Greenwood Farm

Eco-Stewards Program 2011

2011-02-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

We're thrilled to be the site of this year's Eco-Stewards Program! The following is from an IRISH church news blog post... (and their info is right on!)

A week long summer opportunity in Montana for young adults who are looking to connect their faith and environmental stewardship.

Young adults from all denominations are encouraged to participate.

The Eco-Stewards Program is for young adults ages 20-30 who are interested in exploring the connections between our faith and environmental stewardship. The 2011 program will take place June 2-9 with the theme “Living with and from the Land on the Crow Reservation in Montana: Sustainability and Reconciliation through Agriculture, Health and Green Building.” The program will be held at Greenwood Farm, a 40-acre organic farm on the Crow Reservation, just outside of Hardin, Montana.

There are also limited paid summer internships available at Greenwood Farm in Montana, one of several churches, or one of several Presbyterian Church (USA) camps around the country.

The Eco-Stewards Program blog describes the 2011 program: “Through discussions with environmental experts, local farmers, doctors and tribal leaders, we will consider how communities can achieve sustainability and reconciliation through better agriculture, health care and green building practices. Our exploration of these issues will include lectures, community gatherings, field excursions, hands-on project work, creative worship, and sharing of personal passions and vocational discernment. While paddling the Bighorn and hiking in the Sand Rocks, participants will have time to absorb the region’s powerful landscape while reflecting on their own eco-life journeys.”

Apply by March 1. Email Rev. Rob Mark with questions at robfirstpres@gmail.com.

The Eco-Stewards Program is a partnership between the Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Association and Presbyterians for Earth Care.

More info can be found on the Eco-Stewards blog at http://ecostewardsprogram.wordpress.com/2011-program/.

Part Two-- building away...

2010-12-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

One project that did get done is rebuilding the firebox for our main heat source, the rocket mass heater. With firebrick and a tighter angle iron collar for the feeding tube, it works better.

We can now pile in trash cedar posts and let them burn. They are very combustible, but if we run the fan it keeps the flame blowing down. But I don't trust cedar post firewood enough to set them in the stove and leave. We're thankful for this stove! The recent cold spells had many days with very little sunlight. That means we need to run the stove.

All in all, we sure like the help from our grandkids, operating their heavy light equipment to fill in the cracks between the urbanite. Now everything is buried in snow.

Too much! We had our hopes for getting the solarium finished before winter set in, so we had another heat source. But to get that done, the sunny john must be built. Josh helped me pour the floor of the vault after Springlane Construction did the stem wall for us.dd caption

Here's the heat storage for the sunny john. Look up sunny john on line to see how it works.

We snaked the pipes from a central barrel for airflow through 20" of fill to keep the place from freezing in winter. Maybe.

We got the west wall done barely in time for some fall rains. See the white walls between exposed studs? We painted elastomeric over $1/yard mesh on the surface of our EPS (styrofoam) 4" thick panels, and it makes a very adequate indoor surface. Not quite as hard as sheetrock, but durable enough. Works good. Sand the styrofoam surface well so the paint adheres

The east wall is still open, after sever cold and plenty of snow it looks like we will not have a real thaw until springtime. We have about 10" of snow on the ground. So our solarium cannot really get warm. But it is protected enough for lumber, and for Sheila.

We tried to get it done! Here's the backing for the solar air collector for the sunny john, a baffle to allow air to flow into the black ducts at the bottom and out the opening at the top into the Sunny John.

Here's the window with insulated glass for the collector, it's 5' X 6'

The collector surface is old aluminum siding, painted with a special highly-selective solar collector black coating, formulated to soak up the sun's rays efficiently, but block out radiation. This allows the surface to get considerably hotter than something painted with normal black paint. Well, it's not done, and the forecast is for more snow tonight....

Here's hoping for a mid winter thaw to finsih some of these projects!
Maybe I've been spending too much time on my column with the local newspaper. Check it out if you like, http://www.bighorncountynews.com/clergy.html
Grandpa Dave.

moon, mice and veggies

2010-12-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

The late fall new moon is tipped almost vertical because the eclliptic–the path the sun moon & planets appear to follow around the earth–is angled almost flat to bring the sun lower in the south at noon, lowest by Dec. 21. And that's the harbinger, fall ended two weeks ago, and we were hit the 2nd week of Nov with cold and snow, well below 0. And it snowed more, and more.

