July 31, 2022 Blue Heron & Dinosaur, Seed Inventory, Transplanting

Our pond was very nearly empty at the beginning of last week, with only several inches of water in the very bottom. This blue heron decided to take advantage of the situation and the fact that the fish would  be easy to harvest with such a low level of water. This beautiful water bird comes here regularly to fish in our pond, but this time it was a long stop-over. He/She took up station in one spot after another all along the parameter of the pond and had a smorgasbord of a fishy meal that day.

Gratefully, the next day we got a delivery of our irrigation water to fill the pond. It is scary to be a farmer and know that your livelihood depends on whether or not mother nature will keep water coming in the form of monsoon rains during the mid-summer.

All around us for the past two weeks, there have been monsoon rains happening, but we are in the rain shadow of Pike’s Peak, and while the clouds build up over our farm, they sometimes don’t rain until they have moved further northeast or southeast. We have been staying dry here.

We did get a rain shower on Friday for about 20 minutes that gave us 3/10″ of rain and it helped to refresh things. It’s no where near enough for what we really need, but we are grateful for every little bit we get!

Meanwhile, work in the flower field continues every day. Above is the beautiful Fire Wheels Gaillardia.

This is the Tibetan Mountain Onion, which has now been completely harvested of its seed by now. The entire seed room smells like onions as the seed finishes drying.

Chris pushes a wheel hoe through the aisles of the flower beds in the seed field. He uses a wheel hoe instead of a rototiller to help control the bindweed that grows in the aisles between flower beds. The reason, is that it only disturbs the ground for an inch or so and that helps to prevent damage to the ground nests of important native pollinators like native bees.

I’ve been working on getting an inventory of our seed supply after the spring busy season is now finished. These are the seeds we use to grow our greenhouse crops. Once the seed inventory is finished, I’ll know exactly which varieties of seed I need to order for our spring 2023 planting schedule.

Amazing to think we begin seeding and vegetative propagation for the plants we will sell next spring in about 2 weeks. No rest for the weary around here.

Kaila and Eric work in the flower field during the cooler morning hours and then in the afternoon, Kaila works in the greenhouse. Last week she was transplanting herbs into 2.5″ pots. These are herbs that will be available for wholesale customers in about 2 weeks. Lots of basil, chamomile, chives, catnip, oregano, lemongrass and some other more common varieties.

This big guy was hanging out on the trail where we walk with Shrek in the evenings after work. The smaller dinosaurs that have been hanging out on this trail, seem to be dinner for this one!

With Green Thoughts, Tammi

July 24, 2022 Food Bank Donation, Seed Harvesting, Sangre Hike & Banks Walk, Ducks, Baby Quail & Sunflowers

For those of you that visit our Farm Stand Plant Sale, you will remember that every year we raffle off two Fairy Gardens and use the money earned from the raffle ticket sales to buy fresh produce to donate to our local food bank. Since we really don’t grow fresh produce on our farm, except for our own pantry, we purchase the fresh veggies from another local farm in our community.

New Roots Farm provided a case each of carrots, cucumbers, squash, lettuce and beets this year. Thank you, Susan and Bella, for your amazing veggies!! Thank you to all of our farm visitors who purchased raffle tickets, as this is how we make this large purchase of veggies to give to the food bank. They were thrilled to get the fresh produce, and we were thrilled to support both New Roots Farm and Loaves & Fishes Food Bank with our Fairy Gardens Raffle this year.

This is what the Agave flower stalk in our Desert Garden looks like right now. Incredible!!

We are in the thick of the summer seed harvest now. Every day Chris and the field crew are picking seeds. Chris has been harvesting the Pennisetum grass this week. He uses a metal flower rack to harvest the grass seed heads. It is a lot of arm and shoulder work. This crop will provide an additional 1 or 2 flushes of seed to harvest before it finishes out in fall.

Meanwhile, Eric and Kaila were working on the Fire Wheel Gaillardia, a Jelitto exclusive selection, that we grow here.  As with many of the seed crops we grow, they must be picked every single day, which is time-consuming work, as all the seed here is picked by hand.

