We Did It!!

Jun5

Everything happens the last weekend in May and the first week of June. The goal is to get the gardens planted by the first week of June and Jon, Zina, Grandma and Aaron did it! The drip irrigation is all hooked up on both the big root garden and the greenhouse and surrounding beds. They are all on timers and will come on early in the morning and mid evening until the seedlings are all up and established. After that, depending on the heat factor, we will probably go back to just mornings.

The broilers are also now out in their chicken tractor and that seems to be THE way to go. By moving it the length of itself each day the birds get to have clean grass to live on and it avoids the problems of having to constantly clean up after them like one does with a cat litter box. We put up an electric poultry net around it to keep the neighbor dogs, our dog, the barn cats, and the coyotes and foxes away from them. All in all, if you are going to raise chickens for meat and want to do it on grass, this is the best bet.

Chicks in the Tractor 2016 2 chicks in the tractor 2016 3

So we are all exhausted. I did manage to wrench my back pretty badly so now I’m forced to lay flat until these muscles loosen up. That’s the penalty for farming in your 50’s I guess. Grandma was a trooper too. We just had wine and griped about our aches and pains afterward! But the major projects are done!

We even had the farmer from across the road come over and ask to farm our back 30. This will save us a ton on property taxes and also help kind of rebuild the soil. It will be nice to have the land used in a more sustainable way as he uses a “no tilling” method. The first year it needs to be plowed and disced but after that there will be a rotation of 4 crops and a fallow year in the 5th. He will begin by planting Wheat then Milo, then Millet, then Sunflowers. I am looking forward to a field full of big yellow flowers!

Here is the most recent You Tube update. Thanks for stopping by!

The Last Week of May The First Week of June

May31

HAIL article 2016

It is unbelievable how spring works around here. The melt off in the Rockies turns to some of the most violent storms I have ever witnessed… EVERY YEAR! This past Thursday I was off to pick up my mother from the airport. As per usual the severe storm warnings came up. We had a bit of a hail storm and I thought not much of it. However, the memo’s being issued from Denver International Airport had multitudes of flight delays. They weren’t allowing planes to land and were re-routing them either above the storm or way north into Wyoming to avoid the golf ball sized hail we were being hammered with down on Terra Firma. I left to pick up mom and didn’t get 3 miles down the road and had to hide out under an over pass to keep from having my truck destroyed by hail. It was like being in a 55 gallon drum while someone shot a 12 gauge shotgun at me repeatedly. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I was in 4 wheel drive in a big old pickup, and it wasn’t enough. The hail was golf-ball sized and was coming down horizontally and breaking itself into pieces on the side of my truck. Springtime in the Rockies… no matter how romantic…. completely sucks!!

This is what exhausted looks like if you are a Lab:

Even the dog is wiped out

This was from today (May 31st):

However, we have been weeding and manure spreading and tilling and planting like there is no tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow, the root garden gets planted, the drippers pressurized and tested, and the meat chickens go outside (which will be a blessing considering our house now smells a lot like chicken shit). Here is a “so far” update on the big garden:

We had a day or so with a sick piggy but all seems to be ok. He was throwing up but the day before he was just fine. My suspicion is that he ate some of the weeds we had pulled up and something didn’t sit quite right. As of today he is up and running so all is good.

We put the new layer girls out into the “grow out coop” – a coop that allows them to grow up to the size of the existing hens so they can defend themselves once the new pecking order ensues. I have had to dispatch a couple of our 3 year olds because the flock was pecking them to death and while it might be part of nature, it is painful to watch.

Here are the new little ones:

babies on the roost 2016 Babies in the grow out coop 2016

The piggies are all healthy again. Which is fortunate. I had to give our last ladies Penicillin shots for a week and there is nothing more deafening than a screaming piglet!

Baby sized wallow

So during the “holiday” we all weeded, spread poop, roto-tilled, flame weeded and got the garden ready for the summer.

Aaron with the flame thrower with dad hoping he doesn’t start a wildfire!

Flame Weeding

Grandma has been a weeding machine! She seems to love it so I’m not going to look a gift horse…..

Grandma the weeding machine!

Because we couldn’t put the beds to bed properly last fall, here is what we had to contend with…. metric tons of the nastiest taprootiest, grassiest crap mother nature ever invented!

