August 2014

 The above photo shows our 2014 garden, as seen from the roof of the goat barn.  I shouldn't say our garden, since really it was the grasshoppers', not ours.  After replanting all of the corn, squash, melons, beans, kale, etc., only to watch them eat every seedling as it came up (well, the slugs were out in force this year too, so they helped the grasshoppers with the mass murder of our seedlings), we decided not to bother even TRYING to weed (other than potatoes plants, which seemed to be mostly unaffected), so the bindweed and chicory (neither of which appeal to grasshoppers and slugs, unfortunately) took over.

Linc read that Bill Mollison, founder of the regenerative design philosophy called Permaculture, once said that there is no such thing as too many insect pests, it only means that you need more predators (as in ducks, guinea fowl, turkeys), so we are now scheming on how best to incorporate ducks, and possibly turkeys or guinea fowl, into next year's garden.

Remember when I said that homesteading teaches perseverance?  This was definitely a perseverance-teaching lesson!

 Unfazed by the loss of our crops, we put together another E-bike, this one for Linc to replace the one he'd burned out the previous winter.  Here they both are, a 750 watt Bafang BBS01 mid-drive kit on Linc's bike, and a 350 watt on Jeanne's (the guy's has to be faster than the woman's, it's a rule!)  The single solar panel on the right is part of a separate solar system that will eventually supply power for charging e-bikes, e-car, and a second milk-storage fridge - thanks to neighbor Jack for the inverter, and Zoe and Colin for the batteries for that system.

The photo above says so many things.  It's of Jeanne, happily planting the new greenhouse winter greens beds, as the moon rises over Mt Lamborn and another vibrant colored sunset slowly fades over our homestead.  It got so dark that we had to finish up planting, and installing row cover, by headlamp in the dark.  I think I'll call this photo "Perseverance".  Maybe it should be called "Optimism".  It encompasses the philosophy that we are learning, which is to always focus on what we want to create, rather than worrying about what has gone wrong, or what we might do wrong, or what others might think.  And when we do, (go through the extra effort to get those new seeds planted, even if it means doing it in the dark, and even if they might all get eaten by grasshoppers and slugs like everything else planted this year), we're rewarded by beautiful experiences.  In this case, the beautiful experience was the sunset sky with moonrise that we might have missed if we'd been inside eating dinner.  Later, we were treated to an endless winter supply of greens, and that was icing on the cake.

Another nice thing that happened this month is that friends from New Hampshire, the Anderson Family, drove up for a visit on their way to see Mesa Verde.  Being short on guest space, we brought them up to our neighbor Eric Darby, where they slept in a large room he'd built above his earth ship, complete with a view of the West Elk Mountains out the open east side.  They loved it, and we loved seeing them and chatting about old times and life in between.  Yay for friends, old, current and yet to come!  

July 2014

 July brought an invasion of several billion plant-eating grasshoppers, pictured here sunning themselves as they did each the morning on the north garden fence, prior to embarking on another day's hard work of eating everything we had planted in the garden, (including all of the leaves and buds off of the $500 worth of new fruit and nut trees we'd planted in April).  "Thanks Linc and Jeanne, we're hoppingly happy!" they said, wriggling their thoraxes at us for emphasis.  "I hate you." Linc replied, as he spread out another day's supply of NOLO Bait (an organic, grasshopper biological control agent that appears to have been completely ineffective).  We watched in disbelief as they ate every bean, squash, melon plant that came up, then started in on the kale, lettuce, raspberries and blackberries, rhubarb, onions....  We now know what a true insect plague looks like.   

 We emailed a few friends and let them know we were thinking of trying to put the cover on our greenhouse, and were pleased to have a small crowd gather, swarm up onto the frame like kids on a jungle gym, and despite some wind, pull the cover on and cinch it down in a matter of one or two hours of fun work.  Thanks everyone!

 Now there's just one problem.  The beds that we're prepping are in the west half of the greenhouse area, and the greenhouse itself is on the east half.  Which means that before winter, we're going to have to un-anchor it, and roll it westward on the rails to the newly planted beds of winter greens.  More on that in the fall...

The chickens, living their mobile RV lifestyle, received the addition of a new dust bath trailer (small yellow tented trailer in the photo above).  The old mobile dust bath was a blue plastic kiddie pool that tended to collect water, turning their dust bath into a chicken mud wrestling pit.  Fun for the chickens I guess, but the eggs were getting pretty dirty with all of their muddy feet running in and out of the nesting boxes after the latest henny-penny mud wrestling bout, so we put a roof over the new bath house and the mud wrestling stopped.

June 2014

 As the last of the snow melted off of Mount Lamborn and Lands End across the valley, things really started to green up down below.  Here, our Sannen goat Phoebe appears to be enjoying the view from Robbins Ditch as much as me, with Fire Mountain Canal contouring its way around the Roatcap Creek drainage below.