The exception is the Helichrysum seed, which Chris uses his seed vacuum to harvest because the seed is too tiny, light and difficult to pick by hand, as when you touch it, even barely, it flies away on the lightest of a breeze.

It has been exceptionally hot and dry here of late, as we are having a heat wave the same as many places in the world, plus our drought is terrible by now!

Hannah and Gretel, our granny ducks, decided to take matters into their own wings and have a stroll through the sprinkler in the fruit garden to cool off.

Afterwards, they rested under their version of a beach umbrella :-}  Each of them settled down under one of our pond viewing chairs where it was cooler and shady.

A week ago, we had our first mountain hike of this year. We try to head out one day a week, after all the morning greenhouse and seed crop chores are finished, to hike for several hours before we have to get back home to close up the greenhouses at the end of the day.

Shrek and Tessila were very pleased to be hiking in the Sangre Mountains where it was a bit cooler than back in Canon City, where temps have been in the high 90’s to well into the 100’s degrees lately.

Tessila’s person is our friend James. He was our hiking companion as we hiked the trail to Megan Lake. It was a fabulous day!

The wildflowers are amazing and the dogs had a good time cooling off their paws in the creek at the creek crossings. I should have done the same, but it is a bit of trouble to take off and put on hiking shoes at every creek crossing. That cold mountain water is pretty wonderful though!

This is the patch of beautiful and cheerful sunflowers that the birds and squirrels planted in my White Rabbit Garden this year. I absolutely love them and they would have been great bird food. However, our summer crop of deer fawns decided to eat off the flower heads TODAY! Every single flower was baby deer breakfast today!! Oh well, we all have to eat I suppose, and those fawns are so cute that I can’t stay upset with them for more than a few seconds anyway.

This past week I’ve been working on the woody plants that will be for sale at the 2023 Spring Farm Stand Plant Sale and this is a peek at all the heirloom fruit trees we are growing for next spring. Cherries, Apples, Plums, Peaches, Apricots, Mulberries and so much more!

I have the best scenery of just about anyone from my desk window. This morning, and for a while now, I’ve had the pleasure of watching one of the Scaled Quail families. It has been an excellent year for the Quail families that live in our desert garden and there are at least 3 different families that we recognize. This family started out with 13 babies. Now there are 9 chicks. It isn’t easy for baby wildlife to reach adulthood, as there are a lot of things to overcome as they grow up…predators including domestic cats (keep your cats indoors please), illness, cars, weather, finding enough to eat…all sorts of things.

I’ve decided if I ever have to replace our windows again, I will definitely have the screens installed at the top of the window rather than the bottom, so that I get a clearer view, and my pictures don’t always have to be taken through a window screen. Very irritating!

Last night we walked, for our evening dog stroll, up at The Banks. This is an area that is very near to our farm and a beautiful place to walk in the evenings.

Nutalia, a rare plant, is happy growing along the cliff walls.

The Cleome (also called Bee Plant) is just beginning to bloom and its vivid purples seem like they are glowing in the evening light. Yellow Melilot is blooming with abundance right now too and I so love the fragrance of this plant.

These little fuzzy caterpillars also love the meliot, but not for its fragrance…they think it is mighty tasty!

The geography where we live is nothing short of breath-taking and I am in gratitude every single day for the beautiful place I live.

Who could complain about having this as part of their back yard and being able to walk there with their four-legged friends.

Journey well!

With Green Thoughts, Tammi

July 6, 2022 Since Open Farm Days Closed, There Is A Lot Going On At Desert Canyon Farm

We finished Open Farm Days on June 12th, and you haven’t heard from me since that time, but a lot has been happening here at Desert Canyon Farm.  The Farm Stand garden is in full bloom right now and gorgeous!

The fawns have been born and we have three mother Does with two sets of twins and a single fawn hanging out most of the time on the farm. This Mama seems to consider our farm her primary home and she is here most of every day with her babes.

She is skin and bones after birthing her twins, and with good reason, as feeding twin fawns and keeping up with them takes a lot out of a Mama Deer!

The flower seed crop field is blooming like crazy and is really pretty. I wish I could take a photo of the entire acre seed field to really do justice to all the variety of flower crops in bloom now, but alas, that would require a better photographer than me.

