December 2013

 Early December was a bit of a scramble to try and finish a few things before the snow started.  We wanted to get the heavy digging done for the new hoop greenhouse beds before putting the frame up over the winter, and figured that our last chance until spring was NOW.  The backhoe wouldn't start (too cold), so Linc removed all of the fluids (oil, antifreeze, heated them up on the stove in old pots, poured them back in, stuck a magnetic block heater on, running off of a generator, charged up two batteries, sprayed ether, and finally, with a groaaannn, it started!  Linc used it to dig out each greenhouse bed, grab loads of semi-rotted Cottonwood and Siberian Elm logs from the other end of the property (above), piled them in the dug bed trenches, and put dirt back over.  With only three beds left to go, daylight fading, and the big snow storm and cold expected that evening, he made the mistake of running the backhoe out of diesel fuel.  Quick run down to the gas station for 5 gallons of fuel, and 30 minutes of mechanicking to bleed the air out of the fuel system, and it was running again!  The final digging was done by headlamp, and came out a bid messy, but it was done, yay!

 The snow came that night, and temperatures dropped to below zero.  Winter arrived like a flick of light switch, it seemed.  Restricted to indoor chores for a couple days, Linc has been helping a group of friends organize a community shift into gift economy, inspired by the ideas presented in books such as Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein.  Below, a focus group meets in the warmth of a friend's home. 

Winter this year seems to be starting out as a time to reflect, look at what we did during the last year, have a few doubts and misgivings, maybe, and research some alternatives.  I'm sure by February, we'll be starting to envision what is next, and maybe begin the first steps towards as author Eisenstein puts it, "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible". 

Thanks for joining us in this blog summary of our own efforts.  Hopefully, it will help inspire you and let you know that other people are out there struggling, like you maybe, with understanding what's wrong with our dysfunctional human world, and starting to take the first steps towards something better!

November 2013

 November brought continued work on the 6000' long irrigation pipeline.  Here, the contractor is burying the pipe that he previously fused and dragged up the ditch.  One day, the pipe suddenly made it's way to the end of the ditch, right past our cabin and down the driveway.

 Meanwhile, with the cabin liveable again, Jeanne's focus was to build a goat milking parlor shed, so that she could give the goats more room in the barn by getting the milk stand and equipment out.  So, she learned how to operate a circular saw.

 Then she learned how to frame a deck and walls.

The two of us put the walls up and fastened them together.

 When it got to the roof, she made the trusses, Linc installed them, and a friend dropped by just in time to put on the roof sheathing so we could get it weathertight before the next storm.

 After the storm, we started in on siding the shed, using leftover lumber and boards that folks had offered.

 And finally, the test!  Eggplant, our black Nubian goat, was quite uncomfortable on the stand at first, without the support that a back fence in the barn had provided (above), but Jeanne extended the stand and added carpet to give them better traction, and now the goats are jumping right up for the their milking snacks.

 While Jeanne focused on the milking shed, Linc worried his way through getting holes made for the greenhouse support rail foundation.  This involved attempting to bore 18 holes exactly 30" deep in clay and kaliche, and pouring the support posts in level, plumb, and the correct distance apart.

He borrowed a friend's tractor and post hole auger, and found that, even sitting on a 6' pry bar to give some weight to the auger, it still couldn't get through the rock-like subsoil in places.  In the end, he had to dig out several with the backhoe, lightly backfill, redig them with the tractor and hand-operated post hole digger, and set the posts.   Whew!

 Here's a view (above) of what those fold down canning jar cabinets look like when open.  And, a view (below) of what Jeanne's reaction looks like when you forget and leave them open!

With the greenhouse foundation done, we took Thanksgiving Day off and went for a several hour-long, exploratory run/hike up the stream that feeds water to our ditch, and back along an older, higher, abandoned ditch to a friend's home for a visit, and then over to another couple's home for dinner.  While hiking, we realized again how lucky we all are to be here, surrounded by all of this beauty, wild nature so close by that it's within a short walk, run or bike ride.  I have a feeling that connecting with nature is going to gain a lot more importance over the next few years, as we all realize how disconnected we are from a world that is much more alive and enspirited than we'd been led to believe.  I'm looking forward to it.

