Falling in Love with my Tumbleweed Farm

My farm started as a garden. My garden started as a driveway. A severely compacted gravel ridden urban heat island. We moved into our home 4 years after it was built. The previous tenants were renters, the builder/owner had never lived there. The renter did the best she could with the outdoor space. And she took most of it with her when she left, leaving only a few thorny rose bushes, crowded periwinkle, overbearing mint, and zealous iris bulbs for us to work with. Despite the obvious challenge, my husband and I thought this was the most logical place to put the garden given it is right out our kitchen door, southwest facing and in “Zone 1” – the area you walk by everyday, multiple times a day as long as you leave the house. We dreamed of picking sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes not yet hardened by the hot New Mexico sun each morning on our way out the door to work.

He was willing to do the digging, so dig he did one weekend while I was away. I came back to a space of about 200 square feet that he soaked, fought with, broke shovels and axes on and finally dug down as far as he could in concrete slab like clay we were calling earth. What happens to earth when you drive ATVs, construction equipment and cars over it for years. He got about 12 inches down and hit what felt like bedrock. We trucked in a thick layer of compost mixed it with the clay and quickly put in our first garden since it was already July when we finally unloaded our boxes at the house that first year. After a slow start after which we did a soil test and added lots of bonemeal for a needed nitrogen fix, we got a bumper crop of zucchini, and that was about it. I’m convinced that in the wild zucchini would be a pioneering species – the first to come in after a fire, volcano, or other such disturbance to repopulate the area. It does well anywhere! Funny enough, we’ve hardly gotten any zucchini out of our garden in the three years since. In fact every year we seems to get one crop that does better than all the rest, but it is never the same thing from year to year.

We did install a drip system that first year. Most of the water soaked down about 12 inches and then ran off like a sheet of rain on that bedrock– still too concrete underneath for it to penetrate. The downhill side of the garden and driveway got most of the watering that year. But over the years it has worked itself out. I am reminded of the Growing Power gardens in Milwaukee where I grew up. One the south side of the City where it is mostly concrete, they just lay topsoil mixed with compost on top of paved parking lots and grow tomatoes in raised beds. After seeing those big, red bright tasty tomatoes that came from the urban gardens, I firmly believe Nature will work with what ever you have if you give her enough attention, love and care.

The next year I just had just given birth to my son in the spring and was lucky enough to spend 6 months off work home with him through the growing season. During every single nap I plotted, planned, dug, planted, weeded, harvested, and enjoyed my summer garden. When he was awake I would sit him in his squishy practice seat in the middle of the garden. He would reach out for the nearest plant and gum basil leaves, corn stalks, and spinach as I picked through the tomato patch. His first experience of solid foods was from those green leaves fresh off the stalk. From the look on his face, he loved it as much as I love the earthy smell of tomato leaves when you brush up against them in the hot sun. YUM! Breathe deeply. My son and I spent most of our first months of his life together out in that garden and continue to every year since. Even in the winter we play in the garden. Protected by a coyote fence to keep the dogs and rabbits out, it is the warmest place in the whole yard in late afternoon. On a warm winter day, it feels like summer, and an exquisite place from which to watch the sunset.

In year two, I expanded the main garden plot adding about 80 square feet and taking over the front flower beds adjacent to the walls of the house for another 150 sq feet. I added a few key flowers and shrubs to the flower gardens to attract beneficial insects and filled in the rest of the space with kitchen herbs. I love the convenience of reaching out my front door for the fresh rosemary and thyme the soup recipe calls for. No more “I forgot the ____!” runs to the grocery store. The herbs last most of the winter too – I just consider them “dried on the vine” in January and harvest them brown.

