Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

I read the whole article, Lynn. Hard to accept all the growing plants & trees 
u showed us are just dead & gone. As a grower myself I can't help but take it 
personally. But the ending part of that piece is what I must focus on now.

Building resilience against drought. It goes with a discussion Barb & I had 
on the road to town this AM. Farmers & gardeners have struggled with adverse 
weather & climate forever, but now we have to learn to grow for climate 
change. Plan for weather we didn't plan for. Personally I see little hope for 
corporate field crop industrial agriculture, but small local growers for home 
or market can adopt many innovative strategies & workarounds. Not just for 
drought but storms, record heat, out-of-season cold & all the rest. And 
realize Eliot Coleman's 4-seasons book is just a starting point.

It happens we've been doing some season stretching here with much earlier 
carrots, greens & tomatoes, & also using shade, quick succession, & water 
that's keeping many greens good thru this record heat when they've 
disappeared from the markets. I'm finding what works & what doesn't. Our 
French spinach in demand just won't germinate close to 100f. 3 mos ago the 
challenge was just the reverse. But the rule of thumb stays the same. Find 
ways to give food plants the conditions they need & nature does the rest. 
Easier said than done - of course. There just isn't much help out there along 
this line. & row covers are nonsense financially, & impractical when growing 
in tractor rows is inefficient & unsustainable.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 7/2/2012 at 10:58 AM Lynn Montgomery wrote:

