The painters are here and the house is looking great.  After it is all done all three buildings (the house, the barn and the chicken coop) will all be Hunter Green and Cream.  These guys are doing a good job.  We had  a lot of trim that needed to be sealed and they are taking care of all of it.  After this is done then the contractor comes out to replace the doors and the one window you see in the picture.  The JAZFarm farmhouse will be watertight and ready for winter!

To all my Doomer, Prepper, Peaker, Survivalist, Environmentalist, Collapsitarian, Homesteader, and Organic Gardener friends: A call for Props, Back Pats and Atta Boys! (Hey if I don’t get it from you there’s only the dog here!)

51 years old, 51 8 foot by 6 inch fence posts with 3 foot holes, 51 60lb bags of concrete, two days…….. DONE!!!! I am IRON MAN… sing with me daa daa dadadaa dadadada da da da daa.

I still have to hang the gates and string the fence but the days of EVERYTHING I TOUCH this past year weighing over 60 lbs and having to be lugged because NONE of it has handles, are OVER!!! The JAZ farm house has been virtually 100% remodeled, the dog run/future goat pen, DONE. Ginormous Chicken coop… DONE. 51 ffffffffreeeeeekin fence posts for my 3/4 acre garden – DONE! Time: one year – right on my self-imposed schedule! Almost time to get down to the business and enjoyment of planting! Woohoo!!! Uh huh, Uh huh! whodaman? whodaman? dats right dats right!!!

Ok I’m back…. sorry. ; )

Lessons learned: Use a power washer to soften up the ground before you auger in Colorado soil. Don’t drop bags of Quick Crete on the ground or you’ll cuss and scoop up lots of cement. If the auger goes in crooked don’t leave it that way or the posts won’t go in right, and 2…… take your time or you will be drinking lots of Aspirin/Wine pain bombs. Anybody near enough to come by and walk on my back?

Pictures for proof! Oh ya, and there is one a good friend sent of a picture out the window of a plane while we were having our floods!! This looks like it is near our farm. Can’t really tell but it looks close. Beautiful though…. even if it did send CAFO crap and Oil down every stream in the state.

At long last the post holes are all dug.  The tractor lived to tell about it!  I am so glad to have it finished.  Now to haul, poor and set 51, 60 lb bags of Quick-Crete.   I did the first 10 yesterday with hopes to do a bunch more today (Friday).  My back is having something to say about that.  Going to give it a rest for a day or two.  Zina leaves on a business trip Sunday and I will be alone for the following 8 days.  Will get the inner-hulk healed and re-motivated and kick em out.  I am so happy that this is all proceeding on my “self-imposed” schedule.  It was a year ago this week when we found the place.  It has been my goal to have the farm “farmable” in the first year.  The house is almost all remodeled (contractors are coming in the next week to replace the doors and one window, and we are having the place painted).  This will make the place water tight and with the exception of some bathroom issues, completely livable.

The next step after fencing in the garden is to get the compost dug into the soil and get the drip irrigation installed.  The second coop needs to be built so we can have the broiler birds going by about next May (plenty of time).  This coop is a part of the existing one.  It won’t be as big a project as the first one.  Broilers don’t need roosts, nesting boxes, etc. and the fencing and building are already constructed.  I need to build a floor, install one wall, an automatic chicken door and a people door.  We then need to get the “sanitary” processing equipment.

So off I go to make some righteous homemade pizza.  Tonight its home made whole wheat pizza crust, our own dehydrated tomatoes, our own garlic, and our own eggplant, topped with cheese from Zina’s company.  I love homesteading!

The birds are all about the size of basket balls now.  We have made the change from growing food rations to adult hen layer feed.  All growed up!  Can’t wait to see the first eggs!

This infernal fence has got to be the last back breaking project for awhile.  Farmer Jon’s ass is draggin’.   If you have never worked on a tractor, you might think that the engine does all the work.  HONK, Wrong! Thanks for playing.  When that post hole digger is on, that machine will shake you to death!  This is one of the more frustrating projects I’ve done.  Part of it is because I am kind of rushing to get the posts in ahead of any big freeze (just what I’d need is frozen ground.  Ground that is already hard like Native American Clay Pots!)  The ground is unbelievably hard to get into.  My 23 horse tractor stalls out on just about every hole.

I am convinced that the universe has a very playful side and that when I do projects there is some invisible little Sprite just messing with me anyway it can!  Guys you know what I mean.  All you want to do is run an electric cord out to do some work….. easy right…. WRONG!  It gets hung up on everything!  Its tangled and doesn’t roll out nice and neatly.  You want to pull out a hose because you need to use the power washer to soften up the ground for the next hole.  Easy?  WRONG!  The hose finds any and all corners, lifts, edges and crannies to lodge itself into and you have to walk 50 yards to free the thing.  You know of which I speak.  You’ve got ONE LAST screw to put in to hang up a feeder in the coop.  You try to get it in place and POP! it falls into the chicken feed and now you have to drop everything, dig through it and find it!  And the list goes on and on and on.  Sprites messing with you so that nothing goes swimmingly!!  Gotta keep a sense of humor.  The Sprite best stay invisible too because if I ever caught the little gremlin………

Anywho, I now have 40 of the 53 posts dug in.  Trying to align them is a bit of a trick and I had two posts that were about a foot or so out of true with the rest of the posts I put in this morning.  So, being the perfectionist, I pulled the posts out, filled in the old holes and got started on the new ones.  The Sprite emerged!!  The two do over holes proved to be the absolute worst of the day!  I had blogged before about how hard the ground is.  By jamming a power washer into the ground the dirt can be loosened a bit and it doesn’t stick quite so badly.  Not so today!  The first do over hole was so hard the digger got stuck to the gear box again.  I had to flip on the PTO, watch the shaft turn maybe a 16th of a turn, flip off the PTO so as not to stall the tractor, and repeat that at least 50 times.  I was really starting to worry that I was going to rip up the hydraulics on the tractor.

After finally getting that one done (a very dry hole), I moved on to the second do over.  OMG!!!  This was the reverse of the first one.  I stuck the power washer down into the ground and soaked it up really good.  Too good it turns out.  This one was like a chocolate mud hole!  The auger got away from me and drilled itself all the way into the ground and I was hosed.  This was goo.  The Sprite turned the tables on me.  This time the auger would spin but the hydraulics on the 3 point hitch couldn’t pull it back out of the ground!!  It would just sit there buried 3 1/2 feet in the ground and spin like a kitchen mixer!!  I went to the barn, got the floor jack and tried to get it out that way but all it did was lift the tractor off the ground!

I tried again and let it spin for awhile.  Eventually the cork screw shaped auger belched out a tube of mud that looked like the consistency of pink slime!  It rattled, groaned and belched and finally freed itself.  Anyone who has ever stepped into a deep mud hole wearing a pair of muck boots can understand this.  The mud acted like a giant suction and all the auger did by spinning was seal the mud in around itself.  Thanks to the Sprite, I was very concerned that the auger was going to spend the winter in that hole.  It finally gave way and all is forgiven.  Beware of construction Sprites, they will mess with you when you least expect it.

So I figure I have maybe two more days of post hole digging.  Then they all get leveled and cemented in, the gates go up and the fencing gets nailed in place.  I will NOT be doing this again anytime soon!

This morning Zina looked out the window and was surprised to see farmer Brad and his big toy tractor.  We had noticed that the property had been disced (plowed to get ready for seeding) but couldn’t tell if it had been drilled (a seed drill is a gizmo that puts seed into the ground and then covers it up so it doesn’t blow away.  Evidently it had not been and Brad came tooling through the property, seed drill in tow.  It didn’t take him a half an hour to plant 30 acres with winter wheat.  Hopefully, come next spring our fields will be green with growing wheat and then “amber waves of grain” by the 4th of July.

While these folks can cover an awful lot of ground, man is it inefficient.  We have had our whole field exposed to the air all summer.  The wind has blown away soil, dust gets on everything, and it seems that a tractor, diesel fuel, Round-up, and seeding, followed by swathing and threshing with another big combine burning diesel, is what modern farming has become.  It is likely that next year we will cut his access in half, re-seed haying grass to the front half and start rotational grazing of some fashion or another.  Also, because the big organic garden will at least have SOME planting in it next spring, I can’t have Mr. Diesel farmer, spraying Round-Up and 2 – 4- D anywhere near it.  At least though, come harvest, when the combine discharges the chaff, we will have some natural muching ground cover.

I got out in earnest today and began digging the post holes to fence in the garden and coop.  If ever there was a device worth its cost it is this beastie!  When the ground is dry here it is extremely hard.  When it is wet though, it is pretty easy to get through.  I found that out by trial and error over the past few months and even more so today.  This tool can dig out a 30 inch deep 9 inch wide hole in just a couple of minutes.  I hope to have a third or more of them done by the end of the weekend.