We also added asparagus trenches, cherry tomato & basil patches, raspberries, fruit trees, rhubarb, and a few choice wild strawberries in our front yard the second year. This April will mark three years since we planted those asparagus. We are still learning what they need. Every year we have added about 2 inches of new compost, but they are still slow in coming and a few have died off. We are trying to stave off the crab grass that is threatening to take over the trenches. The third year is supposed to be the charm with asparagus. Once they pop their crowns up this year it will mark the start of our year as locavores. Asparagus season. I talked to a local farmer recently about having youth help out throughout the season. He said sure, anytime between asparagus season and blackberry season. His way of marking the start and the end of the natural farming cycle in northern New Mexico. I am planting blackberries this year too so we have a marker for the other end of the season.

The cherry tomatoes were the bumper crop that second year. We had so many our neighbors wouldn’t take any more from us. So we learned how to roast them, dry them, add them to every imaginable dish we could think of. We did manage to eat them all up before canning season came. Roasted cherry tomatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper are irresistible. Once we learned that, we did the tomato patch in pretty quickly. But many did fall to the ground and get squished, only to leave seeds that came up the next year as volunteer plants. They didn’t produce as much the second and third years but they keep doing decently enough.

It seems every year one plant shines above all others, and it is never the same one. The third year of our garden, we only expanded about 20 square feet to add a strawberry patch to the front yard. That year we got a bumper crop of pumpkins. Delicious sweet, round, small sugar pie pumpkins. My favorite. And enough purple green beans to freeze and can and last us into the early winter.

This year we plan to take over another portion of the driveway and turn it into terraced vegetable gardens, making room for more variety and more harvest to last us into the winter with canning and freezing. We will also plan green manures on the southwest side of the house in a fairly flat spot getting it ready for a future grain crop. I also plan to diversify our food forest. Last summer we added four raspberry bushes and 5 egg-laying chickens to the mix in the orchard. This year we will add 4 more chickens to give us enough for all our needs including baking from scratch. Then I’ll expand the wild strawberry patch – which my son treats like a treasure chest of delight!! The berries grow small but they are packed with sweetness. He cherishes them, months after the harvest ended last year he still went out into the yard everyday to check the plant for berries. Plus blackberries, sandcherries, and other native fruit bearing edible shrubs.

I’ve just started my tomato, pepper, eggplant starts two weeks ago. I am working slowly towards my plan of having a 1.5 acre urban farm that can provide us with food year round. We have a 2 acre plot but about .5 of that is too steep to do anything with except nurture it and help it go native again. Maybe plant a windblock on its contours. We will add 3 goats for yogurt and cheese this summer and focus on the food forest. I await the day when I can lie on my little patch of bluegrama grass under the pear tree and pick fresh, juicy fruit while harvesting eggs with my other hand while my son gorges on tamed wild strawberries, and my husband milks the goats. That is when I will have achieved true wealth and abundance in my life.

I’ve been closely observing the land I call mine for four years now. I’ve walked every inch of it, listened and looked closely where the sun falls, how the water flows, where the good dirt is still left, how the wind blows, how it changes over the course of a day. And still I feel as I am just getting a sense of it. The land is responding well. It was so abused, misused, and ignored when I arrived it has been a slow healing process. Working on one eroded, compacted patch at a time. Working on building corridors, stringing together patches that have a bit more vibrancy in hopes that the land in between will respond as well some day and fill in the holes.

I have built a relationship with my land and I love it. I get the sense it loves me too. She appreciates the care, the attention, the patience, the light touch I use. I don’t try too hard to get it to do what I want it to. If it doesn’t want to grow zucchinis one year, I don’t force it. I feed it as much as feels right and as much as I have time for. Every small act of kindness is returned. We have an incredible view of the mountains from my house. When I moved in, I thought that might be as good as it was going to get on that damaged spot. But the land has responded with vigor and vibrancy. There is still a lot more I can do for it. Many more troubled areas being cut open by rivers of water when the rain does fall or the snow melts off, needing to be slowed down and redirected, needing time to soak it in. But we are getting there. Growing together, learning from each other, listening to each others’ needs. I won’t force it to feed me all year long if it is not ready. I won’t put too many animals on it. In this way I believe we will continue to tread lightly but grow deeply together.