April « 2015 « JAZ Farm Blog

Today was a sad day. The greenhouse fiasco has been one of the greatest disappointments associated with the JAZ Farm to date. Previous posts have shown just what a roller coaster this has been. We have been delayed, lied to, told we are being delivered to, and none of them have come true. I have registered a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (which shocked the hell out of the manufacturer let me tell you). I have delivered all of the communications and invoices to our attorney (another eye opener for them) and we finally got a little bit of satisfaction. We were informed that the plastic covers for the greenhouse had shipped. We even got a call to confirm the delivery time from Fed Ex. This was supposed to be delivered this past Friday. This time it was Fed Ex. We waited all day and when it got close to the end of the timeframe for delivery and it still hadn’t shown up I re-checked the tracking number. DELAYED!! For some unknown reason, the driver decided he just couldn’t get it on the truck! I was LIVID! Now I have to hang out another day on Monday and the best they could do is tell me that it will be here sometime between 8 am and 5 pm. It is the luckiest thing in my life that I don’t work in cubicle. How other two working families do it I have no idea.

So still no greenhouse. After quite a fight between the manufacturer and I last week the new excuse is that the machine they bought to bend the steel for the frames is on a ship on the west coast sitting there because of the Longshoreman’s strike. But oh ya, of a 5 – 7 week estimated wait we are now into MONTH 6!

So today I was down in our seedling room repotting tomato plants and it suddenly hit me: I have no place to plant these plants. A half an acre garden takes some pretty serious prep work. Even if the greenhouse was delivered this week I would be less than 5 weeks away from planting week. I might be strong, I might be efficient, but there is not a chance in hell I could build a 44 foot greenhouse kit AND have my outdoor garden prepped and ready to go (as we speak Aaron and a friend are out pulling up the drip lines so we can get the tractor in and the compost dug in.

Zina and I took a hard look at it. The drop dead date for the greenhouse has passed. We have to proceed as though its not going to be here. That means having to deal with the potential hailstorms again and maximize the use of the city garden.

We have close to 200 tomato plants growing in the basement, not to mention all of the other plants like the peppers, tomatillos, eggplants, etc. Most of the tomatoes were going to be planted in the greenhouse. As of today more than half of them are being pulled up and thrown away. Dozens of heirloom tomato plants just pitched. We will still have a good tomato crop thanks to the city garden but as of right now, even if the Starship Enterprise were to use a transporter to get the greenhouse here, it will likely not be built until the 4th of July holiday. What a total disappointment.

The good news is that now we have plenty of time to get the city and country gardens prepped and planted, the bad news is that 1. No greenhouse, 2. Hail worries again, 3. Dozens of plants just tossed, 4. Having to build the thing in the heat of the summer, 5. We had to go out and spend $200.00 on tarps. 6. Then we had to haul tires and fenceposts to cover and secure the tarps to cover the $1000.00 of topsoil we just had hauled in. I’ve been watching it just blow away.

These people (Greenhouse Pro’s) don’t seem to understand just how much damage they have caused out here with their empty promises. If I ran my business like this I’m sure not too many of my clients will have turned into the really special and great friends they have become over the years. I wouldn’t refer these people, nor will I ever do business of any kind with them again. I’ve heard so many people tell me how much they would love a greenhouse. It is a once in a lifetime purchase. It will take quite a bit of time even after it is built, to be able to look at it and not feel my blood pressure rise. As Zina said today, “This is really a hard one to let go mentally.” Getting screwed always is.

Our feed store in town found us a line on some weaners! They were such a big help. After having all of our sources run dry either because of the litters dying or others not having enough the Byers America Feed Supply came through! They did what had to have been close to a 6 our round trip for us and came back with 2000 pounds of organic pig feed and 3 purebred Hampshire gilts (females)!

Of course, in keeping with the “nothing is ever easy” theme of JAZ Farm (if you want to do something you better WANT to do it, because everything will transpire to make something relatively easy into an ordeal!) we unloaded the little 10 week old girls in an April 2nd snow storm. We put them in their new shelter and they promptly buried themselves in the straw and went to sleep.

Last night was kind of a sleepless night. Nervous pig parents worried that these new creatures that we had only really seen for a few minutes were now out in temperatures down into the mid-teens. We had gone through the same thing with our first chickens and it is amazing the anxiety you can feel dealing with livestock for the first time. You know you think you did everything right but …….

So this morning we were up with the chickens. We took some warm milk, carrots, and regular feed out to them. They must not have slept much because they were just in a pile in the corner. They had some issues with their eyes being crusted but a warm cloth was able to get that taken care of. We kept going out to see them about once an hour to check on them but they didn’t want to move about much. Zina came in after one check and was very worried that one had died. When we got out there you could hear all of them snoring just like humans. All were fine.

Later this evening, after having gotten quite a good sleep, they made their first ventures out to the door of the shelter. They came out far enough just to get to the pot of feed we had left for them. They truly “ate like pigs”! Once their little bellies were full back they went to bed down for the night. Now that they have gotten over the stress of the move and the cold of last night and have gotten a little used to us we will have to see if we can coax them out into their pen to explore.

Of course we only took a “few” pictures of them. Undoubtedly there will be more to come!