The only issue is that the auger itself can over power the tractor.  My little tractor is 23 horsepower.  It is quite a workhorse but the auger acts like a wine bottle opener.  If the corkscrew gets into the ground it will keep on digging in deeper and deeper completely overwhelming the hydraulics on the tractor’s 3 point hitch.  You know the ground is hard if it can stall out a tractor.  It dug itself into one hole and practically pulled the front tires off the ground.  I have had to get it unstuck a few times and am learning some of the tricks needed to get it free.

The fencing guys who were out earlier this year taught me a trick that I’m going to have to use.  Because the ground is more pliable when wet, they force a power washer gun down into the ground to get it moistened.  Even with the moisture we have had the past couple of weeks the ground is only wet the first few inches below the surface.  The rest is dry like a sandbox.  Getting the sub-soil moistened will hopefully help keep from drilling this thing to China.  There were a couple of instances where it drilled itself into the ground right down to the gear box.  Not such a great thing.  Through some rocking back and forth and other maneuvers it finally broke free.  The manual says to have several replacement sheering bolts handy because if it gets stuck it can snap them off.  Haven’t had that happen yet, but one is a bit bent.  Live and learn.  I am just so grateful that I am not having 1. To pay to have someone do this (the auger has already paid for itself) and 2. Not have to dig these almost 3 foot deep holes by hand!  Once this is done I get to learn how to use a fence stretcher to tension out the fence and nail it to the posts.  Always something going on.

The project after that, as it will still hopefully be winter and the garden won’t be workable for awhile, is to build the second coop in the chicken run.  We debated back and forth today on how to make that happen.  Because this coop will be for raising meat birds it doesn’t need to be nearly as elaborate as the layer’s house.  They don’t roost, they won’t lay eggs so they don’t need nesting boxes and they will only be in the pen for about 5 or 6 weeks.  They need a place to sleep, an automatic door to protect them just like the layers, it doesn’t need electricity or any kind of heated waterers as they will be raised in the spring to early summer.  The expense that was put into the layer coop will likely be put into the processing equipment (kill cones, scalder, plucker, stainless steel tables, freezer and the like).  After all, gotta keep the USDA (or USDUH) happy.  Salmonella is a very bad thing.

The puzzle had to do with the layers in the summer time.  The section of the barn where the new coop will go is also the place where the layers go during the day to escape the sun.  What we came up with is a way to have wide swinging doors that will allow access to that part of the barn, but can also be closed off when the meat birds are in it.  It is a very bad idea to introduce new birds to an existing flock.  It screws up the pecking order and can stress them out (stressed layers stop laying).  So instead of building and fencing in a whole new coop it looks as though we are going to be able to do it all in one place.  A very nice thing as I wasn’t really too keen on paying for a whole 2nd coop set up.

Here are some pictures of the beginning of the fencing project and a couple of cute signs we put up on the barn itself (The one below the window is hard to read.  It says, “Rooster Brand Coffee”  The rooster is exclaiming, “WAKE THE HELL UP!”)   At least one of the roosters today was trying to get his cockadoodledo on.  It was pretty humorous.  It sounded like a teenager who’s voice is beginning to change.  We will likely have roosters joining the chorus of roosters to the north and south of us very soon.  Some people hate that sound, I think it is “wonderful”.  The girls are all having their little skirmishes trying to establish their pecking order.  They have also turned out to be BIG food wasters.  I filled one feeder yesterday with about 25 lbs of feed and they had flicked most of it out onto the ground by the end of the day today.  They call it “billing out”.  They peck into the food and when they do, a bunch of it gets thrown out onto the ground.  Oh well, I guess if they run out when I’m not here they can just scratch and peck it off of the barn floor!

PS:  May some sanity finally prevail in Washington.  These children shouldn’t be governing.  I’m getting too old and burned out to keep having to do financial planning via crisis management.  I refuse to melt down again because of having to defend people against criminals.  Selling chicken eggs is starting to look better and better all the time!!!

After almost two weeks of being completely stuck in the mud and high centered, the truck has been freed!  Brad, the farmer we are leasing much of the property to, is almost to the planting stage for winter wheat.  He came by and saw the truck in its mud grave.  He was driving the same tractor that plowed out our driveway this past winter.  Using my heavy chains, he pulled up, hitched up to the truck’s trailer hitch and inside of about 30 seconds the truck was out!  A tractor with 8 five foot tall tires – pulling out a Dodge 2500 Ram V10 Long bed….. now there’s something you don’t see at the golf course or the mall!!

