The sun shines brilliant the golden autumn leaves of the Cottonwood tree. A storm hides the Sandia Mountains usually visible in the background.
Sunlight on cottonwood tree.
Though this photo doesn’t do the apricot tree justice (it’s a day or two before prime color), it has the most gorgeous fall color of all our fruit trees.
One of our fruit trees planted by the former owner of our place.
Friends at Biodynamic CSA, Erda Gardens, are hosting some cool summer workshops. Below is their schedule.
Erda Gardens CSA members can take any of our homesteading workshops offered at Sunstone at a discount. Our regular fee is $15 the day of or $12 in advance. The discount price for Erda Gardens members is $10. See our workshop schedule at www.sunstoneherbs.com/workshops
Enjoy the incomparable taste of eggs grown from a backyard flock. These are no anemic store bought eggs. Our happy hens freely range with our goats, dining on grains, goat milk, bugs and weeds so their yolks are deep yellow to orange. The eggshells range in color from dark brown to pale pink. Gorgeous! $3.00 per dozen. Email us at orders@sunstoneherbs.com
Eggs for Sale
Interested in urban homesteading? Permaculture garden design? Growing your own food?
Join Jen in March for a free hands-on workshop on creating a food forest at the Garden’s Edge plot at La Placita Gardens. Learn Permaculture garden design techniques while we create an abundant garden that you can replicate at home. This workshop will cover an overview of Permaculture, garden preparation and plant selection for creating a food forest and much more!
By learning from successful patterns found in nature, we can co-create healthy communities grounded in a sustainable land ethic. Don’t forget your hat, garden gloves if you have them and water.
Garden’s Edge is a 501 (c)3 non-profit corporation that works in New Mexico and Guatemala to revitalize local culture and economy through projects in sustainable agriculture and environmental education.
La Placita Gardens is a community farm project of La Plazita Institute.
Directions: From I-25 South, exit at Cesar Chavez/Bridge Blvd and head west. Left on Isleta Blvd. Left on Lopez Drive. Right on Arenal. Enter the farm through the western gates.
RSVP & Contact Info: While reservations aren’t required, please RSVP so that we can be sure to have enough handouts for everyone.
Jen appears in a segment of New Mexico in Focus that covers the Rio Grande Valley Farmers Guild which is designed to give farmers in Albuquerque’s South Valley access to land, water, equipment, education and support. It will air tomorrow evening at 7pm on KNME, Albuquerque’s PBS station.
That’s our rooster Henry crowing at the opening and our goat Tosca mugging for the camera.
Bard and Zoe's Strawbale Shed
Since moving to Albuquerque’s South Valley 2 years ago, our good friends Bard and Zoe have transformed their home and gardens into a sustainable oasis on 1/3 acre. Tomorrow, they are hosting an open house and invite the community to visit from 12noon – 4pm. They’ll share information and tips about such sustainable urban practices as rainwater harvesting, building a strawbale shed, bee production, edible landscaping and more.
For more information, please see mothernaturegardens.wordpress.com.
John takes spent hay from goat pen for sheet mulching new garden beds.
Friends, it’s time to give you an update on what we’re doing here at Sunstone since moving to New Mexico last fall.
Our intention was to live rural with larger acreage as we did in New York, but after much thought, we decided to explore the urban homesteading model, settling just 11 miles outside of the city of Albuquerque in the historically agrarian South Valley.
Instead of a 100 or 20 or 5 acres, we landed on 1.5 acres in the fertile Rio Grande Valley. This is a far cry from the greenbelt we once called home, but already our smallholding has the same peaceful feel of our farmstead in the Catskills.
The urban homesteading model is one that we are excited about exploring and encourage others to experiment and learn with us. With 98% of the US population living off farm, one of the ways to really increase local farms, local foods and local economies is for people to start their own urban jungle of fruit trees, vegetables and healing herbs. We can’t all go “back to the land,” but we can each do our part to create greenbelts of our cities.
Some of the projects we will blog about after our period of “long and thoughtful observation” are sheet-mulching, planning an urban farmstead, harvesting rainwater and creating micro-pastures and edible fences for our goats.
To see what one enterprising family is doing with their urban homestead, check out the inspiring Path to Freedom website. Si se puede! – Jen
Yarrow Nestled Among the Wild Blanket Flower
We have been lucky to harvest many wild growing herbs (violets, dandelions, plantain, yarrow… ) on our land this spring, but I was especially excited to harvest our first cultivated crop of oats at La Placita Gardens, the new community garden located at the historic Sanchez Farm where we have a plot for Sunstone Herbs. We seeded the oats back in March when the soil still held moisture from the winter snows and rains. They grew wonderfully without irrigation, thanks to a few timely rains and a few accidental flood irrigations from the acequia. We harvested the oats in the milky stage (that is when the oat seed has formed but has not hardened off, and when you press the seed it exudes a milky substance), taking the tops and the “straw.”
The oats were vibrantly green and beautiful with no issues of too much rain interfering with the harvest as often happened in New York where it always seemed to pour the day the oats were ripe for picking.
Oats Harvested from Our Plot at Placita Gardens
We made a pretty green tincture of the milky oats, and dried the remaining oats and oat straw for tea. Unfortunately this year we will not have any of this dried oat straw for sale as we grew a smaller trial plot to understand how the oats would grow here. Well they grow beautifully, so you can be sure that next year we will plant a large area to oats to make this nourishing herb available to you. – Jen
Fortunately for us, our new property came with access to the Chanate acequia which is part of the Rio Grande Valley’s centuries-old 300 mile network of irrigation ditches and canals.
For approximately $25 per year (payable to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District), we can access water from this ditch on a weekly basis during the growing season.
Because we have a 30ft irrigation well to water our gardens (we really lucked out!! We also have a 300ft well for the house) we use the ditch water specifically for irrigating the various trees that form a natural screen along the perimeter of our property. These trees – Austrian Pines, Russian Olives, Autumn Olives to name a few – are planted along canals designed by the previous owner to receive water from the ditch.
With the help of my neighbor Terry, I’ve been learning how to navigate the gates and turnouts of the ditch. You need to be careful because the water can come fast and, if not managed properly, could jump the ditch and end up flooding someone’s house.
I have a lot of fun watering with the ditch (as do our dogs Maggie and Tessie) and am getting better at it. Last week I washed out one of the planks that I use as a walkway to cross where the water enters our property. I did better this week though. -Tree
Jen removes leaves blocking flow
Maggie plays crocodile
Contrary to popular opinion goats do not eat just anything. Yes, they can be impish and grab a piece of paper out of your hand and start to chew it up, but when it comes to the food they ingest for nourishment they are fastidious, choosing only those hays and forages which give them the nutrients they need. We learned this quickly living in New York as we watched in dismay as they rooted through a clip of hay for that choice piece of timothy while a large pile of rejected grasses accumulated below the feeder.
Now that we are in New Mexico the goats are eating alfalfa-grass mix grown right down the road from us in the South Valley and are no longer as wasteful because they LOVE it. The three of them look great and their milk production is on the mark.
Desi with a mouthful of the good stuff.