 Late May and early June brings mornings with Bluebird skies, green pastures, singing birds.  This time of year helps me remember what I'm inspired to create here more than any other time.  Abundance, trees, water, flowers, fruit, happy people, birds everywhere!

 Our neighbor Eric spent much of May and June constructing a two-story, 2400 square foot community dance hall on his property, mostly by himself, with the occasional assistance when needed from his sons and once, a neighborhood work party to move the homemade roof trusses into the building.  I want to have more neighborhood work parties - fun!

The warm weather helped several of our hens remember that they sometimes like to go broody and sit on eggs for 21 days straight so that they'll hatch out flocks of tiny, chirping chicks.

 Linc and Jeanne worked, with help from friends Ian, Dev, David and Colin, on putting up the high tunnel hoophouse frame.  It turned out that the company had sent the wrong instructions and several of the wrong parts, but that didn't stop us.  If anything, homesteading teaches about perseverance!

 Inside the cabin, we replaced a small, chest fridge with a larger one (to handle the increasing refrigeration requirements created by more goat milk products), and squeezed a front-loading clothes washer into the attached greenhouse.  The larger electrical load from these, plus charging electric bicycle batteries, necessitated a larger solar electric array, so we moved the array down off of the cabin roof (hard to keep clear of snow in the winter), increased the size from 600 watts to 1000 watts, and fenced if off from goat hooves and horns.  This array will eventually be pole mounted, with the ability to change tilt angle seasonally to follow the sun.

The alfalfa in our alfalfa/grass pastures got hit hard by weevils again this year, and the goats (not being insectivorous I suppose) opted not to eat from the pastures for a month or so.  Linc borrowed neighbor Ryan's tractor, rented a mower attachment, and cut two of the paddocks (recommended for weevil control).  Also this month, we planted all of our warm weather garden vegetables, including 66 tomato seedlings we'd raised in the cabin greenhouse in soil blocks, and replanted carrots (we still haven't quite figured out how to get carrots to grow here).  Go plants go!

May 2014

 This month, Jeanne went off on a 9 day Vision Quest in the desert with a group of girlfriends.  Here's what she looked like after spending 3 of those days sitting by herself on a rock out in the wind (and it was really windy) and sun without a tent, no food, a jug of water.  She has this "grounded" look to her, I think.

 Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Linc ran around like the proverbial headless chicken, milking chickens, collecting goat eggs, prepping garden beds, planting potatoes, going for bike rides with a friend, work sharing with neighbor Dev (we'd work for a few hours together on my projects, then go over and work for a few hours on his), doing some HVAC load calc work for a friend, etc.  The garden bed prep this year involved loosening weeds in beds and paths with a sharp shovel blade, shoveling weeds from paths onto the beds then covering that with topsoil from the paths, then adding hay mulch to beds and wood chip mulch to paths, then reinstalling drip hose.  Still a lot of work.  Gotta be a better way...

 The goats didn't know what to make of Linc as he went tearing around the homestead trying to do the work of two people, looking a little frazzled due to sleeping 5 hours/night. 

Finally, Jeanne came home!  Welcome home, Jeanne, how was your trip, great, now help me plant all of this chard, kale, beets, lettuce, corn, beans, the rest of these potatoes, and, oh, can you separate out some cream, churn some butter, and make some cheese, cause there's about six gallons of milk in the fridge...

And, we bought a web cam so that we could enjoy dinner time Skype webcam calls with Linc's mother, calling from the laundry room/office of the assisted living home that she shares with a family (the owners) and two other elderly residents.  She frequently enjoyed telling us her favorite joke, "There was one smart fella and he felt smart, two smart fellas and they felt smart, three fart smellas and they smelt...oops!"

April 2014

April brought the usual high winds and louder whisperings of spring.  Linc turned on the new mile long buried pipe irrigation system for the first time on the 3rd. It worked great!  No more herding piles of leaves and sticks down the ditch every spring (OK, actually that part was fun).  No more worrying about the ditch leaking, drying up, or slipping down the mountainside.  Fantastic.

Linc purchased a better electric bike kit for Jeanne's town bike (shown above), along with the requisite fenders and lights, and put together our second e-bike.  This one is MUCH better than the first.  Slightly less power, extremely quiet, with a digital control pad that allows one to set the level of assist desired (can be overridden with thumb-throttle for a quick boost up short hills, passing cars on the freeway ;-)).   Pedaling lightly, she is able to do 22 mph on the flats.  Steep hills are around 10 mph, 14 if pedaling hard.  Jeanne at first expressed only mild interest until one day she decided to take her first ride by commuting to work and back on it.  By the end of the day, she too had EGG (Electric Goofy Grin) on her face when she pulled in the driveway, and her days of driving the car pretty much ended right there.

This month, we planted peas out in the garden, and started warmer weather veggies in soil blocks in our cabin greenhouse.  We also planted 17 dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit and nut trees in the garden.  Planting food-producing trees felt REALLY good.  With time, ONE of these could produce as much food as an entire garden bed.  Its roots will mine minerals from the soil and drop them as leaves in the fall, enriching the topsoil around it.  The flowers will attract insects.  Its roots will pull moisture from deep in the ground and transpire it from its leaves, cooling the air around it, and its leaves will provide some shade and windbreak, both of which we could use a lot more of on our south facing mountainside.  Lastly, the trees will attract and form symbiotic relationships with fungi, eventually creating an information and nutrient-exchanging subsurface network in the garden.  REALLY, ALL THAT?  Wow, why wouldn't everyone drop whatever they were doing right this instant and go outside and start planting trees?  Well, for one, I'm writing this on Dec 31st, and it's 16 F outside...

February and March 2014

No photos!.  I think we were too busy!  We both had work, Linc's mostly being in Grand Junction, doing HVAC/plumbing design/drafting, with some additional engineering and water treatment work from home.  Jeanne continued to work at PACE at the senior center doing physical therapy two days/week, as well as taking care of all of the chores while Linc was away.

Linc's e-bike motor burned out after a month or so of exciting pre-dawn and post-sunset winter commutes across the Grand Valley to work from his friends' home, often in sleet, snow, rain.  Still, he was impressed, and immediately made plans to order a better made kit for Jeanne's town bike.

While on the subject, here's what I like about these e-bike kits.  They're fast, silent (well, the newer ones are), one can pedal as much and as hard as one wants for a work out while commuting or running errands, and if tired or hauling a big load of groceries in the trailer, the motor is always there to help out, or even take over completely if need be.  Uphills and headwinds are no longer an issue, and given the speed boost, it's possible to nearly keep up with traffic, which gives car drivers more time to react to the sight of a bicyclist flying along in the bike lane with a huge grin on the rider's face.  All this, and a 20 to 30 mile battery range, and the ability to recharge (2000 to 5000 times) for 6 cents worth of electricity per charge (if grid tied, free if off-grid solar electric).  Errands (and the associated finding of parking spaces, undoing seatbelts and hauling oneself in and out of the car - all associated with errands in a car), are a breeze.  Cruise up onto the sidewalk, lean the bike against the front of the store, back out in a flash, then whip across town to the next place.  Santa Claus needs one of these!

In February, Linc drove down to Flagstaff, Arizona for a week to visit his mother and sister, and help with Mom's filing and tax prep.

One weekend in February, Linc took at weekend-long workshop in Paonia called Transformation Mind Dynamics, a self-examining, dysfunctional pattern exposing, self-actualizing program similar to the EST trainings that were held in the 70's.  Immediately hooked, he began spouting TMD terms like "I am now RADICALLY HONEST!", or "I'm out of INTEGRITY!" on a regular basis, which amused (or irritated, depending on the day) Jeanne and any neighbors who hadn't already taken the training, quite a bit.

We used up the last of the root cellar-stored apples in late March, and a day or two later, the first Robin of spring started singing outside the cabin.  In early March, we planted the first spring greens, parsnips and beets in the garden.  Not complaining, but WHERE, did the winter go?

January 2014

 Thinking wisely that we should eat what we grew, we continued eating potatoes at a furious rate (well, they tasted good too), along with the usual eggs, kimchi, homemade ketchup, etc.  They usually found their way into breakfast and supper, and if there was soup, for lunch.  Late in the month, we finished off the last of the 400-something lbs that we'd harvested last fall, minus whatever had been given away, and the 80 lbs saved for seed potatoes.  This year, we'll aim for twice that!

 Linc finally got time to pursue his interest in electric-human hybrid transportation, buying a mid-drive electric motor kit that allowed him to pedal up hills pulling a trailer, feeling like Superman.  The motor was operated from a handlebar twist throttle, and a Lithium phosphate battery rode in a rear pannier.  A small charger came with the battery, allowing charging off of our home solar electric system.  The kit was a blast, but cheap.  The motor mount twisted, chain fell off regularly, and it smelled like it was burning out almost from the first day he rode it.  And, he was hooked.

With snow on the ground again up higher, we did our best to get out for the occasional quick ski tour up Tower Hill.  The snow was always good, with the trail head located perhaps 6 miles, and 3000 feet or so higher than home.

Linc received some engineering work to do from home, and Jeanne was hired to do physical therapy work at the local senior center 2 days/week, a dream job for her, being less than 2 miles from the farm, close enough to zip home at lunch if need be to check on the goats and chickens.