Month: July 2024

We have garlic!

/ Elizabeth / 6 Comments

Back in 2021, farmer colleagues down in southwestern Colorado launched the Grasshopper Collective. This cooperative operation amongst growers was created in response to a particularly devastating grasshopper invasion that year:

“The intense growing conditions left us with many questions. In an age of drought and increasing climate instability, how can we adapt? How can vegetable growers be better prepared for years like this? What crops make sense for the future? Amongst our four farms, one plant stood out as particularly resilient, and that was GARLIC! Garlic harvests were bountiful across the board. It seemed that this pungent, powerful Allium was exceptionally undesirable to the hoppers. Beyond that, its timely July harvest window makes garlic a reliable crop to produce, even in the tightest of water years. Garlic thrives at our high elevation and appreciates the cool nights and desert air. On the consumer and market end, it is a keystone of the culinary world, and an essential item in many growers seed stock.  Thus, the idea was born – let’s grow more garlic – let’s start a Garlic Seed Company – and with what better name than “The Grasshopper Collective.” 

This is a smart team of growers who chose to work together to address the ongoing challenges presented by a changing climate, and one of their answers to those challenges was ‘garlic.’ While we are too far away geographically to team up with this lovely group, ‘garlic’ is the answer to some of our challenges here, too.

We mentioned in our last post that the grasshopper infestation this year is apocalyptic, dwarfing the damage we saw last year. This means we have missed out entirely on many of the favorite crops we grow, including tender salad greens, head lettuces, chard, kale, beets and carrots, to name a few. But in our lived experience (and this might certainly vary for others!) the grasshoppers never touch the alliums, a spicy, pungent plant family that also includes onion, leek, shallot and chive. And so, we’ve had a terrific garlic harvest of almost eighty pounds this year, nearly doubling last year’s yield.

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Farm update: July 8

/ Elizabeth / 11 Comments

It is official: we crown 2024 The Year of Mediocrity. Six years into our farming journey, it is expected that we might hit a slump – and so here we are. Numerous farming challenges large (hay delivery canceled, annual shearing rescheduled again and again, a goathead invasion, an apocalyptic plague of grasshoppers, rampaging rodents, hail) and small (late planting, poor germination, ricocheting temperatures) mean that this season, we’re going to be happy with anything we get. Anything! I’m not even weighing our harvests, because I’m not going to judge this year’s output against previous years – it’s not a fair fight. The brassicas were mowed down by hungry grasshoppers. The beets and carrots got too hot and never germinated. The strawberries were devoured by ravenous baby squirrels (a terrific band name!). The tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and squash are all still so tiny and fragile and battered that the prospect of harvesting anything before Christmas seems laughable at the moment, but perhaps the tide will turn in our favor as we move into high summer. We do have plenty of irrigation water this year, which is something we never take for granted.

Much happier after taking off their winter sweaters.

Despite an unplanned six-week delay that was entirely out of our control, our four rescue alpacas were successfully sheared a few days ago. They had really started to suffer in June’s abnormally high temperatures, constantly seeking out shade in the pasture and the cooling waters whenever we irrigated, and we were very glad to get their winter coats removed. I am in the process of learning how to spin their fleece into yarn and have attended a local spinning and weaving guild to observe and practice this ancient art. Like all handcraft there is a meditative aspect to spinning that soothes my constantly anxious mind, and this winter I hope to make some real headway on the bags of fleece we’ve accumulated over the years.

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