New Pets

So I got a message from a woman I met at our vet. She is one of the assistants there and I discovered while they were working on Basil, our dog, that she raises pigs. It turns out that she is going to be switching her stock over to a new breed. The message was asking if we were still interested in breeding pigs, would we be interested in buying her two young sows. Now this was NOT what we were expecting to be doing on short notice – or at all this year, but Zina and I had decided when we got our first pigs last year, that keeping them was something we wanted to do. Because pigs can have 10 – 13 pigs in a litter, it makes sense to sell some of them and keep a couple to raise for the freezer. The sale of the others pays for your own food. Brilliant.

So we told the vet lady that yes we wanted them. Oh YAY!, she replied. She was very happy that they didn’t have to go to the processor. Our trailer at the time was trapped behind a snow drift so they offered to bring them by. We set to the task of getting everything in order. Cleaned the hut, got the water tank set back up, brought in fresh straw, ordered a ton of organic feed, fixed the feeder, and re-dug out the wallow.

So this morning, JAZ Farm got more livestock. They are Hampshire crosses and are very docile and friendly. While we were talking about them it was pretty clear that mom and the little daughter were pretty attached to them. In fact, the husband had to tell them “no crying”. I don’t think it worked.

Anywho, the little girl had named one of them “Sparkles”. She is spotted so, who knows, maybe it looked like sparkles. However, I was not going to be calling a 350 lb sow “Sparkles” for the next 8 years. Zina said, that she had gotten a song from the movie, Cold Mountain, stuck in her head. In the movie, the characters Ruby Thewz and Ada Monroe, live together on a homestead in the hills. Ruby’s father shows up and sings a song called “Ruby with the eyes that Sparkle”. So the names just appeared – Ruby (instead of Sparkles) and Ada. It’s one of my favorite movies and the names will work fine for us.

So here are the latest girls. They are our future Bacon Puppy manufacturers. Welcome ladies!

Getting the Greenhouse Ready For Spring

Jan31

While we languish in winter, the non-planting and building projects emerge. We can finally see the workbench surfaces in the barn! We organized, swept out piles of mouse poop, threw junk away, and generally created a neatness. There was junk in there in boxes strewn about from way back three years ago when I was building the coop and fences. After all, who wants to clean up when you are too tired to walk? Its actually possible to walk around in there without fearing for your shins!

Now that the greenhouse is up and the raised beds in place, it was time to start getting the thing ready for the spring. The drip irrigation parts are here waiting to be assembled and I am using a small solar panel battery charger hooked up to a deep cycle battery to provide power out there. The big solar array has the ability to bring power to the building but it has yet to be wired up. Considering that the ground, depending on the day, is either hard frozen or a muddy mess, that will just have to wait.

This weekend I put up the shade cloth. After checking it out last fall after the greenhouse had been built, it became quite clear that something was going to have to be done to cool it down. I did some research about the best shade cloth to use for plants like tomatoes and the powers that be suggested that a 50% block was optimal. This material will block half of the sunlight and it claims that it will keep the temperature inside about 20 degrees cooler than the outside temps. If it works that will be perfect. If its 100 outside (which its sure to be this summer), then it should be around 80-ish. The fans will certainly help as well. This is important in a warming climate. For instance, tomatoes will stop producing pollen at temperatures sustained above 95 degrees F. They will drop their flowers and voila, no tomatoes.

The last assembly piece is to get the drip irrigation set up. The drippers themselves aren’t such a big deal; I’ve done it many times. The challenge this time is the actual source of water. Over by the big garden we have a ranch hydrant that provides water to the critters and to the drip system. Over by the greenhouse there is nothing but a house spigot. So what we are planning is a combination rain water harvesting tank with a pump, and use the house spigot that is supplied by the well to keep the tank topped off when there isn’t enough runoff from the roof. The tank we will be ordering is 1100 gallons and has a water pump plumbed to it. It has enough power to actually run an oscillating sprinkler so we my have to add a pressure regulator to the line. Drippers don’t care much for high pressure. If it works then T’s and ball joints can be added to redirect water to various areas around the greenhouse, including the apple trees we are hoping to plant.

