Hello blog. It's been a bit.

I am loving this Spring weather! Although I could do without all the wind. Everyone keeps saying this is windier than "usual", but we are still waiting for it to calm down and give us (and newly planted tomatoes!) a break.

We have made a lot of progress in the garden. It feels really good to get outside and work in the sun. Vitamin D is doing me some good! I have probably done more hard work in the last month, consistently, than I've ever done. I'm not saying I've been lazy, I just haven't had this kind of hard work to do. It feels really good to see that I can really do it. I've underestimated myself. Also, if you told me 3 years ago that someday my idea of fun work would be shoveling trailer after trailer of composted horse manure, I would have laughed at you.

We have our 7 raised beds dug in and filled with soil. We also have 2 tire "containers", and 1 small book shelf that was turned into a raised bed and filled with onions and garlic (better late on the garlic than never). 5 of the raised beds are completely planted, 4 of them have green stuff sprouting, and 2 have hoophouse frames on them. I like to walk around the garden and examine the beds, checking to see what I have missed.

One of the 4 hops plants we planted has sprouted! It's actually up past that wood block now :)

Last weekend we went hiking around Beaver Creek, here in Fremont County. Daisy had a blast. Turns out she might have some water dog in her after all!

My loves :)

This weekend we are taking off and heading up to our property in Park County. We haven't been up there since last year, and I am looking forward to getting away for a few days. I'm also looking forward to a few naps with the camper window open and fresh breeze blowing in :)

Everyone have an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend :)

Bill Maher anti-pharma rant...



"Someone has to stand up and say that the answer isn't another pill -- the answer is spinach."

A lesson in ants

We have ants in our field. Red ones, and lots of them. Millions of them. Crawling around in enormous (at least to me) ant hills. I've been watching them, sometimes taking a shovel to them and creating mass ant hysteria. But they always rebuild. I don't like the ants. They don't look like they do anything useful to me, so I got on the Google this morning to learn how to get rid of them. I went to the CSU Extension website, which I should add is enormously helpful to people with small acreage. Instead of learning how to rid myself of ants, I found this little tidbit:

Q. What is the best way to get rid of large ant piles in a pasture?

A. The piles are probably from harvester ants, which play a critical role in recycling nutrients in rangeland ecosystems. They play a role in turning over the soils and allowing enhanced infiltration of water, so they should not be eliminated. And even if they were treated for control, they would probably return.

Another insect I am just going to have to learn to live and work with :)

Our Big Day!!

Our first irrigation day, I mean.

It was yesterday. Although we didn't have a lot of notice. We noticed our neighbors getting water Wednesday, but hadn't heard anything from Don Ditchrider (that's what I have him in my phone as) about when it was going to be our turn. So I call him and get the ol' "oh I was just going to call you..." Oooookay. A little more notice would have been nice so that Kelly could take the day off and stomp around in the mud with me, but now we know for next time.

We opened our gate in the water box at 8 in the AM. 3 shares means 24 hours of water, so our gate has most likely been closed now.

As Kelly put it, directing the water is like herding cats. (If you have ever easily herded a cat, you don't get what I am saying here). Like everything else, this was a learning experience, and I thought it was another fun one. I kind of feel like we have accomplished something. This time last year we were setting up a 5 x 8 foot garden in the backyard of our rental home. Now we live on 5 acres of land with irrigation and room for a HUGE garden.

Spring has arrived, and everything feels like it is coming together nicely :)

Our first composter... and other happenings around the farm

This past weekend, we built our first composter! Our friend Richard at Green Desert Eco Farm got us started with some extra pallets he had, as well as the name of the place we can get them from. After I picked up some more last Friday, we were ready to build.

I never realized how many uses there are for pallets. And they are perfect for building an easy composter. We decided to build a long composter with 3 bins. We will start filling one side, and move to the next once that one is full. If we fill up those quickly, we can always build single composters, also using pallets. We spent Saturday morning building. It turned out to be a beautiful day, and we have the sunburns to prove it.

Here's what we came up with :)

See? Not too hard, and it doesn't look too bad either. We will still build a removable top section, as well as one for the front. Right off the bat, we threw in a little bit of soil, some leaves I finally raked up, and some hay from the barn (brown stuff). I've been adding more green stuff from the kitchen -- coffee grounds, veggie scraps, etc. (Random side note: you can also compost fingernails, and hair!) I'll keep an eye on it, and wet it and turn it every once in awhile, and before we know it, we'll have our own compost.