Still…you get the idea I’m sure.

The pale yellow flowers are Greek Mountain Tea, which is used as a digestive herb made into a tea. The yellow Echinacea offers immune system support and is antimicrobial. The Fire Wheel Gaillardia (yellow, red and orange) behind the Echinacea is a dye plant.

Chris’ desert garden is amazing in its glory now! The Agave that had started to send up a flower stalk during our Farm Stand plant sale, is now in full-on bloom of bright yellow. The white flower stalk is a Yucca, and there is Hesperaloe with reddish-pink flowers, yellow Wild Zinnia and red Indian Paintbrush close to the ground. There are Cacti and Penstemons blooming everywhere in this garden and many different varieties of both of those. The Thrasher’s Cholla just finished blooming. The Wild Petunia is starting to bloom and the list goes on and on.

Here is a close up of the flowers on the Agave, which is easily 20′ tall or more. It is covered with different kinds of native bees and even the hummingbirds are interested in these flowers.

This past week, I was able to get the butterfly garden weeded and planted with Zinnias, which the butterflies love so much. Soon those Zinnias will be in flower and the dozens of different kinds of butterflies they will attract will all be visiting this corner of our front porch garden.

I harvested the pie Cherries and the Red Lake Currants this week, which are now neatly in the freezer for later use.

The silver ribbon is bird flash tape, which I wrap around the tree just before the fruit starts to ripen. As soon as the Cherries are ripe and picked, I take the bird flash tape down and save it to use next year. I always leave behind a fair amount of Cherries for the birds to enjoy. After all it is only fair to share in Nature’s abundance.

Tonight, the twins were playing in the fruit orchard, where wild sweet peas grow along our irrigation ditch. They were having such a good time.

Hannah and Gretel are happy as larks in the pond.

The recent rain we had last week brought us 6/10″ of rain. On the nearby BLM land where we take Shrek for evening walks, many wildflowers are beginning to finally bloom. The above is an Immortal plant that will be fully in bloom soon.

The Blackfoot Daisies are so cute right now.

We even saw some colorful dinosaurs lingering around on our walk. Not sure where they showed up from.

There are some Tarantulas out and about too.

In late June, we made a fast trip back to Lincoln, Nebraska to visit our parents. It was so nice to see them! Shrek always goes with us for those visits, and he likes to walk at the nearby High School park, where the trees are big and beautiful.

I’ve been spending time trying to put my house in order and get gardens weeded and planted. All of these tasks get much neglected during the late winter and spring seasons when farm work commands every minute of our days. It feels so good to get things tidy again and to have time to “sit a spell” on our back porch.

Lately, I’m spending time on the porch working on an outline for a new book project I’m contemplating. I’ll see if it manifests into something at some point, but right now it’s just bits and pieces of ideas on paper.

Enjoy your early days of July and be sure to take a bit of time to “sit a spell” on your porch or somewhere equally nice too.

With Green Thoughts, Tammi

June 17, 2022 The Desert Smells Like Rain

Where does the distinct scent that comes with monsoon storms come from?

Greetings

Dr. Gary Nabhan, Eric Daughtery and myself published a paper recently about the aromatic fragrances of the desert, especially when the monsoon season arrives. The Desert Smells Like Rain is all about the real scientific joy that comes when we smell the fragrances of the desert, especially just before or during a rain, when volatile oils from the plants combine with the moisture of the rain and the compounds in the soil to create that very special smell.

 

This week ABC15 Arizona did an interview with us as part of their special presentation on the Monsoon Season. Here is the link for you to enjoy.

 

Where does the distinct scent that comes with monsoon storms come from?

 

And by the way….many years back, Gary Nabhan published a book by the name The Desert Smells Like Rain and it was pure delight to me. Soon, he will be releasing a new updated version of that book, so keep your eyes open for it. It is definitely a book you will want to have in your reading collection!

 

With Green Thoughts,

Tammi

 

June 12, 2022 Farm Stand Closed Until Next Spring!

Greetings,

Are Farm Stand store is now closed until next spring.

We want to thank everyone who came out to support this small family organic farm this spring and early summer! Chris and I and our farm crew appreciate each and every one of you!!