The Zombie apocalypse of Weeds

Once we could find the soil again then came the job of spreading composted chicken crap on it for fertilizer…. guess who got THAT job?

composting

Then out came the tractor and the tiller to flatten it out and make it plantable.

Tilled beds 2016

Tomorrow the meaties go out in the chicken tractor, the drippers get pressurized, the onions get planted, the beans get seeded and we are off to the races to get it all in before the end of the week. Vacation? What stinking vacation? I stop doing my real job for a day or so and this stuff happens….. why am I doing this? I must be neurotic. Time will tell.

Have to Vs. Want to

May21

As of today, the JAZ Farm “have to” projects have practically ended. There are some things yet to be done with the drip irrigation to get water to the greenhouse, but other than that we have a functioning homestead that we can now enjoy with all the infrastructure built to support our goals.

It has been practically 4 years since the start of this endeavor. Looking for the place, rebuilding the place, putting in the coops and pens and gardens and greenhouse and alternate power source, and all the other “pieces” of it all finally have come to an end. Should we want to add more pens or livestock or other “homestead things” we can do them at our leisure and want. The last bits have happened in the past week. We built a sub-divided chicken coop, added a pig loading corral, strung the drip mainlines to the greenhouse, moved plants out to the greenhouse, built the chicken tractor, and started the bed prepping for the root vegetable gardens.

I was about to the end of my physical capabilities and wouldn’t you know it, the world conspired to attack me mentally through work. The times they are a changing’ and I must change or retire (the jury is still out, I love my clients and I hate having to continually defend them against criminals). Every generation thinks they are changing things for the better, but my experience has taught me that it is simply one big circle. Everyone forgets history, repeats it, and then says “no one could have anticipated that….”. What nonsense. Sorry, I digress, but in our efforts to be prepared, the one variable I didn’t anticipate was “real” work. Now that the farm is done, I guess I can focus my attention on whatever the Department of Labor thinks we need to change at work. They are attacking the wrong people. Why aren’t the banksters in jail? Why haven’t hedge fund managers and those responsible for the worst heist in the history of the world been summarily jailed or executed for crimes against humanity? Instead, lets target those who already work in the best interest of their clients. Let the criminals go free. Such are the ways of things.

So I am thrilled about the fact that the JAZ Farm is as self-sustainable as it can be at this time. That in itself is a sense of security. The rest of the world? What a joke. We are just big apes with big malfunctioning brains thinking we are the superior species on earth. Arrogance and sociopathy rule. I long for the gentle and the kind. My motto, probably for the rest of my life is: Live Like A Hobbit.

We Had A Very Productive Day

May20

The big push to get caught up and get the gardens in has commenced. This is when Zina and I take time off of work as a spring break and spend the time many people take to go to some pretty beach, digging in the dirt. Today began that effort.

We discovered that big pigs aren’t as willing to do what you want as little ones. Our most recent freezer dwellers were about 270 lbs when we took them to the processor. As I had mentioned previously, we discovered that we are not ready with the right infrastructure to breed pigs yet. We will be, but not yet. There are a couple of pens we need to build and we need to have some way of getting electricity to at least one of the huts to run a heat lamp when the babies are born. One of my pig gurus also said that our girls are likely too big to be bred as first timers. Ideal I guess, is under 300 lbs. Ruby is closer to 400 and a force to be reckoned with. As a result, we decided to make them additions to the freezer. Well folks, not only are we not really set up for breeding, until today, we weren’t set up for getting a small VW Beetle replica on the horse trailer either! Yesterday was quite a site. I’m a big lineman looking sorta dude and I was physically bested by these ladies.

We didn’t really care which of the big girls got to go for a ride. Whomever got on the trailer first was the winner! But there were no winners. They decided that getting on that trailer, even if there were tasty treats, was not on their agenda. We chased them around the pen until both we and they were exhausted and panting. You can’t just get in their way and hope to turn these beasties. They have a low center of gravity and when Ada decided that going between my legs was a good escape route she damned near upended me!