It runs and still drives but it isn’t a 4 wheel drive anymore.  Either the transfer case is busted or the front differential.  Oh well.  We decided not to renew the license plates and they expired August 31st.  I have a thirty day grace period to get some things I need to do done, then it is off to sell my soul to the Dodge dealership for a new truck.  This one was purchased when Aaron was 5, has taken us to the top of the world and back dozens of times, more archery tournaments than I can count, hunting camps galore, hauled thousands of pounds of gravel and topsoil, white out blizzards in the high country, is on its second transmission, needs a third, and now has differential issues.  Thank you big truck, The Make A Wish Foundation will appreciate your contribution.

While we may be in a drought, the monsoons sure did a number on this place.  Here are a couple of pictures of the drainage and truck.  Two weeks later, the lake in the back 30 is only now subsiding.  Hopefully, when it goes, so will the mosquitoes!

We have also begun work on the garden fence.  One project gets finished and a dozen more get started.  I am fencing in about a half an acre and will also electrify it to keep out the deer, coyotes, antelope and rabbits (especially rabbits!).  I have laid out the posts and corners for the front facing section.  Saturday, Zina and I took the newly freed truck up to Greeley to the Tractor Supply Company and picked up a tractor mounted post hole digger.  As there will likely be close to a hundred posts I didn’t want to have to do them all with the hand held gas auger I have now. That thing will shake the life out of you.  The holes need to be 30 – 36 inches deep.  The power washer, to soften up the ground, and the auger, are going to get quite a work out.

Once the fence is up, then the JAZ Farm can kind of officially be deemed functional.  The construction projects will slow way down and the work on the beds, the irrigation, and the soil amending will take the place of lifting, sawing, screwing, nailing, cussing, ……

The 32 chickens are all over a pound a piece now and we have identified the three roosters we ordered as well.  The hens are supposed to start laying eggs around 20 weeks of age and that will put them somewhere near the first of the year.  As the days are shorter then and they need long daylight cycles to lay consistently we may not have many to speak of until spring.  At this rate, I will have the garden fenced and ready to do at least some planting in the spring, the chickens will be laying eggs, I will have built the second coop for the meat birds, brooded the meat birds, and have produce, eggs, and meat by early next summer.  My goal was to build the place out in a year.  Knocking on wood, it looks like that will happen.  Guess no one can accuse us EVER of being lazy…. although some have tried.

Happy Labor Day All!

After months of seemingly doing nothing but planning and building the coop, it seems odd that most of that work is completed.  We have wasted no time putting it to use.  We have ordered our first little flock of chicks.  Murray McMurray hatchery will be delivering 34 day old chicks Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.  I watched a video of how they are delivered.  Very ingenious.  They come priority mail and the post office calls you and lets you know when they arrive.  The boxes they use to ship them are designed for maximum airflow.  The interiors are adjustable so the birds are either closer together in the winter or farther apart in the summer to adjust for body heat.  I guess, because they still have some of the yolk left, that the trip doesn’t bother them.  They have enough food and are hydrated enough to make the quick trip.  Once they arrive, you do have to teach them how to eat and drink.  Each little fuzz ball has to have its beak dipped into the water.  You have to make sure you see them drink otherwise they won’t know how and will die of dehydration.  Once they have discovered drinking, you have to do the same with their food.

We ordered 3 roosters and 30 hens.  The hatchery is sending us a bonus “mystery” bird.  It will be fun to see what it is.

Once they arrive they need constant attention for the first month.  We set up a brooder consisting of a galvanized water tank, heater, feeders and waterers in our city grow room in the basement.  With Aaron around before college through August, we will be able to have tag team chick-sitting throughout the process.  Once they are about a month old they will go out to the farm coop.

I will post pictures of the whole set up next week once it is populated.

With the coop finished, my thoughts switched almost immediately to the garden.  I have figured out the fencing configuration which, of course, means more post holes!  My poor back.  I had a forced hiatus with respect to the post hole digging because while digging the trench around the coop I burst the pressurized hose on the power washer.  Waiting for a replacement.  I will never dig another hole out there without it!

I am thinking that I will be attaching the perimeter fence of the garden to the coop itself.  That way, in the spring and fall when I want the chickens to go out and peck and forage in the garden all I have to do is open the coop gate and let them out.

I had some initial concerns about how much water is available to me with my well.  Not that it can’ t handle it, but what my rights are.  I looked up the paperwork on the well and it turns out that if I ran the well pump 24/7, it couldn’t pump the amount of water I am allowed annually.  Evidently it is 2.5 acre feet per year.  That equates to some 815,000 gallons per year.  My pump produces 10 gallon per minute.  Do the math.  Water concerns alleviated.  I hope to get the drip tapes strung yet this summer so I can get cover crops planted.  The soil needs to be doctored and that would be a great first step.

