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Show | ea PAI a be ASG BUA those are good growing conditions. But about the time I gave up the good job and moved down here the temperature jumped to 102, 105, 115 degrees. When it's that hot the plants Just shut down, they stop setting fruit, they stop growing. That's what's happened to me the past five years--I've been waiting out July and August. Middle of August I've picked up another yield. But we've learned to adapt, too, with added-value items, and the bread thing. You've got a wood-fired brick oven out here... I bake bread every day. | start at 6:30 a.m. and it takes 5 hours. There's also an oven story. Early on I was baking inside. One winter I studied baking bread and by spring, I could bake pretty good loaves and was serving bread with salads. Then one day a lady stops in and talks with Debra and says you should get this book called The Bread Builders. So Debra orders the book and gives it to me, and it's got a plan for that oven in it. At the time I decided no way, I've never laid a brick in my life, that's way over my head. But Debra egged me on and J said oh all right. You can't lay brick in the winter, so | had to start it in spring when I'm busier than the dickens. In August I finished the oven. We decided to bake the first batch of bread one day, and as we're pulling out the very first load, the lady who suggested the book--who we've never seen before and never seen since--pulls in the driveway and buys the first loaf of bread out of the oven. Since then, people from all over the world have sent me books and recipes and flour. A friend who was a professional baker for 45 years sent me his best artisan bread recipes. I had a customer, this French guy--again a professional baker--come by and he worked with me for half a day showing me some tricks, so what you see is kind of an evolved series of recipes and people that I've met. At times I would have lost money if it hadn't been for bread. I could make more money just baking, but | like raising vegetables, and sustainable agriculture is what I'm interested in. So talk a bit about that. How much land are you farming? I've got 1.7 acres of vegetables and 50 fruit trees and 2.2 acres in cover crop. I'm just beginning to see the payoff of five years of cover cropping. It's becoming easier to work the soil, which means a reduced level of physical input on my part. For years I struggled with different cover crops but now I use oats and yellow clover. One fall I was scratching my head and wondering, OK, what am I going to use for a cover crop this next year? And all over the ditches, everywhere I look, there's yellow clover. It grows well, it's taproot busts up that tight soil that I've got. It's very forgiving, you can mow it or you don't have to mow it. But it took me years to figure that out. Now that I have, my soil quality's coming up. It's an incredible process, learning to grow out here in this environment. So many things that you take for granted, you can't take for granted out here. It requires really good observation and really good thought. You have to think about stuff and be logical and reasonable. Who are your customers? Mostly tourists. Whether it's here at the store or in Torrey we pretty much rely on them. I have two or three restaurants in Torrey that I deal with. Café Diablo, that's a wonderful place. Capital Reef Inn & Café are great customers, very supportive. Without them, I wouldn't be here. Now | also do a farmer market, and I'm the only farmer there. At Robber's Roost bookstore, Saturday afternoons. So everyone is learning to meet me there. We're building community too. Getting old timers to meet the young people in Torrey. It's just a good thing. ae 7 DELORES CONTEMPORARY 6TH & RAILROAD AVENUE DELORES, COLORADO FRIDAY& SATURDAY ~NOON TOSPM JUDY POWERS "The REALTOR who knows what's COLDWCLL BANKCRG REALLY going on in Moab.” IT'S SUMMERTIME WITH LOTS OF WARM UPDRAFTS. THAT'S WHEN JUDY LIKES TO.. RIDE THE THERMALS! | GET THE ‘BIG PICTURE’ FROM UP HERE!!! © b \: So, what is this symbol that is part of your market sign? I found this symbol on a wall down in North Wash near Lake Powell. It's just a little symbol, I thought it was cool and that it looked like something growing. So I took a picture of it and we adopted it as our logo. I'd looked through a number of books trying to find something out about it and couldn't find anything. One woman--an archeologist--has come in to the store and said she's also seen it in another place. There is a symbol very similar to this in the Hopi tradition. As near as I'm able to tell, the head of it is a cloud, and then it's lightning, and corn and water. That's what I think, but it's only my interpretation. How have your neighbors responded to what you're doing out here? Well, I like to think I've had a positive effect in the neighborhood. Though it takes a while for people to understand what you're doing. But right now one of my neighbors--the rancher who has the land all around me here--is very seriously considering going into natural beef and natural lamb, as a side. Still maintaining his cow-calf operation but pulling out a certain number of head and seeing if we can't make a go of that. I'm really interested in it and want to work with the marketing side of it. You obviously depend on irrigation. A lot of years the reservoirs around here run dry about mid-summer and the irrigation water runs out. What do you do when that happens? Well, we hope we don't run out of irrigation water. The lower Fremont is a pretty consistent source, and we haven't run out even in these drought years. We have some political problems with allocation, but the source is good. Water everywhere, though, is the issue for farmers. The aquifers are going down in the midwest, and everywhere, the cities are taking it away from agriculture, politically. They're not interested in keeping agriculture alive in America, and that's something we need to change as farmers, as organic growers. It's essential that we become involved in changing the consumer's mind about the food that they're eating. Because without agriculture in America there's no hope for co-existence with the environment, we're just totally false, in a false environment. I've had people come in here and tell me that I'm using water that the cities could be using and that I should be out of business. And my reply is, where do you think your food comes from? It's a sad state of affairs. But then it's amazing the number of people that stop through here and encourage me... because they think it's unusual what I'm doing and they're interested in sustainability. It's good to show people it can be done. As organic growers, we have that intrinsic power that is contained in our product. Because we're not just promoting our own welfare and our own existence, we're actually promoting the potential for continued existence of mankind. I know for a lot of people it's weird to put it on that kind of scale, but I really think that's where we're at. It's not that this plagues my every thought, but it's in the back of my mind. Gardening balances you: it's physical, it's emotional--you've got to love it, you've got to be emotionally involved in it, and it's intellectual--you have to think. So gardening, farming is a perfect system to use to get balance in your life. So that's why I do this. That's why people have all these little gardens in their back yards. People understand how important ARCHES REALTY 150 E. Center St. Moab. UT 84532 BUS: 435.259.5693 800.634.0770 CELL: 260.9553 judy@moabproperties.com (Each office is independently owned and operated) SSE SHOW A LITTLE BACKBONE For $99.99/year, you can put your face | on this page. Send a photo & the Big Bucks to The Zephyr &join the Crowd FOR SALE BY OWNER Northern Az-Flagstaff area strawbale home 1500sf on 40 fenced acres, borders state on 2 sides, painted desert and San Francisco peaks views, full solar, rain collection system, saltillo tile, mexican tile countertops, sunroom 3bd/Iba. $178,900 (928)853-7599 juliepersons@uahoo.com th \, 9 |
