While we tried to keep our minds off of the total screwing we took from Solar Mart we harvested carrots. They never seem to disappoint. I estimated the harvest at around 60 lbs. A third were put into the dehydrator, we canned another third and we made and froze carrot juice with the rest. They are so sweet. I wish we could keep them fresh year round!
If you are going to do something for your retirement that goes well beyond shuffleboard, traveling abroad, golf, or sitting on a beach somewhere, be prepared for the people you contract with to be a much bigger obstacle to your success than the actual plans.
You simply cannot make this up. For those who have followed this blog from the beginning you know that not only is it our intent to build this farm as a symbol of sustainability and an effort to preserve traditions of our agricultural past, it is also to be our retirement place. We hope to be here growing food, raising animals, gazing at the stars, doing crafts and enjoying a rural existence until we are simply too old or unable to continue.
The setbacks have been stunning. All of them have involved dishonest people. We lost the first place we bid on, had to put money into this place before we even owned it, had myriad delays in deliveries, a greenhouse company that couldn’t get its act together, and is now bankrupt and out of business, and now…… not a month after the greenhouse was built, the solar company we contracted with to basically take the place off the grid has defrauded us out of $31,000.00!!! They are no longer in business as we can tell and we have nothing to show for it.
Solar Mart came to us with a spotless record. They were highly recommended, and we even have a credit union right near the place in town for whom they did their solar installation. We were told, because we were also having a battery back up system installed, that Arapahoe county didn’t really understand how the system worked and that they kept coming back with questions. Each question adding delay upon delay. Finally, we were told that we had a project start date. It was supposed to be the Tuesday after Labor Day. Because of that they needed the second payment to pay for the equipment we would have installed. The third being due upon completion. I shuffled my work schedule around so that I could be available for the crew when they arrived. That Tuesday, around 10 am, I received a call from the project manager stating that we were still in the permitting phase; that Arapahoe County still had questions. No one was coming. It was then that my BS detector had come off the neutral peg and started to quiver.
We gave them a week after that. I started making email inquiries and phone calls as to when we could expect the project to begin. No answers from anyone. No returned emails. My wife thought I was just being grumpy. Then she tried to get ahold of them. No answers. Then she got grumpy. I finally decided to jump in the truck and go pay them an unannounced visit. I drove to their showroom… it was dark. Fortunately the door was unlocked so I went in. After a little bit of a wait in a showroom that was clearly being boxed up, the woman we met to give our second check showed up. She told me they weren’t open. She didn’t recognize me at first but when she discovered who I was she got visibly shaken. The DeJong fireworks erupted in a display that I am sure some of the other businesses in that warehouse were quite entertained by. My voice booms. If put in an empty warehouse… it echoes. We were informed that ours was one of the projects that was cancelled due to some alleged negotiations of the sale of the company to another. At that time there was some dispute as to who actually owned the company now.
I got the numbers to both the old owner and the CEO of the acquiring company and both denied owning the company…. Believe me, both understand that I hold them all responsible for stealing our money. There is certainly reason to believe that the project never went to the county for permitting in the first place. It turns out, also, that the woman I encountered at the warehouse was the original owner’s wife. I confronted her point blank as to whether or not she knew about the company’s demise at the time we gave her the second check. Almost in tears and clearly scared to death, she denied it. That is almost certainly a lie. The company was allegedly purchased. The former CEO resigned on August 24th and we gave them the check on the 28th under the perception that there was some urgency to get it to them. It turns out that in the buy/sell agreement there was a clause that stated that if the records being used to justify the sale were not accurate or truthful that the contract was null and void. The seller defrauded that company too and they washed their hands of the sale. We didn’t know about the sale of the company or any of these events until this past week.
Now the money is gone, the project not even started, 40 other projects in disarray and another hassle from dishonest people bedeviling the build out of our homestead. This was to be the last “core” piece of construction needing completion and now we have nothing to show for it.
We have been getting some help. The radio show that Solar Mart had a good reputation with was a referral network. Zina contacted them and their director has been working with us to get some kind of justice. He has an “in” with the DA of the economic crimes division in Denver and we got all of our documentation submitted to him this morning. Zina has already received a response from him stating that this is a cut and dried case of fraud and they will be pursuing it. I doubt that we will see a dime from this. For my clients who read this…. this is why you keep cash reserves!! Fortunately we didn’t go into debt and it won’t break us. This is more a case of shock and disgust. No way they win… no way! I will take great joy seeing him arrested and doing jail time.
So in the meantime, we are all trying to once again heal from the antics of people who simply don’t understand the real meaning of the word honesty. I haven’t really had time to defuse from the whole greenhouse debacle yet and now this! I trust no one anymore. I am continually flabbergasted how some people can live with themselves. I don’t know how many psychological blows I can withstand, although I think my success rate to date has been pretty exemplary.