Here's the evidence of some wee invaaders. We unfortunately used a lot of old hay for mulch. Our garden suffered a bountiful population explosion of mice.


Grandchildren did a good job harvesting carrots, but not before the previously mentioned friendly 4 legged harvesters took sizeable bites out.

We want to remember our bountiful fall. Too much sweet corn, we ended up processing over 100 lbs and giving away at least as much on the ear for Crow fair, churches, etc. And Hannah enjoys feeding the three chickens left. The other 21 or so are in the freezer. Grandma and I did the operation with almost no grandkid supervision. Too gruesome for their age??

Those pesky invaders proved to be food for Sheila the Aussie Shepherd, but there are too many mice

Grandma's garden produced. These are samples.

AFr. Charlie asked us to care for the apples in the tree behind his parsonage. They were the right size, not oversize like modern apples, and delicious.dd caption

To be continued...

A visitor

2010-09-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

And just last evening, we ended three days of wonderful new friendship with Denise from Boston, a good friend/colleague of Dave (Dr. Mark), from Switzerland, more recently from Boston. She has been traveling the country, and Dave told her to stop in to see us. She is an awesome chokecherry picker, so Grandma has her dozen quarts of canned chokecherry juice ready to transform into fruit juice or pancake syrup. We had a wonderful three days fellowship.

On chickens and rainbows

2010-09-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

This post opens with an end of summer chicky challenge. Here are the chickens just driven from the garden, because they ate of the fruit of the tomato. We were curious why our tomatoes were slow ripening, and it didn't occur to us they would totally consume any at the first slight pinkening. So they are banned. This makes them vulnerable to our wild predators.

But Sheila the Aussie Sheepdog has become reincarnated as a chicken herder dog. In fact, she is so protective and caring, she actually crawls into our little secure chicken pen in the evening with the chickens. They are a bit distressed at having a dog so close, but we came home last evening and found sheila and the 25 chickens asleep in their abode.

We decided that wasn't the best, and have insisted Sheila not babysit chickens that close.

End of summer also means we have come home from our camping vacation, this August, with Bonnie's two brothers and children and friends. We had an awesome time in Colorado, hosted by Ryan, Mark, and Cassandra and Troy. Our family provided the only grandkids, and only four at that, so they had adult attention.

It also means I start to school, neglecting farm and house building for mondays and Wednesdays each week now. Here's thumbkin. Or rather, where is thumbkin.

My K kids also learn to coordinate eyes hands and ears with drumming and singing Indian songs. Here we're giving it a shot.

pow wow is over. sorry, no picts. I was laid out with both eyes impossibly burning from one of the worst hay fever cases I've had. Our house, with its high tech fan, was the best place to be. But that lasted only four days, ruining Crow Fair, but not ruining plum picking with Bonnie and a friend.

And it's also honey harvest time, with our friend the honey man from Lodge Grass, Rich Behlow. He filled six gal jugs for us this fall.

We are urgently now trying to get our solarium done. stem wall is poured, ready to install a "sunny john" moldering toilet, and the arched pipes to support the glazing. And then it rained, but thank God the two inches of rain--unheard of this time of year--came after we had it poured. Only now, it's a pain to back fill.

With the storm gone, the sun has now started to warm up the place again. They had 3 inches of snow on the highway in Glacier Park. So we took advantage of the mud and went to town to work on the house K and Dave will occupy when they arrive 2nd week in September. So we are not bored! Enjoy the picts! And
See my blog Spirit and Dust for my column in the local paper: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

Summer happenings

2010-08-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

This blog begins at midnight looking north beside our barn house. This is not aurora. It is the dusk at the point of turning into dawn.

The biggest news is the three grandkids helping prepare Grandma and Grandpa's old house at 933 Rangeview for the big move from Boston back to Montana. They'll arrive in September. Guess who they are?

Yes, Hannah, Toby, and Caleb.

And we had our first board meeting of the new Bighorn Valley Health Center. We have great hopes for improved health care delivery in our community!

Our John Deere. We sold the Allis 180 diesel and bought this 4020. It bales very nice, 8 speed hydro trans, 4 speeds in reverse.

We attended the National Native Ministries conference at Ashland, where Dave presented on indigenous hymns of the Crow and Cheyenne, and yes, that's Bonnie, with our good friends from decades ago in Busby.

We can't seem to avoid the wind in summer. I placed large square straw bales west of the garden. But the storm winds came from the north.

