Christmas in July!

We celebrated Christmas on Wednesday, complete with feast, secret santa gift exchanges, Ken playing the role of Santa with a white flour beard, and even a Charlie Brown Christmas tree!! It was a really sweet night, with all the gifts being so well thought out for each recipient, and most being hand made also. The end of this week also marks my fourth month here at the farm, and nearly the half way point (if not past) for most of us at the internship who are staying until the end of the season. Our farming activities this week still revolved mostly around cultivation, weeding, harvesting radishes, green beans and carrots, and trellising and pruning our tomatoes. This was also the first week we have been able to harvest a few of our very first choice heirloom tomatoes off the vine, and Elena, Stephanie and I considered ourselves very lucky girls to get a quick unplanned field trip with Isaac to our Fisher field to glean the first tiny and tender eggplants coming to fruit there. Here are the pics of the week:

July 23

Katie, bringing in some green beans from harvest, African Queen style!

July 24

Trellis Masters! Richie and I spent Tuesday spooling extra twine onto all the stakes in the field. The top west end of the field is behind us.
We definitely came from behind and finally got caught up this week! Maybe even a little ahead...

July 25 (Merry Christmas!!)

The best Christmas present ever... Justin paying up on a bet he lost to me with a bottle of champagne! He bet me Isaac would never use the  word 'cray', as in crazy, to describe anything. But he did, and I won. That was really hard for them both. More great Christmas pics in the
bonus fotos, just couldn't resist making this THE shot for Wednesday. Yessss.

July 26

Elena with a kitten friend from the farm next door. They have four kittens that spent the day trooping along with us as we trellised and
pruned the tomatoes in Pie Four!

July 27

At the top of our twenty acre field in Pie Four, looking East. Tomatoes, melons, and peppers abound!! I remember picking up garbage out of this field when it was just dirt. Now it is weeks away from harvesting, and gloriously weed free!! Amazing.

July 28

Colten and Alex with the brand new baby eggplants in our Fisher Field on Saturday! A nice treat in the midst of a fun filled day of weeding!

Bonus Fotos:

Jacob and Elena, with Christmas sweaters in full effect!

Happy Christmas children! From left: Emma, Luke, Abby, Alex, Stephanie Jacob, Eric, Elena, Val, Rachel, and Sarah.

Luke, with his awesome gift made by Santa Ken!

Justin with feathers, opening his gift on Santa Ken's lap. 

Sarah opening her gift under the Christmas tree, with Rachel. Jacob, Val and Eric looking on.

The happiest Christmas child, Ian, with his gift, the quintessential farm snack,
sunflower seeds! Lucia in background.

Won my bet! Me with the disgruntled men, Isaac and Justin! Carrots and champagne make for sweet, sweet victory.

Dragon Fly season! Most are these tiny electric blue ones that dart around fast as lightning, but this guy was a helicopter!! I could see
his head move around and his eyes shift as he smiled for the camera. This one is perched a top one of our trellising stakes in Pie Four.

Okay, so, might have overdone it with all the pics this week, but it is Christmas in July, so what's a little overabundance? All the crops are ripening to harvest and I can't wait until that's what we are spending the majority of our time on. It's unbelievable that soon July will be over. It seems like just last week it was April and I was wondering what I was getting myself into! Now it's almost August and I am wondering why I never started sooner, and how I will occupy my time during the cold season!! To those of you with your own gardens and farms, I hope everything is ripening right and here's to happy harvesting! To those of you with us at Grant Farms and to our CSA members, hooray(!), for harvesting full time is almost here!!

XO,

Val

Exiled to Trellising...

Who ever could have imagined that tomatoes could be such work? Especially when it's a large portion of twenty acres that we're talking about!! I have to apologize up front this week for the selective nature of the pics, as a few other interns and myself have spent the majority of our time in our Pie Four field, tamping in end posts, securing brace posts (cowboy style, with baling twine, of course) pounding in pine stakes and spooling twine around them, and finally tightening and securing the twine to create trellising on a large scale! We finish a row by pulling our beautiful heirloom tomato plants up and out through our contraptions to grow and flourish and grow us some delicious fruit!! It's a task of seemingly endless toil, though actually really enjoyable! It is delightful at the end of the day to see our plants standing tall off the ground and know that it's our labors that have made it happen. We were also responsible for a large portion of our CSA's harvest this week, so those of you receiving radishes, green onions, and green beans this week, know that some of us might be holding your produce in our arms in this weeks pics! It was a lovely week, as always, though hot, with a little humidity thrown in for good measure! Here are the pics of the week:

July 16

Elena with an armload of green onions for our CSA shares! These onions
came from the northwest end of our Pie Four Pie! 

July 17

Amber waves of grain freshly cut with the combine in our Pie One Field! This is our hard red winter wheat crop being harvested. It will
go to mill in Denver and be turned into delicious artisan bread by Red Mountain Bakery and returned to us for our bread shares!
Gorgeous Colorado day!

