I had posted a bunch of videos a while ago through Facebook and was told that they wouldn’t play on this venue. My technogeek son schooled me up on how to upload to You Tube and these seem to be working better.
Here is a fly over of the farm from earlier this spring. The solar panels and greenhouse aren’t up yet but it is a good fly over of the place.
JAZ Farm has just completed its third year. It will go down as the year that tried all of our patience, our tenacity, our physical endurance and our faith in people. The farm itself is now a functioning entity and the major projects have been completed, but getting there, because contractors and other people were involved, always had that end result in doubt.
The year began with the dog having surgery and contracting to have a greenhouse delivered. For two months the dog had to be bed rested and taken everywhere on a leash. The greenhouse story has been well documented in other posts but I have never been through such an ordeal with such a dishonest individual (well… yes I have but its been awhile). It is now built and it does have plants growing in it. We are very pleased with it now that has arrived and Aaron and I built it. We have discovered though, that the summer is going to present certain problems keeping it cool enough to use. Thus, during Christmas break, I will be hanging shade cloth inside so that we can help to diminish some of the intensity of the sun. It will be a 50% sun reduction and hopefully it will keep the internal temperature in the 80s instead of the 100+ temperatures we get here.
No sooner did we get the greenhouse built, we began the work of taking the farm off-grid. We researched and contracted with Solar Mart to put up a solar array and proceeded to get ripped off for our whole cost of purchase and set up. We are still embroiled in settlements and prosecution and may or may see some justice from this. Once the shock subsided some, we found a wonderful group of guys who picked up where the criminals left off.
As a result, I am happy to report that tomorrow, December 17th, the power company will be here to switch out their meter and I will be flipping the switches to make us electricity independent. It cost a fortune because of getting ripped off, but fortunately the federal credit will help to offset some of this. Because, as it always figures, the money we had stolen could have gone to purchase my wife a new car…. which as I type is in the dealership with electrical issues. Both the greenhouse and the solar array put us in contact with the essence of the dishonesty of people. We were hugely disillusioned. Our projects got completed but it certainly didn’t instill any sense of trust in our fellow man. However, we are SO excited to be taking the place off grid. It will make the seed germination process much less expensive, and when the grid goes down, our freezers will have automatic backup to keep our produce and meat from thawing. The meat freezer currently has 45 chickens and 3 whole pigs in it (approximately 550 lbs). A power loss would be devastating. Because we can’t be here every day, it is great peace of mind knowing that the back up will kick in whether we are here or not!
Improvements and accessibility:
We finally have the driveway covered so that we can get in and out of the farm without spinning our wheels when it rains. We had 150 tons of milled asphalt delivered. I took the tractor and spread it out and now we don’t slip and slide in the snot that gets created in inclement weather. We will be bringing more in in the spring to cover the parking apron and to fill in some low spots.
Along with the usual chickens and eggs, we built a pig pen! As usual, this was not a smooth and drama free affair as getting the shed for the pigs to get in out of the weather just about killed me. The posts from this year describe what a tussle I had just getting the thing off the trailer! Because of a disease running through the pork population that was killing piglets, we didn’t think we were going to get any to raise. Thanks to our local feed store, they found 3 Hampshires for us and the JAZ Farm had piggies! So just like the greenhouse and solar array are thrilling, even though it took a lot more effort than anticipated, raising pigs is AWESOME! They are super easy to keep. We only had one issue early on when one of them had a respiratory infection and I had to give her penicillin shots for 2 weeks. Lesson learned: if you have to do that, wear ear plugs. A piglet squealing inside of a steel shed is louder than any rock concert I’ve ever attended! All in all though, they are very friendly and have very few needs. In fact, when we get our livestock barn built, we will probably start breeding our own.
The JAZ Farm experimented with raising wheat this year as well. All in all it went well and we learned a bit about getting the soil prepared for it. Wheat and corn are very nitrogen intensive so we will have to make sure we have the ground thoroughly prepared for it when we plant again in the spring. Zina seems to really love the threshing and winnowing processes involved. She received a Scythe for her birthday so I guess we really need to get the seed ordered for the spring!
