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eggs!

somewhere around the middle of spring, we realized we had way too many eggs, and were not able to increase the number of customers as fast as our hens were laying. we always do give volunteers farm-goods when they come to work parties, so we stepped up on moving eggs out of the house that way, and meanwhile, we reached out to our friend Gael at Exotic Edibles of Edgewood. She grows oyster mushrooms, which she sells to restaurants and at the Downtown Grower’s Market. She agreed to sell eggs for us at market if we could get the paperwork in order. So we reached out to the market manager, and wow, I had no idea how many hoops a person must go through to legally sell a few dozen eggs a week in downtown Albuquerque! over a month later, we have a state egg permit, a business license (well, okay, i already had that), have paid all the fees, and at last we have our grower’s market permit! for 2018. (we are starting this earlier next year!)

so… drumroll… you will be able to buy Sunflower River Farm Fresh eggs (cage-free, ungraded, extremely tasty) at the Downtown Grower’s Market starting this Saturday! You’ll find them at Exotic Edibles of Edgewood with Gael.

but if you want to get in on the peacock eggs, you’ll still have to come to a work party on the farm! next open work day, July 7th. ;-)

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now accepting work-trade volunteers

We have openings for June, July and August for work-trade volunteers. We can host 1-3 volunteers during this time. We are a host farm through wwoof, helpx, and workaway. We ask 25 hours of farm-work/week in exchange for room & board. Room looks like either our clean and cozy vintage travel-trailer (available after June 8th), camping space in our awesome 16′ dome in the shady green-belt area of our back acreage, or regular camping in the green-belt area. We provide access to the community house for kitchen, bath, laundry, and wifi, and food for all your meals.

We are looking for people who are motivated self-starters who love to do active outdoor work. If this sounds like you, please email us at info@sunflowerriver.org with some information about who you are, the skills you’d bring, and why you’re interested in a work-trade! Thanks!

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Spring Projects – Yurt Cover Protection

Another project that needed attending to this spring was the protection of Alan’s yurt cover. The cover was originally made from a reclaimed billboard, sewn into yurt-cover-shape and then painted grey with regular exterior latex house paint. That was in 2009, so it really has lasted a long time, all things considered. Last summer, we observed that the roof material had developed pinprick holes everywhere, and water was getting in. By this past winter, it was possible to see daylight through the roof in the thinner areas.

So we brainstormed solutions, from “buy a new cover” (expensive) down to “repaint it and hope that helps” and settled on repainting it — but with an elastomeric roof coating, the kind of thing used on flat vinyl roofs.

It took three people one entire day — also not bad for a project on this scale.

It is very white now, but we are pleased to report that daylight no longer gets through the roof! As soon as it ever rains again, we’ll know if water can still get in, but I’m betting this worked. It should extend the life of the cover by a few years, hopefully long enough for us to be able to invest in a new one!

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spring, sprang, sprung

There’s been so much going on at the farm this spring! Which is usual for springtime on farms, I suppose.

After a number of setbacks (mice, irrigation, wild swings in the weather) the greenhouse is up and running for the year and beginning to produce lovely little seedlings for us.

Meanwhile the peas are climbing, and some other veggies emerging from the garden, and we are looking up at what is going to become a bumper crop of apricots if the weather holds.

(photo taken a few weeks ago — it takes a lot longer to write blog posts than to grow peas, turns out)

The beehives are ready for bees to move in next month:
note the lovely observation window, which should make it a lot easier on us, and the bees, when we observe how they’re doing.

Our intern Shelby and I took apart the old Glass Shed (a shed we used to store glass jars and other canning supplies in, which has since been replaced by the Potting Shed, which is larger, solider, and has many fewer cracks for dust to get in through. the Glass Shed had skunks living under it all summer and we decided it was time for it to go.) So we pulled off the asbestos tiles:

And then took it apart:

And then Rev took the pieces, and made a lot more progress on the Tree House beside the Pirate Fort:

Meanwhile, baby turkeys have arrived:

And we’ve had our first flood-irrigation night of the year. In this intensely dry weather, the floodwaters are both a great relief, and a precious precarious resource. We are praying every day for rain.

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a year of tasks, measured in beer-inches

One of the ways we communicate about projects on the farm is that there is a kanban (information board) in the kitchen, with sticky notes on it, that go from Projects to Tasks. When a task gets done, you move it to the Done section, and we celebrate that at house meeting each week, and then put the done notes in a jar. At the end of the year, we take the whole jar worth of notes to the retreat. Here are the results from the last two years, measured against a standard reatreat-food item. ;)

2016

2017

it looks like we got more things done in 2017– or anyway, were better about keeping track of the things we got done!

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2018 Calendar — updated!

We have so many great events happening this year! The first big one is brand new to us — the Sunflower River Music Festival!

