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 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!

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.

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!

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.

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

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?