A mottled Java chick. Little darling.

Austrian Winter Peas are part of a cover crop seed mix we grow in the winter. The finished compost from this plant and others(Vetch, Cayuse Oats, Fava Beans) is rich in nutriments, looks like horse manure, and smells like honey. 

Spring brings back perfect maritme weather much to Bucky's delight! The worn path takes us from the house to the garden, and is (obviously!) an oft-trod way.

This pretty little allium has the unfortunate common-name Blue Dicks. It's obviously deserving of a better name. The American West was explored and colonized by many newcomers from Europe and the eastern US who went about naming mountains, rivers and flowers after dead generals or industrial titans, without any knowledge of this place and its ecolocy. I believe the day will come when people who love the land enough to 'dress and keep it' will begin renaming these beauties with more poetic and deserving names. 

Oliview Farm is on a property that was once part of the larger, 1,740 acre Alexander Ranch. It was established around 1884 with Olive and fruit trees planted on or about 1887. Through the years the ranch was split up and now there are only a fraction of the original Olive orchards left in production, with many abandoned sections neglected by landowners. Given the age of these trees (some almost 130 years old!), it's a remarkable testament to the resiliency and potential of these trees to shape our local landscape ecology and culture. We are proud stewards of this land and its ancient inhabitants. 

This broad fork was built for Pedro by John Streeby, an artist and metalworker here in Shasta County. The tines are 18 inches long, and it is about 30 in width. It stands 7 feet tall. The right angles at the back of the fork allow for leverage when pulling back. It can get through a bed very quickly!

This group of chicks is made up of Mottled Javas (mostly yellow with black markings on their back, and sometimes head), Ameraucanas (some black ones, and some of the more brindled chicks toward the upper right of the photo), and mixed Ameraucana-Maran (black with varied markings). This mix gives us a variety of egg colours and sizes, as well as a variety of behaviours and body sizes. We hatch all of our own chickens in order to preserve these heritage breeds, maintain adaptive capacity to our environment, and to remain independent from the large poultry houses.

Babies are allowed to live outside after a week or so, and they're certainly ready by that time. We always keep them enclosed, however, and they have a warming light for another 4-6 weeks. Introducing them to greens and bugs early, however, allows them to develop healthy habits for a long life of eating garden greens and orchard bugs.

One of our queens of summer, being attended to by garden staff!

Mid-Summer Bed preparation for fall garden crops. We trench in some compost at the height of decomposition. Then the beds are reshaped and top-dressed with an added layer of more finished compost. 

The peppers are developing and the cucumbers are developing... and the nicotiana, a beautifully night-scented blossom, helps to keep the pests away!

Sunset over corn... a beautiful summer sight.

We trellis tomatoes to enable us to better find and reach them(!), but also to better focus their energy on growing fruit, not just leaves. 

Cucumbers ready to work their way up the trellis.

We plant flowers for pollinators, for nutrients and compost, and for the beauty they provide to all who labor in the garden. They make lovely bouquets for us and for our CSA customers!

One of our staff hard at work!

The bounty of summer, presented on my kitchen counter: CSA customers, please come pick up your bounty on time... I want my counter back!

Ping Tung Long eggplant... an heirloom that produces beautifully and cooks up deliciously!

Summer cover crop - buckwheat and the occasional black-eyed peas - nourishes the soil and allows for us to create our own compost. This practice helps us to move toward our goal of being a full-circle farm.

Summer's share includes (during the photo week, at least): chard, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, basil, eggplant, tomatoes, and eggs... enough for a number of healthy, heritage-sourced meals for a hungry family!

Mid summer is truly a beautiful time of year.

We always, always, always breed/hatch our own chicks... but this year, a neighbor's feral cat gang got ALL 40 of our spring hatch! So we ended up with hatchery chicks, who are just about grown and starting to lay, about 5 months later.

Sometimes we give our tools a hard time... this one broke, likely digging a bed for the next set of beets.

This new bed site is being dug in winter of 2015. It hosted cover crop over winter, but then potatoes for our 2016 season.

Double-dug and shaped... ready for new plants!

And a garden view in mid-autumn.

A landscape-style view of the garden as the beds get prepped for winter plantings.

Making sure those thieving gophers don't come near...

Siding the garden shed - and painting, in the colors of poppies and blue sky!

The olive harvest is challenging physically, and the stress of finding a mill that will take our "boutique" sized harvest for milling, as late as we'd like to do it, is ALWAYS a challenge. So we're ALWAYS glad we're done!

We pick our olives later in their maturity for two reasons: 1) the longer they're on the tree (to a point!) the more oil we get from them, and 2) we much prefer the more mellow flavours that come from purple-er olives, rather than the somewhat ascerbic (burn in the back of your throat) flavour profile that is more hip, now, with some of the larger growers.

We are so pleased, every year, when the pears are ready, not the least because that means that cooler days are upon us!

A stupendous winter snow in early December of 2013 buried our crops... but they bounced right back! And it was beautiful.

Cover crop covered in snow! Not a common occurrence, but a beautiful one!

Winter isn't the most natural time for young chickens, but the timing is right for getting eggs at the start of the CSA season.

Yup - a surprisingly heavy snow buried our garden in December of 2013. Crops survived well, but the flowers didn't.

Pedro certainly heard this one! After heaps and heaps of rain in the 2015-16 winter, he came home to this surprise... we didn't lose it, as the ground was wet enough to keep the roots healthy after he propped it back up! Time to trim the trees, though...

And you have this guy! Of course, the males are always on vacation, but the ladies behind him are laying less because of having less light during the winter. We could light their coop, but then they'd just lay less over their lifetime. Our goal is sustainable, which means that poultry get to follow their natural rhythms, too!

Oliview Farm waiting for the rain...

For some reason, getting the timing right on planting cabbages is incredibly difficult... and as such, we haven't had any out of our garden for the past several years. This beauty went into soup in January, inspired by French onion flavors.

A beautiful post-storm photo in January of 2016, looking west to the coastal range. We truly live in a beautiful place!