July 18

Wednesday afternoon we got the opportunity to tour our fields with Isaac and talk about pests and organic control measures used to
protect our crops during the height of the season. Here we are in our sweet corn field (ready in three weeks!) discussing trap cropping,
row covering, early detection, and preventions. Clockwise from left: Rachel, Sarah, Isaac, Emma, Lucia, Alex, Chris, Ken, Stephanie, Alyssa, Justin, Ian and Tanea.

July 19

Steph, tightening the baling twine we are using to trellis our heirloom tomato
crop in Pie Four.

July 20

Alex and Stephanie stringing up the last trellis line of the day in Pie Four.
Our goal was to complete a 30 row section on Friday. With a crew of three that
afternoon, we managed about half that. Honestly, though, not too shabby!
We were beat by the end of the day.

Bonus Foto(s):

Justin, taking it easy at lunchtime after weed whacking his life away at
Pie Four. I'm still not clear if he brought this thing along with him, or
just found it... or if it is even a real hammock.

Emma, Lucia and Isaac in the sweet corn crop on Wednesday. I think Emma is getting an early taste...

Ken in the sweet corn. Beard is lookin' solid!

An example of what we are calling "Zombie Hands", a  result of handling the tomatoes and having their residue come off on your
hands for eight hours a day! I dare movie makeup to do better!

Finally, one of me!  At the end of the day on Wednesday, we went to check on
our potatoes! Here I am with the German Butterballs, still pretty tiny, but
delicious, even raw! Nate's behind me.

There you have it! The week in pics. We are at the height of weed season and pest season, so there will be a lot more maintenance in our future for now; hoeing, weeding, and of course continued trellising as our tomatoes strive to attain their full height! Thanks for following the blog, as always, and here's to a rain shower or two to cool things down!

XO,

Val

Creepy, Scary Farming Time Now!

It is the week of Friday the 13th, so creepy pictures as well as legit pictures have been taken in honor of spooky holiday-ness...Although we are into cultivation now, actually, it really was a pretty great week. I have been on the trellising tomatoes crew for the most part, and it has been fine and not too spooky. We are really just getting into the routine of being specilised crews for various tasks like trellising tomatoes, harvesting peas, swiss chard and radishes, tossing hay bales and ripping up posts from former corrals(or pony shame circles, Steph!) and tamping in end posts for tomato trellises. Pics of the week below!

July 9

Elena, Jacob, Lucia, Ryan, and Eric harvesting sugar snap peas in our Fisher Field! A totally beautiful, cotton candy cloud day!

July 10

Nate, doing his favorite thing, driving the interns around in the psychedelic school bus.. Wait, are his eyes open?
Super Scary! Just kidding, it was a blink, for sure...

July 11

Stephanie and Ryan inside one of our storage silos! We were just doing a small errand this day but
couldn't resist this shot...Creepy!!! But also fun.

July 12

Me and the big boss man, Isaac, Pruning our indeterminate tomatoes in Pie Four. And yeah, we drove all those stakes in by hand early last week, not to mention tightening that twine!!! Those that have done it know the need for the exclamation points... Woo- hoo!

FRIDAY THE 13!

Me again! Sorry, but just look at these amazing green onions we harvested from
Pie Four on Thursday! Super beauties!!!

July 14

Elena getting ready to use an end post as a battering ram on me! we hauled these bad boys up and down the road to be the brace posts for  our trellising on Saturday! Our lucky working members and the rest of our intern crew harvested radishes and snow peas this day! Scary but awesome battering ram shadow in effect!

Bonus Pics

Can't resist adding this great shot of Rachel, our newest intern on her second working day at Grant Farms, harvesting sugar snap peas! 

Justin was giving me static for asking people to smile for the camera. So Alyssa just made him for me.
A little blurry, but worth it. Thanks, girl! 

Look what is growing wild in the rows between our tomatoes! 

Snatching up some green onions!! Never a great blog without the magic school bus in the background at some point. Here we are with Elena, recognizably featuring Ian, Rachel, Alex and Justin in the background.

Beautiful Lucia with a basket of  beautiful sugar snap peas. Poster Farm Girl.

Was it super spooky? Is it super spooky to think we are into the middle of July? I think so! We are having an awesome time though, and the serious harvest season is just around the corner! Thank you so much everybody for your comments, and compliments, and thank you for reading and following along with us! 


XO,
Val

Cultivation

Happy Independence Week! We celebrated the fourth on Wednesday by visiting the 139th annual Independence Day picnic at Roberts Ranch, one of the Grant's good friends and neighbors up in Wellington. All the interns, plus our Farmer, Andy, made our way over for some wonderful food and to listen to D.L. Roberts tell us a little about his family history. Later we to a short hike to one of the historical buffalo jump landmarks on his property- a place where the Indians would run buffalo off the cliffs in order to provide for their tribe during the winters. Pretty amazing stuff! We have been harvesting radishes and peas all week, as well as driving in posts and trellising our heirloom tomatoes in Pie Four. Monday, we were super excited to welcome back Chris, who has been out for three weeks with a broken collarbone for being too hardcore of a road biker. Friday, we got our first taste of a new crop, some beautiful swiss chard out of Diamond Two Field, that we gleaned for hail damage and also harvested for our CSA. Here are the pics of the week:

July 2

Chris is back! Looking gangsta' in our turnip field, which we spent time
thinning on Monday. The turnips needed to be thinned to 1/2 inch between
plants to reach full maturity. Looking good Christian! 