October 2013

 October arrived, and we were still living in that tiny crowded camper out in the driveway.  The nights were starting to dip below freezing, and we started using the propane furnace.  Well, one morning, the furnace sprung a gas leak, and it blew up as Linc sat at the computer.  There was a big ball of flame, lots of yelling and confused running around, and then flames licking up the walls inside, followed by more yelling, and beating out the flames.  It was over pretty quickly, with no real damage, but from then on, no heat in the camper.

 Cooking breakfast in the summer kitchen was no longer that much fun either.  It's hard to see, but there's a bit of snow on the ground in the back of this picture, and while the stove gives off some heat, it's still outside in the wind, and after awhile you just get tired of being cold all day long!

 So, we renewed our efforts to finish the inside of the cabin.  Jeanne applied marble tile to the new countertop,

 We used some limewash to decorate the east wall of the loft, built a bed frame, built shelving out of some 1x6 tongue and groove cedar a friend had given us,

 Built a dining/office nook downstairs, and forced the first neighborhood visitors to sit down and see if it was large enough for a future dinner party of four.  Barely!

 Based on an idea Jeanne saw in a library book on cabinetry, Linc made seven cabinets that drop down from the ceiling joist space, with the shelves sized to fit quart and half gallon canning jars.  Yay, we finally have a place to put those jars and jars of pear sauce, tomato sauce, ketchup, and salsa we've been canning all fall!

 And then the big day came.  We're moved in and warm, and wow does it feel good to be back in out of the cold!  Here's Jeanne in the dining/office nook, herbal medicine cabinet to the right, new larger chest freezer (running at refrigerator temperature with a remote bulb tstat), custom bulk food storage cabinet behind it, filing cabinet in foreground.  Overhead are the folded up canning jar cabinets.

 Here's a view of the west side with the old wood cookstove back in service keeping us warm, cooking hot meals, heating water.  We now have a sink!  But the greywater drain isn't hooked up to a mulch basin yet, so we're still carrying the dishwater out to the compost piles every day.  No hot water yet, other than that heated on the stove, but we've bought the supplies to install a hot water heat exchanger in the wood stove firebox, so soon....

 Here's our new (used, $60) miniature clothes washer.  It runs off of the solar electric system just fine.  Only handles about half of what a normal clothes washer would, but works a bit better than the old 1926 Maytag ringer-washer that we'd been using before.  Our water filtration system shows here, a 5 micron particle filter, a charcoal cartridge filter, then a UV sterilization light canister.  When the 1100 gallon cistern that's buried up the hill gets low, we hook a hose up to the irrigation system and pump water through this system and up to the tank.  Takes about a day to refill the cistern, and then we've got water for drinking, bathing, laundry, and for goats and chickens for another two to three months.

 This year's pumpkin and winter squash harvest.  Not our best ever, but not too bad either.  Squash bugs had their way in the garden this year...

 With frost predicted, we harvested all of the remaining tomatoes, and piled them on the counters to ripen.  Within a week or so, we had enough ripe to make several more quarts of tomato sauce.

 With the emergency of getting back in the cabin resolved, Linc went up the road and spent a day helping Eric and Cooper build an earth ship house using tires filled with compacted soil for the walls.  Eric has worked out an ingenious system for doing this that involves a few custom made tools and an old skid steer.

 Next, we spent a morning helping friends down in the vally pick wine grapes, and watched the de-stemming machine do it's thing.

 Back at our farm, we invited the community over to process apples into cider using our antique grinder/press.  The majority of the group worked on cutting out the wormy parts (above), while two of us worked the machine (below).

 And then, one day, an enormous semi truck came driving up into our field, right through the prairie dog town, his trailer full of 10" diameter piping, part of an NRCS fundshared project to replace the leaking, 6000' long irrigation ditch that serves this property with a buried pipeline.