The projects now are a lot less intimidating. There are three basic capital intensive projects we still want to do but we will be whittling away at those between now and some far off day in the future. To really bring the place off-grid I still want to have a solar – hot water heater installed (with all the sun here there is no reason not to use it). Also, in order to reduce the propane use, I would like to install a pellet stove (pellets instead of wood because in either case it needs to be brought in from off site. Wood needs to be split and stacked. Pellets come bagged and on skids) and what is referred to as a solar hot air condenser . If you have ever felt the water that comes out of a black hose that has been lying in the sun, that’s essentially how it works. Its a big black box aimed at the sun with a fan pushing air through it to heat it up and then bring it in the house. The last, which will simply be a work in progress, is to build a livestock barn. The livestock wouldn’t necessarily be for food. We are trying to heal the fields, and having goats or a couple of cows rotationally grazing around different paddocks, will aid in the re-fertilization of the ground and help restore the natural grasses. However, in blizzard conditions, and if we breed them, we need a place to get them out of the elements. But that’s a ways off.

All of the seeds for the spring planting have arrived from their various sources. We acquired a small refrigerator to keep them in as it aids in the longevity of their viability. Considering that we are also doing some of our own seed saving, this will help to keep them useable from year to year.

So the winter at the JAZ Farm has been a little lazier than the last few years – thank god. Now if we could get the children running Wall Street to get a grip and calm down maybe work would become more tolerable as well. We live in one weird world. I wonder what’s going to happen next. Its all one surreal adventure.

This was the temperature in the greenhouse yesterday. Today there is snow on the ground! You can see the texture of the shade cloth behind the thermometer.

GH Temp

Not a bad crop of Spinach for the middle of winter!

GH Spinach

The shade cloth is up on the roof. YAY! No more climbing up ladders for awhile! I hate ladders! It was like trying to hang a 10 x 36 foot long curtain with a drill and self – tapping screws 12 feet off the ground with someone that gets nervous about unstable heights! I know. I’m a whimp. Hey, bite me. I did it. Anyone wanna see if they can keep up?

Shade Cloth 3

2015. The Year That Tested Our Sanity

Dec16

JAZ Farm has just completed its third year. It will go down as the year that tried all of our patience, our tenacity, our physical endurance and our faith in people. The farm itself is now a functioning entity and the major projects have been completed, but getting there, because contractors and other people were involved, always had that end result in doubt.

The year began with the dog having surgery and contracting to have a greenhouse delivered. For two months the dog had to be bed rested and taken everywhere on a leash. The greenhouse story has been well documented in other posts but I have never been through such an ordeal with such a dishonest individual (well… yes I have but its been awhile). It is now built and it does have plants growing in it. We are very pleased with it now that has arrived and Aaron and I built it. We have discovered though, that the summer is going to present certain problems keeping it cool enough to use. Thus, during Christmas break, I will be hanging shade cloth inside so that we can help to diminish some of the intensity of the sun. It will be a 50% sun reduction and hopefully it will keep the internal temperature in the 80s instead of the 100+ temperatures we get here.

No sooner did we get the greenhouse built, we began the work of taking the farm off-grid. We researched and contracted with Solar Mart to put up a solar array and proceeded to get ripped off for our whole cost of purchase and set up. We are still embroiled in settlements and prosecution and may or may see some justice from this. Once the shock subsided some, we found a wonderful group of guys who picked up where the criminals left off.

As a result, I am happy to report that tomorrow, December 17th, the power company will be here to switch out their meter and I will be flipping the switches to make us electricity independent. It cost a fortune because of getting ripped off, but fortunately the federal credit will help to offset some of this. Because, as it always figures, the money we had stolen could have gone to purchase my wife a new car…. which as I type is in the dealership with electrical issues. Both the greenhouse and the solar array put us in contact with the essence of the dishonesty of people. We were hugely disillusioned. Our projects got completed but it certainly didn’t instill any sense of trust in our fellow man. However, we are SO excited to be taking the place off grid. It will make the seed germination process much less expensive, and when the grid goes down, our freezers will have automatic backup to keep our produce and meat from thawing. The meat freezer currently has 45 chickens and 3 whole pigs in it (approximately 550 lbs). A power loss would be devastating. Because we can’t be here every day, it is great peace of mind knowing that the back up will kick in whether we are here or not!

