Planters II is a soil amendment that is mined in Wellsville, just south of Salida. Juniper and I went down to the production facility on Tuesday and picked up 19 five-gallon buckets. The metamorphic rock is from an old fresh water lake bed that was heated by geothermal activity during the uplift of the Rocky Mountains. In 1947 Emil Lionelle found the deposit and discovered that the rock was water soluble and contained plant available nutrients. Now, the company US Soil crushes it into a powder, mixes it with molasses and then dries it into pellets.
Thursday night I closed at the Asian Palate. Eddie was on a trip to the Front Range to pick up more inventory for the new restaurant. I called him at 10:30 pm and he said I-70 near Frisco was in a white out. By the next morning the storm had dropped 16 in. of snow in Saguache and Vail pass was closed. It was gloomy here but the ground was clear. Low hanging clouds obscured the mountains and flecks of snow filtered down intermittently. The main storm had passed us by, but the tail end might still leave a little precipitation behind. I got to work and applied about 500 lbs of Planters II to our 1 acre field just ahead of the storm.
When I picked up the Planters II, I talked with Albert Lionelle, Emil’s grandson, about their operation. He explained the story of the product, helped me load the buckets and is generally a helpful and friendly fellow. Driving home I felt not so out of my mind, as I often do, trying to grow food here. With my growing awareness of the local food ecomomy support network, the challenges of 8,000 feet seem more manageable. At 8,000 feet or at sea level I’m sure the satisfaction of geting the job done before the storm is the same.