 A shot of the contractor beginning to unload pipe. 

 One afternoon, I (Linc) bicycled a few miles up the valley to a neighbor's remote mountain home (an old school bus) to borrow his tractor.  Driving the ancient, puttering, diesel machine back down the dirt mountain road, with the mountain scenery slowly passing by, I experienced this timeless feeling of intense gratitude for where we live.

September 2013

 With the floor and walls done, we began installing new (used) cabinets in the cabin (above).

 The garden continued to grow like crazy into September.  Here's Jeanne next to the sunflowers.

 Linc next to some Reid's Dent Corn.

 A great harvest day from the garden (assuming you like fresh tomatoes and green beans).

 We've gotten a lot of use out of the Toyota former U-Haul rental moving truck that we bought in Boston a few years back.  It now serves as a mobile farm tool shed, complete with all of the tools required to do nearly anything.  Here, we're set up to build some custom cabinets for the cabin.

 A happy Waldorf school girl with one of our chicks.

The sky and the view here are so variable, inspiring, never boring.  It's one reason we've never gotten itchy feet since moving here (a former pattern).  I can think of a lot of places we've seen that are AS beautiful, but they were all in national parks or wilderness areas.

August 2013

 During August, the growing horns on the goat girls began to cause problems.  The would stick their heads through the fence to the "greener grass", and be unable to get back out.  The best solution we've come up with so far is to duct tape a stick across their horns for a couple days.  Here's Tulip modeling her new headware... hornware?

 The garden started really booming in August, as seen above from the goat barn roof, and below, with squash, corn and beans, and LOTS of weeds.

 With the finish plaster on the walls done, we tackled the finish plaster coat on the earthen floor.  Same mix as for the walls, except that for each gallon of earthen plaster, we added one raw egg (for strength).  We later finished the floor with two coats of walnut oil, then two coats of walnut cut 25% with beeswax (and applied hot), then rubbed off after a week, then another two coats of OSMO Hardwax Oil.  We were very happy with the final result.  Very durable, slightly glossy, and feels great under bare feet.

 We wondered if the pastured chickens were missing the dust baths that they had so enjoyed back when they were free range.  Their favorite dust for bathing was the duff that accumulates under the Juniper trees, so we shoveled a bunch into a kiddy pool that someone gave us, put it on an old trailer, and moved it around the pasture with their camper coop and mobile fencing.  They do enjoy it!

 Jeanne harvested over 360 garlic bulbs from the garden!  She hung them in bundles, still attached to their stalks, from the frame of our portable storage garage/hay barn.  I don't think we'll run out of garlic this year!

 The peaches came on in an orchard up on the opposite side of the valley, and we needed exercise, so we hooked a trailer up to Linc's bike, bicycled to a You-Pick orchard, piled 30 or so lbs of peaches into the trailer, and biked home.  It's doable, but Linc is now looking into adding a small, electric assist drive to one of our bikes for when we want to haul groceries from down in the valley back up here.  We could recharge the battery off of our solar electric array.  Beats burning gas.

 We did get out hiking about once a week in August, while a friend took care of our farm for the day.  Thanks Siobhan!  Here's Last Dollar Lake (below).

 Jeanne, during a rest break below the Beckwith Range (probably telling me to point the camera the opposite direction!)

 We're starting to learn about edible wild mushrooms.  Here is what we tentatively identified as an edible King Bolete, but being tentative, we never did get up the nerve to eat it.  Next year, we'll try and get out with some of our mushroom hunting friends to learn more.

 This year, we finally made it to the top of Mt. Lamborn, just across the valley from our home.  Here, we're looking down at the North Fork Valley, the town of Paonia, and our homestead across the valley.

 Here's the same view, but zoomed in on our homestead quite a bit.

 And zoomed in even more.  Our place is at the top middle of the brown field in the center of the photo.  You can even see some green streaking where we put the last of the irrigation water on the field below the garden.

 On the way home, the truck managed to levitate one wheel on a tricky section of road, causing both of us to abandon ship long enough to get a photo.