July 2016

Thanks to Phyllis, Steve and Carolyn, we got in a couple days on the Gunnison River this year.  So nice to play in that desert canyon water.

We got a new neighbor this month.  PJ, from Omaha, Nebraska, bought the strip of land at the bottom of the field, and arrived in an old RV (visible at upper right), carrying a complete workout gym.  He spent the first week or so recuperating from working for a living, then got bored and started helping Linc on the home renovation downtown.  This year, the goats decided they actually liked the grass/clover/alfalfa/weed mix we'd been cultivating for them and spent a lot of time down there, or maybe they were just spying on PJ.

This home renovation business started to pay off when a tree in the yard there yielded a bumper crop of sweet cherries.  Here's a small sample of the 90 lbs we picked, another 50 lbs picked by others, and more left hanging on the tree for the birds.  It was a wonderful year valley-wide for fruit.  Finally, no late frost to zap all those blossoms.

June 2016

Busy on the house, we let the garden go except for watering and occasionally weed wacking the paths.  Except for the voles eating all of our beets and carrots, it did pretty well without us fussing over it, even if it looks a little like a Colorado jungle.

May 2016

Despite thinking that we didn't have time to plant a garden this year, we managed to do it - still a few beds left to plant after the last danger of frost in June.

Hard not to be thankful and happy to be alive on a spring day in the mountains.

Eggplant, so pregnant she had to prop herself up on her front feet to give her belly room when not standing, thought it would be nice if her kids would arrive soon.

Linc planted 300 trees, with the help of a backhoe.  300 trees!??!

Eggplant and Tulip, both dark colored Nubian goats, gave birth to four hyperactive goat kids (two boys, two girls), that kept us pretty entertained.  This is what you watch when you don't own a TV.

Here's Jeanne, in the background, serving as an obstacle course for goat kids..

Really, I think the date stamp on my digital camera was off.  This was probably from May.  Anyway, here's progress on a home renovation we're doing downtown.  New paint, tile, bamboo flooring, cabinets, etc.

We managed to get a day off for our favorite summertime activity - caving, of course.

April 2016

The chickens rototilled our garden for us this year.  Here's what it looked like when they were done.

With 300 tree seedlings on order, we qualified for free fencing furnished (but not installed) by the Colorado Dept of Wildlife.  We pondered how to get seventy 10' long fence posts installed until someone mentioned that we could probably rent a skidsteer with an auger.  Linc had a blast putting holes all over the field, finished all the holes in a day then went over to the neighbor's and augered right into the public water line.  Oops!  Linc excavated the broken line in the dark with the backhoe and fearless Ian finished patching the break somewhere around 3AM (long after Linc had given up and gone home to sleep).

With some help from friends (thanks Dev, Ian and Kelly!), Linc and Jeanne managed to get about 1000 feet of 7' high deer fencing and four 16' long, 7' high gates installed in a matter of days.  This made Linc very happy.

Feeling accomplished, we joined some friends on a nice day hike in Dominguez Canyon to an abandoned homestead.

March 2016

Strangely, after all that snow in February, it warmed up in March, and melted off enough to be able to trail run on the irrigation ditch in t-shirts.

We continued on a home renovation project that we'd started in February.  Ordering and hauling cabinets, plumbing fixtures, flooring and light fixtures, finished demolition work and started renovation work.

 

February 2016

We had a ton of snow this month!

 The ducks were fine with it.

Our neighbor's plow couldn't make it down the road in 4WD with chains on all wheels, so the road became impassable above our place.  Our neighbors up the road reverted to skiing, snowshoeing and postholing for a week or two until they were able to get someone with a Bobcat up to plow them out.

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Our old diesel backhoe wouldn't start in the cold, so we were no help, and without chains, it wouldn't have been able to do much.

 It was too deep to walk the goats up the ditch where we'd normally take them for browse, so Pitkin Road became our goat path for a week or so.

Someday, we'll teach the goats to haul things.  For this year though, the neighborhood relied on the two legged pack animals instead.
 

Happily, we made it up to the higher country a few times for some turns.

January 2016

We spent January resting a little, sleeping a lot, skiing some.  The big hybrid battery on the Prius failed.  At $3000 for a new one, and $1600 for a reconditioned from NAPA, Linc used the Youtube approach.  That involves watching a few videos until you know how to do something that you normally wouldn't attempt.  In this case, it involved taking the 200 volt battery out of the car, finding the bad cell, ordering a functioning used one on Ebay for $40, making the swap, then reconditioning the whole battery bank using a strange assortment of lightbulbs and power supplies.  Luckily, he had an empty garage to use nearby with grid electricity and a wood stove for heat.  It took a few days, but it worked!  Here's the battery: