June 2013

 View of the slowly growing June garden from the roof of the goat barn.

 One of the first hens to go broody showing zen like patience as she waits 21 days, nearly motionless, for the eggs to hatch.  If meditation produces wisdom, these chickens are Buddhas.

 So, Jeanne named the three doelings after flowers; Tulip, Jasmine and Violet.  Here, Tulip and Violet show off their new horns as they vie for queen of the goat gym.

 And neighbors try out the portable, wearable milking seat that one of them found in a junk pile on a nearby farm.

 And, June is our first chance to buy more hay for the coming winter, first cutting.  Not cutting our own yet, still buying and bartering from others.

 All that hay hauling makes the sight of our homemade hot tub in the trees look pretty good.  The water we fill it with is heated as it flows through a 500 foot long, 3/4" black plastic pipe lying in the hot summer sun.  The result is a 95 to 115F bath that feels pretty good on sore muscles.

 

 Not a bad view from the tub, either!

Jeanne says the only trouble with the tub is that once she gets in, she doesn't want to get out.  Eventually though, someone drives up to say hello, or to buy some milk or eggs, and bath time ends pretty quick.

May 2013

May brought a flurry of garden bed prepping and planting, as we struggled once again to keep up with more garden than two people probably should have tried to establish (55' x 155', with 45 beds).

Linc experimented with a variety of bed prep and soil prep strategies, keeping records of what was done where, and trying to make sure that there was always a control in each experiment (one half of each bed with minimal prep, the other half with something experimental, be it lasagna gardening, extra compost, no mulch, etc).  For two beds, we work exchanged with friends by helping them with projects in exchange for their help in creating two hugelkulture beds, also called hugelbeds.  These involved digging all of the topsoil out, filling the excavated trench with logs, then brush, then piling the topsoil back on.  We followed up the work party with pizzas cooked in the wood fired cob oven - made for a nice day, and a chance to enjoy a taste of community life often lacking in our modern culture.

 Digging out the beds...

 Cottonwood and elm logs in.

Brush added, dirt on top.

 A finished bed.

That was so much work, that Linc went out and bought an old backhoe on his birthday for future digging projects, and I think we've got a lot of them!  We'll do our best to keep this ancient (1965) machine running!

 Meanwhile, the goat kids grew bigger, and were taught the ropes of the goat gym by nanny goat Phoebe.

April 2013

We didn't have our white Saanen goat, Phoebe, bred last fall, but Eggplant was bred to a mixed Alpine/Nubian buck (named Homer) in the fall.  Eggplant got really big (below), and we wondered how many kids she'd have this year.  She'd had 2 kids her first year, and two doelings and one buckling the second, so we were curious, and worried, since Jeanne had needed to assist with the delivery last year.

As it turned out, she had three healthy doelings in a matter of 20 minutes or so, with no help needed.  Jeanne was ecstatic, and we were both happy that all girls meant that we wouldn't need to butcher a friendly little buckling this year.  Of course, we weren't sure what we would do with three doelings either...  One thing's for sure, they were some cute little goats!

A view back at Frugalbundance Farm from the south end of the meadow.

  And a view of Fire Mountain Canal, the North Fork Valley, and Mount Lamborn and Land's End, from the same spot.

March 2013

Linc joined a group of Paonian permaculture enthusiasts on a day trip to the Colorado Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, Colorado.  Here, Jerome Ostentowski and his crew of enthusiastic interns are growing an amazing array of greens, veggies and fruit in forest gardens inside greenhouses tempered by ingenious heat storage systems.  Here, some of the group negotiates its way through a banana grove, in Colorado, at 8000' above sea level...  A great cure for the winter blahs.

 In our own greenhouse, we were enjoying the warm spring sun on cold days, drying the last of the apples from the root cellar, starting new seeds in the beds, and, in the photo below, building a fodder rack and sprouting barley seeds into green barley grass for the goats and chickens to munch on.

 Jeanne placed an add in the local want ads, looking for a cream separator, and was surprised to be given one that just needed a little attention to work again.  Since it arrived, she's made cream at least once a week, and used that to make sour cream, butter, ice cream, buttermilk, and leftover skim milk for the chickens.

We dug the last of the sugar (mangel) beets out of the garden.  They run big!

 Linc took an old camper that we'd been given, gutted it, added roost bars, a roost ladder, and nesting boxes to make a mobile coop.

 He also made a brooder box for up to four hens to hatch and raise chicks in.

February 2013

February saw Jeanne planning garden beds, ordering seeds, and a trip to Flagstaff to visit Linc's mother and sister.  Linc also received engineering work from a friend that he was able to do from home, saving the weekly commute to Grand Junction.  In the meantime, the farm waited for the snow to melt, some of us more patiently than others...

Just to feel productive, we made a new hay feeder for the goats that allowed several to eat at once, without spilling as much hay on the floor.

January 2013

 Winter's a great time for a homesteader to make money, and Linc was lucky to get offered some engineering work in Grand Junction, so off he went for a few days each week, leaving all those farm chores to Jeanne. 

Around the 19th, we accompanied a group of friends on an epic cross country ski tour to celebrate neighbor Jack's 50th birthday.  The tour involved skiing the 23 mile Kebler Pass Road (closed in winter) to Crested Butte, spending the night with friends, and skiing back the next day.  It reminded us of all the outdoor adventures we used to go on, before we became attached to the farming/homesteading lifestyle.  Everyone involved had a wonderful time, despite the blisters, numb feet, and sore muscles.

Season's greetings everyone!  May we all have the time, energy, and especially, internal strength, needed to do what we feel drawn to do this year, in order to create the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.  And, may we be present enough to appreciate the beauty that is all around us already.