Improvements and accessibility:

We finally have the driveway covered so that we can get in and out of the farm without spinning our wheels when it rains. We had 150 tons of milled asphalt delivered. I took the tractor and spread it out and now we don’t slip and slide in the snot that gets created in inclement weather. We will be bringing more in in the spring to cover the parking apron and to fill in some low spots.

Along with the usual chickens and eggs, we built a pig pen! As usual, this was not a smooth and drama free affair as getting the shed for the pigs to get in out of the weather just about killed me. The posts from this year describe what a tussle I had just getting the thing off the trailer! Because of a disease running through the pork population that was killing piglets, we didn’t think we were going to get any to raise. Thanks to our local feed store, they found 3 Hampshires for us and the JAZ Farm had piggies! So just like the greenhouse and solar array are thrilling, even though it took a lot more effort than anticipated, raising pigs is AWESOME! They are super easy to keep. We only had one issue early on when one of them had a respiratory infection and I had to give her penicillin shots for 2 weeks. Lesson learned: if you have to do that, wear ear plugs. A piglet squealing inside of a steel shed is louder than any rock concert I’ve ever attended! All in all though, they are very friendly and have very few needs. In fact, when we get our livestock barn built, we will probably start breeding our own.

The JAZ Farm experimented with raising wheat this year as well. All in all it went well and we learned a bit about getting the soil prepared for it. Wheat and corn are very nitrogen intensive so we will have to make sure we have the ground thoroughly prepared for it when we plant again in the spring. Zina seems to really love the threshing and winnowing processes involved. She received a Scythe for her birthday so I guess we really need to get the seed ordered for the spring!

Because of the hassles of getting the big building projects going, Zina took on the bulk of the garden weeding this year. Aaron and I were continually busy in the heat of the deep summer putting up the greenhouse. Zina put on the garden warrior suit and beat back the weeds in the garden so as not to lose the whole thing from neglect. We had a lot of successes again and a few failures, which is to be expected. The strawberries took root, the beets, carrots, onions, potatoes and beans were incredible. The sunflowers loved the sun of the high plains, the Butternut squash took over the world but the Acorn Squash languished this year. Because of the interminable delay with the greenhouse and an unexpected freeze, for the first time in 10 years, I had almost no tomato harvest. That will NOT happen again. I threw away dozens of beautiful tomato plants and the jerk we bought the greenhouse from is to blame for all of it. The Asparagus continued to develop and had we taken better care of them, the melons were amazing! We didn’t get them harvested early enough so we had a lot that went bad – to the delight of the chickens and pigs – same with the cabbage. Because the big building projects are now completed, we plan to devote our energy this year to making the garden flourish. To build the soil quality and to fill the beds in the greenhouse, we had 60 yards of compost and planters mix soil brought in. We also have been composting the chicken waste, and the pigs completely turned over our manure pile so we will have plenty of fertilizer available in the spring. The addition to the garden will also include about a dozen apple trees. This will both provide food as well as create badly needed wind breaks.

The prepper part of me, in addition to wanting to be off grid, embarked on developing alternative cooking arrangements to the usual kitchen stove and barbecue grill. Our deck is now an alternative cooking area. We are now able to cook with electricity (free now with the solar panels), with propane (grill and outdoor burners – primarily for canning), with the sun (we purchased an amazing solar oven) and biomass (A rocket stove and gasifying stove). It is my assertion that if one lives in a place with the sun as intensive as it is here, there is NO reason to rely on fossil fuels and the corruption involved in that industry. The solar panels and the outdoor kitchen are the start. We will be installing solar hot water and a solar heat collector for heating, and a wood burning stove in 2016. My profession is all about helping people to achieve financial independence, so it stands to reason that self-sufficiency is simply the next level of those goals. Once completed we will have no electric, water, or sewer bills. We will have a minuscule food bill (mostly the purchase of seeds that we can’t save ourselves). The solar water heater, wood stove and heat collector will reduce our propane bill to practically nothing.

