Sustainable SW Blogs

Part of the production yesterday was Ben helping me reassemble my solar oven.  As it turns out, I wasn't called upon to prepare anything with it so I am enjoying my first solar oven cooked meal in over a year tonight.  94,97,76,0,B

Had a return visit today from Ben Fogle.  My Ben was named after him when his show New Lives in the Wild filmed here 5 years ago.  Nice when a celebrity insists on getting selfies with my famous animals and includes my favorite UPS driver.  They were here for 8 hours today to do a follow up on my episode from the first season of the program.  95,97,74,0,B

 

Lots of people want to write cookbooks for different reasons, and this is the workshop to address what makes for a successful cookbook.

You can bring a manuscript, an idea, a thought and we’ll work together on crafting it into a book. We will also meet with authors who have approached writing a cookbook in different ways—through mainstream publishers, a university press, and self-publishing. These are very different approaches and it will be helpful to hear from these different authors. We will also talk about working with photographers and stylists.

I hope you’ll join me!  Here is more information:  https://santafeworkshops.com/workshop/secret-ingredients-for-cookbook-success/.

This is a beautiful time of year in Santa Fe.

 

 

2017
Kitchen Garden & Coop Tour
Sunday, August 6
9 am – 3 pm

Our 7th Annul Kitchen Garden & Coop tour is fast approaching. Do you have your ticket yet?  Come get inspired for your own gardens on this self-paced tour! See five of Santa Fe’s most inspirational gardens. Pick up ideas that you can use at your place or just enjoy these beautiful edible and functional landscapes.

The 5 properties on the tour this year will feature many gardening ideas—beautiful vegetable gardens, fruit trees, backyard chicken coops, composting, backyard bees, greywater systems, greenhouses, a neighborhood community garden, permaculture sites, edible landscapes and rainwater harvesting systems.

Read on for more info on each house and how to buy tickets. You can get a map of the homes on the tour the last week just before the tour here at this site.

Cost: FREE to members/$25 per person for non-members/children under 12 are free

PREPAID TICKETS: You can prepay online with a credit card. If you want to use a credit card, you’ll need to prepay here on this site.

 

BUY PREPAID TICKETS NOW:  

DAY OF TOUR:  Check or cash ONLY accepted on day of tour.  Pay at the first property you visit on the tour.

ADDRESSES AND A MAP WILL BE RELEASED THE WEEK OF THE TOUR (not before to respect the owners privacy):

HERE ARE THE 5 SPECIAL PROPERTIES
ON THE TOUR FOR 2017

1. Amy Hetager Community Garden
If you are a gardener and space is limited where you live or for those of you thinking about joining a community garden, this is a great example.  Sponsored by the City of Santa Fe Parks Division, it was established in 2009, and is one of six such gardens, scattered around the city. It is beautiful and was named after the late Amy Hetager who was one of the founders of Home Grown New Mexico.  We know she would be proud of this garden. Everyone pays a small fee to help cover the cost of water and upkeep of the garden and in return has their own raised garden plot where they can plant and harvest for a season – renewable annually. Many veggies are grown here from corn and tomatoes, to squash, peppers and cucumbers. All the gardeners’ work together maintaining the common areas – including 2 plots planted for the Food Depot, a Worm Compost Bin and a beautiful Perennial planting designed by David Salman. Come see how a model community garden can work.

Also the Santa Fe mayor will be there from 10-10:30 to show support for our city’s efforts to provide community gardening space.

___________________________________________

2. Alessandra & Steve Haines
Steven and Alessandra Haines live on the north end of town off of Bishop’s Lodge Road, where they started their garden 17 years ago. They have an extensive spread of vegetable gardens that wrap around their house. Always tinkering and experimenting with their gardens, they use a variety of techniques from raised beds to mini hoop houses to soilless gardens.  They have a playful approach to garden building using found materials such as corrugated steel roofing to make surprisingly beautiful raised beds.  Not bound to convention one can find a variety of interesting companion plantings such as nasturtiums woven in between the tomatoes or Hubbard squash racing out of a cucumber patch.  Plus they have fruit trees, berries and grapes and veggies in unique containers on their back patio. Alessandra loves the henhouse that Steven built from oak flooring rescued from an old schoolhouse. A greenhouse and cold frame are used to grow starts and veggies in the winter. Alessandra enjoys “innovating” with all the fresh food their garden produces. She says “its all about the compost”. They have been amending their sandy soil w/ food scraps, yard waste and manure: chicken, goat and horse, increasing the fertility of the soil and its ability to hold water.

SCAT (Santa Fe Master Gardeners Compost Action Team) will be on hand to answer your questions about composting.

_________________________________________________

3. Reese Baker
The Bakers live on a small residential lot in central Santa Fe, and every square inch of which is packed to its potential, producing an abundance of fresh fruit, flowers, veggies, berries, and nuts incorporating many Permaculture designs. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Reese owns and manages The Rain Catcher Inc, a full service design/build landscaping company. Rainwater is collected in above and below ground storage tanks and used for irrigation. Gray water from the house is channeled through Zuni bowls to fruit trees and a constructed wetland that filters the water from their washing machine filling a small pond where beautiful fish swim among vigorous water plants. They have developed a ‘food forest’ landscape where most of their annual vegetable garden is intermixed with perennials-many of which are native to Northern New Mexico.  All this, plus five happy hens in a homemade coop of recycled materials. A great example of what one can accomplish in a small, city lot! You will be inspired.

The SNaPP (Santa Fe Native Plant Project) Team and will be at Reese’s home/garden to answer your questions about using Native New Mexican plants in your garden/landscape.