We will reopen to the public for retail plant sales in spring 2023. In the meantime, the farm will be wholesale only.

Oh, and thank you very much to everyone who participated in the Fairy Garden Raffle! We raised $120.00 with raffle ticket sales and two donations! We will soon be making a purchase of fresh produce from a local farm here in Canon City and then we will donate that produce to our local food bank.

With Green Thoughts,

Chris & Tammi & Shrek

Ashley, Michelle, Tammy, Lizz, Kaila, Susan, Eric (our amazing and great 2022 Farm Crew)

June 8, 2022 Final Days for the Farm Stand Store – Come On By!!

Greetings All,

Just a quick reminder that this coming Sunday, June 12th, will be our last open day for our retail Farm Stand store!

If you have any last minute shopping you want to do for plants to grow in your gardens or on your patio, please stop in tomorrow (Thursday), Saturday or Sunday and get what you need. Remember that we are closed on Friday. We still have lots of great fruits, veggie, herbs, native and wildlife habitat, plants available!!

There will be a free class on Saturday at 1:00pm on Herbal Flowers and Seeds and How to Use Them. On Sunday at 1:00pm I will be giving a Behind the Scenes Farm Tour of the Gardens, Flower Field and the Greenhouses.

After June 12th, we will return to being wholesale only and only open to the public by appointment for Farm Tours and wildlife watching.

Hope to see you in the next few days for some last minute plant shopping!

With Green Thoughts,

Tammi and Chris

June 2, 2022 Visit the Farm for Open Farm Days, Canon City Farmers Market, Wildlife, etc.

Summer Greetings!

June is here, and with it all is green from the snow and rain we got in May! We have so much gratitude for that mositure!! The flower field is blooming now and so many of those flower seed crops are really beautiful. If you are visiting the farm during our Open Farm Days now, and you have time to walk out to the flower field….please do. It is worth your time and bring your camera!

There is a call out to find local vendors for our Canon City Farmers Market. All types of farmers, bakers, beekeepers, artisans and crafters, food trucks… If you are interested in selling your wares in a lovely park location with big trees and places for customers to stroll and linger – the perfect setting for a Farmers Market…please contact Wendy Burley (the market master). The information is in this flyer.

Every year we plant 2 fairy gardens that we raffle off during Open Farm Days. Tomorrow, Saturday June 4, 2022, we will raffle off the second fairy garden for this Farm Stand season. The raffle will be at 1pm and you do not have to be present to win, but if you are hoping to win a fairy garden, you will have to purchase a ticket or two! Tickets are $1.00 each and the money we raise from raffle ticket sales is always used to purchase fresh produce from a local farm, which we then gift that produce to our local food bank. Maybe you will be the lucky one that wins our second fairy garden for this year.

We have lots of vegetable, fruit and herb plants to choose from, plus tender succulents, native plants and wildlife habitat plants, still lots of heirloom fruit trees too…my, oh, my! You will be able to find some real treasures of plants for your gardens! All are grown here on our farm and are certified USDA organic.

But…we will only be open thru Sunday, June 12th to the public, so come on by and visit before then. Remember we are closed on Fridays.

Oh, and Shrek would like you to know that we have changed our farm rule about dogs visiting the farm. If you have a dog with manners AND that dog is on a leash, then they are welcome to go inside the Farm Stand & Nursery and they can stroll the farm with you to see the gardens and the flower field. Since our farm is a registered Nature Preserve, your dog must stay on a leash that is attached to your hand – no free-running dogs please.

Look who has been staying around of late. We love having the hawks here. There are so many varieties of wild birds on the farm, especially right now. If you are interested in birding, this is a good place to be. Desert Canyon Farm is part of the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Colorado Birding Trail!

Any time now we are expecting to see baby fawns with their mothers on the farm. They are always born in June and usually we see them before the Farm Stand closes, so keep your eyes open and maybe you will see a sweet baby deer…but remember that they are wild creatures and do not approach them or scare them if you see them here. Their moms know that our farm is a safe haven for them and so the mother does often linger on the farm all day and night with their fawns.

And…please, drive slowly on the farm and on the roads. Baby fawns know NOTHING about cars and are extra vulnerable, so watch out for them and drive slowly.