Lastly, the permaculturist in me is determined to heal this piece of land from the conventional land that has degraded the soil over the years. We let the land rest this year and were overrun with invasive weeds. Because of the weather swings due to climate change, we either had too much rain or total drought; which made this project a challenge. We plan to bring in cows and goats to rotationally graze the land and build fertility. However, in order to do this we need to get the grass growing here again. We are consulting with a planter to get this done but we weren’t able to get him into the fields this year. So once the spring arrives Tom will be out here to mow the rest of the place and then “drill” in alfalfa and short prairie grass seed to start creating some cover that can be both grazed, cut and baled. This is a big process but in the end, once it takes, the scar that was inflicted here from conventional agriculture will disappear. Even during this past year, letting the land rest has re-attracted Antelope, MICE, falcons, hawks and horned owls. We now have a resident 6 foot bull snake in the garden (great mouser), and the rabbits seem to think the weed cover is just the best. We have hundreds of Meadowlarks as well. I have done a ton of research on this and it is my non-food producing goal for the farm to have this back as much to its natural state as possible.

So as winter descends and the shortest day of the year being next week, it is a time to reflect, evaluate and plan. Over the holiday break I will be laying out the garden and order seed for the 2016 adventures. As the winter proceeds we will be decommissioning the garden in the city as it is simply too much for me to garden in both locations. It is kind of melancholy to think of as the whole farm project evolved from that backyard oasis. It will be turned into a pollinator garden for the bees.

This was an incredibly trying year. Emotionally I cannot STAND what this country has become politically and ethically – we have truly gone off the rails. Physically, 2015 was about all I could handle. Since the construction of the greenhouse I have had to really power down and let my joints heal. I’ve been in pain every day since and it is only now starting to subside. I’ll be getting on the treadmill and exercise bike and get this old crate back in shape so that we can now USE the JAZ Farm that we have spent the past three years building. As my wife is oft to let me know, JAZ Farm’s biggest and most powerful implement is …. ME! If I can’t function, the farm will not exist. Something important to remember…. always. I hope to be doing this until they find me keeled over my broadfork.

Peace ya’ll.

The Outdoor Kitchen

Nov1

Another way to be more self-sufficient and not burn so much fossil fuel is to use the sun and other sources to cook with. Because we have about 350 sunny days here it simply doesn’t make sense not to use that big old nuclear reactor in the sky as much as possible. The solar electric system is the big chunk of that. Solar hot water will be next. Thirdly, we have put together a fun and relatively inexpensive outdoor kitchen on our back deck.

Some of it will use propane, some of it charcoal, another piece will use wood and the center piece is a solar oven. The propane is primarily for heating the pressure canner for food storage. There will also be a propane grill. For the smokey tastes we have a Weber charcoal grill which can also be used to make pizza. The newest additions (thanks to American Express rewards points!) is an All-American Solar Sun Oven and what is called a Rocket Stove. The rocket stove burns very efficiently and really only uses small twigs and branches to cook with. It can boil a pot, heat a fry pan, and I’ve even seen it used to can with. The solar oven is a lot of fun. The mirrored panels direct sunlight into the cooking area. Today while I was doing the “pre-first use” seasoning for it, I had it up to over 300 degrees. No electricity, no gas, no moving parts, in November! Just aim it at the sun and it works just like an oven in the house. This thing will get used a LOT to heat things up.

So here ya go! Lots of ideas. Hopefully we will see more folks doing these kinds of thing as well. Change does NOT have to be drudgery. This is a total kick!

The Solar Project Is Half Way!!

Nov1

So the project to take the JAZ Farm off grid is finally progressing as it should have all along. The gear is here. The footers are poured. The ground mount racking is here and the SOLAR PANELS ARE ACTUALLY IN THE BARN!! Who would have ever have thought that there could be so much dishonesty, fraud and corruption in the the alternative energy industry? Troy and his crew have been outstanding, even coming out this past Saturday to get the footers poured. All I can say is buyer be ware. It may look good, but don’t pay ’em til they deliver. The world of humans never ceases to delude me.

