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