The chickens we bought as babies love our weeds. We have a conflict. The chickens won. But they will soon start losing their heads, as soon as they have depleted more of the grasshoppers. The experiment in our garden was successful until they discovered the tomatoes.

The wind that flattened the corn did this to Dr. Dave's tipi. We have rescued what's left to get it repaired for next summer. Care to come try it out at Crow Fair 2011?

Greenwood existentialism

2010-06-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

Life and death, struggle, defeat, triumph, and determination. The beauty of it all is in the beholder? It depends who's beholding.

Bonnie caught me cutting the new seeded pasture ground at about 10 inches, opening up sunlight for the legumes and grasses I planted to grow. My interference with nature. See all the weeds? Obviously, they want to win over my seedling perennial pasture forbs. Fortunately, after lots of examination, I found we have in this field only one weed that's listed as noxious. But it is totally nutritious, so all the weeds in here make good forage. In a couple weeks I'll cut and bale it, and see who wants it this fall. The noxious one is only a problem for tender lips. If your lips can tolerate the prickles, canadian thistle is delicious. Goats love it, sheep will eat it, stickers and all, as long as it's green. In this field, only a few dozen square yards have infestation. We are committed to spending a half hour a week this summer keeping it uprooted. As you may know, it's about the most difficult perennial to control, because of the vast lateral root network. One thistle plant growing from seed in the spring can infest a circle 30 feet diameter with over a thousand plants by fall, all from lateral roots. Of course, it also produces seeds. If we humans could network like that, we could out-populate our enemies too, if not the whole earth.

This and other challenges get put aside in the evening to watch the sky to the west. I couldn't resist using the camera last evening, after a hard day's work on cutting weeds, Russian Olive brush, gardening, digging in the bottom of the drainage ditch so it drains better, pulling fence posts, rolling up rusted barb wire, and rubbing sore muscles. See the progress of the sunset? It's like progress on the farm. Sometimes so subtle it takes a picture timer to get the flow. Near the end, Venus, the evening star, appears to remind me of a globally warmed planet with 400 degrees sulphuric acid atmosphere, and I'm glad to live on fragile planet earth. It's enough encouragement, or barely enough, to handle the latest tragedy.

The last picture is of the wood door frame on our chicken coop. A carnivore splintered it while attacking the latch until it gave way. Bonnie has had difficulty opening and closing it, because I made it tight and strong so no predator could do the very evil act done. I lost, he won. It's not fun. One lonely hen was left. All the others disappeared. Sheila the dog found one carcass, with a small hole from which all the blood was consumed. We looked around, and found no others.

Shall we give up? Bonnie says no way. I have plans in my head to build a heavy chicken range shelter using cottonwood logs for rails, and varmint proof wire (chicken wire is not strong enough), the whole thing heavy enough to keep it down in the wind, but not too heavy to scoot behind a tractor. And now especially, with our Boston family coming in a couple weeks, we can't imagine anything but determination to make it better.

So the sunset progression reminds us of truth and beauty. It's in the hope of another day, and the possibilities of winning in the bio struggle. God rest our cute chickens. We miss them. And our culinary plans are now defeated, but there's another day.

Problems ad infinitum

2010-06-07T05:20:00.000-07:00

I've about gone my mental route with myriad problems for which solutions bring on more problems challenging solutions that are problematic. This post is the problem post.

1. Shade. No critter shade on the west border, since our drainage ditch is completed and the Russian Olive got trashed. Solution: plant wild cottonwoods. Anyway, these trees will help lower the high water table. Problem: the only ones I can find easy enough to dig are in sand, so the roots lose all soil when pulled up by my front-end loader. I got 9 trees in one bucket load, and the root soil all fell off. Solution, plant them in saturated soil next to the ditch. Problem: They need lots of water, and even then they might not make it. Solution: Bonnie, the water girl. See her work. My back does not allow me to reach like this, and she is so agile anyway, I had to get her in the picture.

2. Frosted blossoms. Here is a newly planted crab apple trees, with blossoms newly frosted. The good side is newly planted trees do better if they don't produce seed. So it's OK.

But even better after frost is these cottonwood flower buds. They got zapped. This spring I have no cottonwood blossom allergy.

