Gray Area Farms

  This time on the Steadcast: business networking for homesteaders and small farms featuring an interview with Lynda Cink and Brian Swanson of LnB Connectors, screw-ups of the week, and the struggle of keeping a professsional wardrobe in a Tiny House. Welcome to Season 2 Episode 4 of The ‘Steadcast, the homestead and farmstead podcast you listen in-stead of making the mistakes yourself. As always, this is Jason of Gray Area Farm. Before we go into the networking topic, let’s get through the updates and screw-ups of the week. How to Store Clothes in a Tiny House For Professionals. We’ve been fitting out Barn 2.0 so we can move our storage and utility stuff in there started this week. We bought braces to secure the additional cabinets that we rescued from the school’s remodel to the wall so they don’t tip over or whatnot since it’s a dirt and rock floor in there. Then we can start moving stuff like our storage clothes and such in there. That’ll be the biggest improvement to our day-to-day lives yet. The Yuugest struggle for Tiny House livers… and the rest of the person, not just the liver… their spleen too, I guess… is storage of things like clothes when you are a busy professional on the move like Tera Lynn. Working on the farm and doing writing? I can go full Columbo and rock out my khakis, maybe even one of the two polos I still own if I’m really dressing up for an event like a business networking outing. But as a school administration type, supposedly there’s some kind of cultural expectation that Tera Lynn not go to work in one of three different outlets each day. I don’t really get it, but she’s quite insistent this expectation exists. But in a Tiny, and I’ve read the same from the RV Full Timers sites, it is a real struggle to store clothes in such a way you can choose something to wear and not wrinkle the everliving crap out stuff. Because also in a tiny, there’s noplace to store an ironing board. We get to do the old college trick of laying out an ironing pad on the kitchen slash dining room slash office table. Try Using the Storage Space Under the Bed — But Learn From Our Mistakes About “Clothes Storage Bag” Fails We’ve solved that for the most part by storing stuff under the master bed, with any backstock, if you want to call it, has been at the storage unit. But every single clothes storage bag we’ve tried that fits under the bed has ripped to shreds within a week. This has been a terrible thorn in Tera Lynn’s side, so it’s been very exciting to know that within days that will be solved. But since it’s Gray Area Farm, NOTHING can go exactly to plan. The kids were rough-housing and playing, as kids are wont to do. One of them – they instituted their kid mafia Omerta oath so we can’t figure out who exactly did this to us – slammed the barn side door with the wind SO HARD that they broke the door jam at the latch. So now it only stays closed if it’s deadbolted. So there’s another thing to put on the list to fix around here. Hacking the Chickshaw We purchased a whole mess of new chicks a few months ago, and we found our very first tiny pullet egg from one of them yesterday! So that’s awesome that they’re going to start laying for us here and keeping up their end of the deal. I have a new Pasture Raised Life column coming out in a couple days describing how much “the first egg” costs and why $2 a dozen eggs from a neighbor with chickens is just about the worst thing ever. But where does the screw-up come in? We’re still purely free-ranging these gals, about a hundred yards from where they’re supposed to be. And the Chickshaws we built for them based on designs we got from Justin Rhodes of Abundant Permaculture still don’t have wheels. The Chickshaw is a great concept and a great design, and god love Justin for putting it out, because it’s an ingenious plan. But the wheels he uses are basically just not available for any reasonable price. Like people want 60 bucks a wheel for these things now. No. Just… no. But now that they’re laying, and with all the feral dog pack attacks going on in El Paso County, we need to get these guys behind the electric fencing we bought and installed for them right the heck now. So we’re looking at hacking the chickshaw by putting second hand bicycle wheels on them instead. Justin Rhodes strongly recommends against that, but sorry bro, I’m not paying $240 for the fancy plastic wheels. We *REALLY* Don’t Want to Think About Next Year’s CSA Yet We received our first call about next season’s CSA, off our listing at LocalHarvest. If you’re out of the area and looking for a CSA – community supported agriculture – farm to be part of, LocalHarvest is probably your first place to look. And then look them up on social media or at the farmers markets to see if their growing practices and scale are what you’re looking for. Remember, when we’re talking local food and regenerative practices, friends don’t let friends use Bountiful Baskets. If that’s all you have and you want to get good practice at using bulk veggies, then fine. But that is not a long term option. Anyway, where’s the ‘screwup’ there? The fact that we have not even started to think about plans for next season. Will we even have a CSA? I mean goodness, between the presidential election and Deutche Bank looking like it’s gonna pull a Lehman Weekend here, are we even going to have an economy of any kind next season? Sorry, let me adjust my tin foil hat here, it’s getting in the way of the mic… Business Networking for Small Farms and Homesteads — Yes, It Can and Should Be Part of Your Marketing Most people think that business networking – chamber of commerce meetings, BNI, leads groups – are all for folks like Edward Jones