Because of the hassles of getting the big building projects going, Zina took on the bulk of the garden weeding this year. Aaron and I were continually busy in the heat of the deep summer putting up the greenhouse. Zina put on the garden warrior suit and beat back the weeds in the garden so as not to lose the whole thing from neglect. We had a lot of successes again and a few failures, which is to be expected. The strawberries took root, the beets, carrots, onions, potatoes and beans were incredible. The sunflowers loved the sun of the high plains, the Butternut squash took over the world but the Acorn Squash languished this year. Because of the interminable delay with the greenhouse and an unexpected freeze, for the first time in 10 years, I had almost no tomato harvest. That will NOT happen again. I threw away dozens of beautiful tomato plants and the jerk we bought the greenhouse from is to blame for all of it. The Asparagus continued to develop and had we taken better care of them, the melons were amazing! We didn’t get them harvested early enough so we had a lot that went bad – to the delight of the chickens and pigs – same with the cabbage. Because the big building projects are now completed, we plan to devote our energy this year to making the garden flourish. To build the soil quality and to fill the beds in the greenhouse, we had 60 yards of compost and planters mix soil brought in. We also have been composting the chicken waste, and the pigs completely turned over our manure pile so we will have plenty of fertilizer available in the spring. The addition to the garden will also include about a dozen apple trees. This will both provide food as well as create badly needed wind breaks.
The prepper part of me, in addition to wanting to be off grid, embarked on developing alternative cooking arrangements to the usual kitchen stove and barbecue grill. Our deck is now an alternative cooking area. We are now able to cook with electricity (free now with the solar panels), with propane (grill and outdoor burners – primarily for canning), with the sun (we purchased an amazing solar oven) and biomass (A rocket stove and gasifying stove). It is my assertion that if one lives in a place with the sun as intensive as it is here, there is NO reason to rely on fossil fuels and the corruption involved in that industry. The solar panels and the outdoor kitchen are the start. We will be installing solar hot water and a solar heat collector for heating, and a wood burning stove in 2016. My profession is all about helping people to achieve financial independence, so it stands to reason that self-sufficiency is simply the next level of those goals. Once completed we will have no electric, water, or sewer bills. We will have a minuscule food bill (mostly the purchase of seeds that we can’t save ourselves). The solar water heater, wood stove and heat collector will reduce our propane bill to practically nothing.
Lastly, the permaculturist in me is determined to heal this piece of land from the conventional land that has degraded the soil over the years. We let the land rest this year and were overrun with invasive weeds. Because of the weather swings due to climate change, we either had too much rain or total drought; which made this project a challenge. We plan to bring in cows and goats to rotationally graze the land and build fertility. However, in order to do this we need to get the grass growing here again. We are consulting with a planter to get this done but we weren’t able to get him into the fields this year. So once the spring arrives Tom will be out here to mow the rest of the place and then “drill” in alfalfa and short prairie grass seed to start creating some cover that can be both grazed, cut and baled. This is a big process but in the end, once it takes, the scar that was inflicted here from conventional agriculture will disappear. Even during this past year, letting the land rest has re-attracted Antelope, MICE, falcons, hawks and horned owls. We now have a resident 6 foot bull snake in the garden (great mouser), and the rabbits seem to think the weed cover is just the best. We have hundreds of Meadowlarks as well. I have done a ton of research on this and it is my non-food producing goal for the farm to have this back as much to its natural state as possible.
So as winter descends and the shortest day of the year being next week, it is a time to reflect, evaluate and plan. Over the holiday break I will be laying out the garden and order seed for the 2016 adventures. As the winter proceeds we will be decommissioning the garden in the city as it is simply too much for me to garden in both locations. It is kind of melancholy to think of as the whole farm project evolved from that backyard oasis. It will be turned into a pollinator garden for the bees.
This was an incredibly trying year. Emotionally I cannot STAND what this country has become politically and ethically – we have truly gone off the rails. Physically, 2015 was about all I could handle. Since the construction of the greenhouse I have had to really power down and let my joints heal. I’ve been in pain every day since and it is only now starting to subside. I’ll be getting on the treadmill and exercise bike and get this old crate back in shape so that we can now USE the JAZ Farm that we have spent the past three years building. As my wife is oft to let me know, JAZ Farm’s biggest and most powerful implement is …. ME! If I can’t function, the farm will not exist. Something important to remember…. always. I hope to be doing this until they find me keeled over my broadfork.
Peace ya’ll.
One Wednesday, Bossy the pig goes to the processor. The other two went about a month or so ago. I can tell you with conviction, that if we had no other reason for having a hobby farm, the produce and meat would be reason enough. Oh my god is that bacon and ham amazing!
The first two went off first because they were no trouble to get on the trailer. Bossy, having some issues with her hips, wanted nothing to do with getting loaded. We figured that if we forced her on, the other two might try to come back off so we decided to keep Bossy Britches another month. You could tell she was lonely being all by herself, but she thought it was the best thing ever to have all the food to herself! As a result, she is easily 300 lbs. To get an idea of how much meat that translates into just multiply by .68. We got 350 lbs of meat from the other two. If Bossy is 300 lbs then there is another 200 lbs on the way! Good thing our neighbor wants a bunch! The hams are HUGE and I could eat the sausage every day!
