So after two weeks, the gardens at both places are in!  As of this morning all of the direct seed vegetables have all come up.  We are anxiously waiting to see if the corn field will start to sprout.  It has had some good soaking so I am sure we will see results soon.

The pigs are becoming more active and inquisitive every day.  They have discovered the wallow and the compost heap and are loving to get muddy and root around in the pile of … well … pile.

The new round of meat birds have gotten to the rollie pollie stage and we are getting the outdoor coop ready to have them for the next month.  The newest layer hens have started laying their little pullet eggs.  They are much smaller than the mature hen’s eggs but it is a way to see that they have started laying at all.  The rooster that attacked my mom hit her so hard he either sprained or broke his own leg.  It appears that his days may be numbered – not paying vet bills for a rooster.

We finally got the good news that the last parts for the greenhouse have shipped.  Some year I’ll have time to build it, but it will be so nice to be rid of this whole nightmare of a purchase.  I assume that I will do a bunch of the assembly work over the 4th of July weekend.  Some of the hours I have available for farm work will likely be curtailed somewhat because of real work and some volatility in our sturdy ol’ markets.

The exciting part is that we have kind of mapped out the last of the real major projects that will take the JAZ Farm to the level we want for infrastructure.  It is my hope in retirement to be able to have enough production that the cost of the farming and food production will pay for itself:  We would sell eggs and pork and organic veggies and chickens, and maybe beef.   So in anticipation of that end we had some issues to prioritize.

As of today these are the projects will be going forward with:

1.  We are having the place seed drilled with Dry Prairie Grass and Alfalfa.  This will give us the ability to graze animals for both meat and fertilizer.  Once growing, we will likely have the back half hayed and stored for winter feeding.  It is my conviction that as long as we have this place there will never be another herbicide like Roundup or 2,4 – D sprayed here again.  The conventional way to re-seed a field is to spray Roundup on the whole place to kill the weeds.  Then they disc the whole thing and seed drill the bare ground.  In keeping with the work of Wes Jackson and Joel Salatin and the entire Permaculture movement, this is going to be a no till operation.  The driller will go over the existing weeds.  As it plants it will use the knocked down plants as a cover crop and a mulch.  That will help to keep the seed from blowing away and help to keep moisture down in the ground so the seeds can take hold.

2.  Once the seeding is done I am going to be fencing in 4 to 5 acre paddocks so that we can rotationally graze and not run the risk of over grazing.  Here on the high Plains over grazing turns land into desserts. We will be working to rebuild a lot of the soil and use cows and goats to help with that task.

3.  The biggest event that will happen in 2015 is that JAZ Farm is going electricity independent!  We are contracting to have a ground mounted 6.5 Kwh solar system with a battery back up installed.  This will be a grid tied system but it has a battery back up in the event of power outages so that we can ensure that we have our well pumping and our freezers freezing.  It isn’t completely off grid but it’s mighty close.  We are looking to see at some point what it would take to take the place completely off the grid but that is for another time.  This is a great thing.  We can run our air conditioning in the summer and run the grow lamps in the spring and not have an electricity bill.

4.  Next in line as the fields establish their new grass will be to put up a livestock barn.

5.  Once the greenhouse is built and operational and the Lumite is laid down on the walkways in the garden (for weed suppression) then I start on the fence building, adding a gutter to the coop for rain water collection, and also starting the rainwater harvesting system on the house and the garage.  I’ll be putting a 55 gallon water barrel on the coop and then have plans for 4 – 1100 gallon above ground cisterns.  If we can fill these in the spring we could conceivably water the garden and greenhouse beds the whole summer.  Not to mention being able to filter the water for consumption.

6.  Lastly (ya right),  in order to cut down significantly on propane usage we will be installing a wood burning stove in the basement.  Solar or on demand hot water may be next and that would virtually eliminate our propane usage.

Once these projects are completed JAZ Farm will be declared complete.  There is  always something, and it is sure to arise, but from there we will have the ability to raise our own organic vegetables – and when planted – apples.  We can grow our own dent corn and wheat.  We will be able to  raise our own chickens and turkeys for both for eggs and meat, Keep our own grazing animals, continue to raise pigs, and also be able to put up our own hay.  It can be done almost all off grid and with a certain amount of water security that homesteads in this part of the world are going to need.  Quite a year once again. Looks like we have the next couple of years worth of projects mapped out. All in addition to the daily chores, our real jobs, a kid in school …  A lot to get done before all the veggies need harvesting!

So the saga continues with the greenhouse.  About a month or so ago we got the plastic for the greenhouse.  Then more delays.  I reported them to the BBB and also sent copies of all the documents and texts that had been exchanged to my attorney.  This, of course, didn’t make the builder very happy but being the customer and we are into month 8 of what was supposted to be a 7 week delivery schedule, I figured I had been more than patient.

3 weeks ago, the roof corners and peaks arrived via Old Dominion.  Because it was so wet and our ground turns into brown snot when it is wet, we ended up unloading about 500 pounds of steel off the semi and into the bed of my pickup.  From there I drove it to the build site and unloaded it again!  I must be made of some seriously tough stuff because everything I do seems to be heavier than it should have to be.

