Friends! The preservation season is fully upon us and our Preservation Series has been such fun so far! If you’re in the Surface Creek or North Fork Valleys, join us this Saturday, September 27, for our class on salsa, hot sauce and pickles!
And we’ve got another food swap coming up November 1 – contact me for more details!
The corral’s warm metal panel is covered with grasshoppers each morning.
Friends, hello. Muted greetings from high summer in the desert, where it is hot, smoky and dry. Let’s not mince words – the world is full of terrible suffering right now, most of it instigated and/or supported by the current regime. It is hard to know how to phrase things appropriately in the face of an entirely intentional famine. We are experiencing our worst farming season in eight years, yet we have easy access to whatever food we might need or want – but children are being purposefully, deliberately starved, and collectively we are obviously fine with this. We are also fine with concentration camps, a militarized police state and taking benefits from poor kids to enrich billionaires. The active cognitive dissonance required to manage one’s daily existence in 2025 frequently leaves me in despair.
A lettuce plant and marigolds, both stripped to the stalks in a few hours.
Here’s one thing I do know – along with cruel, vengeful, power-hungry leaders, grasshoppers (and locusts) can also cause famine. The thousand-year drought in the American Southwest has created ideal conditions for these hardy creatures to thrive, and they are most certainly thriving here. Just about every conversation we’ve had with local friends over the past two months has centered on two topics: grasshoppers and drought. We’ve had no appreciable moisture this year, and the grasshoppers have absolutely annihilated many of our crops. Unless you have the experience of walking amongst our raised beds or our pasture and seeing tens of thousands of insects move at once, unless you’ve been hit in the face and arms repeatedly by these sturdy bugs, unless you’ve seen firsthand the scale of the devastation – you cannot possibly appreciate how bad things are here this year.
The kale is not thriving.
The brassicas (kale, cabbages, broccoli, bok choy, and so on) have taken the most damage, by far. Entire beds are destroyed in a few hours or days. I am pulling all the broccoli plants this week as they’re so badly eaten that there is virtually no chance they’ll develop proper heads this season, and it’s just painful to look at them every day. Mint, basil, thyme, tarragon – all the soft herbs are gone entirely.
The bean yield will sadly be far lower than expected this year.
As with all crops, the bean plants are at their most vulnerable when they’ve just put on their first true leaves; the grasshoppers love these tender, nutrient-packed starts. The rows are littered with empty stalks that didn’t survive, but we are seeing some resilience from beans that managed to escape that initial onslaught. We’ll likely get some beans, but certainly not the amount we’d planned on.
Dark-spotted blister beetles, a new arrival for us this year.
An enemy, but also an ally. It’s a delicate balance.
Because Nature never makes mistakes, the grasshopper invasion has been followed by dark-spotted blister beetles, who feast upon grasshopper larvae. We’d never seen these before, but they certainly have plenty to eat this year – although they also took out the beet and chard leaves on their way. They love alfalfa, too, and can be toxic to horses if their poison is heavily concentrated in hay bales.
Tassels on Painted Mountain corn; it’s drought-tolerant, cold-tolerant and apparently grasshopper-tolerant.
On the plus side, the grasshoppers have thus far done very little damage to our ‘Painted Mountain’ corn, an heirloom that I am exceptionally proud to grow this year. (You can see a little exploratory leaf-chewing in the photo above, but overall devastation is minimal.) I am so hopeful for this stand of open-pollinated flour corn and will share an update when we harvest.
The tomatoes and peppers have also mostly survived, with the exception of a few replacement transplants that disappeared in hours. I suspect the bitter compounds in well-developed Solanaceae plants aren’t appealing to grasshoppers, though the tiny ones don’t put up much of a fight since they’re likely too little to have developed their defenses. This metaphor is not just relevant in farming, obviously.
Lettuce plants reproduce by sending out their light seeds on the wind.
And of course the lettuce has gone to seed by now, so it’s time to harvest the little fluffy puffs to collect seeds for future plantings. Saving seeds always reminds me that gardening and farming are ultimately acts of optimism and hope, both of which I am sorely lacking at the moment.
Much as I wish I had a more positive update to share, I am also unwilling to pretend that farming is always easy or fun or rewarding. Sometimes it’s a miserable, exhausting sunbaked slog while watching plants be devoured in a matter of hours. Sometimes it’s replanting precious beans two and three times in the hopes they’ll survive the initial attack. Sometimes it’s bursting into helpless, infuriated tears, because when you’re irrigating, no one can hear you cry. And sometimes it’s taking resigned solace in the famous Zora Neale Hurston quote, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This is a year for questioning, dear friends, and for questioning a lot more than just farming.
Thanks for being here, as ever.
Hi! Would you like to learn how to can and preserve your own food? Come take a fun preservation class with me! I teach small-group classes (never more than eight guests) in our dedicated studio space. We learn a lot! We eat delicious food! We build community and self-reliance!
Peaches / Saturday, August 16 / 9AM-11AM / Showcasing our area’s legendary local peaches! Learn the basics of water-bath canning, plus how to dry and freeze peaches. Opening a jar of home-canned peaches in frigid January is a beacon of warm sunlight!