3. Contaminated irrigation water. Then there is our major organic transition problem: our water source has drainage from over 500 acres. Here is the origin of our farmers' ditch, a smaller canal flowing out of the main "Two Leggins" irrigation canal from the river. Problem: it uses 1.6 miles of Williams Coulee creek, which serves as drainage to adjacent fields. After it crosses the road in the right it bends north and is higher than surrounding farmland, which can then be irrigated. My NRCS folks thought this would be a very small problem. This problem doesn't yet have a solution. I'll call my organic tech expert.

Here's our farm from a satellite pict, see the Williams Coulee water flowing in the channel past our property, and off to the right into the Big Horn River.

4. The neighbor's tiller. It fits on my 3 pt hitch and the PTO, and works great. But not if it picks up twine. The twine will pull itself into the bearing seals, breaking the seals and destroying the bearings. Solution: knife and wire cutter pliers, and pretzel-capable spine that I don't have. Volunteers?

5. Chickens on the farm. Great source of meat, fertilizer, and fun for grandkids. Problem: Also great attraction to Sheila our dog, who continually feints attacks and scratches on the chicken wire. Eventually she'll get through. Solution: kill Sheila before Sheila kills our chickens. Nope, wrong solution, our grandkids love both. But they also love to eat chicken. Any ideas? We need a dog trainer? Reminder: Sheila dispatched our Colorado grandkids favorite bunny when she persisted in attacking the cage until it fell over, the lid fell off, the rabbit ran, and quickly suffered a crunching fatal bite. This carnivore needs to learn a behavior change or be dispatched elsewhere, unless the household wants to give up on chicken raising.

6. And then there's our salt cedar problem. My hired help cut the salt cedar in the snow last winter, leaving low stumps in the ground. But because of the stumps, I cannot mow here to keep it down, it would wreck my mower. The stumps need to be cut again with the chainsaw. Who will do it?

And when we cut the Russian Olive, we did not get all the slash out of the channel. It is lots of work, and steep, and slick in the snow. And now, the slough is full of water, since the river is up, and the mosquitoes have heaven on earth. Solution? Jump in the goo and pull them out? It's really deep foul mud. And, notice the salt cedar budding from its red stems on the left. There's no end to problems.

So it's better to just gaze on the beauty of the place in spring....

Here are three of my favorite farm techs, son Scott, and grandsons Isaiah and Elisha. They came last weekend, finished the tree watering dams, and cut and piled an enormous amount of Russian olive slash by the channel. Isaiah and his wife are parents to our two great-granddaughters, and plan to move to Australia in a month. How times change, and problems get solutions with problems and solutions and the joy of living.

News from Iowa

2010-05-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

We went to Iowa, my parents' farm, now owned by my brother Phil. We drove our neighbor's truck there to a memorial for my aunt, my father's sister. We took my neighbor's truck to cut some hedge posts from hedge trees in my brother's timber. Hedge trees are considered weeds, but make real good posts except for one thing. They do not grow straight. You might see hedge trees in eastern Texas, that's where they originally came from. People don't like them because of thorns, lots of trash, and grass won't grow under them. And they spread fast in a pasture.

So we cut the trees into posts and loaded our truck. We hope we have a good trip back to Montana Monday. We hope they will last twice as long in the ground as the steel posts we're putting beside them. At least that's what my brother Phil says... (we'll keep you posted as time passes...)

Fires and near-misses

2010-03-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

The tiny bird flying to our big oak tree seems oblivious to the sun dog in the western sky, guarding the sun off the picture to the left. We often see these bright sun dogs in fall and winter, and they are supposedly a harbinger of bad winter weather. But we believe it's spring.

So, we got to work on Russian olive. We burned the big pile near the barn. And we cut firewood from the rest of the Russian olive piles from the ditch just off our south border, and burned the slash. I got the help of Sam and Naomi, our renters in town, and Pastor Josh. So I bought a second chain saw.

Did a lot on Tuesday. Got a lot done. Hard work. my shoulder and back had enough.

But back home and we found sparks had jumped across to the grass in the slough, and started burning around the big dead cottonwood tree stump that I cut off high a year ago because I don't like cutting into barbed wire embedded in that tree. After we controlled the grass fire, the hollow center of the tree was burning. I didn't even notice. What a roaring blow torch! Louder than our rocket stove.

Water would not put it out, I couldn't reach the core with the hose. I decided to let it burn.

So we decided to soak everything around the burning stump and go eat dinner.

I wasn't too worried, with everything soaked. Of course, if one of those rare nighttime chinook winds started up, sparks could possibly fly across the channel to the Eagles Nest resort....I didn't want to think about it. But see those sparks in the pict?

