February 2018

A VERY dry winter so far.  We got out a bit, jogging the canal towpath instead of skiing it like we normally would in February.  Linc did some biking (photo above from ebiking up Steven's Gulch Road to see whether there was enough snow yet to ski - not yet!)

And finally, finding enough snow up on McClure Pass, 35 miles and 3000' higher than home, to climb up Huntsman Ridge for some tele turns.  Nice to get out!  Back on the farm, Linc had finished the tiny house on wheels, and started advertising it nationally as a work/housing barter offer (home in exchange for taking over our farm chores 8 days/month).  Immediately we started getting responses, and the interviews started.  Everyone we spoke with was sure that they were a perfect fit, and we, in turn, were sure that they weren't after talking with each.

This was the month that one of our largest goats, (maybe 175 lbs, and definitely the largest with horns), Jasmine, got a wild hair and decided to kill Linc.  That's probably not what she was intending really.  Goats have a hierarchy, and the herd queen is at the top.  All the goats know Jeanne is herd queen and rarely, if ever, offer her the slightest challenge.  Linc, however, doesn't spend that much time with the goats, and I guess Jasmine decided to find out where he fit in the herd's pecking order.  One day, while he had the goats out on a browse walk, she suddenly began charging and knocking him down.  This went on for a matter of weeks, and became even more concerning because we were looking for someone to take over farm chores (the tiny house barter) and having a goat that liked to knock people over wouldn't help the new person learn about goats (besides, it hurts!).  Gradually, (this took several months to finally calm her down) the situation resolved, through a combination of positive reinforcement (clicker) training, along with physical restraint techniques (grabbing Jasmine firmly by the horns and holding her while explaining that bashing humans was not acceptable, etc).

We also finally had to process Jasmine's buckling for food.  We'd been unable to find a good home for him, and when that happens, we prefer to process bucklings ourselves as the best way to honor and respect the gift of the goat's body for food with the least stress for the animal in the process.  It's never easy, but it was quick (for him), and a huge relief to get it done.  And, yes, we do feel very thankful for the gift he provided us.  Quoting from the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, Greetings to the Natural World;

"The Animals - We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world.  They have many things to teach us as people.  We are honored by them when they give up their lives so we may use their bodies as food for our people.  We see them near our homes and in the deep forests.  We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so.  Now are minds are one"

 Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address 

January 2018

January consisted of a lot of the usual winter farm chores, plus some hikes, bike rides and a bit of skiing.  Linc continued working on getting the tiny house on wheels ready for someone to live in full time, modifying the kitchen cabinets, the solar electric system, and also worked with a friend to get the common land field (field area outside of our fenced pastures) planted with some perennial drought tolerant grasses and legumes.  That mostly involved riding around the 25 acre field on a grain drill towed behind Mike's tractor, keeping the seed flowing and watching for mechanical issues.

Here's a couple photos of the tiny house, finally pretty much ready!

The main floor, from door looking towards kitchen (bathroom hidden on left across from kitchen).  The stainless steel cylinder is a high efficiency wood burning stove (with a Coleman campstove oven sitting on top for baking).  The ladder gets moved around as needed.  Loft is above at the end.

Looking from top of ladder into loft.  There are windows on the 3 exterior walls, and a wall mount TV/DVD unit out of site around the right corner.

December 2017

December brought potlucks, Christmas parties, and more of day hikes between AM & PM chores.

Linc continued working on the tiny house on wheels, upgrading the solar electric system with more panels, more batteries, circuit breakers and fuses, modifying the chimney to get the stove drawing better, bought a used storage shed to go with it, had it moved in and started renovating that too.

The photos are a little washed out due to some cloudy weather, but we had some nice hikes.  One to Green Mountain overlooking the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, one down to Morrow Point Reservoir on the Hermits Rest Trail, also in the Black Canyon National Park, and another snowy day hike to the hammock at high point on the Paonia Jumbo Mountain hiking/mountain biking trails.

View from Inspiration Point, Black Canyon NP

Hermits Rest Trail, overlooking Morrow Point Reservoir

Morrow Point Reservoir, Black Canyon NP

Jeanne in the Hammock on Jumbo Mountain, overlooking Paonia

And that wraps up our year.  Kind of a mostly work year, but with some spectacular adventures on occasion, ending with a sense of being slightly better off financially, even if we'd still be considered poverty level for income.  We have everything we need, live in a beautiful spot in a great community, enjoy some great friendships, and have lots of freedom (except for chores twice/day, but we love our animal and bird friends so it's nice to spend time with them and acknowledge how thankful we are for the gifts they provide us).  The longer we do it, the more we like and appreciate this homesteading lifestyle.

In closing, I'll list a few numbers from the garden harvest totals, plus goat dairy and poultry.  It was definitely not our best garden year due to the June frost, July hailstorm, and general neglect due to our other obligations this year, but it is still a serious endeavor that enables us to manage without working "normal" jobs.  This isn't comprehensive:

Goats milk - 514 gallons

Chicken, duck and turkey eggs - 236 dozen
Asparagus - 26 lbs

 Cabbage - 67 lbs

Broccoli - 34 lbs

Corn - 165 ears

Garlic - 350 bulbs

Cooking greens - 160 lbs

Salad greens - 90 lbs

Onions and leeks - 101 lbs

Melons - 38 lbs

Parsnips - 155 lbs

Potatoes - 410 lbs

Pumpkins - 121 lbs

Winter squash - 335 lbs

Tomatoes - 285 lbs (something like 151 lbs of them "green", but about half of those did ripen on the shelf)

Zucchini - 65 lbs

Total value of food from farm - $16,971

Time to start planning this year's garden!

