July 2013

 So, July was a bit of a blur.  Mid-summer should be like that, right?  We moved out of our cabin into a tiny camper in the driveway, and started applying finish plaster to the walls of the cabin, both upstairs and down.  The plaster consisted of clay-earth sifted through a screen, water to make a slip, sifted sand, and boiled wheat paste.  We had some major help on this project when our neighbor Ian came over for a day and helped us do three of the four walls downstairs.

 The summer kitchen got a facelift when the old cabinets from the cabin were moved out there.  It became a focal point both mornings and evenings, as we could no longer cook in the cabin, and the camper was really too small for much other than sleeping and a bit of engineering work.

 The overhanging porch off the west end of the cabin became our pantry, with chest freezer, another chest freezer wired to run as a fridge, the cream separator, grain grinder, cabinets, bulk bins.

 At the same time, we used the backhoe to level out a spot in the woods, added carpet as underlayment, and installed a used above ground swimming pool that we found for cheap in the want ads.  The pool was 18' wide, and big enough to store around 6000 gallons of water for the garden for the end of August when our irrigation water typically runs out.

 It also made for a nice swimming hole on hot days.

 Towards the end of the month, we traveled down to Flagstaff again for Linc's mother and sister's birthdays, and did some car camping and hiking near Telluride (Lake Hope above), and Monument Valley (below).

 Stopped for a look at the Sneffels Range on the way back up.

 And took a selfie at Gretchen's place as we worked on Mom's taxes.

 Meanwhile, the garden was progressing, with the 3 sisters (corn, squash and beans) growing nicely below, surrounded by the ever-present bindweed and prickly lettuce.

 And, the snow pea harvest started, along with lots of greens.

 Here, we tried making a trellis of cattle panel to use to grow squash up.  Unfortunately, the squash never got big enough to climb it this year, but someday we'll get it to work!

 Linc helped out a bit with a community art wall downtown as part of a Village Building Convergence project.

 And, there was always the community garden asking for attention.  We wanted to help with this project a lot more than we were able to.  It came out great!

 At home, Linc installed a fertigation system in the irrigation pipe feeding our garden, and used it to innoculate the soils with beneficial microorganisms.  We used a purchased product called EM-1, and also fed extra whey, from making goat milk cheese, through this.  Hard to say what effect it had, since we didn't use a control in this experiment, but the garden did really well this year.

 We also periodically used the truck to move the chicken coop around the field, moving a portable electric mesh fence and solar powered fence charger with it.  The effect on the vitality of the pasture after the chickens had been there was dramatic and unmistakeable.

 Jeanne continued taking the goats on daily browse walks up the ditch...

 For a scale perspective of the landscape we inhabit, Jeanne and the goats are in this photo, just below a solitary tree in the center of the picture, walking along the ditch.

 Same photo, just zoomed in.  Now you can see them!

 And, the interior of the little camper we called home for four months or so this year.  I don't miss living in it all that much!

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.