A Walk Around the Farm

The Ancient Art of Moon Gardening
As handed down by
R.John Harris ~ Head Gardener

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     The parcel of land I live on was originally a cattle ranch until the 1960's when the ranch was subdivided. I live in the original Ranch Manager's house, a small house on 3 acres.
     We have a short growing season here, and are in the climatic zone 4 or 5, depending on to whom you speak.
        We are at 6440 feet in
{Christmas Morning, 2007}
elevation and have relatively small amounts of rainfall. Winter temperatures can dip to -20 F and soar to 105 F in the summer, so anything planted here must be able  to withstand
a lot of extremes:wind, hail, snow and lots of it...measured in feet, scalding sun and drought.

My house is a small wooden cottage built in 1949. The barn is an 8-stall horse barn with half of it devoted to horses and hay and a grain & tack room, and the other half is a workshop/storage & garage and my greenhouse was built into the southwest corner of the building. This is a great design for someone like me, who loves and lives with horses, loves gardening, needs storage and a workbench/shop to fix farm equipment, all in one place.

{My dear friend Arrow, who passed away with his head in my lap at age 33}

This is a picture of the greenhouse, you can see huge tomatoes through the windows, and outside is the 3 sisters planting with large sunflowers, corn and squash. The traditional planting is Corn, Beans and Squash however, since I have lots of beans planted in the larger garden, and love huge sunflowers, I planted it this way. John Harris planted the traditional planting this year at Tresillian. I need tall fencing here because of the deer. In the foreground is a bed of eggplant, with row-cover rolled up at the ready to protect them from hail. Under the hanging pots is the cold frame. Obviously, I have lost the annual battle with weeds. Again.

Getting ready for winter, in mid-summer. I heat my house with wood, hard and soft woods, and usually use 2-3 cords every winter. The hens' house is in the background.

One of my Great Pyrenees dogs, guarding the squash which has escaped it's confines, and is not heading down into the pasture, toward the creek.

Here is a picture of the Broad Beans John sent me...not doing very well at all in the searing Colorado heat of July and August. In the background are some of the sunflowers and the squash and melons. I won't know what I have in there until the first hard freeze I think...very difficult to navigate safely though this mess! The squash vines are completely engulfing the pathway around the raised beds. But, it is a JOYFUL mess!