So anywho, the project is finally progressing. This is called a Grid-tied system with battery back up. For all intents and purposes this takes us off the grid but not quite 100%. The solar panels are the primary source of electricity. If we consume more energy than we produce, the electric company is the back up and will provide us with power (like at night watching TV when it is dark outside). If we produce more electricity than we use (which is more likely the case), we sell it back to the power company (essentially spinning the meter backwards). However, IF the power goes down, the magic boxes in the basement kick in. The panels separate themselves from the grid and their sole job is to keep the batteries charged up. The batteries then are the power source for the house. They are wired to keep the well pump pumping, the refrigerator and the chest freezers running, the furnace working, and power to the master bedroom. During the evening the batteries would be the sole power source. During the day, the solar panels provide the electricity to those circuits and also charge up the batteries.

This is pretty important considering that we have hundreds of pounds of meat in the freezer, not to mention the dozens of pre- made meals we have frozen and all the produce we have stored up. We anticipated that before Thanksgiving the farm will be electricity independent. Once we recover a bit financially from having to pay for this TWICE, we will be contracting with Troy to install solar hot water as well. Once that is done, the only fossil fuel the farm will burn is propane for the furnace and we will be addressing that with a wood stove at a future date.

Finally Some Good News!

Oct9

After getting through our despondency and desires to help Karma along the way in avenging the most recent theft from Solar Mart, a bit of good news has worked its way back to the farm.

Marc, a representative of a referral network, put us in touch with a solar installer that might be able to move us forward after having $31,000.00 basically stolen from us. Troy, the contractor, seems to have us back on track.

Part of the dilemma of having the project be terminated has to do with the fact that power companies seem to hate solar users. IREA, the power company out here, is going to start charging solar users a monthly connection fee to help offset revenue loss due to we people who think their product sucks! After all, why out here on the high, treeless plains, would you NOT use the sun? In addition, because the system has not been installed, we would also lose the federal tax credit which goes a long way to offsetting the cost of purchasing a system like ours.

If we were not able to get things going and had to start from square one, then the system would have to all be redesigned and re-permitted and the cost involved with that is roughly 10k.

Troy got in touch with IREA and the Arapahoe County permit department and was able to find out that 1. IREA still has us listed as good to go on the hook up without having to pay the connection fees and 2. Arapahoe County has the permits approved and waiting and as long as we submit a letter stating we are changing contractors they couldn’t care less who does the installation! Good news! That means that of the $31k that was stolen, because we don’t have to re-engineer the thing, we will now be out 21k instead of $31,000.00 and we will get the federal credit.

Troy looked over the plans and if his cost estimate on parts isn’t worse than Solar Mart we are back in business. We won’t have to pay anything until the gear is here, and then the final payment isn’t due until the thing is working and approved. This is such a relief. While it is no fun to have to eat such a large sum of money, what we stood to lose was worse: No solar, no tax credit, IREAs extortion, and having to start over from square one.

We will likely make a decision this weekend. His estimate now is that we could have the thing running by about Thanksgiving or the first part of December.

Once more into the abyss. Never give up, never quit fighting, and never be afraid to stomp the life out of people who threaten your plans.

You Simply Cannot Make This Stuff Up.

Sep22

If you are going to do something for your retirement that goes well beyond shuffleboard, traveling abroad, golf, or sitting on a beach somewhere, be prepared for the people you contract with to be a much bigger obstacle to your success than the actual plans.

You simply cannot make this up. For those who have followed this blog from the beginning you know that not only is it our intent to build this farm as a symbol of sustainability and an effort to preserve traditions of our agricultural past, it is also to be our retirement place. We hope to be here growing food, raising animals, gazing at the stars, doing crafts and enjoying a rural existence until we are simply too old or unable to continue.

The setbacks have been stunning. All of them have involved dishonest people. We lost the first place we bid on, had to put money into this place before we even owned it, had myriad delays in deliveries, a greenhouse company that couldn’t get its act together, and is now bankrupt and out of business, and now…… not a month after the greenhouse was built, the solar company we contracted with to basically take the place off the grid has defrauded us out of $31,000.00!!! They are no longer in business as we can tell and we have nothing to show for it.