Now here’s the thing. We bought them from a breeder, fed them nothing but expensive organic feed, apples, milk, bread, and whey protein, had them butchered by the shop the next town over and it worked out to about 5 buck a pound start to finish! You can’t buy factory pork for that price! This was boutique meat. The finest of the fine and raised about 200 feet from where I am sitting. Not only do we have chicken and pork for at least the next year and so do my neighbors in town, it has had no, Zero ZIP antibiotics, they weren’t raised in cement floored crates, they lived outside, the manure was used for compost and fertilizer not held in football sized lagoons, they lived a good life, and the meat is better than anything you have ever tasted!
So today the Freezer Camp Express got backed up into place so she could get used to it being there. A couple of ranch gates I have were strung up to make chutes, and Wednesday morning off she’ll go. We are so enthused by all of this we are considering raising and breeding our own. They are no more trouble than dogs (easier actually) and a whole lotta fun. If a football team had a squad of these porkers on the front line they would not be disappointed. Pigs is STOUT!
We have been building out this farm for 3 years. Time off from work and farm construction has been virtually non-existent. Also, while we have had our followers during all of these years behind the hammer and drills, we have never had a time where we could sit and just chat and swap stories about our successes, failures, and future developments with other hobby farmers.
A great friend of mine from archery, due to various reasons, found himself living in Michigan only about 90 minutes from where I grew up. We used to talk everything archery and shoot a bunch together. I hadn’t seen him in several years since his departure. We hooked up via text and email about a year or so ago and were both absolutely stunned by what we found out. We had both gone off, bought land, and proceeded to destroy ourselves physically by building farms!! Ours grew out of gardening, and theirs grew out of dairy. Understand this though – in all the years we had known each other we had NEVER talked about it. I still find it uncanny that we have both made this leap to self-sufficiency and simple living!
Every year Mother Earth News magazine hosts their sustainability fairs in various places around the country. It is a collection of booths of many subjects and products as well as seminars spaced throughout the weekend. We saw how to build straw-bale houses, keep bees, winter gardening, making solar panels, rocket mass heaters, and many others. Two of my heroes, Wes Jackson, a biologist and Joel Salatin – the guru of the small farm movement were also there.
Paul, his wife, son – in – law, Zina and I decided to meet at the fair in Topeka, Kansas. We had an absolute riot! We went to breakfast, out to dinner, hung out at lectures, wandered booths (I even got to meet a Facebook brother face to face for the first time and bought one of his hand made brooms!) It was just the ticket! It was a short weekend with two long drives at either end, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. It has been so long where traveling didn’t mean having to visit family, or clients. The astronomy star-parties are fun, but the total upheaval of one’s sleep schedule makes it not as relaxing as it could be.
All in all the fair was pretty basic. I have my ideas on how the vendor displays could be more homestead-ish and self-sufficient oriented than they were, but if my friends want to hook up again at one of these things, I’m all in.
Paul, Cindy and Jonathan, it was so great to see you!
Another way to be more self-sufficient and not burn so much fossil fuel is to use the sun and other sources to cook with. Because we have about 350 sunny days here it simply doesn’t make sense not to use that big old nuclear reactor in the sky as much as possible. The solar electric system is the big chunk of that. Solar hot water will be next. Thirdly, we have put together a fun and relatively inexpensive outdoor kitchen on our back deck.
Some of it will use propane, some of it charcoal, another piece will use wood and the center piece is a solar oven. The propane is primarily for heating the pressure canner for food storage. There will also be a propane grill. For the smokey tastes we have a Weber charcoal grill which can also be used to make pizza. The newest additions (thanks to American Express rewards points!) is an All-American Solar Sun Oven and what is called a Rocket Stove. The rocket stove burns very efficiently and really only uses small twigs and branches to cook with. It can boil a pot, heat a fry pan, and I’ve even seen it used to can with. The solar oven is a lot of fun. The mirrored panels direct sunlight into the cooking area. Today while I was doing the “pre-first use” seasoning for it, I had it up to over 300 degrees. No electricity, no gas, no moving parts, in November! Just aim it at the sun and it works just like an oven in the house. This thing will get used a LOT to heat things up.
So here ya go! Lots of ideas. Hopefully we will see more folks doing these kinds of thing as well. Change does NOT have to be drudgery. This is a total kick!
