August 2018

Over the years, the wood framing in our hoophouse had rotted.  It's a mobile hoophouse with end walls that fold up and sits on rails so that we can roll it back and forth 24' each year so that the soil gets a chance to be flushed out with rain and snow and to accommodate a winter/summer planting schedule.  With the winds we get here, the rotting wood was requiring more and more bracing, which made moving it each fall a longer and longer chore (undo all the braces, move it, screw them back together).  We decided it was worth replacing the wood framing with metal, so Linc took off the plastic, removed all the wood, ordered and cut metal studs to replace the wood ones, reassembled it, and with the help of Jeanne and two neighbors, got new plastic installed.   We also went with a plastic that has an radiative heat loss barrier in hopes of raising our clear sky night time temps (it can get colder inside the hoophouse than outside due to focusing effect of the parabolic shape, cold high altitude night skies, and no air movement - we've had plants frosted inside at 43 F outdoor air temps).

 Another project was moving our summer kitchen (which had been up on the hill by the cabin) down to the cabin outdoor addition that we'd finished constructing the year before.  Our neighbor Dev came up and helped Linc finish plastering the walls.  We moved the old sink/cabinet unit, a wood cookstove and installed a propane cooktop, and a few cabinets, and did a little plumbing and wiring.  Now we've got a place to cook outside if it's too hot inside, a place to process garden produce, chickens, etc.  Nice!

A couple of different people that had responded to our tiny house barter ad came for separate trial runs to see if we all thought they were a good fit.  They both were great, so we had a tough decision on our hands.  As it turned out, one was still traveling on a long distance bike trip, and by the time he had made his decision to join us, the other was already here.  She (Amber) immediately started working with the goats, and had much better success with Jasmine, now that we had learned a thing or two about how to keep her from butting people.  As she got more comfortable with everything, we took off on a few longer day hikes.  Yule Pass and Carbonate Creek over by Marble, Colorado, and up Mount Lamborn, directly across the valley from our farm.

  As you can see in at least one photo below, the west was now on fire due to the drought, the streams were low, the vegetation muted even in the mountains, and the air constantly hazy.  It still felt like heaven every time we got up to the high country.