Gordon Longfoot

If you need to add more nitrogen:

A couple ducks and a small pond. My compost pile is 100 feet from the pond so with two garden hoses and a pump the pile gets soaked with duck water.

I use a pump for an RV fresh water tank, but bypass the pressure switch, it will burn up with the amount of pumping I need to do.

I pumped my duck pond last week with an RV water pump. It's 12 volts and the one I used needs about 20 amps, so I got away with a 100AH lifepo4 hooked up to a 250 watt solar panel. The cost of these batteries has really come down, I paid about $100 for mine but I've seen them advertised as low as $70.

The weak point in these pumps is the pressure switch, which will melt after an hour or two of use. What I did was bypass the switch so the pump was always on. This was a temporary setup but you could have a higher rated on/off switch for a permanent system.

I pumped onto my compost pile 100 feet away. There's a sediment filter that needs to be cleaned every 30 minutes or so depending on how much debris gets sucked in. I have hose adapters that convert the 1/2" NPT to 3/4" garden hose. Putting a filter on the sucking hose would probably be more efficient but I didn't have one at the time.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Gordon Longfoot wrote:berries.

I just read that berry prices are going to be bonkers this year, looks like you made a smart move!!

I was planning on charging a little more for my produce and meat instead of trying to compete with big store prices. But it may be about even. I'm not trying to gouge but I need to be paid for my time, so I can put the money into expanding this operation.

Gasoline has gone up about $1.50 here but hopefully growing more feed for the livestock will make that added cost of transportation irrelevant. I still need to drive to the market, but I'm trying to get away from corn. Even though the feed store grows their own onsite, they need fuel for a tractor. I might be able to get 3 months worth of millet out of a controlled crop, then put animals on pasture the rest of the time.

We have some wild desert dandelions growing out here. Those are pretty exciting to see.

My wife spends way too much money on strawberries, so I have 55 plants in the ground.

There's an acre I can use but I've only been able to get 1/4 planted so far. A few weeks ago I ran 100' of underground plumbing with two hose spigots coming off of it. Then 100' of hose above ground.

There's some plants in the mounds and rows then 58 pots in the green house.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
In ground:

55 strawberries
4 Raspberries
2 Blackberries
2 Blueberries
20' of carrots
3 rows of beats
8 broccoli mounds
8 jalapenos
6 watermelon
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Green house:

Slow Bolt Cilantro
Basil
Cumin
Dill
-
Cantaloupe
Early Girl Tomato
Siberian Red Tomato
Tomatillo (makes great pepper sauce)
Pickling Cucumber
Jalapeno
Peppercini
Garden beans
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Then there's 20'x40' of millet, and I spread some more seed on about 10 acres of field. I also have 5lbs of seed peas. A few potatoes growing in a separate garden. Then seeds for corn and onions. Need to form rows for these.

Ordered 350' of trellis netting for $30 off Amazon. Should be great for cucumbers but I also want the cantaloupe on it, and can be used for tomatoes.

We have a booth reserved at a farmers market so any excess can be sold to help the community get locally grown food.

Recipe for Salsa Verde (blended):

9 peeled/roasted tomatillos
1/2 onion (roasted)
1/2 jalapeno (roasted)
1/2 cup cilantro
1 lime
2 cloves garlic (roasted)
2 tablespoons salt

Add more jalapeno and it can be a hot sauce.

Towards the back right, kinda near where there's a planter in the picture above I started a small watering hole. It should naturally get some runoff but my kids have been filling it with the hose every day. By morning it will be drained but eventually the clay should create a seal.

This will be a habitat for birds to get water and do bird things. We planted a few Zinnia flower seeds, just for fun. Once it's holding water I'll create brush piles around the edges.

Here's where I'm at. I have strawberry roots planted in the middle row and part of the left row. Then there's an Ebony King BlackBerry in the back left row. This should grow to a hedge that blocks the wind coming from the back.

There's more strawberry roots arriving today for a total of 55 plants.

We were getting gusts of wind yesterday afternoon and the trees were blocking it good.

Our white goat had triplets today. It took all day, she was having contractions this morning and I spent a couple hours keeping an eye on here. Of course when I go back to working on my other project my wife hears the baby doing it's first little baby goat sounds. This time we got two girls that will stay on the homestead and one boy that will be sold off.

So she was exposed in October and took a few weeks to go into heat.

Lif Strand wrote:

Gordon Longfoot wrote:
There were prairie dogs in our front field before we moved to our farm. This was out in Springerville.

