The Cycle Begins for Year Three

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

Tilling one of the fields

Starting the new crop year. It always seems so far away after harvest. Then when the time arrives, a sense of urgency comes over me. Even though I'm not the one doing the 99% of the work.

Although we added a tractor and a tiller a little over a year ago, much of the work is still accomplished by hand. We don't have the implement for the tractor that would alleviate much of the hand work involved with working the soil. Even used, it would cost about $2000. Lance says he considers all the handwork a good work out everyday. Love the attitude. But he loves what he does. We still borrow the gannon from our good neighbor Dave which scrapes and tears the ground.

Forming the rows

The first rows to be formed are for the cucumbers. They are wide to allow planting on both sides of the trellis that Lance will build. This will be our third year of planting and the configuration has been revised again. What and how much has also been revised. Each year is a learning experience.

Carrots on the right

For example, carrots. We had two long rows outside. They are planted from seed and they do not like weeds since they are a root vegetable. Weeds compete for water and nutrients below the surface. But when those little, itty, bitty carrot tops first appear, it's hard to tell them from weeds. By the time we could tell, the weeds had a strong foothold. It was a huge task to weed them and we gave up on some areas. They still produced extremely well even though some were small. They produced so well that we only harvested one row. The other row was left until winter when we dug up most of them and gave them to the food bank. Amazing thing about the row we kept for ourselves - we're still eating carrots from it. We had a small amount of spoilage just this month. Carrots are in the green house this year. The weed problem is negligible.

We received word from the Prescott Farmers Market that we are accepted pending two things - insurance and a special permit from the county. Hopefully, we'll have those next week. One step closer!