Tierra Viva Farm
Harlingen, Tx
A Few Photos of the Place
The garden in January '08. The garden is always changing, so it's hard to pick a representative photo. Here you can see some mustard, collards, chard, and other young plants. That's a little piece of the Rio Grande flowing down my furrows.
A Leucaena tree from last September when it was at maximum leafiness. I've planted many more of these fast-growing legume trees around the farm to provide shade, forage, nitrogen, and a windbreak. This ~15' tree is 2-3 years old.
My first lambs, ever. That's Brownie with her day-old twin lambs. These are hair sheep that don't require shearing and tolerate the South Texas heat better. The sheep are here because they can turn grass into meat and because I don't want to mow the lawn. Don't worry, these lambs are females, so they won't become kabobs (for a long time.)
The garden on April 22nd.
The black beating heart of the garden, the compost piles. Smaller pile on left is horse, rabbit, and chicken manure with some old hay and coffee grounds. Bigger pile is a few truckloads of water hyacinth that I've collected from beside irrigation canals.
The okra was covered in aphids. Ladybugs eat aphids, but there were way more aphids than ladybugs. So I waited patiently for nature to work for me, and a couple weeks later the aphid problem dissapeared.
All the sheep on October 31st, 2008. Their Halloween treat was the first grazing of the leucaena forest that I've been growing for the past 13 months. All the trees seen here were no more than 6" tall when we moved here last September.
More Photos Soon! Any Requests?