The Avalon Organic Gardens, Farm, and Ranch Report

Farm Report From
Avalon Organic Gardens, Farm, and Ranch in Tumacacori, Arizona.
2/08

February witnessed the preparation and anticipation of spring. In this climate spring sneaks in fast out of winter, and is gone into the blazing summer without waiting for anyone to catch up. We are getting our seedlings going in the greenhouse. When it is warm enough outside they will have that head-start to go right into the ground, for early produce. We continue to harvest plenty with our winter crops, along with beginning to enjoy the beets, parsley, and new round of carrots emerging.

We’ve kept busy building the soils with our own compost made from our goats, rabbits, chickens, horses, and cattle. We’ve mixed wood ash, charcoal, leftover food scraps the chickens overlooked, alfalfa shake, wood chips, and sprayed it with EM (Effective Microorganisms™) in order to assist break it down.

The winter so far has been warm and very dry. We can sure use any rain we get. The experts say we’re in a ten year drought out here in the West.

Recently we’ve begun to set in motion our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for the surrounding area. Anyone from Tucson, Nogales, Green Valley, Patagonia, Aravaca, Tumacacori, Tubac, and surrounding areas that interested in having the freshest, home-grown organic vegetables possible can sign up to participate with us. E-mail or call us to get more details. We’ll appreciate all the support we can get doing our part here to realign our local food security and eating habits towards more bioregional, healthy produce.

We’ve had some visitors come by lately for our gardening exchange program. People can stay with us in exchange for helping out on the farm. We’re always looking for extra hands, so if any of you out there are interested in agriculture, and want to see what we’re doing here and pitch in, please let us know: we have a live-in agricultural training program, and will also accept day workers. We’d love to have ya.