This is a post in an on going segment I like to call “Farm Rules.” They aren’t rules for coming onto the farm but rather things I have found to be true about farming. This rule is “Never buy a cheap wheelbarrow, because you are going to the one using it.” In our price driven society where everyone is driven to look at the price of a good rather than it’s cost or quality, hand tools have gotten cheaper and cheaper. They are made of poorer materials, poorer construction but WOW did we save at Wal-Mart on it!
(I have nicknamed this the Wal-Mart effect because Wal-Mart demands suppliers lower their prices 5-10% yearly to the retailer. This results in race to the bottom where suppliers must substitute cheaper and cheaper materiel and construction techniques. This is a race to the bottom of quality. This means by the end of 5 years of selling to Wal Mart, a suppliers tools don’t even last a season.)
Because of this instead of buying a quality tool like a wheelbarrow, you end up with something that is going to make your life harder and won’t even last a season. I always recommend that you buy the highest quality tools whenever possible. It’s a bit pricer in the beginning but worth it in the long run. For a wheelbarrow this is especially true because you don’t want to feel like Sisyphus using it. Fighting your tools because they are poorly made means a higher risk of injury and elevated risk of kick it because it doesn’t work. Don’t skimp on tools.
I am incredibly excited about today. Today we bottle my own attempt at a Montana brown ale. I over hopped this batch relative to the normal brown recipe. I had no idea how it was going to turn out. Would it be too hoppy? I cracked up the primary fermentation tank and my nose caught the scent of a brown ale with a hint of citrus, with a little grapefruit undertone. It smelled delicious! You can’t really be a home brewer without the ability to delay gratification. After bottling the six gallons of beer today, it’s got to bottle condition for 3 weeks. So it’s end of January before we can enjoy this beer. Perhaps for my birthday on the 26th I can enjoy this brown beer.
The New Mexico Locust is a great anchor tree for any food forest in New Mexico. It is in the sub family Faboideae in the Fabaceae(Pea Family). This means it’s a nitrogen fixing tree whose legumes can significantly improve soils. This is a native tree especially useful for erosion control due to its rapid growth and thicket forming tendencies. The legumes incorporate nitrogen into the soil improving the quality of the soil. It produces showy purple flowers in the spring. It has high calcium carbonate tolerance and low salinity tolerance. Optimum soil pH is 7.0 to 8.5. It is shade intolerant. The average crown width is 15 feet. It’s preferred elevation is 4500 – 8500 feet and should be considered essential to improving soil here. It’s preferred to the Siberian Pea Shrub in New Mexico as it’s more drought tolerant. The flowers are edible.
Bodhi Farms is looking for a winter/spring intern. Bodhi Farms is a permaculture based farm that also grows year round in greenhouses. We are looking for a long term intern (or interns) for our winter greenhouse season and our spring planting season. We are looking for in intern for at least 3 months (preferably 6 months). At the farm you will learn the following things.
Companion Planting. These are typically micro-guilds like the three sisters.
Swales and water catchement construction. We are continuing with our water retaining ponds
Cover cropping and forage planting.
How to build a greenhouse.
How to build a ground thermal storage system for a greenhouse
The basics of drip irrigation
Tree planting and guild creation
Earthship building
Bee Keeping
Beer and Bread Making
Chicken Tractor building and design
You should be interested in permaculture, physically fit and comfortable with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. WE can accept couples as we have a private room in the house with it’s own shower and bathroom. We can accommodate vegan and vegetarian diets as well as meat eaters (assuming you like local grass feed beef or local free range chicken). If you are interested I would encourage you to view our profile on wwoofusa.org and see the type of experience we offer. Please feel free to email me at brian@bodhifarms.com. Please note we are located in Las Vegas New Mexico, not Las Vegas Nevada. This internship will provide room and board but is otherwise unpaid. We can certainly pick you up from Albuquerque or Santa Fe and Amtrak actually runs through Vegas.
Just finished a batch of new Bodhi Farms Blonde ale in the primary fermentation right now. One week till it’s bottled and put in the wellhouse. Update: It’s bottled!
Enjoy a taste of spring with Bodhi Farms Winter Greens! Bodhi Farms is at the Santa Fe Farmers Market and the new Las Vegas Winter Farmers Market every saturday. We are growing arugula, pak choi, kale mustard mix, spinach, salad mix and romaine lettuce. The Las Vegas Winter Farmers Market is at Travelers Cafe at 1814 Plaza in Las Vegas. The market is Saturday from 8 AM to sellout.
