Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Lynn Montgomery" <sunfarm@toast.net>]

Hi Paul & Barb! We are almost as cold over here at Sun Farm, about 40 miles west and over the mountain from you. We have about 700' of frost tunnels, (we put white 40% shade cloth over the bamboo hoops during hot weather), with 3oz. frost fabric. The kale is fine and very productive, and the carrots, beets, and parsnips can be dug easily, as it doesn't freeze hard under the covers. The spinach, lettuce, and bok choi didn't get large enough as they were planted too late, so we're hoping that they won't bolt in the spring and continue to give good harvest. Regardless, we have lots of row to super early plant and even try tender things like tomatoes and chiles. As you know, there are a couple of winter growers' markets around the area, but we need more winter growers so these can expand. Right now, the snow and ice have formed a great seal so I'm not going to break it and continue eating good until the cold snap breaks. Tunnel gardening is a lot easier than I thought. Although the materials are expensive, especially the shade cloth, we can realize the expenses by June, and then have several years of profit. Things like lettuce and spinach don't produce well here at any time of year, so our customers are delighted to find these for sale. All of us small gardeners and farmers have to find ways to produce year round. In Maine, they put a hoop house up and then have grow tunnels within it. There's always a way.....

We have lots of small power tools here. I do most of the gardening and get help harvesting and marketing from the couple that lives here. He is an excellent mechanic, funky style, so they pay their way many times over. There is no way I could manage the place without mechanical assistance. We have a chain saw, troy bilt 4 cycle (no mixing oil) string trimmers with lots of attachments, including a little tiller that works great in tight places, and, the jewel of our mechanical assistants, a troy bilt professional horse tiller. We are going to expand to 4 acres this year, and it wouldn't be possible to do it without this machine. We grew out over 2 1/2 acres this year, double cropping a lot and breaking old ditches and fields for this year and consumed less than 8 gallons of gasoline. I would love to have draft animals, but even a burro is a luxury in this desert. Hopefully, someone will invent a small 4 cycle engine that runs good on homegrown hemp oil or other such on-site produced fuel. We live kinda primitive here, but some things from the good? 'ol days need to be avoided. There are so few small farmers these days. They need to be super productive until all residents of the Planet gain the skills and knowledge to grow stuff, so we need to keep our machines and develop them to better fit our future needs. Forward into the past and back to the future.

Those that have a little time and have a high-speed connection might want to check out an hour long movie just released by our local PBS tv station. Sandia Mountain is one of the most beautiful places in the world, plus Sun Farm makes a small appearance in Chapter 3. www.knme.org/sandias/  (pause and let load a couple minutes if it skips)

Regards, Lynn Montgomery