Post by flowerweaver on Jan 17, 2014 18:06:44 GMT -5
Hello everyone! My husband and I have 5 diverse acres in a remote river canyon on the western edge of the Texas hill country where it meets the desert. In the pioneer days it was a farming community, but the knowledge and seeds were lost along the way. The area is now considered a 'food desert'. It's a 3 hour round trip to the grocery store (4 hours for organics), so we try to grow as much of our own food as possible.
In my former life I was a professional native plant botanist/environmental educator. Now I'm a guitar teacher, chicken keeper, budding metalsmith, animal whisperer, and gardener. Recently we started building a rainwater harvesting system.
In all the places we've lived, this has been by far the most challenging for growing food. Our soil is very rocky and alkaline in the open areas, and rich and deep down in the oak-shaded seasonal creek. We actually 'mine' the topsoil from the hills that washes down there during floods for use in our garden. We also have a large composting operation using leaves and manure from our farm animals. It occasionally snows and gets down to 10 degrees, but usually our winter lows are around freezing at night and t-shirt weather during the daytime. We can grow food almost year 'round. It's the summers that are tough, sometimes remaining above 105 degrees for several months. Rain is unpredictable, and can come from the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific. We've been through two '500' year floods in 13 years resulting from 25" and 29" rainfalls in the course of 24 hours. Then, in 2010 we were surrounded by wildfires; it did not rain for 11 months and our well went dry for 6 months. Water wrangling became my full-time job. We lost all our fruit trees except for the fig. It's feast or famine!
I am continually evaluating new heirloom and OP plants, seeing what can survive, then saving my own seed. Up until now I've been trying to keep the seed pure. Recently I became very interested in landraces. I can see how beneficial this would be in our situation and intend to start developing some for this area. It was through this subject I found this forum. I would like to learn what others are doing to create their landraces and perhaps trade seed.
In my former life I was a professional native plant botanist/environmental educator. Now I'm a guitar teacher, chicken keeper, budding metalsmith, animal whisperer, and gardener. Recently we started building a rainwater harvesting system.
In all the places we've lived, this has been by far the most challenging for growing food. Our soil is very rocky and alkaline in the open areas, and rich and deep down in the oak-shaded seasonal creek. We actually 'mine' the topsoil from the hills that washes down there during floods for use in our garden. We also have a large composting operation using leaves and manure from our farm animals. It occasionally snows and gets down to 10 degrees, but usually our winter lows are around freezing at night and t-shirt weather during the daytime. We can grow food almost year 'round. It's the summers that are tough, sometimes remaining above 105 degrees for several months. Rain is unpredictable, and can come from the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific. We've been through two '500' year floods in 13 years resulting from 25" and 29" rainfalls in the course of 24 hours. Then, in 2010 we were surrounded by wildfires; it did not rain for 11 months and our well went dry for 6 months. Water wrangling became my full-time job. We lost all our fruit trees except for the fig. It's feast or famine!
I am continually evaluating new heirloom and OP plants, seeing what can survive, then saving my own seed. Up until now I've been trying to keep the seed pure. Recently I became very interested in landraces. I can see how beneficial this would be in our situation and intend to start developing some for this area. It was through this subject I found this forum. I would like to learn what others are doing to create their landraces and perhaps trade seed.