At 10:00 I just happened to check the weather on line. Warning for high winds at 3:00 AM! So I went out with the chain saw, Bonnie helped me, and we cut the burning stump down. Fortunately by then had dropped all the embedded barbed wire, and a much thinner shell was unburned. Bonnie and I labored to douse every ember, but it was hard to see with the clouds of steam coming up from the burning roots. Then we went to bed. For an hour.

Then Bonnie woke me with the words, "the wind is blowing.". Confident, I went to look out the east door at our dead fire. Spots of hot embers with even some flame! We soaked everything again, and this time we could see better. The wind blew until 4:00 AM, then it started raining, and a potential disaster was averted. So watch out for sun dogs. I didn't know they could be harbingers of too much hot as well as too much cold! Thank God for Bonnie's alertness to the wind.

The latest...

2010-03-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

It's embarrassing how long this took for me to get the next post off and running. Yes, we too had snow, but nothing like you folks farther east. We have been getting cabin fever rehabilitation from our Lacy the cat who runs the place, harasses poor Sheila the dog, and occupies her perch of power on my chair back.

In the background is the green chimney on the floor that keeps us warm. When we have two days in a row of no sun we our thankful for our heat build up in the floor from burning, and like the fact we don't need to stoop over to feed the fire. Just toss in a chunk. The stove works better than we had hoped. Of course, there's plenty to do, and cabin fever is not a legitimate excuse for laziness. Above the green pipe notice the window trim. The top valance covers the roll of bubble foil insulation, and the side covers the newly designed limit switches and counter balancers for our automatic curtains, which to date are working just fine.

For more cabin-fever antidote, here is our almost done carved cottonwood sofa. Pastor Josh, a good friend from the Allliance church in town, is wielding the adze. That tool, the least expensive quality one I could find ($99), came from England. It's a one-handed curved-blade adze that used to be an indispensable tool for chair makers. It really works neat, when we have a hammer to drive it.

But the main source of heat is the sun. It has gradually moved its arc higher in the southern sky, and now we have about half the heat from the sun that we had December 21. It really shows! but the sun still helps. Our teapot still heats water on the stove for coffee when we run it, and we hope this view of our living quarters makes you feel like you would be welcome to stop in any time. If the Lacy won't welcome you, our teapot will. And Lacy will climb into your car when you want to leave, unless we restrain her. She just loves car rides.

Our Russian Olives are pushing, see the red sheen on the branches by the channel. It seems like ages ago when those trees were frosty. now that spring is pushing.

After church I took a walk to see how our west field was doing. Bonnie helped me start cutting the many piles of Russian Olive we need to cut since John stripped them out of the big drainage ditch that belongs to our neighbors. Mr. Koyama is kind enough to allow us to connect our drainage ditch to his. You can just barely see our junction at the bottom right. Our excavator man so easily plucked out the trees and lowered the ditch a foot to make sure we would have drainage. This will stop the rising of the water table along our west border, caused by the main irrigation ditch that serves our irrigation district. The water table rises to a foot below the surface at most, and leaches to the surface where it dries and salts get concentrated in the soil. That's why 10 of our 30 acres produces almost nothing. After draininage, and irrigation, production can begin again, but it may take years.

Here is the pict of our ditch, on the west border. Note the crusty white hue of the dirt because the salt is drying out the soil in the spring wind and sun. Now we need some big rains to drive it back down deep in the ground where it won't trouble us anymore.

We miss our grandkids! Here is Kelly Jo, one of Naomi's daughters, came to visit. She and Sam Pickett rent our house in town, and are some of the folks that keep us busy. Life is good!

On the organic front: I have a certifying organization from North Dakota with some very nice, very experienced people. They say there should be no problem getting organic certification fairly soon, possibly yet this year. This is a surprise, since my discussions with NRCS and the Montana certification peopled were far from encouraging. So, with spring coming on, there's lots to be thankful for!

grandkid bonanza Part 2

2010-01-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

The first real Montana winter in decades, part II.

To our grandkids:

We remember the winter here when your parents were in high school. It was -40 in Hardin, and the almost two feet of snow on the level shrank to a foot turned solid because of warm rain, then came another snow storm, super cold for six weeks, and the deer did not have the strength to paw thru the hard packed snow to get to the grass. We walked and skied on top of the snow. We had a serious winter game and livestock kill, and many elk died in Yellowstone Park. That's not this winter. But, it's not over yet!