Solar Mart came to us with a spotless record. They were highly recommended, and we even have a credit union right near the place in town for whom they did their solar installation. We were told, because we were also having a battery back up system installed, that Arapahoe county didn’t really understand how the system worked and that they kept coming back with questions. Each question adding delay upon delay. Finally, we were told that we had a project start date. It was supposed to be the Tuesday after Labor Day. Because of that they needed the second payment to pay for the equipment we would have installed. The third being due upon completion. I shuffled my work schedule around so that I could be available for the crew when they arrived. That Tuesday, around 10 am, I received a call from the project manager stating that we were still in the permitting phase; that Arapahoe County still had questions. No one was coming. It was then that my BS detector had come off the neutral peg and started to quiver.

We gave them a week after that. I started making email inquiries and phone calls as to when we could expect the project to begin. No answers from anyone. No returned emails. My wife thought I was just being grumpy. Then she tried to get ahold of them. No answers. Then she got grumpy. I finally decided to jump in the truck and go pay them an unannounced visit. I drove to their showroom… it was dark. Fortunately the door was unlocked so I went in. After a little bit of a wait in a showroom that was clearly being boxed up, the woman we met to give our second check showed up. She told me they weren’t open. She didn’t recognize me at first but when she discovered who I was she got visibly shaken. The DeJong fireworks erupted in a display that I am sure some of the other businesses in that warehouse were quite entertained by. My voice booms. If put in an empty warehouse… it echoes. We were informed that ours was one of the projects that was cancelled due to some alleged negotiations of the sale of the company to another. At that time there was some dispute as to who actually owned the company now.

I got the numbers to both the old owner and the CEO of the acquiring company and both denied owning the company…. Believe me, both understand that I hold them all responsible for stealing our money. There is certainly reason to believe that the project never went to the county for permitting in the first place. It turns out, also, that the woman I encountered at the warehouse was the original owner’s wife. I confronted her point blank as to whether or not she knew about the company’s demise at the time we gave her the second check. Almost in tears and clearly scared to death, she denied it. That is almost certainly a lie. The company was allegedly purchased. The former CEO resigned on August 24th and we gave them the check on the 28th under the perception that there was some urgency to get it to them. It turns out that in the buy/sell agreement there was a clause that stated that if the records being used to justify the sale were not accurate or truthful that the contract was null and void. The seller defrauded that company too and they washed their hands of the sale. We didn’t know about the sale of the company or any of these events until this past week.

Now the money is gone, the project not even started, 40 other projects in disarray and another hassle from dishonest people bedeviling the build out of our homestead. This was to be the last “core” piece of construction needing completion and now we have nothing to show for it.

We have been getting some help. The radio show that Solar Mart had a good reputation with was a referral network. Zina contacted them and their director has been working with us to get some kind of justice. He has an “in” with the DA of the economic crimes division in Denver and we got all of our documentation submitted to him this morning. Zina has already received a response from him stating that this is a cut and dried case of fraud and they will be pursuing it. I doubt that we will see a dime from this. For my clients who read this…. this is why you keep cash reserves!! Fortunately we didn’t go into debt and it won’t break us. This is more a case of shock and disgust. No way they win… no way! I will take great joy seeing him arrested and doing jail time.

So in the meantime, we are all trying to once again heal from the antics of people who simply don’t understand the real meaning of the word honesty. I haven’t really had time to defuse from the whole greenhouse debacle yet and now this! I trust no one anymore. I am continually flabbergasted how some people can live with themselves. I don’t know how many psychological blows I can withstand, although I think my success rate to date has been pretty exemplary.

The warrior is once again determined. Make no mistake, we will pursue this to the end. The farm WILL have solar electricity and we will win. I do NOT take defeats lightly. In fact… I do not take them … at all.

I know the saying that what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger… I am strong enough thank you very much. Never let your guard down because even when something looks on the up and up (and we had NO reason to believe these people would do this to us) it can still go full goose bozo wrong on you. The key is to be able to take blow after blow, get up and keep moving forward. That is what I fully intend to do.

Beware homesteaders…. the monsters are out there and they want your money.