>Dear Paul, It rained .03" here yesterday! I left a comment or 2 with this
>article.
>Regards, Lynn
>
>http://www.alternet.org/story/156100/as_farms_bite_the_dust,_%22megadrought%22_may_be_the_new_normal_in_the_southwest?page=1
>
>AlterNet / By Ari LeVaux
> 11 COMMENTS
>As Farms Bite the Dust, "Megadrought" May Be the New Normal in the
>Southwest
>My current perch in Placitas, New Mexico feels like a front-row seat to
>the apocalypse.
>July 1, 2012  |
>
>
>Photo Credit: John Brawley/Creative Commons
>In a dirt parking lot near Many Farms, Arizona, a Navajo farmer sold me a
>mutton burrito. He hasn't used his tractor in two years, he told me, and
>is cooking instead of farming because "there isn't any water." He pointed
>east at the Chuska mountain range, which straddles the New Mexico border.
>In a normal year, water coming off the mountains reaches his fields, he
>said.
>
>But this might be the new normal for the American Southwest, writes
>William deBuys in his new book, A Great Aridness. It was published late
>last year, months after one of the Southwest's driest summers in recorded
>history, during which fires of unprecedented size scorched hundreds of
>thousands of acres of forest. This summer is worse than last; forest fires
>have already broken last year's records. The rains haven't come, and
>temperature records are falling like leaves from a dried-up tree. Springs,
>wells and irrigation ditches are bone dry. Farms are withering. We've all
>heard the gloomy scenarios of global warming: extreme weather, drought,
>famine, breakdown of society, destruction of civilization.
>
>My current perch in Placitas, New Mexico feels like a front-row seat to
>the apocalypse.
>
>Intuitive as the connection may seem, we don't know if the current drought
>is a consequence of global warming, deBuys writes. Periodic, decades-long
>droughts have been relatively common in the last few thousand years,
>according to analysis of dried lake beds. Most of the area's famously
>collapsed civilizations--Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, the Galisteo
>pueblos--are thought to have died out for lack of water in these extended
>dry periods, which deBuys calls "megadroughts."
>
>By contrast, the last century's human population growth in the American
>Southwest occurred during a relatively wet period in the climactic record.
>We were due for another megadrought sooner or later, deBuys writes, which
>could be expected to dramatically alter human settlement patterns in the
>area. While this current heat may not be caused by global warming, he
>writes, climate change could nonetheless trigger the next megadrought.
>
>In the Sandia Mountains above Placitas, last winter's snowpack was
>relatively high. But the spring runoff never came, because the snow
>evaporated straight into the air of the hottest spring on record.
>
>Lynn Montgomery has been farming in Placitas for more than 40 years. Like
>many farmers in northern New Mexico, he irrigates his land with water from
>an acequia, a type of canal system implemented by Spaniards, who'd adopted
>the technique from the Moors. This year, for the second year in a row,
>Montgomery's acequia has run dry. Last year summer rains came in time to
>save his crops, but this year the rains haven't come. The ditch is dry.
>His farm is dying.
>
>First to go were the young Italian prune trees. His more established pear
>trees were next. Now, his decades-old grape vines are dropping their fruit
>and clinging to their lives. The 30-year-old asparagus patch is toast, as
>are the perennial herbs, garlic and strawberries, along with everything he
>planted this spring. Even the weeds are dead.
>
>The farm was part of a thriving community in the '60s and '70s. Most of
>the inhabitants drifted away, or ran away, or got dragged away by the
>police. Montgomery was the last man standing. He sold the farm to the
>local Pueblo Indian tribe, on the condition that they assume ownership
>after his death, and spent the proceeds paying lawyers to enforce water
>law around Placitas. He managed to stop several developments that would
>have illegally taxed the fragile aquifer.
>
>Despite his successes, which included a victory at the New Mexico Supreme
>Court, many wells were drilled, especially in the 1980s and 1990s,
>dropping the water table to the point at which many springs in Placitas
>began running dry, along with the acequias they feed. Montgomery's
>neighbors, with the turn of a tap, can water their grass and wash their
>cars thanks to the wells that killed the spring that feeds his acequia.
>But it's only a matter of time, he told me, until they feel his pain.
>
>
>"At that point all the bedroom community types will realize that the real
>estate people have bamboozled them, and most of us too," he said,
>referring to the Placitas real estate boom of the late 20th century.
>Harold Trujillo is member of an acequia near Mora, New Mexico. All the
>acequias in his Sangre de Cristo mountain valley, near the headwaters of
>the Pecos River, are dry, he told me by phone. Before this year, the worst
>he remembered was 2002, which, according to the Colorado state engineer's
>office was the region's driest year in the last 300.
>
>"In 2002 there were natural ponds that never dried up. Cows could drink
>out of them. Now those ponds are dry. People have been digging them deeper
>with backhoes to get them to fill with water," Trujillo said.
>
>Tempers are getting short. Trujillo said he was verbally threatened last
>weekend at Morphy Lake, the reservoir his acequia association helped
>build.
>
>"We were opening Morphy Lake to get water in the river. These people
>wanted us to open it more, so more water would flow into the river. But we
>can't. We need to save some water for July and August, because we don't
>know if it's going to rain or not."
>
>Even if the next megadrought has already begun, deBuys says, we wouldn't
>know it yet. "The character of a drought becomes clear only
>retrospectively." Either way, he suggests, our decisions for the future
>should be the same.
>
>"Building resilience against drought into the region's water systems and
>cultural practices would be a wise course, irrespective of the cause or
>timing of the next emergency," he writes.
>
>To that end, Lynn Montgomery is scraping together the resources to re-tool
>his farm to be more efficient with water. He's installed a holding tank,
>in which he'll be able to store precious acequia flow in future years,
>before it goes dry again. And he's switching from traditional flood
>irrigation, the way it's always been done in Placitas, to more efficient
>drip tape. It remains to be seen whether his adaptations, and his
>resilience, will be enough to help him face the new normal.
>
>And here is what some of us are doing about it. I am a supervisor on our
>local soil and water conservation district and this is my project.
>http://sandovalsignpost.com/html/eco-beat.html
>Free water available through New Water Projects Initiative
>—Tony Hull
>
>If you’ve ever considered installing rainwater catchment systems and
>making water-wise improvements to your property, you need to know about
>our grant program and come to Placitas Water Day. We invite all residents
>of Eastern Sandoval County to attend Placitas Water Day at the Placitas
>Community Library (453 Hwy 165) on Saturday, July 21, at 2:00 p.m.
>
>Even in a dry summer, thousands of “free” and otherwise unavailable
>gallons a year of water are available to a household. Harvested soft
>rainwater is taken to catchments for use. Conservation may include
>replacement of toilets and showerheads and washing machines with lower
>consumption versions. Even grey water may be diverted from the washing
>machine to trees and garden. There are many things we can do to make best
>use of the water available to us as good citizens of the high desert. And
>we are fortunate to have considerable local expertise both from residents
>who are proficient in water harvesting, and from New Mexico Water
>Collaborative (NMWC).
>
>While the first meeting is in Placitas, the intent of the Program is for
>all of Eastern Sandoval County, and it applies equally to homes, schools,
>businesses and government buildings. In collaboration with several people
>in Placitas, NMWC—a nonprofit corporation—and our local Coronado Soil and
>Water Conservation District will be seeking a grant in October for a
>“Pilot Program” initially to help fund approximately ten households set-up
>to harvest and conserve water.  We believe this is the best way to
>demonstrate the effectiveness of these measures. Up to 99 percent of the
>costs of setting up water catchment systems and home efficiency
>improvements may come from this grant.
>
>Evaluating the effectiveness of the program is an essential step toward
>future initiatives, so those who participate will be requested to provide
>data and other support to NMWC and prospective harvesters and conservers.
>There will be various criteria for selecting the Pilot
>Households/Businesses etc., including diversity of construction methods
>(everything from old adobe to most recent), location, and especially
>motivation and willingness to help future stages of this project.
>
>The current and projected domestic water situation will be discussed.
>Community input is encouraged. Hear the early vision of the Pilot Program,
>the timeline for proposing this Pilot Program. For those who would like to
>participate in the Pilot Program, we will also have application forms and
>describe how they will be used.
>
>Remember, “El agua es la vida—water is life!”
>
>
>“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
>     Wendell Berry
>
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