Rev is now running a quarterly music festival, through Mariposa Music. It will have local bands, vendors, live artists, and we will offer farm tours to VIP ticket holders. The first one is April 7th — we’d love to see you there! This event will also run in June, August, and October.

We’ll be doing more Wall Art Days this summer, in June and September. The theme is plants & animals, and Kat can teach you how to engage with the cement bas-relief process if you’re interested in getting involved but unfamiliar with the material.

We’ve also added a couple of brand new workshop offerings to our calendar — July 14th and October 20th we will offer a Chicken Processing workshop. This will be a one-morning workshop that will teach anyone interested how to process chicken, from the live bird to ready-for-the-table. We’ll also offer a workshop on our Retreat Processes in August. We often hear from people that we are exceptionally well organized, and good at doing what we do, and we agree — so we’re offering this class to anybody interested in picking up some of the planning, management or organizational tools that we use, so you can use them in your own home or community organization. To keep informed of details as they arise, watch this space, or sign up for our Events mailing list.

These are all in addition to our usual monthly work parties!

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Spring cleaning, continued

Come join Sunflower River for a day in the sunshine! We’ll be tackling a variety of spring cleaning projects — getting the land ready for the Ostara festival (which is on the 17th), cleaning the brooders for baby birds, and tidying up all the ritual grounds. If enough people come, we’ll also take apart a no-longer-needed shed in the barnyard.

A hearty vegetarian lunch will appear around 2pm, and we will send all volunteers home with farm goods! We hope to see you there!

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Spring Cleaning

We spent last weekend up to our eyebrows in spring cleaning projects — clearing leaves out of both the acequias, and tilling the garden for an early spring planting!

Our north neighbor Manuel asked us to pitch in on clearing mud and leaves from the concrete acequia this year, so two of us spent the day on that.

Before: waist-deep leaves, with a 2-3″ layer of dry mud caked on the bottom.

After:

That felt good at the end of the day. Though it also felt sore.

Another crew finished clearing leaves from the mud ditch and lowering it a bit.

Meanwhile, a third team tackled the dry, drought-hardened garden soil, which had to be turned in chunks, and then broken up.

We hope to finish that project this week, as well as adding compost to all the rows, setting up the trellising and irrigation for spring, and getting the spring planting done before we leave for our Annual Retreat next weekend. Anybody want to come help out on Friday? Jenny and I will be tackling it again all day! We’d love a hand.

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Field Fencing

When we first moved to Sunflower River, in 2007, one of the plans was to get goats some day. It’s still a plan.

Meanwhile, we raised meat chickens in chicken tractors on our pasture field for several years, until one year a dog from next door broke into the tractors and killed or scattered all of the chickens, all in one fatal afternoon.

Since then, we have not attempted to raise chickens in the field, as we cannot risk having to absorb that kind of emotional or financial loss more than once. Finally we have been able to make time to take the next step towards raising chickens out there again: we fenced the field!

First we went around the area we want to fence with string, and marked the line. Then we spent a long day in the winter sunshine pounding T-posts in along the line, and setting hefty wooden posts at the corners and for the gates (two truck-wide gates east and west, so we can get a tractor or a truck in and across if we need to, and one wheelbarrow-wide pedestrian gate for daily access for animal care). Then, a couple weeks later, we came back and used a come-along to string up the wire fencing.

In some areas, we needed to move the field’s irrigation berm, so that it would align with the fence. We fenced on top of the berm on three sides, to increase the height of the fence. We will still need to go along and add a strip of chicken wire to the bottom all around the field, to prevent the fence from being dug under by that dog, or other predators such as skunks and raccoons — a project we hope to ask some of our upcoming crop of spring interns to handle next month.


you can see the recently moved berm

Rev has started to hang the gates, and we will be fixing up the chicken tractors and raising meat birds out there again this year!

We’re also tentatively planning on creating a workshop/class around processing meat chickens, so keep your eyes out for that post if you’re interested!

P.S.: We also found a very small bird nest in the scrub brush at the side of the field.

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Acequia & Garden work party

Sunflower River is getting ready for Springtime! And we’d love your help! On Saturday, February 10th, we’ll be tilling the garden, mixing in compost, and clearing out the acequias that bring the water of life to our fields. This is “many hands make light work” — lots of raking and moving leaves, especially from the north-south acequia, as well as moving compost and shovelling in the garden, and pulling weeds and shovelling dirt from the west-east acequia.

Come play in the warm winter sunshine in fabulous company! Bring work gloves if you have them; otherwise we have some you can use. We’ll get started about 10 a.m., and work until sunset or we’re done, whichever comes first.

A hearty lunch will appear around 2pm. All volunteers will be gifted with farm goods, as well as our eternal gratitude!

We hope to see you there!