Season updates 2008

Big news at the EU: Europe Relaxes Rules on Sale of Ugly Fruits and Vegetables . "...there was no point in throwing away food just because it looked strange." We ate the carrots and parsnips we harvested in November (photo above), no problem! View details of our products in this MWF holiday sales flier. December We are immersed in the winter season: end of year admin, desperation to finish our irrigation project and test it, plans for next year and assessments in all arenas. What have we learned? What can we do better? I am looking forward to the winter solstice which has a long multi-cultural history for dreaming. It's appropriate, sanctioned even, to dream whether asleep or awake during this time of the year. Dreams taunt me to be daring, ambitious, and creative. Later, I am stuck with challenging problems, overexertion and subsequent grumpiness that leave dreams in the dust as I labor to birth them. Wink and I have decided that 2009, our 4th season farming, will be a year for completion. We will finish two big capital projects, putting 30 acres into micro-irrigation and finishing our invisible barn. Instead of focusing on infrastructure, we'll improve our soil fertility, cover crops, weed control, and work to improve our harvest and markets. Will our resolve to strengthen our foundations instead of expansions stop the traditional Solstice dreaming? I don't think so. No harm in dreams! - M

Max planted garlic which will be harvested next summer. December After Thanksgiving Wink and Max traveled again to St Louis to take in the Acres Eco-Ag Conference in December. Wink has done a good job of recapping in his blog. Of course one of the primary attractions was to visit the "East of the Mississippi Family." Aniela is working happily at Bryan Cave and Nik and Julie are busy entertaining and being entertained by their infant son Roman. Irrigation work has now swapped places with farming. Aaron is back after a summer season of working on irrigation projects in Summit County. He's finishing up the poly and emitters that will run along each orchard and vineyard row. We will then finish the pumphouse and fire up the system when it gets warm enough, hopefully before we sink into the coldest days of winter. October winemaking The night of October 10 temperatures plummeted below freezing so we had to pick our wine grapes. Brix was almost 24, within acceptable range. Fortunately for us, we planned to pick that weekend anyway with the help of Kate and her Telluride buddies Jen and Ellie. We fermented the grapes in a bin positioned in the hoophouse so the must wouldn't get "stuck" by cooler temperatures. This year we left the juice on the skins for 12 days before pressing. The result is going to be a barrel of rose, with lots of body in about a year or so. One of the remaining tasks for the default winemaker (Max) is to bottle the peach, apple, and gris from last year.

Preserving After the peaches and apples were harvested in August and September, we spent several days in the commercial kitchen making jam, canned fruit and chutney. We renewed our organic food processing certificate for the second year in a row. Yummy stuff! In September and October, we canned and froze fruits and vegetables for farm use and extracted several hundred pounds of honey, 20 times more than in previous years. Perhaps those new queens made a big difference! One daydream not far away from reality is to make a couple of candles from all the wax collected in the process. How hard can that be??

We built a storage pond last year and brought in bulrushes from a neighboring farm last September. The results a year later include frogs, water creatures, dragon and damsel flies, nighthawks, swallows and ducks! Fall rains This has been the driest year on record in the North Fork. Farmers still talk about the 2002 drought, a multi-year drought. What saved us this year was a wet perfect winter — plenty of snow and no dust storms from Utah causing premature snow runoffs. North Fork irrigation water shares could deliver 90-100%. We went weeks and months without rain though. And when we thought the fall rains had finally come, we got drizzle, spastic spits and longing instead. The ground barely moistened. Of course that will effect next year in known and unknown ways, just like the wet winter impacted the farm. I can't predict how the weather effects our farm ecology — the effects stretch far beyond yearly calendars. Global warming, climate change, climate crisis, whatever people call it could change farming on the Western Slope because it definitely changes our ecology.

This is the beautiful milkweed flower. We have a few along the canal and were pleased to see Monarch butterflies this year. The European paper wasps were fewer this year as well, possibly due to the wet winter. Our guess is these wasps nailed the Monarch caterpillars in previous years.

Hops in the North Fork

Our favorite scientist, Ron Godin has been growing hops in the North Fork from a brewer and farmer perspective for 7 years. When organic hops all but disappeared from the US market, he had discovered that North Fork farmers could grow enough of the right varieties to make a profitable crop. See his powerpoint presentations on sustainable hops.

Hops grow natively in the Rocky Mountains, are subject to fewer diseases here, and could net 400% more per pound than fruit crops.

In supply/demand fashion, farmers are planting 1000s of acres in the northwest. We are toying with the idea ourselves. Colorado is now #1 in the nation for number of micro breweries, all buying hops from elsewhere and organic from New Zealand.

At a local hops workshop in August, growers and brewmeisters met to learn more about hop varieties, growing and processing hops for local breweries. It turns out that hops is a phenomenal bine, known for its soporific qualities in ancient Greece before its use in beer as a flavoring. In fact when we visited a local hops yard that was in full flower (photo on left) we dang near fell asleep on our feet! But maybe that's because it was August and we were sleep deprived.