advisors, real estate agents, and your multi-level-marketing types. And sure, I got involved in my PEPNet Friday morning group that I talk about here from time to time because I had been in there as the Edward Jones kid. None of the groups in this area had small farms or much of anything in the homesteading cottage industry space. So I went on a whim to start talking about the eggs and the Veggie Season Pass CSA. And it worked like a CHARM. But I was still the only one there. Sure a beekeeper just recently started in PEPNet, basically inspired by me being there. When I talked to other local farms about things I’m up to, they say “well, that’s cool, you’re lucky to have those contacts.” I’m trying to tell them that everyone can get these contacts. Everyone can join a BNI or one of the many spin off groups to pitch their products, sell eggs and veggies, and help spread the word that local small scale ag is just as much a normal business and normal business people (sometimes) as the local real estate lady or auto repair guy. But it is like pulling teeth to get some of the other local farmers to even try. They don’t have time. That’s not them. It won’t work for their personality style. That’s why we’re going to talk here in a second with Brian Swsanson and Lynda Cink of LnB Connectors, a business networking advisory and hosting group here in the Pikes Peak region. Have a listen to hear the interview, and if you’re in the Pikes Peak Region (or a big SciFi or popular culture fan and willing to travel) check out their GalaxyFest event in February.

Move ALL. THE. STORAGE!!!!! This time on The ‘Steadcast: what’s up with Barn 2.0, the mistakes we made on the farm this week, how small farms are like geese, and the pasture-raised life segment is “the only nice weather day was yesterday.” Barn 2.0 roof is on! I visited a store next to the new laundromat, and was briefly excited to go in and see what it was like, and how much a load of laundry cost there. During the winter we’ve had to drive almost an hour into Colorado Springs to use the coin laundry. But realized I don’t NEED the laundromat anymore because we have A BARN ROOF NOW!!! And we’re going to get our washing machine out of the storage unit! Then Tera Lynn said “yeah, but we don’t have electricity in there yet, we don’t have it plumbed….” sooo, it’s $1.25 a load, in case you were wondring. Which is nice. And a lot closer. A very local guy who used to own a construction business up north in Denver stepped up for us and completed the barn when SO MANY so called ‘real’ roofing companies left us hanging the last several months. Now it’s pretty dark in there, though. So now we have to get lights, I guess. Oh well, it’s always ONE MORE THING on the homestead, isn’t it. Other interesting things to listen for… The benefit of line drying even if you DO have a roofed barn utility room for a washer and dryer More updates from the farm!  Especially “what we screwed up this week,” including the Tiny House fresh water pump, bolting green leafy veggies, and leaks in the piggies’ waterers. Some of you have taken our call to action to heart and started leaving reviews on iTunes and Stitcher! Out on The Pasture Raised Life… The only nice-weather day was yesterday Why “competing” organic local food producers are like geese. In a good way.

Morpheus buys his food locally… why won’t you? This time on The ‘Steadcast:   The Farmkids and I visit the “What IF Festival” in downtown Colorado Springs, updates from the farm, more on what the solution was to the well water crisis for Colorado small farms, and The Pasture-Raised Life segment “Meet your Meat.” First off, I’d like to give a shout out to some original listeners who stuck by us and got right back on the podcast bike with us. Now, that’s a phrase I’ve never quite understood: it’s just like riding a bike… like it’s supposed to be easy to get back to it after you’ve been away from it for a while. Because have you ever watched someone who hasn’t ridden a bike for a few years get back on a bike? They look like drunken idiots for the first few blocks, and if they’re doing it on a beach bike path or something, there’s a good chance a rollerblader is going to be eating a set of handlebars along the way. So, in that case getting back to a weekly schedule on the ‘Steadcast is indeed like riding a bike, because we’re wabbling and cursing our way through the first few. More cursing off-mic at Audacity and WordPress, but you get the idea. So I thought I had a point there… right, right… shout outs! One of the early adopter listeners, Ed of the St Louis area, is doing good stuff on social media with his own efforts at homesteading. Check out Coriander Fields on Facebook to see what he’s been up to. We also received a visitor post on the Gray Area Farm facebook page from Rebecca, who says she’s originally from Eugene, Oregon… which, as a staunch USC Trojans family we’ll forgive the Oregon Ducks reference… but she’s now in Istanbul, where she listens to the Steadcast which she says gives her a taste of home. So hey Ed, hey Rebecca. There are many more early listeners who are clearly back with us based on social media likes and the geolocate stuff on the server logs. I also want to give a shout out to Yosef and his crew at Ahavah Farm for a great share on Facebook that brought a few new people over. The 50 new chickens we had shipped to us a couple months ago are almost ready to start laying eggs. Probably another two weeks or so. A back-of-the-envelope calc shows we would probably get about 16 dozen eggs a week out of them, which means the really ad-hoc way we’ve been selling eggs so far is going to be changing. Until now, we’ve had situations where people have been