Yet another project almost completed. 1200 feet of Lumite laid down with 600 pins. The grass and weeds and BINDWEED out on the prairie have eyes and search for unsuspecting vegetables, delicate plants and small children. This should keep it out of the walkways. Not to mention the awful, devil incarnate goat head thorns! Our “bottom” two beds are the wettest because the garden is on a slight slope. Zina pulled buckets of bind weed out this morning. Now hopefully we will be able to stay on top of it now that most of the torrential spring rains have subsided. Whoosh it was hot!

It is starting to feel like the JAZ Farm is getting more and more completed.  We signed our life away this past Friday and are having a Solar Array put up.  This isn’t a completely off grid system but it has a battery back up.  The power company becomes a back up system as well and will provide us electricity when the sun isn’t shining very brightly or if we use more power than the panels produce (not likely).  If the grid goes down the panels keep the room of batteries charged up.  Out here this is important.  With all of the chicken and pork going into freezers and the fact that our well pump is electric, this system will keep us from losing our food and also ensure that we have water available.

In addition, I will be installing water harvesting tanks to catch water from the roof for irrigation, drinking and providing water to the greenhouse….. which by the way…. is actually HERE!  Now that the Lumite is done (there is some that we need to wait until the fall to lay because we can’t disturb the beds and the pathways are fairly narrow) I can start eyeballing the greenhouse and get the frames assembled.  It isn’t the full length we agreed to during the 8 month fiasco that was the wait time, but we did get the original length and upgraded steel.