The warrior is once again determined. Make no mistake, we will pursue this to the end. The farm WILL have solar electricity and we will win. I do NOT take defeats lightly. In fact… I do not take them … at all.
I know the saying that what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger… I am strong enough thank you very much. Never let your guard down because even when something looks on the up and up (and we had NO reason to believe these people would do this to us) it can still go full goose bozo wrong on you. The key is to be able to take blow after blow, get up and keep moving forward. That is what I fully intend to do.
Beware homesteaders…. the monsters are out there and they want your money.
All dressed up but nobody’s home:
Its pretty amazing how quickly nature will take back what is hers if left alone. Our fields were badly beaten up by years of chemical farming in order to grow wheat. The first winter we watched as our topsoil blew away with the wind having been left bare and exposed from the previous year’s harvest. We decided that enough was enough and that we were going to restore the place to natural short prairie grass along with some alfalfa. The idea is that we want to get some grazing animals (goats and cows) to rotationally graze the fields to get some nutrients back into the ground naturally as well as keep the weeds in check. We have been working with a guy in town to have him come out and mow the place and then seed drill it for us. Unfortunately, it has been such a wild summer with extreme dry and then more moisture than we’ve seen in years, that it was either too soft to get the tractor in or too hard so that the driller wouldn’t penetrate the ground. As a result, the weeds took over. The mice had a “field day” – literally, and the hawks and falcons had a happy hunting ground. It has felt all year as if we were trying to repel an invading force of weeds….. and we were losing.
Today we finally got the mower onto the place. The weeds are over 4 feet deep. Thankfully the tractor has enough power to cut them down without much trouble. However, we have had to split the job into a couple of days because with all of the dust and the abnormally hot September weather, the tractor kept overheating. Its quite a job but it is coming along. Next spring, when the ground dries out some but still will sprout seed, he will come out and drill about 20 acres and then we sit and wait and see if the seed takes. The seed has gotten insanely expensive and we have to put down about 35 lbs an acre. Guess I better start saving my pocket change. If it works though, not only will the land get healed but we will be able to put up all of our own hay for the animals to eat for the winter. They will become the compost factory and the manure to vegetable nutrient loop will be complete!
Before:
After:
I’ve done landscaping and built huge gardens. We’ve refurbished a house and built a chicken coop and pig pen but this is simply the biggest structure I’ve ever built. All I can say is good job son, and farmer Jon! Even Zina got in on the act today and helped hold the trim in place while I climbed up that infernal ladder one last time! I am looking forward to some good nights of sleep where my brain isn’t spinning trying to figure out the next stages and ensuring that I don’t do anything stupid and irreversible. Its up! Its here! Woohoo!!
What we have discovered is that it is very hot! We will definitely be putting up shade cloth next spring to help block some of the sun. The fans seem to be doing their job and when the solar array is put up we will be able to run all the fans we want to without having to worry about the electric bill.
We have started laying Lumite on the walk way areas with the intention of bringing in gravel for the “floor”. A trick we learned from some greenhouse videos is that you can spray down the gravel with water in the morning and it will help to keep the humidity up throughout the day. You flat landers might not think that that would be important because your air is as thick as a swimming pool, but out here where the humidity on a bad day is only 30% it will certainly help.
IT”S DONE!!!!!!!!!!!
Because half the country seems to be on fire right now, we have been having pretty smoke filled skies. Last night we watched the moonrise from the deck and it was as orange as I’ve ever seen it. While it does make breathing a little uncomfortable at times, the pictures are spectacular. This is from the deck at about 6 am this past week:
One of Colorado’s big crops is sunflowers. There are fields and fields of them around us. In the past week they have all reached their peak and there is yellow all around us! Next weekend we will be harvesting in earnest as well. The garden seems to be doing well despite our inattention this year because of so many distractions. Zina has already picked all the kidney beans and the wheat is in the winnowing stages. The potatoes look to not be disappointing. Getting them up and stored is always a big job. Hopefully my fingers will be healed up enough after cutting them up working on the greenhouse. Potatoes involve a lot of hand digging despite the tractor’s best efforts.
Zina’s birthday present arrived this past week. She has had so much fun with the wheat growing and harvesting she decided that she needed something more efficient to cut the stalks with. As this is nowhere near needing machinery the Scythe was the logical choice. She has all the gizmos: The scythe, the peening stone and holster, sharpening kit, and book to teach her all the ins and outs. I don’t dare sleep now, I may wake to the grim reaper standing over me!! Happy Birthday Sweetie!