We still had problems. This beautiful scene of frost on our window is a symptom. Our Jetta diesel will not start in the cold, and at -30, it's necessary to do something. We parked our cars in the garage the first really cold night. Water from melting snow flooded over the garage door, soaked into the door jam, and soaked up the sawdust I scattered. The next morning I started fires on both sides to warm things up, and the humidity in the place warmed up. Morning after that we had window sills iced up and frost over the windows, and we had work to do absorbing water in the garage and dumping it out in the snow.

Before it can get warm in Montana frequently there is fog. We had some dense soup hiding the frozen swings.

Of course, the deer had more fun closer to the barn since Sheila, our goofy Australian shepherd who protects us from the deer, decided is was cold enough to stay the night in her cozy bale doghouse. But they kept a lookout during the day.

But the hoar frost on the big Cottonwoods takes the breath away in case the cold doesn't. And eventually the fog lifts, and the chinook air from the mountains in the distance comes, gently enough so Grandma and I could really enjoy some cross country ski trails made by neighbor ATV drivers in our bordering city property.

But, we learned again that what we intend doesn't always turn out, and we have to get up and try again, like Caleb so masterfully showed us over Christmas.

Have a merry new year! Grandpa

PS. For a technical thing: the 1/25th HP pex pump died, and the big tank warmed up to over 90 degrees since we could no longer pump hot water from our rocket furnace into the floor zones. We notice that the floor is colder, even though the air in our living room is warm. With the pump running, the floor stays warmer through the house and the tank stays cooler. We have the technology in place to control that with little effort. Just set the T state to the right temp. New pump on order.

grandkid bonanza, part I

2010-01-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

Our time being what we are, Grandma and Grandpa to the best grandkids in the world, has been changed into a memory with many good feelings. Inside the house we had lots to do, in case it was nighttime and too cold. But the weather outside was (not yet) frightful, and a most delightful time was on skis. Everyone was successful, even the youngest. We didn't know how imnportant it was for these three to stack wood next to our house. After parking their gear. We also didn't really get it when the sun dog parked over the big horn mountains (the sun is 20 some degrees off to the right). Maybe because this dog doesn't bark. Then the storm came. 8 inches of snow and two days later, one morning, the temp was at it reads. I thought it couldn't be, until I checked with some others in Hardin. The high that day was 14 below (I think Jan 5). But the problem was not just cold cheeks and noses and feet, we had other problems cropping up. But we DID keep warm with our cozy rocket furnace. To be continued...

Happy Blue Moon New Year!

2009-12-31T19:54:00.000-08:00

Scenes from around the farm today, this final day of the decade. Sledding, tromping through the hills and gulleys, slipping around on new cross country skis... Then, under the blue moon, and inside a rather smoky tipi, we pinned Psalms for the new year.

Happy New Year!

Making firewood...

2009-12-31T19:38:00.000-08:00

The home-made hydraulic splitter comes in handy during these cold days, as Russian olive is rather resistant to splitting. It's dense, and when well-cured, makes for outstanding fuel for the rocket mass stove.

Automated insulated blinds redux

2009-12-31T19:31:00.001-08:00

With some deft re-engineering, the blinds now are operational. The in-PVC counterweight mechanism, that trips limit switches at the extremes of its action, works well, and is hidden away from prying fingers and such. The window frames will ultimately box in the whole mechanism, making the functional operation even more aesthetically pleasing.

And the added insulation the blinds offer (ultimately to be operated by a solar relay switch) enough R-value to keep the heat in at night, further reducing the amount of Russian Olive wood we consume in the rocket stove.

Even with ambient outdoor temps hovering around -10F, it's quite toasty in here!

Help Wanted...

2009-11-30T19:13:00.000-08:00

We are recruiting. We are prepared to welcome you to our loft, make you quite comfortable, and put you to work. This place needs help. This post is addressed to any volunteers or others willing to work for our vision
for various forms of compensation. Now we will inform you of the privileged possibilities for productive labor. We'll discuss compensation later.

See the curtain in the window? It needs help. We have redesigned our automatic solar curtain mechanism to combine the limit switches with the counterweights.

Here you can see that the eye screws need to be attached to the weights. This involves drillling, tapping, and tightening the eye screws into these weights. It's all steel. And it's quite EZ. Really.

Of course, we don't want to limit people to indoor work, suitable only on bad weather days. Here's nice weather, with the splitter on the tractor waiting for two brave souls to split firewood.

