The guys hustled this past Thursday to beat the freezing rain that came Friday. Building in January, obviously, can be hit or miss. They had planned on putting the roof on on Friday but the forecast called for 25 mph winds with freezing rain. All of which came to fruition. From experience, picking up sheets of anything out here in the wind can be pretty dangerous. Especially when having to carry them up a ladder. So here we wait to see the weather for Monday, which is iffy. The rest of next week is supposed to be sunny and in the 50s. We’ll take what we can get. The fence is one section shy of being finished as far as it can be until the barn is completed. There is another cement mixer that has to get in there before I can button it up.
Category Archives: JAZ Farm Progress
Kinda Lookin’ Like A Barn
I have to admit that these guys work fast. After the fiasco involved with getting our greenhouse and getting fleeced with our solar system, having this crew get in here gettin’ it done is quite refreshing! Today they have almost finished the framing. Before it rains tomorrow they will be coming out to finish the cross bracing, framing for the overhead door and framing for the people door. If they keep at this pace, I’d expect them to be mostly finished next week. They still have to put on the the over hang (lean to) but this thing will be wrapped up by months end at the latest.
In the mean time, I have been steadily getting the pasture enclosed. Because we are getting goats and donkeys everything says not to skimp on fencing. I didn’t. This is about a quarter mile of “No-Climb” horse fencing. A 200 ft roll weighs about 200 pounds and, of course, I have 8 of them. I’ve learned to use the tractor to move them around. Pre-surgery I’d have just heaved them about. Also, all of the nailing and such that happens close to the ground has had to be re-learned. I don’t bend like I used to so most everything from about 18 inches to the ground is done more or less with a lunge. It’s a lot slower going than in my “Strapping young socialist Muslim”days, but I have more time in the day now that Eliot took over at work and I’ve “retired”.
I learned how to splice field fencing today. Because the sides of the pasture are all about 330 feet long, one roll of this fencing won’t get there. So to make it reach, two rolls have to be spliced together. It works great but it’s very time consuming. Also, as it is a lot like sewing with metal wire, getting poked and scratched and hung up on everything, seems to be standard operating procedure.
I’ve built my share of fencing. For non-large animal enclosures, you put up corners, H-braces and fill in the gaps with more single wood posts and/or metal T-posts. Once the skeleton is up, then you wrap the wire around the perimeter and nail and tie it all into place. Not so here! Larger animals love to rub on things, especially exposed fence posts. Consider a 1200 lb. cow. If she sets to scratchin’ what itches and the fencing is on the outside of the posts, then all the weight is being born by the post and it’s staples and clips. Soon the fence starts to sag and critters take themselves for a walk down the road. So this fence, because of the potential of having larger animals, has the fencing on the inside of the frame. Every corner has to be sewn onto the posts and woven at the corners instead of simply wrapped and nailed. Pulling it taught (stretching it) also becomes a challenge because the corners get closed off and you have to put the come-a-long through the fence that is at 90 degrees to the fence you want to stretch. It takes way more time, causes way more cussing, and takes many more staples. But in the end, now that it is strung inside the posts, if said cow rubs up against the fence, it distributes her weight along the fence and thus several posts instead of it being concentrated on a single one. So it’s worth doing, it’s coming along very well, there have been some snags, but it is turning out to be one stout cage. Once that is finished, in order to further deter escape and fence destruction, it will have 3 strands of electric wire to act as a psychological deterrent to keep them away from it.
As, I had mentioned previously, the livestock barn will serve several purposes. One, we are going to get a few goats. Whether or not they become meat, dairy goats, or just eating and pooping machines, remains to be seen. Also, once completed, I’m going to build a chicken brooder inside so we can eventually quit having to have them in our basement for a month at a time. In addition, a flock of turkeys is on the horizon and their coop will be made from chain link dog kennel panels, inside and outside. Lastly (ya right), there is an animal shelter near here that rescues donkeys. It is likely that we will be adopting two of them once all of this construction is over. One requirement that they have is that the donkeys have their own outdoor corral in addition to the pasture where they can come to eat, feel safe, and have grooming and medical issues tended to. Last weekend that was accomplished. I guess there is not turning back now!