All dressed up but nobody’s home:

Healing the Fields

Sep14

Its pretty amazing how quickly nature will take back what is hers if left alone. Our fields were badly beaten up by years of chemical farming in order to grow wheat. The first winter we watched as our topsoil blew away with the wind having been left bare and exposed from the previous year’s harvest. We decided that enough was enough and that we were going to restore the place to natural short prairie grass along with some alfalfa. The idea is that we want to get some grazing animals (goats and cows) to rotationally graze the fields to get some nutrients back into the ground naturally as well as keep the weeds in check. We have been working with a guy in town to have him come out and mow the place and then seed drill it for us. Unfortunately, it has been such a wild summer with extreme dry and then more moisture than we’ve seen in years, that it was either too soft to get the tractor in or too hard so that the driller wouldn’t penetrate the ground. As a result, the weeds took over. The mice had a “field day” – literally, and the hawks and falcons had a happy hunting ground. It has felt all year as if we were trying to repel an invading force of weeds….. and we were losing.

Today we finally got the mower onto the place. The weeds are over 4 feet deep. Thankfully the tractor has enough power to cut them down without much trouble. However, we have had to split the job into a couple of days because with all of the dust and the abnormally hot September weather, the tractor kept overheating. Its quite a job but it is coming along. Next spring, when the ground dries out some but still will sprout seed, he will come out and drill about 20 acres and then we sit and wait and see if the seed takes. The seed has gotten insanely expensive and we have to put down about 35 lbs an acre. Guess I better start saving my pocket change. If it works though, not only will the land get healed but we will be able to put up all of our own hay for the animals to eat for the winter. They will become the compost factory and the manure to vegetable nutrient loop will be complete!

Before:

After:

Done

Sep4

I’ve done landscaping and built huge gardens. We’ve refurbished a house and built a chicken coop and pig pen but this is simply the biggest structure I’ve ever built. All I can say is good job son, and farmer Jon! Even Zina got in on the act today and helped hold the trim in place while I climbed up that infernal ladder one last time! I am looking forward to some good nights of sleep where my brain isn’t spinning trying to figure out the next stages and ensuring that I don’t do anything stupid and irreversible. Its up! Its here! Woohoo!!

What we have discovered is that it is very hot! We will definitely be putting up shade cloth next spring to help block some of the sun. The fans seem to be doing their job and when the solar array is put up we will be able to run all the fans we want to without having to worry about the electric bill.

We have started laying Lumite on the walk way areas with the intention of bringing in gravel for the “floor”. A trick we learned from some greenhouse videos is that you can spray down the gravel with water in the morning and it will help to keep the humidity up throughout the day. You flat landers might not think that that would be important because your air is as thick as a swimming pool, but out here where the humidity on a bad day is only 30% it will certainly help.

IT”S DONE!!!!!!!!!!!

This Thing Is Just About Finished!

Aug30

Of course now that the more tedious parts of the greenhouse project need to be done, my son started back to school and we are in a heat wave! While the last remaining pieces aren’t that difficult, I have been forced inside because of the 95 + F temps we have been having. The walls are up and the door is covered on the back. I couldn’t keep going today it was just too hot. So the last steps are to cover the front door, caulk the seam where the roof and the front and back walls meet and then add the decorative trim. I have had to make many round trips to the hardware store (which is about a 2 hour round trip) because the manufacturer shorted me hundreds of the self-tapping screws. I kept wondering if I was being over zealous about my screw usage but looking at his website I’m pretty sure I am just following the instructions.

I have burned my thumb and I have bandaids on 3 fingers on my right hand where my cutting/grinder raked across the top of my hand. Self-inflicted battle wounds. Now that the whole thing is pretty well sealed up, it is a smart thing that we invested in the fans and vents. It is definitely a greenhouse! I’ll bet this afternoon it was 110 inside it. I’m going to have to get a thermometer to hang in there to see how the temperatures fluctuate and adjust with the seasons. We are all very excited to see this coming to a conclusion. This is the end of our hands on construction for 2015. The solar installers start on September the 8th. All we’ve had to do with that is print up lots of money!

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