So we called the processor and made our apologies and off I went to the stockman supply store to consult about a loading pen. A bruised ego, pulled groin muscle, and $450.00 later I am back on the road home with ranch panels and a plan. This morning I got up and assembled the whole caboodle and now we have a fair idea how to get this done at our next attempt next month. As you can see from the photos below, it is a “sub-pen” The pigs come in to get their food and the first gate is closed behind them. They stay there for about a day without food so their bellies get grumbling. The trailer is backed up to the second gate and the doors opened revealing…. food! The theory is they should simply self-load onto the trailer. They can’t escape back into the larger pen because gate one is closed behind them, so while it can get a bit dangerous with half a ton of pork dancing around, it becomes a more manageable feat. My old fart of a man ticker can’t handle all of that football preseason drilling anymore! The direction changes and doubling back on us would have made Barry Sanders very proud! I remember doing this with cows up in Walden a hundred years ago. Worked on cows. Should work on pigs. If not, thats what rifles are for. I’ve cleaned deer and elk… why not pork beasts!

Pig Corral 2

Next on the agenda was getting the “chicken tractor” built for the meat chickens. The process we were using for them in previous years was pretty messy. After being in the brooder for about 4 weeks they go outside into some kind of pen and are grown out to adulthood – which is about another 5 weeks. Then we process them and they become freezer dwellers. The problem we had was that these fast growing little critters are eating and pooping machines! Cleaning up after them was quite a chore and if one doesn’t keep up on it they can get sick. Because they grow so fast they don’t move around much. So in order to give them fresh pasture, keep them from sitting in their own poop, and also being able to supplement their food by letting them have bugs and grass and weeds, the chicken tractor was invented. There are zillions of plans for them on the internet but schedules being what they are having the farmers both working full time jobs, we ordered a pre-fabricated one. Aaron volunteered to come out and assemble the thing and we are one step closer to much easier broiler raising. The thing is fairly light weight aluminum so it can be moved easily every day to new grass. It has a built in feeder. The only thing we need to add is a waterer and we are set to go. Because we have predators both from above (hawks, falcons, owls, eagles) and from below (coyotes, foxes, skunks, snakes and raccoons) this will keep them protected. As a double insurance we will be enclosing it in a 40×40 electric net. This will give us pasture raised chicken and if it is anything like the ones we have raised before, there is never a reason to go out to eat! This will hold thirty birds pretty comfortably so we will probably put a couple of runs of them through it every year.

Aaron building the Chicken Tractor

Now remember, this is all one day’s work. In addition, I needed a bunch more dirt in order to fill in the raised bed boxes I made around the greenhouse. The 35 yards of that also arrived today and as of this writing they are filled. Tomorrow starts the assembly of the drip irrigation and using what is left of the semi-load of dirt to fill in the gaps inside the greenhouse. Anything left after that will go out into the big garden along with the chicken compost. Nothing ever seems to happen spread out evenly over time, nor does it ever seem to exist on a small scale. Construction and planting….. the ever consuming activities that render us with very little free time to navel gaze. We are getting there though. My mother arrives next Thursday to join in the fray and my sister arrives about a week and a half after that. Let the planting party begin!!

Dirt 2016 B Dirt 2016 A

The Greenhouse Is Full!

May18

After having moved through the most recent cold snap, the forecast for at least the next 10 days is over 75 degrees. Soooooooo, the plants in the basement grow room have been moved into the greenhouse! The dirt for the remaining beds arrives Friday and I will be stringing the drip irrigation to the greenhouse tomorrow.

In the next 2 weeks we will plant the greenhouse, the raised beds outside the greenhouse and the half acre for root plants. If you are interested here is what we grow (for both eating through the summer, but also for storage – freezing, dehydrating, and canning): Blueberries, Blackberries, onions, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, lettuce, spinach, Kale, melons, squash, carrots, cucumbers, herbs, beets, hard beans, green beans, sunflowers, potatoes, asparagus, strawberries, and green beans, wheat, corn, and if we include the animals: eggs, chickens for meat, and pork.

Spring is Springing!!

May13

I spent the day today moving plants to the greenhouse and also planting the last of the seeds that need to get going in order to have them ready for the gardens. Today it was the 3 different types of squash. The big outdoor garden is primarily for storage type vegetables. Most of them are root vegetables but the melons and the squash need to be started ahead of time in order to give them a jump on the season.

I moved the pepper plants out today and introduced a bunch of lady bugs to help ward off the aphid attacks I’ve been having. The Basil and the peppers all had a pretty good assault in the seedling room. They could only have come in with some of the potting soil I purchased to get the seedlings going. They have been maddening.

