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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] From another frog in the slowiy heating pot of water
  • Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 22:15:33 +0100


And at the other side of the pond (Atlantic) our June had 4 times more rain than normal with near constant flooding somewhere. And July looks like more of the same. No sun today but plenty of mist and rain. What a pity we can't divide things more evenly. We have many crops doing badly here as well.
john


these storms also unprecedented

East Coast Storms: Residents Struggling As Power Outages Continue
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/east-coast-storms-residen_n_1644414.html


paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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

On 7/2/2012 at 10:07 PM Tradingpost wrote:

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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