When the Farmer is Your Neighbor

Eating fruits and vegetables in season is good: Getting them right from your neighbor's farm stand is even better. This summer, we are eating fresh, and we're eating just about as local as we can get. 

Every Wednesday and Saturday morning during the summer, we experience what might be considered a little traffic jam just down the road and around the corner. The cars and trucks line the sides of the road, waiting for 8AM when the family owned and operated Hale Farm's stand opens up. 

While we wait, we admire the rows of vegetables and flowers and the view of Picacho Peak in the distance. 

At opening time, folks grab a little red wagon and fill it with green chiles just brought in from the field, watermelon, garlic, onions, okra, cucumbers, black-eyed peas, tomatoes, cabbage, new potatoes. eggplants, squash of all kinds, green beans, fragrant basil, honey from the hives out back, and cut flowers. Oh, and the best sweet corn on the cob that I've eaten in years--Bill grills it in the husk. Those are just some of the items I've seen so far, and we're still at the beginning of the season. 

The line at the cash registers stretches out to the road, while the neighbors chat and kid each other good-naturedly. The lady at the register says "There's got to be a place where no one's in a rush, and this is it!" We all agree, while reaching over for a few more fresh green beans. 

This is part of our haul from this past Wednesday. Tonight we're having grilled corn on the cob and a salad made of those red new potatoes, green beans, and pesto made from that good-smelling basil. So healthy, and so delicious!

If you want to see what's going on at the farm, you can like them on Facebook at Hale Farm (Las Cruces). 

What's Not to Love, for Skywatch

Here in southern New Mexico, land of 

little rain 

big sky 

and sizzling green chile

We love our water

We love our blue skies

And we love our chile fields

When we see all three together

We stop and take pictures 

*****

See beloved skies all over the world at Skywatch Friday. 

W is for WORK; ABC Wednesday

The sun wasn't even up yet when I heard the sound of many cars passing our house. I looked out to see a line of vehicles slowly making their way along the edge of the onion fields across the road. 

Everything is so dry here this year that any car passing raises a little dust; this many cars lifted the dry soil high into the air to mix with the smoke we've been getting from the Arizona fires. 

Hastily dressing and grabbing my camera, I took a picture of one of the harvest trucks as it gathered the onions, which were then sorted and crated by the men who worked quickly in the early morning coolness.

You can see that the furrows on the right have been cleaned of onions, while the furrows to the left have yet to be harvested. It's a lot of work in a dry, dusty, and blazingly hot climate. The workers have my admiration. Would you take on a job like that?

P.S. For my impression of the onion growing and harvesting process, see my comment, below.

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The Las Cruces Report: Late May

When I lived back in New Hampshire, we always put our gardens in on Memorial Day weekend. Oh, we could try to trick Mother Nature by getting plants in the ground before that, but they really wouldn't start to grow until the end of May when the ground warmed up.

Other memories about growing things in the East--we aspired to have corn that was "knee high by the Fourth" (of July); the first haying was done in between rainstorms, also in July, and we always wished for fresh tomatoes from the garden for summer picnics, but didn't really start harvesting them until late July and early August.

Oh, my, things are so different out here in southern New Mexico. First of all, the corn:

 Here is Beez, kindly supplying the knees next to a flourishing field of corn. You can see that it's good and high, and here we are still in the month of May.

Dry soil in the orchard

However, any crop that is flourishing here is doing so because of irrigation. Because the irrigation district is very short of water due to lack of snowmelt, farmers who usually get three to four acre feet per season for their fields are getting 3 acre inches this year. That means that in order to irrigate, they have to pump water from ground wells. This is what the soil looks like in our neighboring pecan orchards. The trees still get flooded, but the water comes from the aquifer, not from the mountains, and the soil dries out a lot in between due to lack of rainfall. We haven't had rain for months now, but there is some rain in the forecast for the week, so keep your fingers crossed for us.

A couple of other notes: The first cutting of alfalfa was done well over a month ago now. That always amazes me. There are probably three more cuttings to come. And our tomato plants are all starting to take off, growth-wise, and are in bud. I'll let you know when we pick the first tomatoes.