The tomatoes and tomatillo plants will stay downstairs until mid next week. We are supposed to get some cooler weather Monday and Tuesday but by Thursday it is supposed to be pushing 90. At that point everyone comes out of the basement and I can turn off most of those high powered lights! So as usual, while anxious about whether or not I’ll get all the work done and get the garden in, the one step at a time, one day at a time, never seems to fail. I just get mental when I can’t see my way clear in my head a way to the end result.

So after all the hassles of actually getting the greenhouse, having it is just about as much fun as I know how to have (yes I’m boring – but a move to a simpler life is NOT a step backwards). Being able to get the plants out there to get ready for the season is such a big help – not to mention the fact that we have had spinach and lettuce since February! The big spring weather out here has begun and the greenhouse has endured at least one mild hail storm. The more ferocious ones are on the way – they always come, but another couple I met when I picked up the pigs had a greenhouse too and theirs has stood up to the ice balls. Here’s hoping ours will too!

All Livestocked Up For Spring!

May11

The first batch of broiler chicks arrived today. We decided to do them in batches of 30 this year as having to process them all at once is WAY too much work. This way they will be raised in the cooler temperatures of the spring and fall weather. So in the past 2 weeks we have acquired 25 new chicks to replace the older ladies of the layer flock, 2 piglets to replenish the bacon and ham in November, and the first 30 broilers. Next week one of the big girls goes off to the processor. Of course, if you like, you can always go get factory farmed meat like substances they call chicken and pork wrapped in cellophane at your local “grocery store”. Ick.

In the next several weeks we will begin planting. Potatoes, carrots, onions and beets can go out most any time now as they grow underground. The melons, cukes, Zukes, squash, melons, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and other above ground plants need to wait until after Memorial Day so they 1. Don’t get destroyed by the hail that comes with the mountain run off and 2. To lessen the chance of them being exposed to a hard freeze.

May is pretty busy. This year more than most. We are all proud parents right now as well. My son turned 21 this past weekend and he just found out he aced his Calculus class. The kid seems to think in numbers. It was a great confidence builder for him. Hopefully there will be a good job waiting for him somewhere down the line.

Starting The Irrigation Project

May4

To think that this past weekend we had a foot of snow is kind of beyond bizarre. Today it was 70 degrees and it is currently about 85 degrees in the greenhouse! Tomorrow the weather gurus say that it’s supposed to get to 80!

So after pushing paper for work, making client phone calls, hacking into the Wall Street matrix and doing all the money voodoo that I do, I hopped on the faithful John Deere steed and commenced attacking the water project for the greenhouse. The tractor dug my trench for me using the “middle buster” plow I use to plant and harvest potatoes. I’ll be out tomorrow with hacking, scraping and digging tools to level out the base for the water tank. Once that beast is in place the rest will be pretty easy. Drip irrigation is pretty neat and it is super easy to install. If you can screw on a jar lid and know how to use a pair of scissors, you can install drippers. Plumber’s tape, PVC, some glue and a wood base, and all will be right with the world….

So here we go. Yet again into the unknown. As they say in the sales world: Fake it til ya make it!

>One correction to the video. I mentioned that it would cost $1.50 a foot to trench to the greenhouse in order to install a ranch hydrant. The actual cost is $15.00 a foot PLUS the cost to buy the plumbing and the hydrant AND the cost to install it. This will work about as well and be significantly cheaper. The trenching alone would cost around $2000.00. I am not a plumber and don’t play one on TV so I’d have to have someone come out and tap into the well’s mainline and install the thing. Not happening. This system: The tank, the pressure tank, the pump (which will be powered from the solar panels), and the dripper parts, were around $2500.00. HALF the cost of doing it the other way. DIY and save the dough (spoken like a true financial planner)!

Spring Rains and New Babies

Apr29

April and May are certainly entertaining in Colorado. While Kansas and Oklahoma are getting pummeled with hail and tornados we have snow! April 29th and a foot of snow! Fortunately it is relatively warm out and a lot of it is melting on contact. Ya Ya I’ve heard it a million times – we need the moisture. Bah humbug. I have a water tank to plumb to the greenhouse, a chicken tractor to build, chickens and pigs to care for, and a garden to get ready to plant. I will be complaining in August of the heat so I guess I should just chill and let nature take her course.

