Category Archives: Just for fun

JAZFarm Aerial Tour

Aaron, my son, has been experimenting with the drone, the GoPro Camera and editing software.  I found this kind of awesome.  We have some other flyovers but this one is pretty neat.  Zina even makes her movie debut!

Learning How To Use You Tube

I had posted a bunch of videos a while ago through Facebook and was told that they wouldn’t play on this venue.  My technogeek son schooled me up on how to upload to You Tube and these seem to be working better.

Here is a fly over of the farm from earlier this spring.  The solar panels and greenhouse aren’t up yet but it is a good fly over of the place.

A Little Homesteader Vacation

We have been building out this farm for 3 years.  Time off from work and farm construction has been virtually non-existent.  Also, while we have had our followers during all of these years behind the hammer and drills, we have never had a time where we could sit and just chat and swap stories about our successes, failures, and future developments with other hobby farmers.

A great friend of mine from archery, due to various reasons, found himself living in Michigan only about 90 minutes from where I grew up.  We used to talk everything archery and shoot a bunch together.  I hadn’t seen him in several years since his departure.  We hooked up via text and email about a year or so ago and were both absolutely stunned by what we found out.  We had both gone off, bought land, and proceeded to destroy ourselves physically by building farms!!  Ours grew out of gardening, and theirs grew out of dairy.  Understand this though – in all the years we had known each other we had NEVER talked about it.  I still find it uncanny that we have both made this leap to self-sufficiency and simple living!

Every year Mother Earth News magazine hosts their sustainability fairs in various places around the country.  It is a collection of booths of many subjects and products as well as seminars spaced throughout the weekend.  We saw how to build straw-bale houses, keep bees, winter gardening, making solar panels, rocket mass heaters, and many others.  Two of my heroes, Wes Jackson, a biologist and Joel Salatin – the guru of the small farm movement were also there.

Paul, his wife, son – in – law, Zina and I decided to meet at the fair in Topeka, Kansas.  We had an absolute riot!  We went to breakfast, out to dinner, hung out at lectures, wandered booths (I even got to meet a Facebook brother face to face for the first time and bought one of his hand made brooms!)  It was just the ticket!  It was a short weekend with two long drives at either end, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.  It has been so long where traveling didn’t mean having to visit family, or clients.  The astronomy star-parties are fun, but the total upheaval of one’s sleep schedule makes it not as relaxing as it could be.

All in all the fair was pretty basic.  I have my ideas on how the vendor displays could be more homestead-ish and self-sufficient oriented than they were, but if my friends want to hook up again at one of these things, I’m all in.

Paul, Cindy and Jonathan, it was so great to see you!

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Summer Is In Full Tilt!

We actually did what we said we should today. Got up early and worked outside before the inferno began. Of course we stayed out there well into the afternoon so the dehydration happened anyway! We hilled 250 row feet of potatoes, shoveled 4 yards of compost, weeded and did chicken chores. Because we old duffs need to get exercise (as if the farm isn’t enough), I took the tractor out and cut a mile and a quarter jogging path around the perimeter of the place. The weeds were super thick. In some places they were over 4 feet high. Tons of different kinds of wild flowers. It’s amazing to see that after only one year since we kicked the conventional wheat farmer off of our land how fast the wild things have rooted and retaken the place. They only choked the little tractor that could, once! Out in the way back we even have some new locust trees coming up and there is some native tall prairie grass trying to make a come back! The beans are beaning, the Potatoes are blooming, the Butternut and Acorn squash are squashing, the Carrots are carroting, the Onions are bulbing, the Tomatillos are growing their little lanterns, the Sunflowers are reaching toward space, and the Strawberries are running. Our peppers are coming on as well; the Jalapeños were the first but there are six more kinds starting to flower – even the Habaneros! After having a tussle with army cutworms, the cabbages appear to be thriving. The Beets are in desperate need of thinning and it looks like we actually may get Melons. A good looking year! Our wheat patch is ready to be cut, threshed and winnowed and the chickens are about a week away from the freezer. Piggies are now over 100 pounds and are rooting up their pen with vigor! They thought it great fun to come in after the tractor had scooped up a load of compost and bury their noses in it up to their eyes! On the conventional farms around us the wheat harvest has started in earnest. The trucks are backed up at the elevator. It looks like the American white processed flour addiction will continue unabated. The city garden is exploding as well. The usual gazillion Tomatoes, Lettuce, Kale, Cucumbers, Zuchs, and Green Onions. Green beans go in this week to replace the Garlic we just harvested. Now we are chillin’ Lovin the AC that will soon be solar powered! Zina is busy stripping a bushel of Thyme from its stems. I actually may begin greenhouse construction next week as well. Summer be in full tilt!

The Storms Here Are Pretty Entertaining!

Wow THAT was COOL!! A thunderstorm built up and is moving over us but the squal line is LITERALLY right across the road. It was raining like hell at the farm across the road but not a drop here! It has since started to rain some but for awhile it was raining right across the street and not here. See something new everyday!

>>> About 15 minutes later:

And after the storm, a complete double rainbow from end to end.  Pretty amazing!

Trying Something New

WordPress doesn’t seem to want me to be able to post videos unless I upgrade to a new and fancier blogging package.  Aint happenin’.  Maybe I’ll need to have my kid teach me how to upload to You Tube or other such infernal techno-wizardry.  But for now I’m going to try to see if I can link videos from my Facebook page.  You have to be a Facebook subscriber I guess, but it will take you to the link.  You don’t have to “friend” me, in fact, if you are hypersensitive I would suggest that you don’t.  my Facebook page is where I kind of let my hair down.  So lets see if this works.  Here are a couple of links to videos of the pigs, the garden and our newest menagerie of egg layer and broiler chickens.

Barn Stars

After months of them sitting in the living room we put up our barn stars.  They are 40 inches across and looked pretty big.  Of course taking them into the big out of doors, the fence swallowed em.  I think they still look pretty nice though!

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