Author: Elizabeth

What’s working

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“…until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer

Right, then. How’s everyone doing out there? Let’s not sugarcoat it – things are seriously grim. But! How about we share what’s working and how we’re maintaining our sanity and finding our joy? I’ll go first.

How to jump in. It’s the most effective thing we can do right now, short of obvious consumer boycotts.

Mending is having a moment!

In the face of devastating wildfires, the Altadena Seed Bank looks to the future. “Even if the entire field burns down, they’ll regrow,” she said. “That underground resilience and connection is such a metaphor for Altadena — those nodes of connection and care are still so strong. Even if they’re invisible, we know we’ll come back.”

“Do not obey in advance.”

Building a community web of support, and calling on that community when in need. (Thank you, Jo Carole!) “The very concept of society rests on the idea of networks of affinity and affection, and the freestanding individual exists largely as an outcast or exile.” -Rebecca Solnit

Vote with your wallet.

Colorful handwritten letters from my cherished penpals.

The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich.

Read this.

The sensible, rational, thoughtful voices to listen to right now: Jessica Craven, Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich. If you have others to suggest, please share in the comments.

Organizing our first community seed and plant swap March 8! See you there?

“I’m simply reminding you that this nation was founded on resistance to arbitrary authority. We built American democracy in the face of what seemed to be impossible odds. And we will never, ever give up that fight.” -Robert Reich

My watchwords right now are calm, clarity and community. Would love to hear how you’re standing strong these days, dear friends.

The art of mending

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A visible mend on a favorite pair of thrifted vintage jeans.

Do you choose a significant word or guiding principle for each year? My word for 2025 is “mend.” I love both the literal and metaphorical meanings of this word, and how it ties in beautifully with my current sewing practice as well as my overarching goal to build and strengthen my community ties. As Austin Kleon wrote recently, “The idea of ‘being local’ is becoming more and more important to me. In times like these I crave the company of humans living near me who care about the same things I do.”

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The 2024 bean harvest

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Part of our display at a recent harvest festival.

Hello friends. Mid-November and we’ve only just finished harvesting the last of our dry beans. We grew over thirty cultivars this year, some roaring successes and some total crop failures (Ayocote Blanco). As ever, we learn from each year’s experience and know better what to grow and what not to grow in coming seasons.

Below we’ve listed all the new cultivars we grew this season, and we also grew almost every cultivar from 2023. We won’t describe those again in this post, but you can read about that harvest here. (Note that the bean we referred to as ‘Palomino’ in 2023 is also called ‘Southwest Gold’ and ‘Zuni Gold,’ depending on the company.)

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Seed saving 101

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Gardeners! If you’re in a temperate climate like we are (zone 5b), you’ve likely noticed that most, if not all, of your annual flowers and vegetables have either set seed or are well on their way to doing so. We’ve had an exceptionally warm autumn this year; normally by now we’d have seen overnight lows into the mid- and high 30s, but we haven’t yet dropped below 40 degrees. This means that many annuals have simply kept on producing and haven’t yet been triggered to set seed and then die; while day length has of course decreased, temperatures have remained unusually high. This is terrible news for the massive wildfires burning in Utah and Wyoming (we are once again coughing under smoky, hazy skies) but great news for those of us focused on saving seeds, since our window of opportunity is still open – for at least another week or two here.

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Farm update: September 16

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We are on the cusp of autumn here on the Western Slope and the weather is truly spectacular; any Colorado resident will tell you that September here is like nowhere else. Most days remain warm and bluebird sunny, but the overnight lows routinely drop into the mid-40s, and our morning and evening chores require an extra layer. A hard freeze is in our near future – three to four weeks, at most – and this year I won’t be too sad about letting the crops go. It has been a tough season of learning, and we need time to rest and regroup.

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High summer book reviews

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With the intense heat and the wildfire smoke, we’ve been spending more time than normal indoors lately. This is terrible news for our climate, but good news for our reading lists! This round-up is heavily weighted towards non-fiction (with a clear attention economy/stolen focus bent!), but I have a couple of dark suspense novels lined up (Lisa Jewell’s None of This Is True and Lucy Foley’s The Paris Apartment) to carry me through these dog days and into (hopefully) cooler temperatures. (You can check out a few previous book review posts here, here and here.)

The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt’s new book, subtitled How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, has gotten a ton of both positive and negative press recently. The book’s essential thesis is that we’ve moved from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood, much to society’s detriment. Parents overprotect their children in the real world – no playing outside in the front yard on your own because you might be kidnapped! – whilst at the same time handing them a smartphone with unrestricted access to all of the horrors humans can dream up. He also argues that social media in particular has contributed to (caused?) most of the dramatic increases in depression, anxiety, eating disorders, suicidal ideation and more mental health issues seen in pre-teens and teenagers in the Anglosphere.

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We have garlic!

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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

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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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Farm update: May 20

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Hello friends, and how are things with you? We are quickly entering our busiest season on the farm, jumping between planting, irrigation and weeding, and are working hard on keeping ourselves physically and mentally healthy while still accomplishing our tasks. Here are a few recent images from the farm, if you’d like to see.

Plant ID is not tricky with this one.

The lilacs have nearly finished for the year, but the blooms and their scent were spectacular this season. We have primarily the classic pale purple flowers with a few white ones thrown in for good measure. While we have planted lots of things during our time at Quiet Farm, we cannot take any credit for the lilacs as all were planted before we found this place. They are such a welcome addition to our spring and we love their unmistakable scent as we go about our farm tasks. Do you have a favorite spring flower?

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