Black Mesa Ranch
Snowflake, Arizona, USA
Artisan Cheese
Nubian Goats
Cheese and Candy Information and Online Ordering Page
Featured pages on this site
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Alternative Energy (updated 10/11)
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David's Culinary Blog
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New!
See our goats in action in this professionally done Whole Foods YouTube promo for our cheeses.
Plus..
See BMR owner/cheese maker, David, make Pasta with Goat Cheese in just one minute.
But, wait, there's more!
Take a 4 minute "tour of the ranch" on YouTube .
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Award Winning Artisan Goat Cheeses
4 Awards 2010 ADGA National Competition
2 Awards 2008 ADGA National Competition
4 Awards 2005 ADGA National Competition
3 Awards 2004 ADGA National Competition
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(available seasonally)
1 Award 2010 ADGA National Competition
2 Awards 2005 ADGA National Competition
2 Awards 2004 ADGA National Competition
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Click here to read the online version of Kathryn's booklet
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This site last updated:
November 30, 2012
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Arizona Grown!
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Black Mesa Ranch The BMR Gardens 2005- 2006 |
The 2006 Season
January-February 2006
The weather was fair much of this winter so I got to do some early garden prep-work done including distributing 20 tractor loads of compost, fence repairs and general cleaning
April 2006
More fence line cleaning and blow-sand removal from around the perimeter. Got pea & pepper bed ready and trellis up. Harvested first asparagus. Planted Red-Gold and Banana potatoes, Red onions and scallion sets. Set out 30 spinach seedlings. Transplanted some tomato and marigolds to bigger pots. Planted sugar snap peas.
May 2006
Planted 5 new horseradish, 3 new Rhubarb and 25 Purple Passion Asparagus and 25 Jersey Knight asparagus. Transplanted out a flat of asst greens and a dozen or so basil. Got the rest of broccoli and marigolds out.
June 2006
Prepped the tomato bed, set out 34 tomato plants and 20 more pepper/chile plants, did some weeding, ferted the melons and tomatoes. Seeded out zucchini, 2 types of patty pan squash, the rest of the broccoli seeds, pumpkins, more melons, more onions sets for scallions, & more carrots and beets. Transplanted out lots of various lettuce starts. Early brocolis are looking good and we've got lots greens & scallions ready now. New asparagus are coming up pretty well. Horse Sandy has discovered that she likes the cotoneaster wind break around the garden and she can reach way too many of them so some fence augmentation is in order.
Moved out the last of the greenhouse plants coming to the garden several tomatoes still producing in there and they will stay until they are done. Row covered the broccoli to keep something from nibbling the florettes - hopefully,
July 2006
Harvested first red potatoes (fingerlings are not even close), planted more lettuces, carrots, beets (harvested the 2 from the last planting!), and basils. Greenhouse tomatoes are still going strong - getting 8-10 nice-ripe (if smallish) ones every week.
August 2006
Lots of produce to harvest and process for the freezer, especially summer squash.
October 2006
Worked on shutting down a few beds for the season. Goats and pigs really liked the remnant plants I threw them.
10/18: Got garden and greenhouse prepped for hard frost predicted ofr tonight, covered tomatoes but everything else is on its own. Supposed to get to 26F.
10/25:
Supposed to be around freezing again tonight but didn't cover the garden.
Several days of low 20's coming up so I think we'll just let it go now. May be
able to get a few more tomatoes off tomorrow but that will be about it.
January 2005
We got our new Davis Weather Station vantage Pro2 assembled and mounted in the garden. The official BMR weather station went online at approx 5:30 PM 1/24/2005. Installed the WeatherLink software on my computer this evening and look forward to the tracking and (eventual) forecasting features of the unit. Daily weather data will be sent each evening to the Weather Underground web site and can be viewed at this page.
March-May 2005
My long-time dream of having a greenhouse for seed-starting and extended-season growing came to fruition this spring with the construction of a site-built, 12x20', polycarbonate-glazed structure we built between march and May of this year. Click here for lots of pictures of it's construction.
The greenhouse is primarily passive solar but does have a small auxiliary LPG heater for back-up and has both in-ground planting spaces and lots of room for pots and flats, as well as some storage space for gardening tools.
June 2005
Well, greenhouse growing has proved to be a difficult nut to crack first time out. My seed starts did not do well at all suffering from either over-or under-watering on various tries, damp-off, rodent damage, or the infestation of mealy bugs that tore through everything when I was not looking <sigh>.
Now that our last-frost date has past, I'm going to direct-seed everything this year and hope for better luck next spring.
July 2005
Getting a few zucchini out of the garden every morning now along with a few sugar snap peas and maybe a chile pepper or two. Carrots, lettuces, herbs, scallions and beets are going great. Tomatoes and potatoes look like they're taking off. Pumpkins and melons don't look so good. Green beans and broccoli are marginal and the jury is still out on the patty pan squashes.
August 2005
Had our first muskmelons of the season - VERY good. The garden has another infestation of Tomato Horn Worms on the peppers and tomatoes. We're plucking 8 or 10 off every other day.
October 2005
10/30: Forecast is for 28*F tonight and 25* tomorrow night so transferred several chile plants ot the greenhouse and set it up for frost. Harvested a bunch of chiles and peppers, assuming that this will probably be the last couple of days for the plants this year.
November 2005
11/2: The frosts have done-in the garden now and it was a longer growing season by several weeks than we have gotten in the past. We picked the garden clean of remaining peppers and tomatoes. Got about 3 over-full bus-tubs of peppers to process now and 3, 1/2 sheet pans of green tomatoes we hope will eventually ripen.
December 2005
The greenhouse has redeemed itself (yes, I'm blaming all my spring problems on IT, not me) by being a very good host to a few tomato plants I direct-seeded into one of the beds. We have enjoyed fresh, home-grown tomatoes this winter and thoroughly enjoyed them. Still having trouble with mealy bugs but the tomatoes are surviving OK. I look forward to testing various different varieties for the best indoor type for my set-up here.