The Desert Garden is filled with blooming plants from perennials to cactus!

The White Rabbit Garden and the Goddess Garden are filled with blooming plants from Catmint and Iris to different kinds of Poppies. It really is beautiful and we hope you will enjoy it when you are here visiting. If you like, bring a picnic and enjoy it in the gardens or the orchards.

At 1pm, both Saturdays and Sundays, we will be having our free classes, but only during Open Farm Days, so this weekend and next are the last four classes of the season.

This weekend, I’ll be teaching a class on Using Herbal Roots on Saturday and on Sunday James will be teaching a class on Herbal Teas & Tisanes, complete with tea tasting if you want to sample. There is no need to register for these classes. You should plan to be outdoors, bring a pen and paper to take notes and meet in the back yard White Rabbit Garden under the Peace Tree (aka: Honeylocust Tree). Hope to see you for a free class.

So, I’ll close tonight with our Farm motto…

“Creating World Peace, One Garden at a Time”

With Green Thoughts, Tammi

 

May 24, 2022 Native Wildlife Presentation, Spring in Her Glory, Spring Snow Storm, Spring Flowers are Back, Classes Under the Peace Tree

It was only a week ago that spring had truly and fully arrived in her glory! The Choke Cherry bushes were filled with flowers, as were many of the other blooming trees on the Farm.

My very special Dine’ Peach tree has baby peaches on it.

And two weekends ago, Nature’s Educators were here at the farm to give a presentation on native wildlife. They had many wild animal friends with them for this class, like this Great Horned Owl that Devan is holding.

Andrew introduced us to a domestic bunny, who was standing in for wild rabbits in the workshops, as wild rabbits are not allowed to be kept even by certified wildlife specialists like Nature’s Educators.

A very beautiful Bull Snake came to be part of the class and we learned all the ways that snakes are helpful to gardeners and farmers.

I set my Violas, Salvias and the Pomegranate tree on my door steps to greet visitors when they come to our door. The Salvias in this picture are Coral Nymph Salvia, Scarlet Red Salvia and Prairie Fire Salvia and they attract and provide food to hummingbirds in abundance. The bumblebees also love them. We have all of these plants for sale in our Farm Stand store and nursery.

The Iris in the gardens have been amazing this spring. This particular one is called Batik and it is by far my favorite. There must be a dozen or more different colors of Iris growing in my gardens and we have many of them available in #1 (1 gallon) pots in the Farm Stand.

The doorstep gardens are blooming beautifully right now with Chocolate Flower (yellow), California Poppy (orange), Jupiter’s Beard (red), Wild Iris (white) and so much more. The Hollyhocks are starting to put up flower stalks and will soon be blooming too.

And then last Friday it began to snow and kept snowing through mid-day on Sunday. Fourteen inches of heavy wet snow fell here, which is pretty rare for us in Canon City for a spring snow, which might usually give us a few inches.  I’ve been asking the moisture gods to give us good moisture for months now, as we haven’t had any decent moisture since last August, and this storm really stepped up to that request. Sadly, I forgot, with my request, that it be gentle non-damaging moisture. This snow did a great deal of damage here on our Farm!

This is the roof that is over the nursery area of our retail Farm Stand and it was so loaded down with snow that it was 2-3 foot off the ground instead of 12 foot above the ground like it is supposed to be. Chris tried everything he could think of to get the snow off the roof, but nothing worked because the snow was too heavy and too wet and was literally freezing into blocks of ice.

Our friend James, and Lizz who works with us here, both came to help. They ended up having to cut slits in the roof and climb up on ladders to scoop the snow off the roof! You can see the slits they cut and the piles of snow below each slit that they scooped off the roof. On Sunday, Chris spent the day tying the slits together and re-stretching the roof tight again so that it is, once again, back at 12 foot above the ground.

While the roof was weighted down with snow, it crushed some plants, but overall, given what could have happened, most of the plants are bouncing back pretty quickly.