We have been in another drought this summer.  As a result,  it appears that our farmer land leaser has abandoned his wheat project.  The USDA office said that there have been a couple of other folks looking for him too and he seems to be in absentia.  That is kind of disconcerting because he plowed up the property and the bare soil has been sitting there.  As it gets dried out, it blows away pretty easily.  The only thing growing at this point is a very healthy and vibrant crop of bindweed.  If you’ve ever had to deal with that invasive stuff……   We are thinking we won’t be attempting that again.  I have learned enough about growing wheat, corn and sunflowers for personal use that I don’t see the reason for it.  We are messing with the idea of restoring the vegetation to the back 30 and make it available to the myriad birds, antelope, foxes, rabbits and other wildlife we have seen out there.  I have been driving the tractor around the perimeter of the farm to mash down the ground again where the plow dug it up so we can resume our daily walks around the farm for exercise and dog running.

I am investigating the procedures involved with having someone coming in and seed drill hay grass into the front 10 acres.  That will hold in the soil and give me hay and feed for chickens and future critters.

So after JUGS this weekend, the babies arrive.  Once that happens, we will be doing activities via hand off of chick sitting tasks.  I will have some time to let my body heal from the months of construction work, pay some attention to the back yard garden, and plan out the next evolution…. the production of food.

So up to this point we are all very proud of the accomplishments.  We are on the verge of a new change of lifestyle with the responsibility of livestock, and in a few short weeks, a kid going off to experience the world of college.

What A Long Strange Trip Its Been

What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been.  The kid is all graduated.  Grandma has come and gone (thanks again for the gardening and coop painting help!).  I’ve visited clients in Steamboat Springs.  We sold a piece of property that will help to greatly reduce our expenses.  Aaron and mom are headed to college this weekend for freshman orientation and I am out here for the rest of the week trying to get the building phase of the chicken coop finished.

We are hoping that by the end of this month that we will be ordering our first chicks.  For ease of initiation, we read that Buff Orpington chickens are pretty easy to care for.  From there, we will try others and we also hope to both hatch our own chicks and start raising our own meat birds in the not too distant future.  After all, JAZ Farm exists to be sustainable.  What is more sustainable than raising your own meat and having chickens to provide you with eggs- all with a majority of the flock’s food raised right here on the same property!

Here is a link that shows what Buff Orpingtons look like:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/buff-orpingtons-chicken-breed-information-pictures

What has happened, that was indeed expected but is always something of a shock, is HEAT!  As I write this it is 97 degrees with 30 mph winds and it seems to be starting a bunch of Colorado on fire.  For those of you who have gone on tours with us to Royal Gorge… it has been evacuated due to a fire that broke out today.  Global warming is a myth right?  The latest is that NYC will see a two foot rise in sea levels by mid-century.  Seester!  Come to the high ground!

My sister once described western heat:  “Its like sitting in an oven while trying to cool yourself off with a hairdryer.”  Its WAY too hot today so the banging and clanking of construction hasn’t started yet.  Poor Basil the dog is trying to cool herself down any way possible.  I have been feeding her ice, which she really seems to enjoy.  I may head up to the feed store tomorrow and see if they have a small water trough I can use as a wading pool for her.  She’s downright miserable.

This past weekend Zina started to add the final coats of paint to the coop.  We chose a cream color to match the barn’s trim.  We also plan to paint the house the same color so all will be somewhat coordinated.

While she painted, I insulated and started to put up the interior walls.  Once done and painted, the coop will be useable.  After that, then we will order our 25 chicks (one rooster).  They will brood in my grow room in the city.  It has plenty of room, hot lights, and the ability to have one of us around to give them the constant supervision they require for the first month.

At about 5 weeks they will be transported via dog crates that Basil has long since outgrown (she is now 9 months old and weighs 90 lbs!).  I will take some time off to be here at the farm to make sure they get acclimatized and that all the feeding and watering and automatic door opener gizmos work.

We are very proud of all of our accomplishments to date.  We got the place in December of 2012 (the predicted end of the world) and since then it has been full days every weekend or more since.  It certainly doesn’t look like the place we bought!

Also, our door wall to our deck didn’t have any curtains on it.  We would eat breakfast with the sun shining directly into our eyes.  Zina bought a curtain rod and some french style drapes and we now have some of that good ol’ modern ambience.  It looks great!

Here are the latest: