A foot of snow last Monday and torrential rain Wednesday….. 85 and sunny today.  Gotta love Colorado.  Finally the forecast is for 50 degree evenings and 70s and 80s in during the day.  Planting shall now commence!

I got the drippers installed on the garden today.  I got a pretty good case of sun stroke from being out there too long — Got WAY dehydrated.  Aaron helped me get the last dozen of the 36 lengths of drip tape installed and as soon as one of the mainline filters arrives the JAZ Farm will have water!

While I was doing that, Aaron and Zina took the plants out of the basement grow room and into the back yard to start hardening off.  In about 5 days the planting will being in earnest.

The city garden gets attacked tomorrow.  The place needs to be spruced up for the impending grandma visit and so the neighbors don’t call the cops for overgrown weeds!

I decided that it made the best sense to put the corn and sunflower patch on its own drip system as well, so Drip Works received another transfusion of cash from the JAZ Farm owners.

It is very exciting to actually be doing the farming work of the farm.  The beds really came together.  Now we cover them with the mulch and get too it.  Let the summer growing begin!

Yes we appreciate the moisture.  Yes we appreciate that it has been cool weather.  BUT! it finally cleared and dried enough to till the beds!!  We are back on track!

Farmer Jon was out on the little tractor and tilled up the garden beds.  It was with the 4×4 engaged and in low range gear climbing over the hills and valleys of the piles that have been sitting there waiting for weeks!  Aaron took over after that task was completed and tilled up the corn and sunflower patch.  Zina started weeding what the tiller didn’t rip up and the garden area now looks like a garden!

The forecast is for the evening temperatures to be right around fifty for most of the next week.  Because of this warm up the plants in the grow room can now go out behind the house to harden off.

It looks like we will actually be planting on Memorial Day weekend!  Grandma better be ready for some serious digging in the dirt! – or anyone else who wants to help for that matter!

Thanks to help from friend Mike and son Aaron, the drift fencing portion of the windbreaks are in place.  There is one stretch of solid fence that still needs to be built but this will get us set for planting…..   of course, the weather still needs to cooperate.  It is still getting down into the 40’s at night.  It looks like Sunday will finally get the evening temps up to where the plants can go out and harden off.

If we can dodge this next round of rain (notice the skies in the pictures below), then tilling can get underway tomorrow.  Aaron got out and plowed up the corn and sunflower patch, so slowly but surely we are progressing along.  The kid applied to the local grain elevator to help unload haulers and load train cars during the wheat harvest.   Very cool if he gets it.  Whoda thunk my kid’s first real non-volunteer summer job would end up being in Ag!  Long hours, lots of dust, heat and gruff hard core laborers.  Perfect!

Looking forward to the grandma visit on Monday!

Last week the weather was in the 80’s.  We got the windbreak done, the chicken chores accomplished and all sorts of other things in anticipation of getting the raised beds tilled and drip tape installed this week, along with the arrival of our broiler chicks next week.  Not so said mother nature!  We had hail and rain yesterday and into the night.  We are expecting more rain today, and this coming Monday we are expecting SNOW and an evening low of 26!!  Farmers are at the mercy of the weather.

I can’t till because of the mud.  I can’t install the drip tapes because I can’t first till.  The plants need to go outside to harden off before planting and that can’t happen because it is too cold!  Planting is going to be late in starting this year.  Oh well, given the adventures our family is going through right now, perhaps that is a good thing.  It will certainly all get done, but we folks who like to think we are in control, often find out that, in fact, we are not.

I recently read a trilogy of books by an author calling himself, Jed McKenna.  It has been an affirmation the likes of which I can’t even begin to describe.  If you want to read an account of what it means to “wake up” and not be a sheep, these books are for you…. only if you are open and ready.   To reverse an often overused quote that says, “when the student is ready the teacher appears”….. I think more accurately should be quoted as:  “When the teacher arrives, the student is ready.”  I was ready.

Letting go of the tiller on the boat is the epitome of farming I am finding out.  Certainly planting season is a busy time, especially when your primary occupation takes full precedence over your homestead; but thinking that you are in control of anything is such a myth and a fallacy.  Let go of the tiller, let the current take you.  When you feel yourself grabbing on tight and wanting to control things, it is at that instance that you need to know its time to let go.  Everything works out for the best.  Indeed, it is impossible for anything to be wrong… even when your ego is screaming at you that it is.

As we work through the final pre-planting tasks and then wait for the weather to allow the crops to go in and it all being delayed according to our schedule, the question isn’t “why?”  Its, “what does this mean and where is it leading?”  I suspect that this time it means that we all need to slow down.  We all need to simply live.  We need to quit thinking we are in some race to some undefined place.  That place, ultimately, is us becoming compost.  To not live currently, trying to build equity for a future that may never come, is ego playing its game.  It is Maya keeping us in prison.  Indeed, it is to rob us of our very lives.  After all, the end result for all of us is death.  Let go of the tiller.  Flow effortlessly down stream.  There is nothing to accomlish, nothing to achieve.  None of it matters.  Let go of the idea that we are “going” somewhere.  Nature will let us plant, our children will find their way, our lives will pass whether we are present with them or simply spending them in exchange for some elusive goal we always call…. the future.

Live now.

The windbreak fences were put up during some of the most intense winds I have experienced.  Because of the broken Jet Stream the air currents were coming straight out of the north and didn’t subside for 5 days.  We had sustained 30+ mph winds with gusts over 70.  I’ve heard this now referred to as Climate 2.0.  It is getting kind of crazy.  Anyway, because these are windbreaks designed to help keep the gales off of the plants I got to see the weak links immediately.  One post, because the concrete didn’t set right, got pushed.  Not pushed over, but enough to let me know where things needed to be reinforced.

I dug 15, 15 inch deep holes across from the posts, installed steel anchors into concrete and strung 2×4’s at roughly 45 degrees to each post.  This has made the wall very rigid and I doubt now that it will meet with any problems (unless of course it is a tornado – eek.)  It was a full day today but the south side windbreak is completed.  There is still a pretty big one to make on the north but that is going to have to wait.

Next week the beds get tilled and the weeds burned off and the drip tapes get installed.  The following week is planting season!  YAY!!  Right on schedule!  I was beginning to think we’d never get to this point.

Stay tuned!  The plants all have to grow yet too!  What an interesting adventure this has been.

May 12th we also get our first batch of broiler chicks.  JAZ Farm is on a roll!

Everyday gets us closer to planting.  It also makes us feel a bit anxious because the clock is ticking.  This past week we were advised to build windbreaks around the garden.  Folks in the know on the high plains said that one of the biggest reasons a garden fails is because of the Wizard of Oz wind we get out here.  So I have been hanging drift fence and building up the metal wall that is to the north of the garden.  Plans are to put up yet another cedar windbreak to fill out that northern length of the garden boarder.  We are both looking forward to the gardening and farming season NEXT year because all of this building will be over and we can concentrate more on just the fun of gardening.  In building a farm from scratch, EVERYTHING has to be built.  Every time you come up with an idea for the homestead it usually involves heavy things, power tools and a sore back.

With the end of tax season here finally we are both taking some time off this next week.  I will be here for most of the week and Zina will come out for a long weekend.  This week will entail rototilling the beds and getting them ready to plant, installing the drip irrigation, and continuing to build windbreak fencing.

We have gotten most of the seedling starts transplanted into bigger pots.  Tonight we did most of the peppers and Zina, in her Agrarian Hippie Chick get up, got them all watered down.