It needs to be added to our winter storage supply. Actually, we are very near enough for the winter, due to our efficient stove (see previous posts) and passive solar design.

In this picture, you see our version of the Panama canal. Actually, it's our newly dug drainage ditch to lower the water table in our field so that the salt can go down away from the root zone. Currently our salt
content is about 10X acceptable for crops. 3500PPM.

The job? In the distance is an orange Allis 180 6-cylinder diesel tractor. It moves dirt, and smooths the ridge so it can be planted next spring. It needs an operator.

No you can't run the excavator in the foreground. It weights 30,000 lbs. But someone will need to move some dirt in the bottom of the ditch so the water drains better. Our operator did not level the bottom of our Panama canal. Just kidding, that's a job for another machine. Or time.

Or you can join in our dog Sheila's deer job, which involves barking. For some strange reason, she only barks at them at night. But she watches and chases them in the daytime. Except when it snows. See the spikes?

And then there's the job down at the end of our channel right beside Greenwood Park (see previous posts). Here, someone drove too close to the river. We need someone with demolition derby skills to drive this car out of the precarious location. Note that one must steer to the right, rather than the left.

Which leaves the problem of finding the steering wheel. It is just in front of the tree growing through the floor behind the drivers seat. Of course this is a challenging job, but surely the strong tree will provide
back support for the acceleration needed to free up this Oldsmobile Futura.

And here is our Allis 180. The right rear tire leaked it's salt water so bad it had be to taken in to Cenex. They sold us a new tube, remounted the tire, and said we could not put saltwater back in for weight. The reason? There are holes in the rim from rust. The rim will not last much longer. We need someone with good connections to find a new or good used rim to replace this one. Look very carefully, you might see some rust.

Here is our potentially comfortable living room sofa. It needs to be carved. We now have purchased an adz to make carving much easier than with an axe. However, the job is started, the vision of log being transformed into sofa is possible. Please use your imagination a bit, if interested.

It's important to connect with our youngest great grandchild, Lilly. She is so cute and alert. Grandpa and Grandma are in need of help to entertain this bundle of joy. Here are her two great grandmothers.

If that isn't enough, there always are folks needed to stoke up the rocket furnace (see previous posts).

And persuade some of the heat from the sun aimed at clouds and sky to come into our abode. At least, help us relish the process in life at Greenwood.

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year, in case this is the last post of the year 2009.

Pasture prep

2009-11-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago Errol Redger ripped up all our 30 acres of pasture in preparation for planing for irrigation, broke up the soil even though it was rock hard, and used another machine for installing border dykes every 80 to 120 feet down the fall line to keep irrigation water flowing properly for irrigated pasture. Here you see his plane at work, after the cultivation. He used a huge V-blade to make the dykes, about 18" high and 3' wide.

We had a little rain after he was finished, and I wanted to get right in and break up the soil more to make a good seedbed for our fall dormant seeding of pasture, after the soil turned colder.

Greenwoodfarm Park, now open...

2009-09-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

The 400 yards access to the river from our farm has been hindered by thorns, trash, and mosquito-infested swampy jungle. No more. We now have a path.

Yesterday, with Mom's brother Gene, Cheryl his wife, son Josh and his wife Kelsey we attacked the undergrowth in a shady spot near the river, where our channel enters. We now have an easily accesible place for a boat/canoe launch, fishing from the river bank in a good location, trees that form a romantic arch, and a less thorny grassy area iin good shade, with a nice
breeze off the river. Josh and Kelsey both took turns with mower, chainsaw, axe, and pruner, we collected a load of firewood, and launched brush and thorns into the river. Also featured is a short path to the lower beaver dam.

A good half-day work in the shade with good humor, some banjo picking, and a wonderful blessing from family members to make our farm a little more livable.

Anyone for catfishing in this hole?

Seen recently around the farm...

2009-09-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

Parabolic trough heater

2009-09-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

The parabolic trough collector is up an running, after several attempts to bleed all the air from the hot delivery pipe.

The installation was done two weeks ago. Now it finally works.

See the little black dot to the right of the end of the thermometer needle? That where the temp was yesterday morning. Later in the afternoon the tank temp (top third, anyway) had raised 3 or 4 degrees. That's significant. I have the elevation of the collector , compared to the tank,
only slightly lower than the top of the tank. The result is that hot water moves into the tank only when it boils in the collector pipe. It flows in intermittent spurts, once every two or three minutes. I figure that as the sun's arc in the sky straightens out toward fall equinox, it will add heat faster. We really need that extra heat only in the spring and fall, when we want more hot water than the hot summer supplies. In the winter, our
furnace heats the big tank. So it does well.

