Current Projects:

Boy, that was a busy season! 2007 was very interesting here on the farm. Beth did a great job  baking and keeping me organized.  Tim was top of the line on surviving the heat while getting the work done. With the help of Tim and Beth and many loyal friends and customers, Mesa Farm had a good year.

I made plenty of mistakes and proved again that I have a lot to learn.

2008 is promising to be another interesting season.  We have purchased four pregnant kid goats. Two are Nubian/Lamancha mix, and two are pure Lamancha. They have been bred with a pure Lamancha. These are dairy goats.  Andrew Barclay is expressing interest in the goat project and is contributing his energy and knowledge to the operation.

We feel that in order to continue to move in the direction of sustainability it is necessary to integrate goats into the operation. It is our plan to experiment with organic goat cheese. I think it would be a real good addition to our product line.

As well as being a good addition to the product line I think the goats will help us manage the weeds. We plan to plant our entire four acre garden into a permanent cover crop. We are thinking that Birdsfoot Trefoil blended with a low growing clover may work well. Then we will strip till a seed bed every eight feet. These seed beds will be the permanent areas in which we grow our vegetables, fruits and herbs. Using movable electric net type fences we will turn the goats in on the areas between the rows of vegetables. In this way we hope to begin to reduce the amount of mechanical cultivation we need to do. Over time we feel that we will greatly reduce weed pressure throughout the garden.

When the goats are not busy grazing the allys they will be used around the farm to control weeds along the fences and irrigation pipes etc.

We are also getting closer to bringing fifteen acres on the lower portion of the farm into cultivation. We are thinking that we will use this area for the production of oil seed crops that we can use to produce our biodiesel.

We currently use waste oil from the restaurants we serve to produce biodiesel, but we feel that it is more sustainable to include the oil seed production in our operation. Not only can the oil seed produce oil, it can be used to feed the chickens and goats and much of the vegetable matter can be returned  organic substance to the farms soil.