So the project to take the JAZ Farm off grid is finally progressing as it should have all along. The gear is here. The footers are poured. The ground mount racking is here and the SOLAR PANELS ARE ACTUALLY IN THE BARN!! Who would have ever have thought that there could be so much dishonesty, fraud and corruption in the the alternative energy industry? Troy and his crew have been outstanding, even coming out this past Saturday to get the footers poured. All I can say is buyer be ware. It may look good, but don’t pay ’em til they deliver. The world of humans never ceases to delude me.
So anywho, the project is finally progressing. This is called a Grid-tied system with battery back up. For all intents and purposes this takes us off the grid but not quite 100%. The solar panels are the primary source of electricity. If we consume more energy than we produce, the electric company is the back up and will provide us with power (like at night watching TV when it is dark outside). If we produce more electricity than we use (which is more likely the case), we sell it back to the power company (essentially spinning the meter backwards). However, IF the power goes down, the magic boxes in the basement kick in. The panels separate themselves from the grid and their sole job is to keep the batteries charged up. The batteries then are the power source for the house. They are wired to keep the well pump pumping, the refrigerator and the chest freezers running, the furnace working, and power to the master bedroom. During the evening the batteries would be the sole power source. During the day, the solar panels provide the electricity to those circuits and also charge up the batteries.
This is pretty important considering that we have hundreds of pounds of meat in the freezer, not to mention the dozens of pre- made meals we have frozen and all the produce we have stored up. We anticipated that before Thanksgiving the farm will be electricity independent. Once we recover a bit financially from having to pay for this TWICE, we will be contracting with Troy to install solar hot water as well. Once that is done, the only fossil fuel the farm will burn is propane for the furnace and we will be addressing that with a wood stove at a future date.
After getting through our despondency and desires to help Karma along the way in avenging the most recent theft from Solar Mart, a bit of good news has worked its way back to the farm.
Marc, a representative of a referral network, put us in touch with a solar installer that might be able to move us forward after having $31,000.00 basically stolen from us. Troy, the contractor, seems to have us back on track.
Part of the dilemma of having the project be terminated has to do with the fact that power companies seem to hate solar users. IREA, the power company out here, is going to start charging solar users a monthly connection fee to help offset revenue loss due to we people who think their product sucks! After all, why out here on the high, treeless plains, would you NOT use the sun? In addition, because the system has not been installed, we would also lose the federal tax credit which goes a long way to offsetting the cost of purchasing a system like ours.
If we were not able to get things going and had to start from square one, then the system would have to all be redesigned and re-permitted and the cost involved with that is roughly 10k.
Troy got in touch with IREA and the Arapahoe County permit department and was able to find out that 1. IREA still has us listed as good to go on the hook up without having to pay the connection fees and 2. Arapahoe County has the permits approved and waiting and as long as we submit a letter stating we are changing contractors they couldn’t care less who does the installation! Good news! That means that of the $31k that was stolen, because we don’t have to re-engineer the thing, we will now be out 21k instead of $31,000.00 and we will get the federal credit.
Troy looked over the plans and if his cost estimate on parts isn’t worse than Solar Mart we are back in business. We won’t have to pay anything until the gear is here, and then the final payment isn’t due until the thing is working and approved. This is such a relief. While it is no fun to have to eat such a large sum of money, what we stood to lose was worse: No solar, no tax credit, IREAs extortion, and having to start over from square one.
We will likely make a decision this weekend. His estimate now is that we could have the thing running by about Thanksgiving or the first part of December.
Once more into the abyss. Never give up, never quit fighting, and never be afraid to stomp the life out of people who threaten your plans.
Habits are a funny thing. We are coming up on our third anniversary of the farm. Every week for those three years, roughly from Thursday noon through Monday morning I’ve been on the business end of tools and machinery building out the infrastructure. In addition to that there was the whole raising a kid and working a real job. There has been little to no down time. Very little rest. A friend once asked me how long I thought I could keep it up. Answer: 3 years, evidently.
I told my wife while we sat on the front porch, just after my 50th birthday, when we were contemplating the purchase of this place, that it would be a life consuming project. She has also had her share of projects – the biggest being painting the inside of the house, sealing the wood fences and decks, chicken chores, and harvesting while I burned out power tools. After all it was a dilapidated foreclosure, the only infrastructure being the house, barn, and broken down corral for all of the toy horses of the previous owner. I’m not sure she understood the magnitude of its scope. It CONSUMED our lives.
