Colorado Chef and the Garden, A Beautiful Thing!

 

So it got warm today, not as warm as you nice climate folks, but pretty
nice. So after helping my daughter pack and getting her on the way to
college again, I just had to be outside. I know many of the regular
readers will find it hard to believe I like being outside. Well with my
wife and son visiting my MIL back east, I get bored. I make myself busy
wandering around taking apart the stock tank heaters and putting them
away for the year. Filling the wine barrel fountains as the wood will
need water to fill out and seal. Cleaning horse pens and moving hay for
the week. Filling bird feeders and cleaning the rest of the stock tanks
for the various animals. When I hear the wonderful sound of a diesel
running. My neighbor has rented the backhoe. We take turns renting the
backhoe. He rents the early rental so we can finish the irrigation
inflow ditch and the return water ditches. I rent the late season so we
can clean up all the things we screwed up through the summer. Each of us
always has only half a days work for the machine, so it works out for us
to share the thing when we get it.



So what is a chef to do? Start the garden. I have a lot of globe willow
trees. Which near as I can tell, globe willow, is Latin for makes many
many many sticks in yard! Any I have taken to chipping the limbs and
using the organic material for the garden. Same with the waste from the
steers, etc. Everything gets turned under.



So first we start moving massive amounts of wood chips.








10 loads into the garden. This should bring the organic level up a lot.
It does a lot of good to add this kind of stuff into the truck patch.
For one it will hold a lot of moisture, in the desert you really
understand that and like it.








All the steer crap is scooped up after sitting for a while and placed
into the garden. I don't use all of the stuff, I have to save some for
Big Dog Chef and his gardens. So when I tell you guys I give Al sh1t, I
mean it!







Then I fire up the NAA Ford and start discing it into the soil. As I
make more and more passes the material begins to break up and mix into
the soil.







As you can see off in the distance, just about everyone is out digging,
burning, or cleaning something up.



When the sun sets the ground will rest. After a week I will then til it
under with a moldboard plow. That will put it down deep where it can
compost. And bring up what I put under last year for the roots this
year.



Kind of a short one, but after a few installments you should get a
picture of running a truck patch.



Til we talk again, dig out a few seed catalogs, they hold the promise
that spring is nearly here!



Chef Bob Ballantyne

The Cowboy and The Rose Catering

Grand Junction, Colorado, USA