Every now and then, some things are successful....

Toil and trouble with thistle and halogetel

2009-09-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

Last summer a broadleaf herbicide was used on the entire field when the thistles started to bloom, with several large colonies a foot taller than the beer barley our lease farmer planted. The thistles wilted, and the barley did well until harvest. A serious hail storm cause 100% loss. This
spring I burned the straw in the 7 acres that had good growth, and broadcast hay barley seed over the entire 18 acres that I harrowed into the soil. Germination was very good, and growth was outstanding, even the 11 acres of salty soil had fair to good germination.

I cut first crop, and burned windrow segments that had thistle. I baled the good hay. We got about 6 to 8 tons of hay total, two cuttings, almost all of it on the 3 or so acres of good soil, between the thistle colonies.

Here it shows the windrows where I burned the thistle hay along with the hay barley, that did not compete some. Where I burned, at least in moderate areas, the second crop of hay barley of course died, and thistles came up unimpeded. I didn't know I could get a second crop of hay barley!.

I have marked the areas of thistle infestation by drawing a boundary with my spring tooth. My intention, until talking to Cassandra, was to spray the infested area thoroughly with Milestone according to the instructions, in about two weeks, when the rate of carbo building into the rhizomes of the root system is highest. Milestone is a broadleaf perrential root killer, most effective when sprayed on thistles in the late summer, in this stage of growth.

Here's my duckfoot shovel, 30" wide swath. It's a little less to pull than a two bottom plow. My tractor will not bull a two-bottom plow in this soil. Too much heavy clay.

Today I got the swather back from the neighbor Dwight, and started cutting my saltweed that infests the NW corner two acres or so. It's a noxious weed to any livestock, but they won't eat it unless desparate. It only grows in heavy salt infested soil. Our land is prime for it. The weed's name: halogetel.

So as I was cutting along in real tough going, crunch. A wheel broke off.

See the spindle (some would call it the axel)? Broke in half. The outside bearing is still in place. Will try to get the part tomorrow, if it's in Billings, I'll go get one.

A Plea for HELP!

2009-09-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

There are many problems with this farm. Some problems are unique, others
ordinary to farming. Here is one problem. What should I do with a serious
Canadian Thistle infestation in some of our most productive ground? I have
a 30 inch duckfoot and a 3-point toolbar I bought specifically to handle the
Canadian Thistle problem.

Since then I've been talking with university extension people and the NRCS.
They recommend applying "Milestone," a broadleaf herbicide that carries well
down into the roots in the late summer, along with the natural life cycle of
this perennial weed. It's supposed to be the most effective herbicide
against thistle in the long run.

My daughter (chemist, environmental engineering experience) says I should
consider putting my duckfoot on my little ferguson 35 and spending the 6
hours or more on the tractor needed to pull that duckfoot through the
thistle areas. Would this be comparable in the long run to using herbicide?
I am interested in doing without chemicals if it's not too much less cost
effective in time as well as money.

If I do this, I want to do it ASAP before the thistle rosettes pump any more
carbo into the rhizomes, which is bound to come up in the spring.

When I spoke with Cassandra my daughter We agreed to appeal to experienced
farmers who might read this. Any comments would be more than welcome! No
one around here has an interest or experience with any procedure the
excludes chemicals.

Have advice, or commiserating words? Call me on my cell 406 665-5714 or
toll free 1 888 665 5714.

The great plunge

2009-07-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Alas, even the mighty tractor has its limits-- while continuing work on urbanite planting, the right front axel breaks, the front wheel rolls away, and the heavy load of concrete bound for the east side of the barn crashes to the ground. Too heavy. See the break. Nice shiny steel. So our favorite three young men hired to lay concrete urbanite, now get to use a wheel barrow.

And here's another view of the first farm income producing product: hay barley. It's about 6 tons, which took the 3 strong young men all day to wrestle. They loaded the 270 bales off the field, and stacked them in an almost-straight stack.

fellowship and fun

2009-07-22T15:45:00.001-07:00

The farm's now housing Grandpa and Grandma full time, and for the summer, Kristen, Hannah, Caleb and Toby have moved in. It's starting to get real fun... :)