Hozho Center in NM Agriculture Appropriations Bill for $49k

Great news on this Monday morning. The Center's proposal for funding for a new tractor to assist in the creation of large swales on the land, and supplies to revamp an existing root cellar into a seed bank has been selected and included an upcoming ag bill. You can read the press release here. https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/heinrich-welcomes-unanimous-committee-support-of-agricultural-appropriations-bill-that-includes-10-million-in-federal-investments-for-new-mexico-project

From here, the bill will go to the Senate for approval, then to Congress for their approval, and lastly to the President for his approval and signature. If everything goes smoothly, we will be able to secure the funds in Spring 2024, just in time for next year's planting season. Here is hoping it all works out.

Cool Season Crops Planting

Greetings and salutations. As the weather is getting warmer and the days longer, planting season has begun. Back on March 15th was the day we started seeds starts in the greenhouse. The two weeks that followed more seeds were started: blue dwarf kale, red russian kale, spinach, kohlrabi, arugula, broccoli, cauliflower, red cabbage, and various varieties of lettuce. These are examples of cool season crops that thrive in the cooler temperatures of spring and can be planted earlier than warm season crops. Most of the aforementioned plants were transplanted into the ground and into the raised garden beds. Since then we have been watering them every MWF with harvested rainwater/snowmelt from as far back as November. We finally exhausted what precipitation we collected and now we are using water from our on-site well. After the starts were transplanted freeing up a lot of space in the greenhouse, we have since started our warm season starts of tomatoes and peppers. These need 6-8 weeks to grow before being planted outside in early June. By the 2nd week of May we will start our squash and melons in the greenhouse. We plan to sell greenhouse starts starting the last week of May. If anyone is interested and has questions about that, use the Chat box located on the homepage of the site. Pretty soon we will starting work on our custom rainwater harvesting system with wi-fo controlled drip irrigation. Stay tuned for an update on that shortly.

Hillside Corn Field

Greetings and Salutations! Over this past weekend we had our first gardening workshop of the 2023 growing season on Saturday April 1st. . We went over how to start seeds, transplanting, soil health, and rainwater harvesting. The workshop portion of the gathering centered around creating swales on the hillside for our future planting of mostly corn, and possibly squash, beans, and melons too. Participants created swales, on contour with the land which will help slow down water, keep it on the land, and utilize it for watering plants and to assist in the recharge of our region's aquifer. This planting in the cove will be dry farmed and will mostly rely on precipitation for its needs. However, if we have to, we will haul water to the top and irrigate plants. Future plans for this site will be expanding the swales throughout the Cove all the way around the Center. Planting of dry farmed crops will take place at the end of May or early June. We are determining which day will be our summer planting day so stay tuned. For more information on swales and their benefits, look up "Brad Lancaster" on YouTube.