Jams & Chutneys / Saturday, August 30 / 9AM-11AM / You need homemade jam to enjoy with your homemade sourdough! Learn the basics of water-bath canning, plus how to make delicious homemade jams, chutneys and condiments.
Tomatoes / Saturday, September 13 / 10AM-12PM / Preserved tomatoes are an incredibly versatile addition to your home pantry. Learn the basics of water-bath canning, plus how to dry and freeze tomatoes. This class showcases our farm’s heirloom tomatoes (grasshopper-permitting)!
Salsas & Hot Sauces / Saturday, September 27 / 10AM-12PM / What to do with all those peppers? Learn the basics of water-bath canning, plus how to make delicious mild and spicy condiments like salsa, hot sauce and chile powder. Featuring our farm’s unique peppers and heirloom tomatoes!
Apples / Saturday, October 11 / 10AM-12PM / Keep the Applefest vibes rolling and enjoy more local apples! Learn the basics of water-bath canning for applesauce and apple pie filling, plus how to dry and freeze apples.
Fermentation, Vinegar & Kombucha / Saturday, October 25 / 10AM-12PM / Learn the basics of fermentation, and make your own incredible homemade vinegars and kombuchas! Sauerkraut and pickles, too!
If you would like more information on these or any other cooking classes or events, please send me a message!
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.)
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
Well, hello there. It’s nice to be here again. We’ve taken a break from posting, but we certainly haven’t taken a break from farming. On the contrary, we have expanded our growing area and our crops. This year, we grew hundreds of pounds of organic vegetables, but we’re most proud of our dry bean harvest – twenty varieties! Read on to learn more about what we grew.
Clockwise from top left: Hopi Yellow, Vaquero, Bolita, Dragon’s Tongue.
Hopi Yellow: A classic yellow bean, larger than Buckeye. Perfectly at home in any soup or stew, this is a bean that will enhance any recipe yet never steal the spotlight. Excellent productivity.
Vaquero: Also called Orca or Yin-Yang (for obvious reasons), these small, dense beans cook up beautifully and produce a rich, inky pot liquor. A stunning bean and surprisingly productive for an heirloom.
Bolita: A lovely, delicate little bean in the pinto family, but smaller and sweeter in flavor. Bolitas are native to southwestern Colorado and New Mexico and figure prominently in the Indigenous cuisine of the region.
Dragon’s Tongue: These pale lavender wax beans grow inside pretty dark purple-striped pods and are most commonly eaten as a fresh green bean, though the attractive pod stripes unfortunately disappear when they’re cooked.
Clockwise from top left: Aztec White, Rio Zape, Jacob’s Cattle, Tiger’s Eye.
Aztec White: One of our very favorite varieties, Aztec White is our top producer and a bean we will likely always grow. These beans are perfect for a white chili or a lush, garlicky dip for crudités.
Rio Zape: We’re proud to grow this spectacular purple and black bean that inspired the creation of the legendary Rancho Gordo. An impressive member of the pinto family, this bean offers deep, dark flavor with coffee and chocolate notes.
Jacob’s Cattle: Like most beans in the kidney family, Jacob’s Cattle’s is dense, meaty and full-flavored. It holds its shape and stands up to strong seasoning, so it makes an excellent chili bean.
Tiger’s Eye: These stunning beans are honestly almost too beautiful to eat. Almost! Tiger’s Eye ripen early due to their thin pods; their correspondingly thin skin nearly disappears in cooking, but they’ll hold their own in any chili or soup.
Clockwise from top left: Hutterite, Cranberry, Palomino, Midnight Black.
Hutterite: Possibly brought to the northern Midwest by Ukrainians in the 1850s, or maybe selected from China Yellow by settlers – like many beans its origin story is a bit murky. This bean is creamy, productive and mild, perfect for any gentle, warming soup or stew.
Cranberry: This comes from a huge bean family; it is likely native to Colombia but is now bred around the world. It’s also called Borlotti, Wren’s Egg and more. Cranberry beans are soft and thin-skinned and they produce a luxurious pot liquor, perfect for pasta e fagioli.
Palomino: This bean is a golden variation of Anasazi, but we choose not to use that disputed name and so have branded it Palomino. Like other yellow beans, it is creamy, mild and versatile.
Midnight Black: A true black turtle bean with traditional flavor and an inky broth, this bean originates from Rancho Gordo’s seedstock. Fresh black beans, cooked from dry, will completely change hearts and minds on using canned black beans.
Clockwise from top left: Forelle, Mayocoba, Peregion, Yellow Eye.
Forelle: Officially known as Forelle fliederfarben, which translates to ‘lilac trout’ in German, these round, purple beans with black stripes are absolutely gorgeous. This variety produced abundantly, always a surprise for heirloom beans.
Mayocoba: Native to either Peru or Mexico, these are creamy, pale yellow, thin-skinned beans with a soft, buttery texture. They make excellent refried beans.