The habit groove wore itself into my brain pretty well. When I turned the last screw on the greenhouse I found myself in a state of disbelief that that three year chapter had come to an end. Sure, projects never really end, but this was the end of what was needed in order for us to see the farm as “complete”. The remodeling of the house, deck building, fence building, chicken coop building, pig pen building, observing field building, dog run construction, driveway covering, organic garden building and growing and harvesting, greenhouse acquisition and building, grow room building, painting, scrubbing, moving furniture in, installing appliances, heaving anything and everything – none if it lite in weight – a never ending spiral of money down a hole – not to mention the mental fatigue of planning things, designing things and thoroughly trying to envision it so as to not make stupid mistakes, had finally come to an end.
So far, a couple of weeks into it, I am starting to actually let myself believe it. I have a synapse worn in my head that says that when I put on overalls it is going to mean frustration, heavy shit to be hauled, and pain. I can’t even count the number of loads I have filled my truck with and then unloaded, along with dozens and dozens of trips to the Depot and the ranch supply stores. Day after day, week after week how many post holes have I dug in three years? How many feet of fencing? How many tons of aggregate and compost and soil have I had delivered and then had to move? . That isn’t the case any longer. How many times have I cut myself, bruised myself, dropped shit on myself and yet gotten up, cussed like a sailor, and continued on anyway? How many building and construction skills have I had to learn, knowing I will probably never use them again?
One of the things I had always wondered in life, was the outside limit of physical and mental endurance that someone can handle. I know that people in horrible conditions can endure herculean amounts of suffering and pain all of which would make this project pale by comparison. But what about a task you set before yourself? What is the upper limit of what one person can really do? After all, people climb mountains and hike thousands of miles or run marathons to try to discover that in themselves. In my case, I know that now. I. Am. Exhausted. My limit has been reached. I climbed the rope, rang the bell and now I will sit for awhile and heal. It helped me slay a lot of demons along the way. The amount of physical work I took on shows just how vicious the voices in my head have been and how much energy needed to be expended to exorcise them. This was an effort more about mental health than physical prowess after all. The demons are now corpses and they will not be missed.
Yesterday, unbelievably, I actually went out into the greenhouse and just sat there zen-ing out. I have actually gone out to the pens just to see the critters, not to repair or change something. We have been out harvesting, with nothing left to have to do but harvest. This morning I drove into the nearest town that has such a thing, and sat in a shop, had coffee and read the news. What a concept. All the while though, I had to catch the thoughts in my head that were telling me that I had to get back, that I couldn’t just relax, that there was something that had to be built or taken care of. Its an amazing thing to look at all that the farm now has on it and think, “Wow! I built practically all of it”. There is still a barn to build and a ranch hydrant to install, some pasture fences to put up in anticipation of our cows and goats, but the fundamental pieces of the farm that will allow us to grow most of our own food is up. It. IS. done.
So I have to now work on changing the habit. Let myself simply merge into it and let the place heal and grow and provide. The biggest reason is that the place kind of broke me. Physically. My hips and shoulders scream at me every day. I use a cane to get around in the morning until I loosen up, and my heels raise holy hell if I go barefoot. I’ll bounce back, I always do. After all, that is what life consuming means. Time for JAZ Farm to just be the farm, not a place where I do penance and beat myself to death for my sins. It has been transformed from an abused plot in a grass field, to a small farm that will be off grid despite that setback. It is the place that we hope to now play and live and escape from the cacophony of the world. I think I will go put on my overalls, go outside, and do………. nothing. What a concept.
We took the pigs off to the processor last week. The “cookies” – the ones we called Oreo and Double Stuff – got onto the trailer without a problem. We deprived them of food for an evening so they were more than willing to jump into the trailer when we put some apples in it. They have extraordinary noses!
Bossy, the one that was almost all black in color, has some issues with her back hips. She wanted nothing to do with the ramp going into the trailer. In fact, when we tried to give her a bit of a push, she balked considerably. Believe me, with their low center of gravity, if a 220 lb pig doesn’t want to be moved…. its not going to be moved. Also, because the other two were already on the trailer, had we really insisted in getting her in there, we ran the risk of the other two coming back off! Soooooo, Bossy is still with us for another month. I am going to have to build a chute to get her up in the trailer. Not a problem, she now gets all the food to herself and I’m sure she doesn’t mind that much.
Oreo and Doubles are now in the process of becoming smoked ham and bacon. It has been a great experience and we are thinking that raising our own might be a great idea. They were fun animals, they were raised with the best food stuffs, they were never caged up, or mis-treated, or given antibiotics, or GMO’s, and in the end they were meant to be food and food they will be. Not only that but they were a big help in turning over my biggest compost pile and that will be put on the gardens here in the next couple of weeks.
JAZ Farm Blog 