either really annoyed that we’d already pre-sold the eggs we bring to Falcon or on the flipside we come back home with some unsold. Therefore, we’re introducing an egg CSA program that we’re calling “rent a hen,” so people can rely on getting their eggs and we can rely on getting their money, to put it somewhat callously. We still have a couple shares of pork available, as we mentioned last week. We’re somewhat confused by Lollipop because we haven’t seen her come into heat yet. She totally should have, because she’s plenty old enough. But because of her coloration and behaviors it’s been difficult to tell. Meanwhile, the younger ones that are destined for freezer camp have been cycling and if you scratch their ears just right they’ll go into standing heat. Which… is kinda disturbing that these girls think I’m just that sexy as a boar that they’ll go into standing heat that quickly. But… when you got it, you got it, I guess. Anyway, with lollipop we definitely want to start tracking her cycle because artificial insemination supplies are.. shall we say… perishable…. and wicked expensive. Like $200 a dose expensive. Sure we could let her hang out with a local boar for a few days, but our goal with her is to really start getting a super-awesome genetic line of piglets and breeding stock so we can get awesome pork and awesome show pigs a few years down the line for Travis for 4-H. One of the better meteorologists around here is saying that the long term models show we’re probably going to be getting some snow in the first week or so of October. So indeed, the short growing season here is coming to a close all too quickly. We’ve got some spinach that will be included in the CSA shares soon, and the new arugula beds are up and in production so I can scrape out the older arugula. Sure it’s “cut and come again” but after a certain number of “agains” it gets bitter. And indeed, the evenings and mornings are starting to get a little bit of a chill. We’re sending the kids to school with light jackets, and we are almost – but not quite – ready to do our start-up procedures on the ol’ Tiny House heater. We certainly don’t want to just fire it up without doing a solid clean out and check on it, after what happened last year with the original heater tearing itself apart on us to the order of $600 and several weeks of space heaters. The kids and I went to “What IF – A Festival of Innovation and Imagination” in downtown Colorado Springs today. They had a hundred and a half booths spread across four city blocks of parks and plazas showing off all kinds of groups and businesses doing cool STEM (that’s science, tech, engineering and math) stuff. Robots, green tech, utilities, media, whatever. They also had about maybe a dozen or more booths from folks in the local food movement. Heritage Belle Farm was there, we finally got to meet the legendary Katie Belle Miller in person. Farm to School, a couple hydroponic veg companies, passive solar greenhouse designers and the state university extension office folks. So obviously the kids had a blast playing with the robots and seeing all the cool stuff the library system brought out, etc etc. You can see some photos I put up on the facebook and instagram accounts of the kids having themselves a good old time if you look in the early September 2016 range, if you’re listening to this as part of a binge-listen sometime in the future. But here’s something that struck me as we walked to the rest of the displays after seeing the local food folks…. Wasn’t there a time in our nation’s past when eating food grown inside a hundred miles of your home wasn’t “innovative” or a product of “imagination?” I mentioned to a few of the food growing displays that it was kind of a bummer that the festival had them all off in a low traffic corner of the deal. But …. ‘what if’… we could get to a place where it wouldn’t even occur to the farms or the organizers to have them there in the first place? – What if – it wasn’t unusual to buy your pork or beef from someplace where you could meet your meat if you wanted to? What if.. getting your veggies in season from local CSA farms where you choose to help volunteer planting or harvesting if you wanted was considered ‘normal?’ I dunno…. that seems like a better vision to inspire people than the battle robot team of the week. But… apparently… that’s just me… and Katie Miller… and Yosef Camire… and, I guess, you fine folks listening to the ‘Steadcast. I’ve wondered in my head… and out loud sometimes, maybe even once in a while with other people around… why it would matter if I had a podcast about what we’re doing here. Doesn’t the world already have Joel Salatin? Or Justin Rhodes? Jack Spirko? Chicken Thistle Farm? Permaculture Voices? Why does the world need The ‘Steadcast too? For the same reason that the world needs lots of small farms at all. Like you heard in that 30-second intro from the networking group last week, I can only currently reach a couple dozen families with the food we grow here. But we can reach millions more to inspire them to do even just one thing different in their lives. Maybe you’re listening to us but never heard of any of those people I listed off. Maybe we’re more your cup of tea personality-wise. Whatever the reason you’re listening to us instead of or in addition to other folks who talk about homsteading and small scale food, you can help us reach all those other people like you. That means sharing The ‘Steadcast on social media, signing up for and forwarding our email newsletter on grayareafarm.com, or – most relevantly for the podcast – giving us a review on iTunes, stitcher or whatever app you use to find us. Last week we talked about the Division