November 2017

November started with another in between morning and evening chores adventure (gives us about six hours).  This time, we opted to attempt to mountain bike the Lead Kind Basin Loop, something we wanted to do when we lived in Grand Junction and were thirty-something years old.  For some reason, we waited until we were 57 to take on the 3000' elevation gain, 15 mile loop jeep road ride.  No regrets though - it was spectacular.  Here's a bunch of photos of the ride.

Jeanne starting out from town of Marble

About 1/3 of the way through the big climb

Oh no, snow and we're only 2/3 of the way up

High point - ecstatic!

Now for 3000' of downhill to the old mining town of Crystal.

Snowmass Peak in the distance above Lead King Basin

Facing south - not sure - Ruby Range maybe?

Nearly down to Crystal - an amazing road

Cliffs overlooking Crystal

Crystal, former mining town

Crystal Mill - one of the most photogenic spots in Colorado

Awe...NOW they tell us - this sign on way out

The tiny house on wheels in its new spot with a view

Completed hay barn!  Tiny house to left.

October 2017

October, two houses rented, time to take it easy!  Sort of.  Linc decided that the roof of the second rental house had two many hips and valleys to attempt a new metal roof without help (he and friends got the first house roof done the year before but it was a simple ranch house with a detached garage).  So, he contracted it out, then hired on with the contractor as a laborer/roofer to help drop the cost a bit.  He learned a lot and decided he'd made the right choice.  They did great work and it was over and done with in a week instead of dragging on for a month or more.

And, we decided that we really needed to build a new hay barn.  Our original one, a tarp garage, is starting to come apart, it's too small to put an entire winter's supply of hay in so we're always scrambling in March or April to find someone's barn stored organic alfalfa hay, and we had inadvertently erected our tarp garage on the neighbor's property (boundary confusion), so we're aiming to take it down sooner than later.  Linc designed a 24' x 12' pole barn, tried augering holes with an assortment of broken tractor driven augers, then just got impatient, hand dug the holes as well as he could and got to building.

With that started (below), we went for a day hike up the road and realized we really wanted a longer hike to celebrate getting the house renovation done and rented, so got our chores done early and made it up to Gunnison Lake (a 4000' in four mile up more or less bushwhack that we'd never managed to make it to before), admired the view while we hastily ate lunch and ran back down in time for evening chores.

Future hay barn in progress (tiny house on left)

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A half mile up Pitkin Road from home on mid-day exercise hike.

Jeanne part way up to Gunnison Lake

Feeling happy we finally made it here after hearing so much about it.

Gunnison Lake - don't ask how to get there, it's a secret!

Coming back down with a view of the Beckwith Range

September 2017

So, what to do after eight months of home renovation?  Well, the garden was cranking, having somewhat recovered from frost in June and hail in July, so there was lots of harvesting and food processing to do...

And we cut, raked, baled and stacked 78 bales of hay in our second cutting.  Not enough legumes in it to be prime goat hay, but good to supplement the alfalfa bales that we buy from a friend across the valley.

We'd been realizing for some time that Jeanne couldn't milk goats twice/day forever without a break, and that we really needed to get something built or bought that could be offered to someone to live in as barter for them helping us with the farm so that we could occasionally have a break.  We hadn't managed to find the time to build another tiny house (or to even finish our own, which still has no shower, an unfinished attached greenhouse, unfinished attached summer kitchen, and unfinished exterior walls).  So, Linc found this nice tiny home on wheels on Craigs List, at the right price and had it delivered.  It weighs 9000 lbs, but we found that our 89 Toyota could move it about the farm as we worked on setting up a spot for it.

 With the old backhoe, which is seriously in need of some TLC, we dug a trench 150 feet up the hillside to where we buried a 1000 gallon cistern, and installed a water line to a spot that we leveled out above the garden for the tiny house.

Linc's sister Gretchen and partner Ken showed up on the way home from their trip to Wyoming to watch the solar eclipse, and boy was it great to take a break and spend some time with them.  Here are Jeanne, Gretchen and Ken on a hike around the Lost Lake trail that Jeanne and I hiked back in June, and the photo below that is what they were all pointing at.  Hard to believe this is all so close  to home.

August 2017

August was the final push to get the fixer upper ready for renting, then showing it.  Part of the push involved blowing 12 to 16" of cellulose insulation into an attic that must have been 130 to 140F.  Thanks to our neighbor PJ for running the insulation machine for Linc, who did the attic crawling.  We spent the last week or so of August finishing up final details and cleaning, advertised the house and showed it to over 30 families who came to look, about half of whom filled out applications.  The hardest part was selecting one family out of that group and letting the others know that their search wasn't over.  It's really hard to find a place to rent in the North Fork Valley this year.

What follows are a series of before and after photos of the house.  We either replaced or refinished every floor, refinished all existing wood trim, added new trim (much of it was missing or damaged), straightened and repainted all baseboard covers, repainted all walls and ceilings, repaired all appliances and windows, re-insulated the attic, replaced all light fixtures, garage door opener, toilets, rebuilt or replaced all faucets and shower trim, repaired leaky pipes, rebuilt a front railing and stone wall, added basement egress windows and window wells, did a rough scrape and paint of the exterior walls and trim, rebuilt cabinets, removed a kitchen island and replaced with something that fit, tore out and rebuilt the water damaged bathroom subfloor under and around the tub, and I don't remember what else.  The inside is done, the roof was done later in the fall, and exterior painting and reroofing a shed is for 2018 or 2019.

Living room before.

Living Room after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Main bath before

Main bath after

Basement main room before

Basement main room after

Bsmt north bdrm before

Basement south bedroom before

Bsmt north bedroom after

Basement south bedroom after

New bsmt windows and window wells

And that's it.  Big relief.