So what are the drawbacks — cost of trellising, labor, certified disease-free rhizome availability and three years before a crop can be harvested. So we'll finish up the projects we started last year first. - M

Gail's mom works at CSU and brought a group of Spanish sustainable ag exchange students to visit. Both Gail and Emily are CSU organic ag students who interned on our farm all summer. July-August The North Fork Valley attracted ag and culinary students this year. Some of the programs were sponsored by universities and culinary institutes. There were a couple of foreign exchange programs too, but some young 'uns just showed up! All are interested in becoming sustainable agriculturists, a career cooking with local organic foods or working in a related business. We've enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with Colorado College students since we began farming in 2005. Wink's daughters, friends, many summer interns from CC — and their families — have visited Mesa Winds Farm. They've helped us over the past several years with picking, sorting, weeding, raking, pruning, harvesting and researching water, soil, insects, birds, and strange phenomena to help us understand our farming practices better. While camping in our orchards, they also visit the Rogers Mesa Research Station and other organic farms in the North Fork. This year they saved Rivendale Farm's John Cooley two full weeks of work by harvesting the last of his potatoes in one day — seventeen people can make a difference!

Thanks to Miro and all these CC students who have helped us tremendously in 2008 — and livened up the joint! We love you!

June

June was plenty outdoor work. But we were lighthearted because we lived outdoors as well. The herb garden was beautiful, vegetables were growing, and we celebrated two birthdays. We ate lots of good farm food cooked for us daily by our cuisine specialist, Laura. You can visit Laura's blog to hear her tales of the North Fork Valley and plenty more about her other adventures as well.

One of our farmer friends coined this phrase: "Work like dogs, eat like kings." Visit our vineyards, orchards and vegetables to see the hardworking part of farm life!

Earthworks

Wink was under great pressure (from lots of dirt piles) to sift, move big rocks, fill in the trenches and get NRCS approval before the crops progressed too far to benefit from our help. This took several months. For the full Mesa Winds Farm irrigation story, go to this page.

When the weather turned warm enough, we had to bury irrigation pipe in the deep ditches left all over the farm last fall. This was critical so we could drive through the orchards and vineyards to thin, spray, and mow.

Wink kept getting pulled off to help plant asparagus, or better yet, to greet the new baby in the family and see his step daughter graduate from law school!

Our springtime was truly New Beginnings! in joyful ways:

This amazing morning of February 15 started out in a cold wet fog more appropriate to Seattle. Roll over this link to see what it looked like a short half hour later! March March has arrived on the farm, but Spring is uncommitted. We continue to have nights below freezing, snow and blustery weather sprinkled with sunny days in the 40s. We took advantage of the delayed spring to attend the New Mexico Organic Farming Conference in Albuquerque Feb 28-Mar 1. The attendance tripled this year so we rubbed elbows and shoulders as well as ideas. It was heartening to see hundreds of organic farmers in one place. Here are some links to info and people who inspired us: Les Crowder, top bar hives, bee master Gordon Tooley, Tooley's Trees, who won the Conference's Educator of the Year Award, see his demo on the orchards page. Don Bustos, Santa Cruz Farm, who shared many specifics of his successful 4-season 3-acre produce farm Farmer Monte, Los Poblanos Organics, loved his chicken talk Rob Fergus, the Birdchaser - M

February

Max continued her crazy sewing mania. She made several aprons from Mary Jane's Farm catalog's Make Do Apron directions. She took Wink's old shirts, deconstructed and reconstructed them into pruning aprons for the vineyard. Many napkins, placemats, tablecloths, and aprons later she's moving on to other things.

Wink finished the farm accounts for the year with much unexpected work decoding and complying with the new workers comp requirements and paperwork.

We attended a mid-February Whole Foods Growers Seminar in Denver. Those folks are really enthusiastic! They're talking the right talk about locally grown food and building lasting relationships with [quality] growers. Farmers have been lodged in the most disrespected of all the food groups during the past 30 years or so. Since I'm from a farm family, now a farmer, I look forward to testing everybody's ability to walk the talk, show respect for the farmer and their farms. - M

January

The weather is perfect wintertime farming weather. Snow blankets the ground. Seriously! The soil won't get colder than 32° because the snow insulates so well. All the roots are happy, snoozing away.

Max finished her son's 7 foot quilt in January. The combo of Polish and German eagles represents his ethnic heritage.

Nighttime temps have been between low teens and zero during January but we are keeping warm. We've suffered bouts of cabin fever, but productive times too.

Wink is hobbling around, post-hernia operation. "It's not so bad," he says. "I just don't want to have to do it again." So now there's no excuse for him not to be working on tax forms instead of skiing. Poor Wink! It's the best ski snow year in recent memory.

Max finished a large quilt that she and her son designed together. Now she's got the bug to sew all kinds of things from curtains for the picker cabins, to aprons for all the tasks and helpers on the farm. She's going to try some original fashions as well.

We attended the Western Colorado Horticultural Society's Annual Conference again this year. Always there's much to think about and discuss. Wink and I learned more about peach trees, how they grow. Dr. DeJong showed a computer model of how a tree distributes carbon through two seasons of growth. Here's a link to L-Peach Modeling.

Another speaker, Jerry Mills of Mills Apple Farm, Marine Illinois, had plenty of stories to tell about his farm's evolution during his 40 years of ownership — from apple orchard to bakery and hayrides. He is also a regular contributor to Fruit Grower News. He's of my father's vintage, must be 80 years old, but he's doing what plenty of farmers are thinking about today — agritourism. Wink and I are thinking about that too.

Now that the Hort Conference is finished, Wink and I are going into "next year" planning mode. We're starting with listing all the things we love to do on the farm. We'll try to eliminate some of the stuff that we don't love so much, and work that into a business plan. Of course "next year" is here on the calendar, but the farm calendar doesn't really start cranking up until next month.

If you haven't gone to Wink's Blog yet, he's feeling a bit left out and needs some comments to fire him up.

In the meantime, we are going to hear Joel Salatin speak at Colorado College and that will probably mean chickens on our farm next year. - M