The roof of the Hygge Greenhouse popped open, which it is definitely NOT supposed to do. This house’s roof is notorious for causing us trouble, and so no reason why this snow storm should be any different, I suppose. Chris stuffed cloth into the gap for the time being and this is on the repair list that will happen after more urgent and immediate repairs and clean-up is done. We have dozens and dozens of broken trees to clean up and trim.

Our outdoor workshop tent, where we hold classes and gatherings, is no more! It totally collapsed and is a bent up mangled mess of a thing now. The snow weight was too much for this structure. Eric and Kaila and Chris took it apart yesterday and it will be hauled away to recycle.

It was about 18 years old, so it has served us well. It began it’s life here on the farm as our Farm Stand store before we got our proper greenhouse buildings for the Farm Stand. In more recent times we have used it to teach classes, host groups for their monthly meetings and such.

Now, classes will return to being held under the Peace Tree (aka: Honeylocust tree) in the White Rabbit Garden. That is the place we originally held classes, and in truth, I like teaching under the tree better than under the workshop tent anyway, so this damage is a gift in disguise.

One of the most discouraging damage happenings is that our Honeybee Yard was crushed down by the snow and is a pile of timber and snow fence. Lizz came down on Saturday as soon as we saw what had happened to see if she could do anything to help the bees. When the structure fell, it knocked the lid and a box off of the beehive. The lid was replaced and she could still hear some buzzing inside the lower part of the hive, so when the weather is warmer this week, she will open the hive and see how the bees fared from this terrible event.

We are hoping that the bees may have survived ok and will be able to re-group to become strong again as a hive.

Today, began the warming trend, but still some rain showers off and on, and the Farm is looking gorgeous once again. The Beauty of Livermere Oriental Poppies are not bothered at all by the recent snow. Many of the Iris flower stalks broke, which is sad, but I think that is Nature’s way of reminding us to be humble.

Everything on the Farm is turning bright green and I can almost “hear” the plants and animals giggling with delight at having such a generous drink of moisture from the sky.

The Agave in the Desert Driveway Garden is inspired to put up a flower stalk, which they only do once in 20-50 years of age. These stalks grow really tall and fast! I’ll be posting photos of it as it progresses along to the point of blooming.

If you look closely, you can see the young Curved Billed Thrasher baby chick in its Cholla Cactus nest. It fledged at the last of the week past and is now learning how to be a grown up bird, with its parents guidance, out in the world at large.

In the Farm Stand & Nursery store, we still have some of the Salvias that the Hummingbirds love to visit so much. If you grow these, you are likely to have lots of Hummingbirds visiting.

All the spring mating birds are here and in their colorful glory. Above the Goldfinches and Rosy Finches are so sweet and pretty.

The Western Tanagers arrived on Friday, with the snow. We have Evening Grosbeaks, Blue Grosbeaks, Black-headed Grosbeaks all here now. The Red-winged Blackbirds are nesting around the ponds and the Curved Billed Thrasher parents are getting ready to have another family – they usually raise 3 batches of chicks each year here. There are Scaled Quail running every where on the farm in pairs, but mainly they seem to live in the Desert Garden. Orioles are here too, along with many other birds.

This weekend we will be having free classes at 1:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, James will be giving a class on Heirloom Fruit trees that are really good for this part of the country.

On Sunday, I’ll be teaching a class on desert plants you can grow and their herbal uses. This will be a Walk-About class and we will be out in the Desert Garden, so if you come, please wear sensible walking shoes.

Remember that all classes during Desert Canyon Farm Open Farm Days are free and no sign-up is required. You simply show up, dressed appropriately for the weather (all classes are outdoors). Bring something to drink if you like, pen and paper to take notes, and your camera if you want to take pictures.

For more specific information about Open Farm Days and the Farm Stand Plant Sale, along with the schedule and topics for our free classes this spring, please visit those pages of this website.

Spring has sprung in earnest now and Hannah and Gretel, the Granny Ducks, invite you to come on out and enjoy it with us. We are open thru June 12, 2022, Saturdays thru Thursdays (closed on Fridays). Hours are 9am to 4pm. Our address is 1270 Field Ave. in Canon City, CO. Hope to see you soon!

With Green Thoughts, Tammi

May 23, 2022 We Are Back Open!

Morning Greetings Everyone!

We are back open for business as usual! Please visit the farm to shop in our Farm Stand Plant Sale store to see what you might need to plant in your gardens this spring.

The snow brought much needed moisture to the Farm and to our water shed and we are in deep gratitude for that. We are still cleaning up and making repairs, but the worse of the damage from the snow is fixed now and we are happy to welcome farm visitors back. Our hours are 9am to 4pm, Saturdays-Thursdays (closed on Fridays). We will be open thru June 12th to the public. Hope to see you soon.

With Green Thoughts, Chris and Tammi and the Farm Crew

April 29, 2022 Things are Happening at Desert Canyon Farm!!!

Spring Greetings to All!

I hope you are managing to stay on the ground rather than flying away in all the wind we have been having of late! Things are spinning here on our farm and we are busy busy busy!

Open Farm Days are in full swing. We are open Saturdays thru Thursdays (closed on Fridays), from 9am to 4pm, and we’ll be open thru June 12th. The wagons are ready for you to fill with lovely plants for your gardens or windowsills or porches.

Everything here is grown USDA certified organic and grown onsite here on our farm. You’ll find more than 2000 different varieties from heirloom fruit trees, heirloom and heritage food plants, hundreds of different kinds of herbs, lots of native plants and wildlife habitat plants, some pretty flowers, some unique and unusual plants, even edible flowers to make your meals beautiful, as well as tasty.

We are bringing out new varieties daily now and hope to have everything big enough to sell by the 12th-15th of May. Right now there is a very big selection, but when all the tomatoes, cucumbers, and more cool season and warm season veggies come out, it will be mind-boggling all the choices you will have. Strawberries came out last week, along with the raspberries, many different kinds of medicinal herbs. The nasturtiums are beginning to bloom in earnest now and they smell wonderful!!

The women that watch over the Farm Stand store are great. Ashley, above, works through the week. Michelle and Tammy are here on the weekends. They are all three amazing!

Speaking of amazing, the tree blossoms this spring fit into that category too. This is my White Rabbit Garden behind our back porch and the Red Buds are truly gorgeous right now!

So many birds are here to nest and raise their families. The yellow-headed blackbirds arrived on last Saturday.

We have a pair of Red Tail Hawks that have been here a lot lately too. I’m especially fond of them.

Flowers are starting to jam in the Desert Garden in our driveway, like this Mahonia fremontii, which smells as good as it looks. All those yellow blooms are sure making the bees happy.

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 1pm we have a free class each week. James was teaching a class on seed growing and saving last weekend. Despite having to have the classes near the back porch to get a bit of wind protection, and being a bit crowded together, we have been having a really good time in the classes.

Tomorrow, I will be teaching a class on unique fruits and vegetables.

On Sunday, we have a real treat in that Cheryl Davison will be teaching a class on Creating a Cottage Garden in Colorado Climate. Cheryl has some of the most beautiful and amazing gardens ever, and they just make you happy being in them. Trust me…she will have lots of information and tips and inspiration for you on Sunday if you attend her class.

Classes are free and you just show up. No need to register ahead of time. They are outdoors, so dress for the weather. Bring pen and paper to take notes and a camera if you would like to.

Oh…and my Chaparral is blooming right now! I have two plants that have proven to be hardy in our desert garden for three years now and one in a pot – that’s the one that is blooming right now. Chaparral is a very important desert medicinal plant. It is hardy to the Sonoran desert, Mojave desert and really should not be hardy in Colorado, but it seems to be fine. I don’t think it will grow into a tree here, but a bush…right on. I also have Mesquite in the garden for many years by now. Tough as can be and beautiful all at the same time.

We have so far had an amazing spring of fruit tree blossoms! We are hoping it will be a really good year for tree fruit this year. The nectarines, apricots, peaches, apples, plums, cherries, almond are all blooming and beautiful.

The wagons are rolling and filled with fun plants going home to gardens. Much thanks to Sandy, a farm visitor, who shared some of these really great photos with me to post on this blog.

And if I am lucky, soon…I hope to sit a spell on my back porch and drink a cup of chai tea. But for now, it is all hands on deck and every minute counts to get things done.

With Green Thoughts, Tammi