Another thing we did this weekend was brew 2 batches of beer. We haven't done as much of it over the last year as we did previously, but we prefer home-brewed to store-bought, so this was long overdue. Our new friend Joe from Westcliffe came over and helped us brew 2 batches -- a Sunshine Wheat clone, and an Amber.

(Daisy helps. It's sanitary.. really)

We should have some tasty homebrew by the time we can sit outside and enjoy it :)


It's becoming more and more apparent around here that Spring is just around the corner. Huge patches of green grass around Penrose seem to be growing every day. And we saw quite a few honey bees this weekend. (Another random note.. bees come out when it is 50 degrees outside. Just learned that one, too). Another sign it's getting warmer -- the bugs are coming out. Or should I say, into my house.

We decided to postpone chickens slightly. First, we are going to focus on the garden, which is really the reason for it all. Our next step is the raised beds. Once we have those built, we can build our coop. It will only be a few weeks extra before we get our chicks, though. I have them picked out :)

I recently, (as in, this morning), found out about an organization called
The Greenhorns. It is a non-profit organization made up of young farmers with a mission to recruit and support other young farmers.

Watch the trailer for their documentary film, which is now in post-production.



One of the young farmers, Amy Courtney, says "I'm doing the best that I can to live honestly. I'm not relying on some strange economic structures that have been set up that benefit some and hurt others to make my livelihood. I think that makes me feel just a little bit safer in a world gone mad.”

This is what we are after -- living honestly and purposefully. I want to create a better life for ourselves and our family now, and a better future for our children and grandchildren.

Our story

Just when I start to feel like winter is never going to end and I'm going to be stuck inside forever, nature throws in a few beautiful days. They have refreshed me and reminded me that Spring is just around the corner. I'm itching to get started.

For anyone who doesn't know what I have been up to over the last few months, (or may not have gotten the Christmas newsletter... oh, yes, there was a newsletter), I'll give the "short" overview.

Kelly and I moved to Erie, Colorado the summer of 2009. Erie was close enough to Boulder to be able to work there but not have to pay the price to live in Boulder. While living there, we got a better taste of what fresh, local, organic food is like. We also started eating healthy, and drinking a lot of juice. I mean fresh juice. (Fresh juice gets in your blood stream as fast as alcohol!) With just changing our diets, drinking juice, and cutting out crappy, processed food, we both noticed a difference in how we felt. For the first time, people would tell me I was healthy, and I'd take it as a true compliment.

In the Summer of 2010, we started our first garden.

(Daisy helps too)

It was small, but just what we needed to get started. From that little garden, we learned a lot. Among other things, I learned that zucchini is not a container plant (neither are cukes). If you plant garlic and onion bulbs too late, they are basically just preserved underground. I learned that grasshoppers like to bask in the sun on a good tomato, and I also learned that wasp stings hurt.

By the time our garden was in full swing, we knew we wanted to garden on a larger scale -- full time, and indefinitely. Like a real farm. With a lot of searching, and even more positive thinking, we happened to find what we now call our home.

We found 5 acres in Penrose, Colorado. We have been here for about 4, almost 5 months, although it feels like that has gone by fast. Our house was a foreclosure, and we are still working on the inside. We were lucky it was in pretty good shape -- nothing a little paint can't fix. Our 5 acres has the potential to do anything we want it to.

We plan on having chickens first (fingers crossed we are ready to order chicks in 1 month). In the future, we will have goats. Some of the other possibilities we like are llamas, pigs, and maybe even a mini dairy cow.

And the big reason we are here in the first place, we will have a very large organic garden. Being in the sun and working in the dirt is like the best kind of therapy. I can't wait to get started.

So that is how we ended up here in Penrose. It is a little strange to, at 27, be living in a house that I have no intentions of moving out of, but it is also pretty exciting. I don't know what we have in store for us, but I have a vision of us in 20 years, sitting outside, relaxing on the porch, and looking out at everything we have done with our little slice of earth, and feeling very accomplished, and very happy with what we have done :)