Are you still in Springerville? If so, that would explain why your conditions seem so similar to mine, because I live in NM 30 miles east of Springerville! And if you are still there and that's what all your posts are about, your experiences will be super valuable for me and the tough growing conditions of this area!

We're an hour away now. In Snowflake but outside of city limits. It's my understanding that this area was the sheep capital of the country. But going further back there was wars over cattle land. The early sheep herders would be run out of town or murdered, but eventually all the land around Holbrook was sheep. I was told they would eat all the grass then pull it up by the roots.

There was a Hatfields McCoys type feud out here. You can look up the Pleasant Valley War.

So it should be good grazing land all around here. I haven't had time to get pictures because we were selling eggs yesterday then today I took some time to search for rocks out in my field. I came in with a wheel barrow full of petrified wood and what looks like ancient stone tools. There's some interesting Pueblo ruins out at Lyman lake, but some of them might have been living here on my land at some point.

Lif Strand wrote:

Jeremy Baker wrote:Our neighbors use trench gardening in the southern AZ. They love it for plants that are not “desert” plants. They dig down about a foot then toss a bunch of weeds, grass, and organic matter in the bottom. Then they replace some of the topsoil and plant herbs, vegetables, or berries.

Anything I plant in the ground has to have the hole lined with metal screen for critter protection (gophers, moles, even prairie dogs). Everything is so hungry around here because of the drought that even the rusty water troughs I used to plant in won't work - the critters somehow get through the rust places. This year I'm going to try planting in straw bales that are on top of metal roofing panels PLUS will have metal screen on the sides. I can't even get angry about the loss of my garden knowing that starvation desperation is driving them.

Climate change changes everything.

There were prairie dogs in our front field before we moved to our farm. This was out in Springerville. The first year we were there they must have had cows in that field because we could see the little critters really well. The last year the grass was too tall.

I see it as over grazing or poor farming practices. Soil has microbes and bacteria in it, so some grazing is good but too much will destroy a field. Turning the soil is also dangerous. It's my understanding that the dust bowl was caused by new farming methods pushed by the Federal Government around the turn of the century. They worked just fine until the drought hit in the 30's. But there was no dust bowl before the grass was plowed under. Plowed under to plant crops that the government would destroy to control the price.

Anyway, I went out in my field yesterday and found grass growing in the shade of a Juniper tree. This is leading me to believe my strawberry idea will work.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Gordon Longfoot wrote:

We're an hour or two from the NM border depending on which way we go. It's a little over 5,000 ft elevation, but there's pine forest within a 20 minute drive. The soil is red clay and sand, so water runs off. But there's a pond that collected some of that water. I'm somewhat concerned with water rights and grazing my livestock, so swales aren't going to be happening. I built a few half moons out in the field and have been adding manure filled bedding to the small wash that runs across the 40 acres. It's mostly experimental right now. My main goal is to get better soil that holds water instead of trying to block water from leaving the property.

It sounds like you have your work cut out for you. You have a lot or irons in the fire. Be careful  to not tackle too many things at a time. Getting better soil will also happen in blocking water from leaving the property.
Those half moons you dug are, in fact swales. You could make more, or make them deeper? I don't know your laws in AZ, but if the pond is entirely on your property, there shouldn't be problems with your water rights, although reading that you have "a small wash that runs through the property" could cause problems if you prevent *that* water from going to your neighbors. You should also be able to make a few more swales and keep doing what you are doing: Putting spent litter and manure will make them really fertile, so good job, and good luck, Gordon.

I broke ground earlier this week. Will get pictures of it later, I'm off to the hardware store to get plumbing and some garden hoses.

It's going to be dirt mounds on the north and south sides of about an acre, then I'll plant my honey locusts on that once the dirt settles. The interior of the acre had junipers and elevated mounts that occured naturally, so I'm digging swales that follow the contour. This will give me mounds for planting strawberries. I can afford 500 plants, which gives me a bulk discount. If these do well I will hopefully get runners in the August heat, which will be cut off from the host plant once they establish roots. So spacing will be 36" between plants.

There's dead trees, which look like they would hold my cantelope's as a natural trellis. And I can get some raspberries and blackberries in the same acre.

Water comes in from the property boundary during monsoons, so I've started establishing pathways for it to fill the swales. We're kinda near the top of a hill with dips and ridges throughout the property, but not completely at the top. Water runs pretty swiftly through where our existing pond is, so I imagine the swales will get a good flow that could fill another pond. That pond will be used to attract birds and dragonflys. The problem with the existing pond is ducks and chickens, it's fine for other birds but I want dragonflys laying eggs in an undisturbed area.

Kinda rambling here, but ground has been broken.