Meet our newest turkey!!! This little one survived our impossible winter. Turkeys don’t lay very often and almost never in cold weather, but our winter was so warm the turkeys started dropping eggs early. It’s bizarre. We have perennials in full leaf and it’s snowing outside.
Anyway, since the eggs were freezing at night (killing any potential baby) we decided to try incubating some. Out of 18 eggs, this little one is the only one who made it. Just hours old, we’re not sure if it’s a male or female, but it’s healthy and bonding to us very quickly.
Every day we wonder how humans survived. Between disease and predators, unpredictable weather and erratic temperatures, or just something in the wind, it’s hard to produce enough of anything. We’ve had to build fortresses instead of coops to keep the foxes, coyotes, racoons, and bobcats out. If it’s not spider mites in the greenhouse, it’s powdery mildew. We just recently learned that the mulch we get at the hardware store (cedar or cypress) isn’t actually appropriate for garden beds and has been killing our plants. As it turns out, the tree leaves we usually bag and dispose of in the fall make one of the best mulches and we’ll be hoarding them in the future. To combat the elements, predators, and pests, we enrolled in a Master Gardeners class this year. We’re learning a ton and as a result, our greenhouse tomatoes (below) are finally doing well.
One of the things that most amazed us was learning how much water our high desert city actually gets, even in drought years. Santa Fe receives about 6 billion gallons of water a year and most of it is channeled to arroyos and lost. There are ways to stop this and, in doing so, regenerate and irrigate land. Here’s a video on Zuni Bowls if you’re interested. And here’s a link to an incredible project in Tucson that transformed a neighborhood after one guy decided to cut his sidewalk curb. We’re especially interested in this project because of the edible forest it created.
Today, depending on the season, we raise 50 to 70% of our own food and we’re always looking for ways to raise more.
