Farm Report: April 2008
by Richard Bernard

An Evolving Vision For The Seeds of Change “Farm and Gardens”
The Seeds of Change Mission is to preserve biodiversity and to promote sustainable organic agriculture. The vision for the Research Farm is to continue to trial seed and plant varieties to determine adaptability, value to our customers, and their role in the preservation of biodiversity, while also researching and developing sustainable organic farming and gardening systems. This knowledge base will be shared with the public through outreach programs and by using the Farm and Gardens as a demonstration, education, and tour site. This use of the farm as a demonstrational and educational tool, embedded in its high desert valley environment, is what we want to focus on for the future.

Our farm has also been selected as a new vegetable trial ground for All-America selections. As part of that program, this year we will have eggplant, watermelons, peppers, winter squash and cherry tomatoes.

Rebuilding The Gardens Around The House
The old adobe house on the farm, along with its more recent extension, are surrounded by extensive terraces and other gardens, all planted with local trees and shrubs. This area has been somewhat neglected in recent years, but as we refocus or efforts to include more garden-scale activities, it is imperative to catch up on back maintenance and make the new ‘Farm and Gardens’ a prominent part of the daily operations and outreach.

The new plantings in the Garden will showcase our varieties, including companion planting and management techniques, and trials of potential new introductions. To start the process of transforming the gardens, we contracted Ecoscapes, a local landscaping service, to clean up the existing site and renew the irrigation system. They came as an army of ants, but respectful of the plants that we decided to preserve. The cleaning opened lots of spaces and made all of us very excited about the possibilities offered now to our creativity. The next step is to develop a landscaping project to complement what already exists. We will have a design workshop on May 14th & 15th led by Ecoscapes’ landscape designer.
 
Field Activities
Generous sunshine gave us warm daytime temperatures during most of March and early April, although morning frosts will not allow the already blooming apricot trees to bear fruits this year. Dry winds make the afternoons less enjoyable.

The Rio Grande waters are running very fast due to abundant snow pack in the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo Mountains and snow has barely started to melt. It is going to be a great season for whitewater rafters, but not so much for fishermen. Water should be plentiful and some areas closer to the river may flood. In early March, most of the field activity was cleaning up the irrigation ditches. On April 6th the main acequia that brings water to the Farm opened, and right away we began seeding and watering cover crops on our rotation fields and planted ten beds of onions for seed, selecting the rounder bulbs. Some friends passed by and gave us a hand and then the interns took over the job.

In mid-March, Steve Peters, our Product Development Manager, came to the Farm to help with the field planning and design for this coming season. We will have about 600 different varieties planted for diverse purposes: observation of new introductions, grow-outs of new lots of our current varieties, seed production, native seeds research, AAS trials, collaborative organic breeding with Cornell University, carrot and melon tasting, a sweet corn variety trial, and cover crops.

Chris Bell joined the crew on March 14th to assist Joe Martinez in the maintenance and fieldwork. Chris had been working at a nearby winery and brings lots of expertise in mechanics, not to mention that he is a fan of Italian motorbikes.

Greenhouse
Returning intern Lindsay Dozoretz has been seeding mainly peppers and tomatoes in the greenhouse. We also have a whole set of onion seedlings in there, patiently waiting to go to the field. The greenhouse has been providing us with a diversity of greens throughout the winter and early spring.

Sustainability (Chicken, Carbon Offset, Energy Audit)
Evan Snow has been working on the chicken tractors to improve their efficiency and they are now ready to go in the field and do their good work. The chicken coop is now fully part of the Farm. Lindsay has been very involved in our carbon offset project (see her article). We are going to have an energy audit at the farm on April 10th. This will be the real starting point of an ambitious energy saving project that will include making our buildings more energy efficient and using renewable sources of energy.

New Interns
A bright New Mexican sun welcomed Koby Jeschkeit-Hagen and Paul Simoneau, arriving by train from Chicago and a little bit exhausted by the overnight ride. Koby comes to us with a BA in Anthropology and Hispanic Studies from Macalester College in St Paul, MN and is currently working on a Masters in Land Resources at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She is also a skilled cross-country runner who will find in our high desert environment a challenging terrain for practice. Paul has studied at the Illinois College of Arts in Chicago and comes to us to experience the rural life of New Mexico.

They have been busy planting onions in the field and seeding in the greenhouse. We have several projects in the air that still need to be selected and handed over to them.

Seed Give-Away
More than 200 people attended our annual Seed Give-Away at the Farm on a very sunny Friday April 4th. It was a great opportunity for me to meet local characters involved in the rural life of the Española and Chama valleys. The few leftover seeds have been given to the Dixon community for their own seed giveaway event. The day ended with a potluck, sharing foods as diverse as fresh avocados brought by a visitor from LA, greens from our greenhouse, a very rich and spicy stew made by a woman from San Felipe Pueblo, delicious blackberry and apricot pies and more.

Richard Bernard
Seeds of Change Research Director

Photo Captions: (1) Extensive terraces are home to many perennial plantings. (2) Preparing beds for spring planting (3) The crowd at the annual Seed Give-Away.