomato balancing!

Have a great last week of May, and if you're interested in seeing our farm in more than just pictures, Grant Farms is having their Spring Farm Tour this upcoming weekend, June 2nd. Check out the deets at www.grantfarms.com! 

XO,

Val

Starting Phase Two

It really was an incredible week for me, kicking off with assembling the plastic layer that hooks up behind the tractor. We laid plastic later this past week in the field to plant our heirloom tomatoes and peppers and eventually for our cantaloupe and other delights as well! The plastic keeps our plants warm in the ground and allows us to be able to plant and harvest early. Other activities included hoeing (of course) the perennial garden, hoeing the weeds from our irrigation system, and planting and covering our tomatoes and peppers! Tanea and I finished off the week by cooking a southwestern vegan fiesta dinner for everyone, though unfortunately no pics were taken of that except for one of Tanea hiding her face... However, here are some great photos from the rest of this week's festivities!

May 14

Our beautiful state flower, the columbine, in our perennial garden. All of us spent
all day in this field, hoeing up weeds. So tedious, but the field looked
so great and healthy afterwards!

May 15

Me and Justin after assembling the plastic layer! We spent the
morning weeding the irrigation system in pie four, so this was
an awesome and fun task to complete for the afternoon.

May 16

Isaac driving the tractor as Katie and Lucia follow behind and throw dirt on the plastic .

May 17

Planting our heirloom tomatoes! Clockwise from left: Kyle, Ian,
Jacob, Katie, Isaac, Chris, Elena, and Lucia.
Such an awesome team!

May 18

Fueling the tractor with diesel. Right after this I got to drive again,
 pulling the plastic layer.  Yes! You knew it would happen.
I may or may not have terrified Isaac the entire time.
Watch out, woman driver!

Bonus Foto(s)

So, got to have several bonuses this week. We had a forest fire in the foot hills due east of us, and the smoke was erie and blew in over us in the field more than once this week. Also, Lucia with her nice car turned farm vehicle, and fresh Grant Farms produce found in my very own neighborhood grocery store! 

Megan with her fire conscious snap bracelet she found, appropriate
for our smoky day in the field, with the fire just west of our farm!

The Rav4 gets er done! Lucia loaded up with heirloom tomatoes for planting
in our pie four field.

Grant Farms rhubarb! Local at Whole Foods, Baby!

It was a great week, I'll say it again. We are definitely moving into a new phase, planting! Clean up and readying the fields is coming to a close and it's exciting to be on to the next things. Have a great week, the last frost date is May 25, only five days away. Summer is right around the corner!

XO,

Val

Farm Family Fun Week Five

This fifth week at the farm was both fun and freezing as the temperature spiked between rainy Monday in the thirties,   Thursday in the high eighties and wrapping up with Friday and Saturday in the forties again with even a bit of snow thrown in for good measure. It was definitely a lesson in the extreme changeability of Colorado weather, as well as a test in our endurance of miserable situations as we learned hand weeding beets on one of the cold days. As our crew leader Katy said Thursday, "You might feel weird, so just know that." She was right, as completely numb, tingling hands for three hours definitely does feel weird. Some awesome times were had this week too, as we got to plant our heirloom tomatoes and peppers into our demo gardens, and (almost) our entire intern group got together for a family meal on Friday. Here are some snapshots of our week.

May 7

Ian in the car after we were released on Monday after
harvesting spinach in the freezing rain. Thumbs
up for half days!

May 8

Tomatoes in the foreground, Chris in the demo garden planting our heirloom crop.

May 9

Chris, Lucia, and Ian, with our boss, Isaac in the lead, going to fix the vineyard
trellising. This entailed digging some new holes and setting some new posts.

May 10

Megan and I doing teamwork to hand week our beet field. This day was our high
eighties day, when we both got sunburned. The following day we continued
to week in the afternoon in the rain, snow and thirty degree temperatures.
We kept ourselves going by making a list of warm things, and telling
stories to each other of people who were colder that us,
like lost mountainclimbers .