Las Vegas Winter Farmers market
Travelers Cafe
Saturday 8 AM to sellout
Travelers Cafe
1814 Plaza
Las Vegas, NM 87701
Please thank Teresa for hosting the winter farmers market in Las Vegas.
Santa Fe Farmers Market
Saturday 8 AM to 1 PM
1607 Paseo De Peralta #1
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Please come take a look at our selection of greens and get a taste of spring in the cold of winter! Please contact me if you need home delivery in Las Vegas.
Jamar Fulton puts the finishing touches on our low tunnel in a high tunnel. Big greenhouse is now filled with product. Thanks to Shea McCann, AJ, Rachel coomer, Caroline, Dan 1 and Dan2, Sarah Keyt and all of our wwoofers. You made this possible and the farm owes you a big thanks!
The new CDC report on “Antibiotic resistance threats” cites the role that factory farms with their extensive use of antibiotics to creating super bugs.“Antibiotic resistance threats in the United States, 2013. Here’s simple graph from the CDC that explains the issue.
A simple graph explaining how factory farms contribute antibiotic-resistant germs.
I encourage you to read the report and read how the factory farming system has yet another hidden cost to our health.
The re-building has take time but Bodhi Farms has rebounded. We had some great help with our WWOOFers. We are adding a new greenhouse with a USDA Eqip grant. Our latest WWoofers had a great time building the infrastructure.
Picture above are Rachel, AJ, and Shea with a power pullup celebrating our success in getting a portion of the steel structure in place. We have begun a long term permaculture project, namely a series of settlement ponds to slow the water on our property. As the hail in July and the recent 12 inches of rain we received in the last 4 days, water management and water storage are crucial in the changing climate we face as farmers. I have begun the first of 30 or so settlement ponds along our arroyo.
This is going to be our winter permaculture project. I am really excited. This will anchor our permaculture food forest and hopefully we can even add trout to the ponds in time. The recent 1000 year flooding we experienced this week has really emphasized the importance of water management in our environment. In many ways the flooding we received in the last week was far worse than July but it only highlights the need to address the problem in a sustainable fashion.
We got over 12 inches of rain in less than 3 days. This is over half of our annual rainfall we would normally receive in Las Vegas, NM. I suspect this will be a regular occurrence – 1,000 year rain events at least once a year.
I am putting up this post because I think it’s important people understand that climate change is quite real and it can have crushing affects on agricultural production. Last Wednesday, July 2, Bodhi Farms received 2.35 inches of rain plus roughly 4-6 inches of hail in less than an hour. To put that in perspectative, that’s more than the normal monthly rainfall we would expect in July. The hail damage by itself would be enough to destroy our row crops. That includes more than 500 heirloom tomato plants, heirloom beans and peas. Both of the Quinoa and Amaranth test fields were destroyed. Below I have included some short video and photographs to highly the extent of the damage. First off, here is 35 seconds of the beginning of the storm.
Now multiply that by an hour and you get a sense of the type of weather we experienced. Here are photographs from the aftermath.
We are now beginning to replant and recover. Clearly we will need to replant shorter season crops where we lost longer season crops. In the long term, we will need to plan on this sort of black swan weather event to be the new normal. When I moved here I anticipated that climate change should make New Mexico (specifically where the mountains meet the prairie) in the long term. What I didn’t anticipate is how violent the transition would be. I suspect that this lends support to my hypothesis that the climate has a punctuated equilibrium model, where the climate is resistant to change and as the deep ocean heats up, the climate is permanently changed and quickly. The ocean is a one of the huge drivers in climate and has acted like a thermal and carbon sink. As we cross 400 ppm Co2, it important to remember that more events like this are more likely and our current industrial food system far less resilient than a diversified food system we once had.
The purpose of this post is too ask my friends if they can help me. At the end of the post there is a donation button via Paypal. The donations will be used to create settlement along the forest arroyo along with a new greenhouse. These will be designed to handle roughly 4 inches of rain in an hour and will be used to water the farm. These ponds and greenhouses are likely to cost $6500 or so to build. If these events are the new norm, I hope to prepare for them. I would appreciate any donation you can make. Donations over $100 will be accompanied by an hour on consulting on a permaculture or software project of your choice. I will even tell you why you don’t rank as highly as you might think you should in Google. If you cannot donate, please pass this post along. I want people to see what the beginning effects of climate change look like.
Update: A number of people have requested our mailing address in order to mail a check. The mailing address is