Peregion: These come out of the Pacific Northwest and have a gorgeous zebra coloration. One of the few beans where the striping is still (faintly) visible after cooking, Peregion are productive and delicious.
Yellow Eye: These beans are both rich and mild, more a supporting character than an outright star. They are an old New England variety and the bean of choice for classic Boston baked beans.
Clockwise from top left: Garbanzo, Buckeye, Marcella, Red Cranberry.
Garbanzo: Also called chickpea or ceci bean, this legume is most commonly used in hummus and other Middle Eastern dishes. Garbanzos are not native to North America like most other beans here and are low-yielding and tricky to grow – but the unusual, fronded plants are fun to see in the field.
Buckeye: Rancho Gordo says, “A small, dense yet velvety bean that holds its shape and provides a rich bean broth. Easily one of the staff’s favorite beans. Buckeye is incredibly creamy, almost more like a classic black turtle bean than anything else. It’s dense without being intense, if that makes sense.” Can’t top that description.
Marcella: A long white cannellini-style bean, named by Rancho Gordo in honor of the great Marcella Hazan. Thin-skinned and creamy; ideal for brothy Italian-style soups and rich, flavorsome dips and spreads.
Red Cranberry: An old variety, likely grown by Indigenous tribes in the northeast U.S. Gorgeous rich red color and much rounder than the more common striped/speckled cranberry bean above. Listed in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste.
We could go on and on about dry beans (and have, previously), but let’s sum it up like this: they’re native to our region and therefore exceptionally drought-tolerant. They’re an incredibly nutritious source of plant-based protein and beneficial fiber. They require almost no care, and they are not plagued by pests, viruses or disease so require no inputs, at least in our microclimate. They keep well. And they actually give more than they take, replenishing the soil with each season’s growth. Beans are an absolute powerhouse in every category, and they’re a great addition to Quiet Farm. We’re deeply proud of our 2023 harvest, and are already evaluating what varieties we’ll grow next year.
More than ever, we know that small, regenerative farms are the only sure way out of this increasingly catastrophic environmental mess we find ourselves in. We encourage you to support small farms in whatever way makes the most sense for you and your household.
As always, thanks for being here. We’ll be back again soon!
It’s surprisingly cold now, in late November, although dry and clear. As always, we’d love for some of the snow blanketing other parts of the country (hello, six feet in Buffalo!) to bestow its generosity upon us here, but nothing shows in the forecast as yet. Days are crisp and blue, and nights definitely require extra quilts. The sunroom is still full of cardboard trays of slowly ripening tomatoes and peppers; this unheated room works perfectly for cold storage and allows these vegetables to ripen slowly with sunlight but without so much warmth that they’d rot. Certainly something is sacrificed in terms of flavor when crops aren’t allowed to ripen outside, but we have a reasonably short growing season here so we have to work with what we have – and it’s a lovely treat to enjoy our own fresh tomato salads well into winter.
Those cardboard trays are slowly transforming into rustic, delicate ristras and canning jars of salsa and sauce; seeds are mostly dried and packed away. The winter squash bounty hasn’t been tapped into yet; that will carry us through the coldest months and into fragile spring with warming soups and curries. New planting rows for next year have been plowed and filled with compost. The plants we pulled out have been mowed into bits to break down into compost over winter; the beds have been mulched with spent straw and next year’s garlic has been planted. In all ways, our season is gradually winding down and we’re more than ready to tuck ourselves in for a couple of months of much-needed rest.
We’re still reviewing our season, cataloguing our successes and noting what changes and improvements we plan to make for next year. This year certainly had its challenges, but it definitely offered wins, too! Read on for more about the 2022 growing season.
Continue reading
Our eight bean varieties from the 2022 harvest.
Here we are, dear friends, and yet again I’m singing songs of love and devotion to beans – specifically our own 2022 harvest! My total and complete adoration of dried beans is no secret. Not only are beans one of the most inexpensive yet nutritious whole foods available, but as nitrogen-fixing legumes they actually improve soil. They grow well in our tricky high-plains desert environment, they don’t require much water and they’re very low-maintenance. There can hardly be a better edible crop to grow! Plus, as the world gradually starts to realize that a meat-centric diet for nine billion people simply won’t work, beans (and other nutritious legumes and pulses) will become ever more important as plant-based proteins. We’d like to get ahead of that curve and start cultivating more edible legumes on our farm, for both our own health and our soils, so this year we planted a test crop.
Continue reading
Mid-October and still no hard freeze here yet…not even a frost. We had such a late start to our growing season this year that I can’t really complain about the extended warmth, but it’s time to wrap things up. The forecast for this coming weekend shows that we might be in for a big downward shift in temperatures, and we are ready. But! Before then, there is much to do, including harvesting everything and collecting all our seeds for future planting.
And to that end, I am teaching a free class on seed saving at our local library on October 22. We’ll talk about how easy yet how important seed saving is, and you’ll learn how you can benefit our local foodshed’s seed sovereignty as well as help the library’s seed bank! The class is free but advance registration is required; more information here, if you’d like to attend. No matter where in the world you are, please consider saving and sharing your seeds!
Finding Quiet Farm 