I follow a lot of homesteaders, both on blogs, Facebook and You Tube. I have yet to find any who bought a field of grass with just a dilapidated house, a garage and run down horse shed, and transformed it into a fully operational farm. Sure, there are many who have done some incredible things, but I suspect for lack of resources, many are done via the “make do” approach. Most are many years our junior so what they lack in resources they make up for in energy. This is the last hurrah. There will always be the need to repair things and some lesser, non-urgent projects (I would love to dig a root cellar), but this marks the end of the major construction. It has to be the end. I’m pretty good at all this building of things, but my dream was to be able to actually enjoy the farming part. So far, everyone else has gotten to play – including in my greenhouse! Now it’s my turn too. I am looking forward to a life of simple routine. I relish the life of getting up and tending animals, gathering eggs, making breakfast (cooking in general again) spending time with the livestock, spending hours gardening, harvesting and canning and building our food storage, all without the feeling of some urgency of having to have to get the place built before I’m too old to play with it. The finish line is on the horizon. Three more sections of fence, a couple of pens, and Farmer Juan gets to play with his creation. That will be something to behold.
The Playground Continues
I was making breakfast this morning and when I turned around and looked out the living room window all of the post braces were gone. The guys were out there working and taking advantage of this incredibly weird January weather. Not to be outdone, I got ye old overalls on and got the old crate fired up and headed out for a day of fencing.
By the end of the day, the crew had the barn framed up to the headers. Tomorrow they set the trusses and they should be skinning the thing by the first part of next week.
I am half way through the fencing. I have the equivalent of two sides done. I needed some fencing splicers, which came today, and will be out completing 3 of the 4 sides. I’ll get farther if I can, but my back dictates a lot of what I can accomplish.
More to come.
A Good Old Fashioned Barn Rasing.
The west was not won by people portrayed like the rugged individualist Marlboro man or the John Wayne type shooting a six shooter in a standoff. It was won by pioneers helping one another build homesteads. The last big piece of infrastructure is going up. We contracted with a local builder to put up a 30 x 40 metal pole barn with a 12x 40 overhang for storage. The theory at this point is that it is a livestock barn to house Nigerian Dwarf Goats, a couple of rescued Donkeys from a local shelter, a turkey coop, and a chick brooder and still have room to stack hay for said critters. The goats require some pretty fancy fencing and the donkeys need a corral to create security and a place to fed them and care for them so there has been a flurry of work to have things ready for spring.
We have joked that the initial post setting reminds us of buying something from IKEA. Some assembly required. Come Monday, after the 7 yards of concrete sets, the crew will be out framing. They seem to think it will all be ready for inspection in about three weeks. Too late to change its location now!
In the mean time, after getting the 1350 feet of posts set, I set to task pulling fence. This one is affecting my back. There is a lot of bending and stooping and each roll of fencing weighs 200 lbs. After throwing momma on an airplane today I started getting the fence stretching routine in place. The first section looks pretty good. The come-along, stretcher and the tow hooks on the big pickup make a good combination.
We’ll keep you posted as it progresses. Thanks for looking!
Happy 2018!!! May It Be A Site Happier Than 2017! The Farmer Had His Restrictions Lifted!!
Hello everyone and welcome back to the JAZ Farm blog! I am happy to finally be back. I looked at our last post and it was dated August 31, 2017. It was only a month after back surgery and what a wild year this has been. I am happy to report that I am doing very well. The pain in my legs is all but gone, the fusion has taken hold and the surgeon lifted my remaining restrictions. I had a bit of a battle with pretty mind numbing leg cramps and some pretty serious anti-inflammatories helped make that go away. A huge thank you goes out to the physical therapy staff in Strasburg. They helped get me on my feet, didn’t flinch when I cussed like a sailor, and were observant enough to know when to lighten up on the exercises. I’ve been walking, swimming and after a year of watching the weeds take the farm, doing CHORES and CONSTRUCTION! It feels so good to be re-taking the farm. We have high hopes for 2018 and the list of things we hope to get accomplished is yet again, LONG!
After the first months of recovery, I was still forbidden from bending over (which isn’t possible now anyway because of the change in the way I bend) but I could now lift between 30 and 40 lbs; up from the 10 lbs prior. I was also given permission to get back on the tractor. That was a slow process as the tractor’s suspension and the uneven ground made the jostling a little more than I could tolerate.
So the first task once back on my feet, so to speak was to reclaim the farm from the mountains of weeds and undergrowth that took the gardens and, because it was such a dry summer, threatened us with wild fires. One day, Zina and I got the mowing deck attached to the tractor and I cut the weeds back along the driveway and mowed down the 3 foot tumbleweeds in the pig pen and chicken run to get them ready for the new arrivals in the spring.
Our biggest heartbreak throughout the whole healing process was losing more than half of our egg laying flock to a sly fox. We were still letting the hens out into the big free range field, and with the weeds as high as they got, the fox took to hiding in the weeds and using our chickens as his own private buffet. Of the 40 that we started the year off with, we are down to 15. Those remaining are fairly traumatized and won’t go out there willingly anymore and egg production has dropped way off. As of a week ago, I placed the order to get new chicks in the spring and begin rebuilding the flock and hopefully also start hatching our own so as to offset the cost of ordering birds every spring. We also have an order of 50 meat chickens that will be arriving the first week of May (we usually target 4th of July weekend as freezer camp day).
Next up, because of the tremendous weed overgrowth in the big garden was the decision to start building raised beds around the greenhouse. We didn’t know if we’d be able to get the big garden cut back down (looks like we will) and useable. It was heart wrenching to see just how badly it got over run and not being able to do a damned thing about it. That garden is going to become more of the root vegetable, berry patch, bean, garden. We will also be growing a fair amount of sunflowers too to help feed the chickens. Once I get on with that project, I’ll post the before pictures, and then, with any luck, be able to show you the transformation. It was spreading manure on that garden that was the last straw on the way to surgery. It still gives me a little pause.
I did get creative in my construction endeavors. I was not about to be stopped from getting back after it. So I built 4 saw horses to use as a work bench out by the greenhouse and had Home Depot load 1300 lbs of lumber in the back of the pick up. I was able to build 9 new raised bed boxes (still on lifting restrictions) by pulling the lumber out of the truck, onto the saw horses, slide the boards around into position, screw them together and then use the front end loader of the tractor to move them into place. My compost and planter’s mix supplier brought me a load of composted soil, and I used the tractor to fill them up. The only thing left to do in the spring is attach the drip irrigators to them and we are off and running for next year’s organic vegetables!
This addition gives us 29 10 to 12 foot raised beds in and around the greenhouse in addition to the 18 50 footers in the half acre garden. We may try to get wheat and corn in again this year but the amount of time available will determine that.
Shortly after getting this done, I had my 3rd follow up with my surgeon. I was ecstatic to find that I had no more lifting restrictions. It wasn’t that I was going to go out and do stupid things, but I had been waiting for him to tell me that the fusion was in no danger of being broken. It simply meant that I didn’t have to be hyper-careful with everything I do. I will never be able to touch my toes again by bending over, when I do head for the ground its supposed to be via a squat or a lunge, and lifting must be done with my legs. There is always the danger now that I could blow a disc above L3 and start the whole mess again. That is something I decidedly do NOT want to repeat.
With all of our time to think about the future of the farm now that I knew that I wouldn’t be a cripple forever, we wanted to figure out what still needed to be added to really make the farm feel “finished” (he laughs hysterically). The last big push that we wanted to use some of the equity from the sale of our house this past year for, was to fence in a pasture and get a barn built for livestock. As of tomorrow (January 2nd) the holes for the footers will be dug and barn construction is underway. Aaron and I have been the construction crew for the fencing. Its a quarter mile of fencing to enclose approximately 3 acres. The inhabitants at this point will likely be turkeys, goats, a chicken brooding room, and we plan to rescue a pair of donkeys from a shelter just west of here. We haven’t decided if we are going to use the goats as just eaters and poopers for fertilizer or if we will also use them for meat and dairy. It looks like we will be getting Nigerian Dwarfs to start and see where it leads.
The humorous part of the fence installation (Its funny now, it wasn’t then) was burying the auger. The ground here is very hard. It is about 80% sand and 20% clay. I’ve always had difficulty getting fence post holes punched and have stuck the thing on several occasions. This year was no exception, except that this year the ground won. I broke 2 safety sheering bolts and stuck the auger in the ground. This time for good. I had to unhook it from the transmission box, cover it up and go by another auger unit. It will be there for the alien archaeologists in the future.
The barn itself will be a standard 30 x 40 pole barn with an overhang on the south side to house the tractor, rain catchment, and implements. I will be building pens on the inside for the critters and getting power and heat run to it for the few cold days we still seem to have left around here. As goats are very playful and inquisitive creatures, keeping them from escaping can be a bit of a trick. One suggestion I ran across was to literally build them a playground to keep them entertained. So I’ve tracked down a place that will give away those big wooden cable spools and will use them as a foundation to build up a bit of a castle for them to hop around on. They are very agile little beasties. Here is the beginning of all of this craziness. To date Aaron and I have dug in, cemented, and tensioned 31 8 foot wooden posts, a gate assembly, and hand driven 117 6.5 foot metal T posts. Its been quite an undertaking.
I’ll be posting more pictures of the barn construction progress and when I start stretching fence to enclose the pasture.
Lastly, in the greenhouse, we have had some trouble using some old wimpy trellises that we had at the other house, to try to stand up the tomatoes. That had to change. After seeing someone use cattle panels at their homestead for trellises it looked like just the ticket. Aaron and I pounded some more T posts and wired them up for the spring. They are very stout and even the 12 foot tall Cherokee Purples won’t be able to pull them down (fingers crossed!).
So 2017 has been, as the novel said, “The best of times and the worst of times.” I have been altered in so many ways mentally and physically, but at the same time we have built a life we don’t need or want a vacation from. I promise to put up more of the progress as we move forward. There is a tremendous amount happening and I am thankful to be able to be back after it. I still suffer from some pain, I move a lot slower and am not as limber. It is also amazing how badly my aerobic stamina declined after being on my back for a year. It is coming back, but if this grand experiment is going to succeed going forward, the main supplier of the labor (me) needs to make sure he is in good repair.
So here are our farm goals for 2018:
- Get the barn built
- Finish the remaining fencing
- Get the pigs back on the land
- Rebuild the layer flock
- Restock the freezer with meat birds
- Build the pens, corrals, and brooders for the new critters in the livestock barn
- Install a solar hot water heater (being designed as we speak)
- Get the big outdoor garden reclaimed from the weeds and planted again
- Get the seedlings started and planted for the greenhouse and surrounding beds
- Set up the rain catchment system on the new barn, the garage, and the chicken coop
- Be able to simply use all of this infrastructure instead of spending all of my time building it
- Enjoy my telescope again
- Set up the range, dust off the bows, and once again use arrow flinging as my meditation.
That oughta keep us busy for awhile. I love doing this better than most anything else. I could easily stay here and hide. The world is a crazy and terrible place anymore as far as I see it. My refuge is to be with the plants and animals. They don’t try to stab you in the back. For that I am thankful and look forward to a great and productive farm life in 2018.
The Other Famers Still Made A Harvest
I was able to get the seedlings going this year. After that, my back and health deteriorated to the point that I couldn’t get them planted out in the greenhouse and its surrounding beds. Grandma and Zina took over and got it all planted along with a new Blackberry patch in the big garden. I tried to help but I’m afraid it didn’t amount to much. Here are some pictures of what has been accomplished. I am so grateful for the help and tomorrow begins the food storage and canning process in earnest. We won’t have root crops like onions and carrots, or squash and beans, but fortunately we have grown oodles of them in the past so it should bridge this year without too much trouble. I am determined to get back at this as soon as possible. After all, what else to life is there?
Just before I had to hit the floor for several months we managed to get a dozen apple trees planted. So far all but one have survived. We had to use a post hole digger to make the holes for them because our soil is akin to concrete when it is really dry. Planting trees is a very optimistic endeavor. You believe that you will actually be around in five years when they actually begin go produce!
Because of the fierce winds we have hear we have been trying different things to keep the beds covered when fallow. This set up has potential but the plastic sheets are like sailboat spinnakers. We eventually started weighting them down with car tires. This poor garden is completely over grown now because of my neglect.
I love my seedling room. That is all.
One of the JAZ Farm migrant workers. Commutes in every year from Michigan to play in “her” greenhouse!
Another adventure because of the wind was that we had an old dilapidated section of fence finally blow down. Because of it, there was now a back door entrance to the big garden, and then to the chicken coop. Of our 40 hens we lost 20 to foxes. Again, I couldn’t do anything about it. We will be hatching more out in the spring. It was sad to come home and see a field full of feathers. Because we pay Aaron’s tuition and feed him regularly, his job was to use the old materials and rebuild the fence. Now that it is rebuilt and that we have a new gate to close it all off, we are hopeful that our fox whoas may be over.
Getting Caught Up
It’s been a wild year. I apologize for going so long without updating the blog but it has been a tough summer. I’ve been going through, lets just say, an illness, and I haven’t felt much like blogging. We managed to bring the garden in and the food processed and the pigs processed, but between that and the hell that I call work, I have been somewhat reclusive. 2017 looks like it has the potential to destabilize our world in a way that we thought was behind us and that we were better than. I’m having to kind of start all over mentally and physically. While some folks don’t always show scars and can put on a happy and professional face, it doesn’t mean the problems aren’ t there. Let’s just say that 2017 will bring many changes. But in the meantime, lets show you what has been going on.
The Garden:
We were plagued by grasshoppers this year. They really made the plants have to work hard to grow. Some did well, some didn’t. We lost most of our hard bean crop, the potatoes produced but were very small and many of the herbs were feasted upon. The Squash and the melons got attacked as well but they did quite well anyway. The onions, beets, carrots, peppers, green beans, tomatoes, tomatillos and the Blackberries did pretty well and the canners ran for days and days as we worked to get things preserved.
We Canned dozens of pints of tomato sauce
Because we had so many tomatoes we made lots of Salsa
The onion harvest was crazy. However, not all of them were storage quality, so we made quarts and quarts of canned French Onion soup. The quarts up on the counter are chicken soup and chili
The Tomatillos lost their minds. They really like to grow here. So we made Tortilla soup.
The potatoes struggled because of the grasshoppers. They weren’t a good enough quality to store in the cellar so we canned as many of them as we could. They work great as pan fried, mashed, and in soups or stews.
We found some strains of onions that do well here (and love Chicken Manure fertilizer). We found some mesh bags and we tied them up and hanged them in the basement. These should keep for several months. Considering how many recipes use onions we will likely go through them with no trouble.
Where the Deer and Antelope play
I have really burned out mentally. I brought on a partner at work to help relieve some of the strain. After training him and introducing him to my clients I am thrilled to know that I will be able to take the entire planting season and summer off from work. I haven’t had a real vacation in 30 years and if my clients want me to stick around, they’d best understand why I’m doing this. I love em all but I refuse to die because of someone else’s financial whoas. I desperately need to “Live Like a Hobbit” for a few months. Either that or I need to quit altogether. At this point, both are on the table.
We contacted the Dumb Friends League this year and picked up a couple of “working cats” or what ranchers and farmers call Barn Cats. Their job is to hunt and eat mice. We think they are doing their jobs. They are quite feral so they are not looking for human companionship. This is allegedly where they sleep. We know they are around because the food and water disappears. But this picture shows how much we know about them and what they look like.
One of the funniest things that happened this fall was washing a chicken in the kitchen! Yes you read that right. We had taken the pigs to freezer camp the week before. However, their wallow was still sloppy and muddy. The chickens love to go into the pig pen and scratch around and eat any remnants of food left behind. One evening Zina was out rounding the hens up to put them to bed and she noticed one was still in the pig pen. When she got closer she saw that it had gotten into the wallow and was stuck up to her wings in mud. The rescue attempt involved putting a plank out onto the mud, pull the chicken out and bring her into the house to rinse her off. She was amazingly docile and is now doing well, but now we can honestly say we gave a chicken a bath in our kitchen. I feel so fulfilled!
We have commenced work decommissioning the gardens in the city. We have decided to sell that house because the equity in the place will pay off the farm. Zina and Aaron will maintain an apartment instead and I will pretty much live full time at the farm. I lugged the boards we used for the raised beds to construct compost bins for the garden waste and chicken litter. This past year we spread the composted chicken litter on the garden beds. While it was terrific as fertilizer it was also full of herbicide resistant Amaranth seeds that sprouted the second we applied water to the beds. This is an attempt to try to keep those down. There were thousands of those infernal plants.
Our newest members of the flock started producing in October and even with the shortening of the days into the winter we have never had a shortage of breakfast food.
I never thought I’d see the day when our country could become so divided. This was the unfortunate discovery of the fall. We have a militia training facility about 7 miles from the farm. These folks are pretty “out there” and I hope they have sense enough to leave well enough alone. That mound of dirt running along the upper third of the picture is actually a big horseshoe shape containing a very large shooting range. I fear our country has lost it’s mind and could be considered clinically insane.
So as the farm progresses we have decided to start breeding pigs ourselves instead of buying piglets to raise. We have some fences and pens to complete but if all goes right we will have a Hampshire Sow and Boar to raise in the next year. If successful, the sale of the piglets we don’t want to keep should pay for the feed and thus allow us to have our meat for free (minus the physical exertion of raising them and processing them). A lot of folks do that out here and between eggs, chicken, and pork, we see a way to completely offset our grocery bill. That would make us, food bill, electric bill, water bill, house payment and car payment free. Someone in this household is one hell of a financial planner!
I thought this shirt was cool so I ordered it!
The puppies had a ball this Christmas. They could smell that there were treats amongst the gifts and when Christmas morning arrived they couldn’t wait to join in!
So there you have it y’all! The JAZ Farm has progressed despite our silence. Not only are we looking forward to the growing season in 2017, the new pigs, and ordering our new meat chickens for the year, we will be hatching some of our new layers with our incubator, moving from the city, paying off the farm, taking the summer off, building a livestock barn, fencing in a pasture and perhaps, if the timing works, buying some pet goats to help with the lawn mowing. If there is one thing that can be said for our homesteading/prepping project its this: It Is Always An Adventure! Happy New Year everyone!
Greenhouse Update
So the dog and the husband are into their physical therapy. Basil had her second back (right) knee reconstructed. She is doing fine but because she thinks she is all better we need to keep her on a leash so she doesn’t go tear-assing after bunnies and blow out her new joint. Dad has been in physical therapy for the past couple of months trying to get his sacroiliac joint to unfreeze and to get he muscles to quit trying go clamp down and render him crippled. It’s getting better but it is oh so painful.