A Delivery With The Usual Humor

Mar31

We had to ponder for a while how to best get a reliable source of water to the greenhouse. The spigot from the house is slow, leaky, and is needed for other things, so hooking it up as the source for the drip irrigation system doesn’t work. We have a ranch hydrant out in the chicken coop and we thought that maybe we could string another one over by the greenhouse, but that involves about 150 feet of trenching and some know how about how to tie it in to the water line coming from the well pump (trenching costs $15.00 a foot). I know my limits and that is something I simply don’t want to tackle. So I did some researching of water tanks, rainwater harvesting, using electric pumps on drip irrigation, etc. and I found a company that specializes in just such things! We designed a system and ordered the parts. Essentially, this is a 1000 gallon water tank that will be filled from a combination of snow capture, some rainwater capture (a certain amount is now legal in Colorado) and simply filling it up from the well itself (which will ultimately be the primary source). The tank will be plumbed to a 1/3 horsepower pump that will keep a small pressure tank pressurized(similar to one’s attached to well pumps inside the home). The drip irrigation system will be attached to the pressure tank with a timer attached to it. When I determine the amount of watering that is needed daily, I simply set the timer and voila! The pump detects when the pressure tank is low and switches on thus keeping the pressure in the irrigation lines constant. I can bury the irrigation line using a middle trencher I have for the tractor (it will be down about 8 inches), instead of having to bring in a Ditch Witch to get the line down the 4 feet needed for a hydrant.

The plumbing, pressure tank and pump all arrived within a week of ordering it. The tank itself had to be shipped by semi from someplace in Bumflucking Egypt. Because these things are made of plastic I had to sign a document specifically stating my understanding that I MUST inspect the tank thoroughly prior to signing for it as these things can easily be damaged in transit.

I have been leveled this past week with the flu. I don’t often get sick but when I do, I might as well begin funeral preparations. Man I’ve been sick. You know, the coughing up a lung, can’t smell, can’t hear, cold one minute sweating the next! That kind of crap. Yes, my beloved clients, I was still working through all of it. God I hate tax season.

So no one decided to call and tell me this beast was coming. Fortunately, so as not to pass this gem of a disease on to my son (he is in the throes of Calculus and we don’t need him bugging up now that he just aced his mid-terms), I am quarantined out at the farm. It has been cold and windy and the air outside has been like poison on my throat. So because of this vulnerable state, the creator in all of her mercy decided to deliver the tank un-announced!

No biggie. The guy brought the truck in, wheeled the tank over to the end of the truck, even had a lift-gate (miracle!) and lowered the thing to the ground. He was enthralled with the farm so I gave him a quick tour and he took some videos of the pigs for his kids. He was concerned, because of the soft ground from the recent snows, about being able to turn himself around to get out. I told him that if he backed up a ways toward the gate and because his trailer was pretty empty, he should be able to put his trailer out on the field, keep his cab on the asphalt driveway and kind of jockey himself around. Did he? Are you kidding!? That would have been far to easy! Why would anyone actually listen to the guy who LIVES here? So he started to do his jockey-ing down hill too far from the road. Instead of a series of backs and forth’s, he jackknifed the truck. So he thought that he would just do a big circle. This took him cab first into the field. I watched him do it. The weight of that diesel engine just sank that sucker right up to his gas tanks. Of course, he tried to rock it out and that just dug deeper holes. By the time I had walked out to him he had high-centered the thing and one of the back tires just spun freely with no contact with the ground. That my friends is called STUCK! Been there, done that. The soil out here when it gets wet is like slogging through snot!

At first he asked if I knew of anyone with a tractor that could pull him out. Knowing this part of the world, there isn’t a farmer around here that would knowingly put their tractor in that muddy field. So he had to call in for a tow truck. Turns out that another of his driver co-workers was stuck near here as well so they got a two-fer! About an hour and a half later the hook arrived and pulled him out. As my son said, “This wasn’t just stupid, this was ADVANCED stupid!” Couldn’t agree more. So off they went without so much as a “by your leave” or any offer to replace their divots – which are significant.

So as the JAZ Farm has proven time and time again, everything we want to do eventually happens, but NEVER, EVER, think it is going to go as planned. Just keep smiling, just keep moving.

The Beast! 1000 Gallons! Six feet tall, six feet wide. It will weigh almost 8500 pounds when full.

New Tank