May 11

Group picture on the morning of cold, miserable Friday! From left to right; Elena,
Kyle, Alyssa, Tanea, Lucia, Ken (in the bomb poncho), Justin, Ian, Shaun, Megan,
Katie, and Chris. MIA- Jacob, and Isaac. I'm taking the pic, or course. Close to everyone,
so not bad. This day we spent the morning cutting rhubarb, planting potatoes, and
digging holes. The afternoon was more of the same,
with some beet weeding throwninto the mix. 

May 12

Saturday was our day with the CSA working members volunteering their time.
We harvested heirloom corn from last season to feed our chickens. This is
Elena and Jacob in the interns' awesome beast of a Ford 100 Explorer pick up.

Bonus Foto

Partial pic or our table Friday night for our intern family dinner. Justin did an amazing
job cooking for everyone and all our different eating styles, and it was super fun
to have everyone together to share a meal and relax after a super challenging week!
Megan, Jacob, Lucia, Elena, Shaun, Kyle the top of Chris's head, and my bangs,
clockwise from left.

I hope everyone is still enjoying the pictures. It's fun to start to see a little more green growth emerging as the weeks progress. Looking forward to some warmer temperatures next week, and soon some more planting!

XO,

Val

Officially One Month In

Friday marked the four week mark for my internship at Grant Farms. My hands are feeling better, but I am officially an old lady and have bought ice packs for my forearms and wrist braces to sleep in to keep my hands straight and from falling asleep at night! This week definitely brought warmer temperatures also, with Friday sending us into the weekend with a high of 87º and more than a few sunburns to tend to. This week was dominated by maintaining the rhubarb fields, which entails whacking the flowering heads off the stalks machete style. The farm devotes 23 acres to rhubarb, so this was a fairly large task for us, and the second time around! Other activities this week included fixing more drip line, picking up garbage out of a field we are preparing for planting, loading and planting potatoes, taking deliveries of onions and green and red leaf lettuce, and picking spinach for our chickens. 


I also had the opportunity to drive around a bit with our boss and learn some pretty rad farm info, about what organic farming entails, pesticides, and good land stewardship. I am going to be compiling this info and more as the season progresses on my other blog, The Granedde Mini Farmer, and I'd love it if you'd like to check that out also. It will probably be a little more notey and dry, so as you wish! Here are this week's photos of the day!

Apr 30

From left to right: Megan, Tania, Justin and Ken in the Pie Three Rhubarb Field.
This field seems epic in scale at eight acres, with massive rhubarb plants we
had to wade though, jungle style, as we worked. I think this photo is
reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz in some way!

May 1

Me and Elena Tuesday morning in our matching striped farming shirts in front of the
Lilac bushes. Mine was two dollars, but she has me beat; hers was free.

May 2

Jacob, Justin and Lucia on the cart, harvesting spinach for the chickens. We filled
the three white bins on the wooden cart in about an hour.

May 3

Ken and Justin in the Demo Garden getting orders to go hoe the garlic field, featuring
Blanco, the farm cat, operating the rototiller.

May 4

Lucia's birthday was Saturday, on Cinco de Mayo. We celebrated a little during our
lunch break on Friday with birthday cake (gluten free and vegan, of course!).

Bonus Foto(s) of the Week

View from a small after lunch nap Justin and I took under the Peacock Tree.

Me and Lucia up to our necks in rhubarb on Friday. Okay, okay, not literally,
we were sitting down. But still- we had just cut this field on Monday!!

Looking forward to what May has to bring- I have a feeling it's a lot more bending over and planting, and probably at this point it's only going to get hotter. For a redhead, I surprisingly have a pretty good tan going already, though if my eyebrows could get any whiter, they'd probably be invisible (?)... Anyway, as always, thanks for following my daily account of our farm life!

XO,

Val