In addition, we are working on getting our house in the shitty ready for sale. We have a bathroom that needs to be re-done and they start on Monday. This project costs more than the entire greenhouse setup. Me thinks contractors are shysters. Oh well, once we get this done, Zina is going apartment hunting for a place for us to hole up in the city for work. Having the burden of two places to upkeep while both of us work and a son who is in college is just too much. It will be a welcome relief.
Here is a video update of the greenhouse. Considering that we are dealing with a plague of grasshoppers this year, it looks like we will still have a harvest worthy of Colorado homesteaders. Our freezers are completely filled with meat because of the chickens and pigs we’ve processed, so all of our produce must either be eaten, canned or dehydrated. Usually this time of year we make a trip to Munson Farm in Boulder to get a bunch of sweet corn to freeze and use for the year… this year we simply don’t have room so it looks like when we need corn we will use what we have left or go to Whole Foods to buy organic.
So all is going well. The dog is healing up, my hip is doing much better though not perfect. My most recent mental melt down is being treated and it appears that all will right itself with work (I was convinced it wouldn’t). So whatever you do, whatever you fill your time with, enjoy the adventure. After all…. what else is there?
My Father’s Day Gift
My son took the Phantom drone with the GoPro and did a 2016 early summer update of the farm. The garden is in and the endless battle with the weeds has commenced. We are staying ahead of it and the rains have stopped so we may get the upper hand. I have had numerous requests for flyovers on You Tube so Aaron was nice enough to take the helm and then edit it together (something I know nothing about).
You will see that the farmer across the road came over and began plowing up the back 30 acres. The green patch on the right is a drainage area that turns into quite a swamp and mosquito nursery when it rains. It’s not really fit for canoeing (haha!). It is fun though when it does flood because the toads out here that go dormant until it gets wet, come out and start chirping like a huge choir.
The outdoor garden is planted with 2 kinds of melons, 3 kinds of winter squash, carrots, onions, red onions, beets, 2 kinds of potatoes, black beans, white beans, string beans, sweet potatoes, and asparagus. The greenhouse has 7 kinds of peppers, 5 kinds of tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, basil, rosemary, oregano, parsley, marjoram, tarragon, tomatillos, and chives. We added blueberry and blackberry plants outside of the greenhouse this year as well.
I have been laid up with a couple of issues after having shoveled some 6 tons of compost onto the garden you will see in the clip below. The muscle relaxers have helped but they make me feel pretty loopy.
In any case, I hope you enjoy the video. JAZ Farm is now in maintenance mode. It was great to see my mom and sister the last couple of weeks. Now we look forward to the arrival of Zina’s sister, brother-in-law and niece over the 4th of July weekend.
Thanks for all of your interest and thanks for following along!
The Tractor Is Coming To Save Us On Taxes!
So the neighbor farmer across the road lived up to his billing. Today after we sent my mom and sister back from whence they came, we got home to see the big John Deere discing up our back thirty. What a relief. We have enough to concern ourselves with than having to wonder what to do with the big back field in order to not have to pay residential taxes on 40 acres. We are also going to use the proceeds of the land lease and pay it back to them so they will mow our front 10 acres in order to have some fire suppression when all of the “cheat” grass dries up. That stuff turns to a flash fire hazard as soon as their seeds dry.
So thanks again to my mother for all of her help planting, especially when I hurt my back. Note to self: one need not rake and till the compost in on the big garden all in one day. Sincerely, your smarter self…. idiot.
It was so great to have my sister here to see the farm for the first time as well. We had to be very watchful of her to make sure she didn’t steal my dog! They hit it off pretty good and Basil is now looking around wondering where everyone went.
So the field is plowed, the gardens are planted, the animals are all doing quite well too. I’ll post a picture later but we hooked up our fifth wheel’s solar charger to an inverter out by the broiler’s chicken tractor and plugged in a fan to help keep them cool. As I type it is around 90 degrees. Gotta keep the critters comfortable!
JAZ Farm Blog 