_____________________________________________________

4. Frank Gibbons
Frank Gibbons has been gardening “all his life”.  Starting with landscaping at age 8, he has always been fascinated by the “magic” of watching a seed transform into a plant.  He gained his PhD in Horticulture and eventually taught at California Polytechnic Institute.  At one time he was involved in Gardening as Therapy for mentally ill persons.  He found it was very healing for them and for himself as well. Moving to Santa Fe five years ago and starting his current garden two years ago, he seeks to create a “smaller carbon footprint” for he and his wife Nancy Wilson. He is a beekeeper and is working to create a more bee friendly landscape.  He brews his own beer and mead and has planted hops this year.  He has a special interest in our historic New Mexican pinion pines.  He will  share his approach to controlling “Scale” in these marvelous trees.  He collects the rainwater from his roof in barrels – using it to water the vegetable plants in his raised beds – and makes his own compost.  The Sangre de Cristo Beekeepers will be at this garden to answer your questions about beekeeping.

__________________________________________________

5. Annie McGovern
Annie loves her garden – calling it her “little bit of heaven” and she wants to share it. She grew up in Maine, where she started growing her own food at a young age and she has been gardening ever since-in her current garden here in Santa Fe for the last 14 years. She has created her beautiful vegetable garden in the shape of an octagon, featuring a cold frame. An amazing grapevine surrounds it. She practices succession gardening, filling the spaces left by plants she has harvested with new seeds or seedlings. Thus she is able to harvest throughout the season, putting up the harvest to provide for some of her food needs all year-long. She makes her own compost to “feed her soil” which – feeds her plants – which feed her   She said her garden/landscape is an example of “what anyone can do with a small space, planting in pots and interspersing vegetables, herbs and fruit trees amidst the perennials”. She seeks to inspire others to do the same.

 

 

Philippians 4: 11 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. 

I really need to do some welding tomorrow on the solar oven...but a spider has made a home in my welding jacket.  I hate to disrupt all the hard work he has put into it so I think I will make do without the jacket for this little project.  92,98,71,0,B

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Nearly 3 months in and just when I think "the bucket" has had its last dying breath - someone new finds it.  This morning it was the Ukraine.  This is the second time it has made the rounds there.  88,92,73,0,B

Looks like I have something to keep me busy through the weekend.  I have committed to cooking a pizza when the film crew is here next Tuesday.  My big solar oven has been laying in the same spot since the stand broke last year.  A little welding and a lot of cleaning and it should be good to go.  Let's just hope we have a sunny day.  77,88,74,0,B

Looks like it will take at least one more big storm before I won't be able to squeak by.  The rest of the road is all dry now and clear sailing for at least the next week.  87,94,71,0,B

Below is an event many of you might be interested in. Check it out!

Photo courtesy of Edible

DETAILS
What: Farms, Films, Food: A Santa Fe Celebration
Where: Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe
When: Wednesday, August 2, 2017

The second 2017 Farms, Films, Food: A Santa Fe Celebration (co-presented by Center for Contemporary Arts, the Street Food Institute, and the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute) will be on Wednesday, August 2.  This free event celebrates Santa Fe’s unrivaled love of great food, local agriculture, and world-class cinema.

Farms, Films, Food: A Santa Fe Celebration offers free food samples from a cooking demonstration by local chefs or farmers, tours of Muñoz Waxman Gallery, presentations from community partners, affordable meals from the Street Food Institute and Kebab Caravan (including specials using locally-sourced produce), and two free screenings designed for food lovers and families.

The food trucks will offer Farmers’ Market specials, featuring local ingredients largely sourced from the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market.

The featured speaker, Don Bustos, and food demo chef, Chef Michelle Chavez, will both be addressing the importance of heirloom and land race varieties as we work to maintain a vast diversity of varieties.

SCHEDULE:
5-6:45pm
-Food trucks (Street Food Institute, Kebab Caravan, and Freezie Fresh)
-Axle Contemporary
-Muñoz Waxman Gallery tours
-Ask A Farmer: Victoria Montoya, Montoya Orchards & Wicked Kreations (fruit wines)
Smoothie Bike

5:20-6pm
-Cooking Demonstration with Chef Michelle Chavez (Coriander Catering)

6:10-6:30pm
-Featured Speaker: Don Bustos, Santa Cruz Farms

6:45pm
-Screening of My Neighbor Totoro

7pm
-Screening of Food Evolution

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Matthew 7:
11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!  

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A bit of touch and go this morning with the weather.  Was afraid I wouldn't get my deliveries due to rain.  Luckily the nearby storms passed this morning with only a brief sprinkle and it was clear sailing.  Headed out at 2 PM and caught a new FedEx driver headed my way with the goggles.  I told her I was sorry she didn't get a chance to meet Chupa.  She was more than happy to avoid the encounter since she had already heard all about him.  Ventured south and caught a substitute UPS driver on the road with another delivery.  I figured Manny must be on vacation because normally I am his first stop and he gets here by 1 PM.  Brought the new gear home and charged everything up.  Easily got through linking the goggles with the Mavic and luckily my poor eyesight is just right to be able to see an incredible image without any glasses (the view is truly amazing).  The fit of the goggles on my noggin was a little iffy and they tended to slip (as I have seen in some of the reviews).  Figured out that wearing a backwards baseball cap under the rig was just what I needed to keep them in place.  Lots of little things to still figure out.  Will do a full review of all the new gear eventually on YouTube.  82,88,75,0,B    

Had a return visit today from Larry D. Hayden.  Good to get caught up after 7 years and Chupa was on his best behavior (sort of).  Ben really enjoyed seeing a Hasselblad for the first time.
Larry shot this iconic image of Benita when he was last here. 93,97,78,0,B

Tackled the worst of it yesterday.  First major clean up since my accident 2 1/2 years ago.  Last on the list is to find out what is going on under the bed - where the monsters live... 95,96,76,0,W