Of course now that the more tedious parts of the greenhouse project need to be done, my son started back to school and we are in a heat wave! While the last remaining pieces aren’t that difficult, I have been forced inside because of the 95 + F temps we have been having. The walls are up and the door is covered on the back. I couldn’t keep going today it was just too hot. So the last steps are to cover the front door, caulk the seam where the roof and the front and back walls meet and then add the decorative trim. I have had to make many round trips to the hardware store (which is about a 2 hour round trip) because the manufacturer shorted me hundreds of the self-tapping screws. I kept wondering if I was being over zealous about my screw usage but looking at his website I’m pretty sure I am just following the instructions.
I have burned my thumb and I have bandaids on 3 fingers on my right hand where my cutting/grinder raked across the top of my hand. Self-inflicted battle wounds. Now that the whole thing is pretty well sealed up, it is a smart thing that we invested in the fans and vents. It is definitely a greenhouse! I’ll bet this afternoon it was 110 inside it. I’m going to have to get a thermometer to hang in there to see how the temperatures fluctuate and adjust with the seasons. We are all very excited to see this coming to a conclusion. This is the end of our hands on construction for 2015. The solar installers start on September the 8th. All we’ve had to do with that is print up lots of money!
Aaron and I for yet another weekend, attacked the greenhouse project! We had to take some time to eyeball and think through the end walls. The posts you see that frame the doors were too long. Everything else has fit perfectly and despite the aggravation of dealing with the manufacturer it is indeed one stout structure. The problem we discovered was in the weight of the roofing and wall trusses. In an effort to keep me from taking him to court, the manufacturer upgraded the framing steel from 16 gauge to 12. It is seriously heavy. I think the design software he was using didn’t take into consideration the sag that would happen because of the added weight. Aaron sat down and did a few diagrams and we came to the conclusion that the added weight pressed down the roof and made it shorter than expected. We went back and forth for most of a morning. After all, this project wasn’t cheap. Now we are considering cutting two pretty important pieces. It turned out that we were correct and all is coming together fabulously!
We got the front and back doors attached. Today I finally got to move and fill the 12 raised beds. They had been weathering in the outdoors since last February but they held up pretty well. After watching the mice scatter after moving the tarp over the dirt we had delivered back in March, I set to placing and filling the beds.
Tomorrow, Aaron and I will put up the last 4 steel braces on the front and back and then install the fans and vents. When that is all done, Zina and I will add the last of the plastic panels and check this project off the list as DONE!
I am so glad to see how well this has come together. It has been such a ridiculous comedy of errors to even get the thing to the property. This marks the last of my seriously huge projects that I will be doing myself. There are a few others, but I am so tired of building things that I am going to treat myself to the use of contractors. I’m spent. Its time to just farm.
Next up once the permits are issued: The solar array. Should be up and going in a couple of weeks!
Aaron and I were driving to the farm yesterday and I asked, “Is it foggy out here?” I thought my sunglasses were dirty. Aaron answered, “Yes it is very hazy”. It turns out that once again our skies are foggy because the country is burning down. Colorado and the north west are burning in a manner that is almost incomprehensible. Fire fighters being brought in from other countries because, in essence, we are tapped out. For the first time, they are looking for volunteers. If you think climate change is a hoax and you are dumb enough to listen to the bought and paid for politicians that try to convince you it is not an established fact you are one of the dumbest individuals that has ever donned a human suit. We are truly screwed and it is a very short time until we see most of our species, and the rest of them for that matter, die. I don’t farm because I think I can do anything about it now. I farm because it feels right. That would be my suggestion: sit down, close your eyes, and ask yourself…. what do you want while you have the time to choose. I can no longer act like it isn’t happening when I have known for decades that it is. Peace. Please. Peace.
Blood Red Sun, Pink Skies. From hundreds of fires. We really screwed up this place.
I have been playing a bit of hooky from work this last half of August. I usually do as I used to take off for archery elk hunting. Aaron came back from town today and there must have been damned near a tornado. No sooner do we say that it looks like the greenhouse stayed up for the day we were gone that we saw the unattached plastic…. EVERYWHERE! There was even a piece behind the house in the wheat field over 100 yards away! This is what it looked like:
Needless to say we kind of freaked until we discovered that none of it was damaged. A contractor once told me that the need to pick up a sheet of plywood is directly proportional to the velocity of the wind! No truer words were ever spoken! These pieces of plastic are pretty light and pliable. They must have just lifted up from the wind during the thunderstorm and they turned into kites.
It was MUCH cooler today so Aaron and I set to it. We got the rest of the roof on and the side walls. We had one incidence when the wind took one of the panels and threatened to rip two others off. Wind SUCKS!! Especially out here!
BUT! It looks awesome. I will not disclose any of our “errors” As far as all readers are concerned… it is absolutely perfect:
Tomorrow we will start building the door wall frames and begin placing the raised beds who’s boxes have been sitting outside since last February! Finally!
JAZ Farm Blog 