July 3

Eric and Alex tamping in end posts for our tomato trellising! This is the way
cowboys used to build barbed wire fences, back in the day. Trellising has been
fun, but hard work in humid, hundred degree weather!!

July 4th

Happy Independence Day!!

Richie, with a tiny bull snake he caught in Fisher Field while we were harvesting
radishes. Gorgeous day for the Fourth, and a good example of our center pivot
irrigation system in the background, pretty radishes in the surrounding rows!

July 5

Jacob made a little friend Thursday morning, waiting for our psychedelic bus ride at the intern house.

July 6

Peace, Love, and HOLLIS!! Hollis with Stephanie harvesting swiss chard on her last day
with us before beginning an awesome new art course at CC in Colorado Springs.
We'll miss you Hollis, come back and visit us!!!

Bonus Fotos:

Some of the amazing flowers from our perennial garden that Tanea has
been cultivating.

Best shot of the week: Richie, Chris, Alyssa and Ken cookin' up some down home southern fare for our Friday Night Dinner. Word.

Elena harvesting swiss chard in Diamond Two.

Glacier, one of the farm's blue heelers had puppies! Here they are this week, about eight and a half weeks old!! Thanks Nick, for the pictures!

Another too cute to resist pic! I think this little boy has the luck of going home with Tanea and her partner Chris!!

Strange to leave planting behind and to be harvesting crop at least once a day. Cultivating is awesome too, building trellises for tomatoes is strange hard work, but fun to see a small stake and twine village growing to hold up what will soon be two hundred pounds of tomato plants between posts! I hope everyone had a great week, including the Fourth of July. God bless America, land that I love. For me, farming has given those words a different meaning now than ever before!

XO,

Val

The End of Planting!

UNbelieveable! We are out of June! Tuesday we finished planting the Greeley field with bell peppers and even did a cheer- "No More Peppers!!" We are pretty much wrapped up with planting for the season, besides possibly some root veggies, and I truly can't believe how quickly the past three months have flown by. Monday was spent harvesting peas and radishes, and Wednesday we spent the day pruning our tomato crop in Pie Four and beginning to trellis our indeterminates before we were rained out by a massive and wonderful storm. Thursday was more of the same but started the day with harvesting some beautiful radishes from our Fisher Field, and Friday was brutal but successful with two groups of us harvesting garlic from our Matsuda 8 field and continuing to trellis at Pie Four. Pics of the week forthcoming below:

June 25

Courtesy of Rachel (thanks!); Kyle doing yoga in the cottonwoods at lunchtime in Pie Four
after harvesting peas all morning. We spend so much time bent over, stretching is critical!!

June 26

Abby and Alyssa finishing the red bell peppers in our Greeley Field. They
also may possibly be breakdance fighting. 

June 27

Stephanie pruning some monster heirloom tomatoes in Pie Four. Ian, Ken, Katie and others in the background.

June 28

Harvesting Radishes in our Fisher Field! From left (people who's backs I can recognize!): Alex, Alyssa ?, Megan, Ian, Justin, Ryan, Colten, Kyle, ?, Eric, Jacob, Tanea, Stephanie, Sarah, Jessica, Elena, Ken and Abby. Beautiful Colorado day!!

June 28

At the end of a brutal day, we celebrated Katie's and my half birthday and had an
animal party! Here, me as a Goat, and Katie as a Squirrel! More animal pics to
follow in the bonus fotos!

Bonus Fotos:

One of our first beautiful heirloom tomatoes in Pie Four!

Animal Party Fotos:

It had to happen. People's costumes were pretty bomb.

The Sea Squad: Elena as whale, Jessica as Fish, Lucia as Seahorse, Hollis as Pilot Fish. I think Jess may be trying to drink Hollis's drink in this shot...

The bug crew: Abby as Earthworm, Alex as Banana Slug, Rachel as Cucumber Beetle, Sarah as Bumble Bee!

Hor D' Oeuvres time! Eric as Lion, Rachel, Katie, Ken as Rooster, Abby, Lucia, Richie (lovin' the croc/ cowboy boot combo), and Isaac, who refused to wear the kitty ears I brought for him. Don't ask me why...

Sums up the whole night. Justin as the Hulk. smashing a PBR into my head. 

Great week as always! We are now moving into vegetable maintenance and cultivation. Lots of weeding and pruning and trellising ahead! Record hot temps this last week too! Welcome to July, and full fledged summer! And for those of you who were trying to comment and couldn't, I've adjusted the settings and now you should be good to go. Thanks for letting me know!

XO,

Val