So the peaks and corners have been sitting there awhile now.  The next tracking number arrived and Old Dominion was able to get the truck onto the property this time.  They arrived in the middle of a Tornado warning and I was a bit worried that the driver was going to be with us in our basement for awhile.  The Phd’s at the loading dock put the joists, door framing, and trusses all in the nose of the trailer – all 1200 lbs of it!  The also didn’t give the driver a skid jack with long enough forks to lift it up to roll it to the door.  Also, while in transit, the skid itself failed.  The 10 foot 2×4’s running the length of the skid were completely broken.  The driver and I jacked it up as high as possible and then heave hoed the whole thing the length of the trailer.  We couldn’t use the lift gate because it was too long.  So once again, we offloaded all of the steel by hand and I spent the next morning sorting it into lengths.

OH WAIT THERE”S MORE!  We have one more skid coming.  This will contain the ground railings, the caulking, the rebar ground anchors, and all of the screws.  It is now closing in on the middle of June.  It was supposed to be here the middle to end of January.  I had planned – once more – to build it over the 4th of July weekend.  I do NOT know if that will happen.  I sure hope I get to use it in the fall.  Pretty ironic that it was delivered in the awful Colorado spring weather  –  as it was supposed to be set up to help us get THROUGH that weather.  This has been the single worst purchasing experience of my life.  It looks like it is going to be one stout critter, but I will never ever work with this guy again.

Greeting all!  Again we have had a bit of a hiatus from the blog.  Once again Colorado has not disappointed in providing some very entertaining spring weather.  Recall that last year we got hit multiple times with hail.  Fortunately that hasn’t been the case yet but we have had week after week of rain.  Flash flooding has been going on all around us.  The ground is unbelievably saturated so every time it rains it simply runs off and pools in the lowest points.  A neighbor down the road had a veritable lake in his front yard with the water practically to the front door.

Because we still haven’t received all the parts for the greenhouse (8 calendar months now), we decided to put the tomato plants outside in the city under the hoop huts so they could harden off and so we wouldn’t have such crowded seedling rooms.  As Colorado spring would have it, the temperatures plummeted into the mid – 20’s killing many of them off.  So what is considered a sacrilege to Farmer Jon, he had to go and BUY tomato plants.

We are keeping an eye on radar these days too as the storms in Mexico could send some pretty big rains up here.  Its always something until the mountains melt off.

This has been the sky just about every afternoon for a month!

This was the scene near one of the towns next to us!

The chicken coop got really nasty!  We had to turn over gobs of wet straw to help it dry out.  The chickens thought pecking through it was great fun!

This from the local paper.  During one of the storms, Byers lost an ambulance in a flash flood.  There were people in it and they had to walk a mile (patient too) in order to get help.  Evidently all are ok and the ambulance is salvageable but what a night that must have been!

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.

In anticipation of the 3 Little Pigs arriving this week we finished putting in the wallow.  Pigs don’t sweat and the reason for them slopping around in mud is to keep them cool.  We are already up to 80 degrees in the very early spring and Zina and I have been out gardening in well over 100 F.  So this morning we fitted the tractor with the middle buster and dredged up the dirt and made a place for about a 10 x 10 mud hole.  We are going to run a sprinkler into the middle of it that we can simply turn on when necessary to keep it sloppy muddy and cool.  In addition to the shelter, and the shade gazebo they should be all set.

Because we are running an electrified wire around the perimeter of the pen, we had to pull, knock down and weed whip all of the grass down around the fence.  The wire will be only about a foot off the ground to keep the pigs from trying to uproot the fencing and if enough of the weeds contact the wire it will short to the ground and become ineffective.  Zina had the sickle out and I got on the weed eater.  All seems to be set.

One brain malfunction.  I dug up the wallow with the plow on the back of the tractor and then set about shoveling out the dirt. I wanted to make sides on it to kind of keep the water in the “pool” for them.  About a third of the way along it dawned on me that the tractor is fitted with a front end loader.  Why the hell was I out there with a shovel?  About 10 minutes later the little tractor that could had the whole thing completed.  Bring on the pigs, bring on the greenhouse!

The hotel, gazebo and hot tub!  

Waterers and Feeders

Farmer Juan wiped out laying at the foot of the manure pile

But but but, that pen looks nicer than MINE!!

After having to absolutely berate the guys building our greenhouse I got a commitment to have the thing here at the end of March (with an added 8 feet to the length).  Thats about a week from now.  Hoping it will be here so we can build it in April.  The plants will have to have someplace to go in May so they had better be on schedule.  I am still very excited about its arrival but this has been the worst purchasing experience I’ve been through in a long time.  He will be getting an email from me tomorrow explaining that the 30 tons of top soil and 30 tons of compost arrive TOMORROW and the raised bed boxes have been built.  If he can’t deliver as promised I have an attorney who has volunteered to call to scare the crap out of him.  We expected this by January 1st.  We ordered it two weeks before Thanksgiving 2014.  No more nice.  Get it here or get sued.

I hate poor customer service. Especially when one tries to not buy from big monopolies. This is evidently being built in Colorado and is the same one we ordered. Ordered it mid November. Said 5-7 weeks. Going on 10. Hope I didn’t flush a bunch of cash. If I exhibited such poor customer service I’d be living under an overpass.

This is sure would look nice at OUR place.