of Water Resources battle against new small scale farms in Colorado. I said we’d talk about some of the very specific situations where folks like Ahavah, us, and other small farmsteads would be able to use what’s called “exempt” water. So, we’re gonna do just that. I addressed some of this in an article in this month’s New Falcon Herald. I’ll put a link in the show notes. Some of the quotes in the following minutes are from those interviews I did for that article. Water law in Colorado is complicated. Lawmakers must balance the needs of agriculture in the state and thirsty urban areas versus what Colorado is legally required to release down river to the Midwest and desert Southwest due to a hundred years of fighting over the water in the Colorado, Platte and Arkansas rivers with the downstream states and eventually Mexico. Even within the state, bloody range battles over people diverting water led to a really aggressive water rights system called prior appropriation, or first-in-time, first-in-right We are a prior appropriation state, where people have very old water rights that are their private property,” said Kevin Rein, deputy state engineer for the Division of Water Resources. “People rely on those rights to run their businesses and livelihoods. If someone comes along and intercepts, it’s going to impact those people downstream.” A new farmer or gardener may not realize the water they pull from a shallow well eventually would have been the water a farmer in the Arkansas Valley or in Kansas uses. The water flowing under a property may be part of larger water rights purchased generations ago. “Someone might do that without intending to impact someone, and they may get a long way into their plans and spend a lot of time and money, only to realize they can’t do this legally,” Rein said. “And that’s not good for anyone involved.” The relatively new beyond-organic small-scale food movement tries to keep water use as low as possible as part of an overall environmental philosophy. “We’re trying to do the right thing for our food supply and everyone else,” Camire said. “We’re trying to take into consideration the water supply, livestock and the environment.” However, for small-scale producers like the Camire family, Colorado law historically viewed even a single gallon of water from non-commercial wells that had been used for commercial purposes illegal. There’s a few different kinds of water legally in Colorado,” said Hank Worley, Colorado Springs based water law attorney. “It’s all ‘H2O,’ but its treated differently by the agencies.” Most homes with wells in El Paso County will have exempt household well permits that allow either inside-the-home use with no outside watering at all or domestic well permits that allow watering of up to an acre of personal lawn or garden and personal livestock watering, Worley said. Newer micro farms and market gardeners get hung up on the phrase “personal use.” The local organic food movement is relatively new in the Pikes Peak region, so the law and policies have struggled to determine where these micro farms fit into water laws. “Before, I haven’t done much of these small farms, but it’s becoming much more popular,” Worley said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years; and, before 2011, the state would have taken the position you couldn’t do anything with the water for any sales purposes.” There’s that continuum moving, from home lawn and garden through selling extras to actual irrigation of a large commercial crop,” Rein said. “The law describes it as a home lawn and garden. Initially, you might interpret that to mean that’s entirely for your own use. But we recognize the intent of the law is that people in rural areas will grow more and sell at a farmers market. So we articulated our interpretation to apply that people may grow products like vegetables that could be sold, but we require certain criteria is met for that irrigation.” The DWR’s Policy 2011-3 allows the 1-acre of home gardens and lawns to include plants for sale as long as… The property has a home that is the primary single-family residence for the party growing the plants The revenue from the plants sold is not a primary source of income The primary purpose of the irrigation is for personal use of the same kind of plants being sold Irrigation of plants remains within the seasons for irrigation (i.e., no heated greenhouses) So for us, we meet those requirements. We certainly live on the property, so it’s not like we’re managing a very commercial farm off in the prairie somewhere. Revenue from the farm is certainly not our primary source of income. And I would argue that if you’re showing a tax profit big enough to be a family’s primary source of income in agriculture, you need a new tax person. The third one, personal consumption of the same kind being sold seems to me to mean that you can’t be doing epic monoculture fields of field corn and soybeans for bean oil. Which isn’t what the local food movement is about anyway. And no heated greenhouses… well, I’m not totally sure why they care whether the season of use is consistent, because unless you have a really shallow alluvial well, the aquifers aren’t being replenished at all, much less seasonally. But there you have it. This policy – as long as it remains in force, which is an issue since it’s just an agency policy and not actually written into statute – allows small farmsteads like us to keep on doing what we’re doing, selling veggies, meat and eggs through our CSAs and even farmers markets, without getting those cease and desist letters we talked about last week. Or at least it’s an affirmative defense against those if they do come. In a perfect world, we’d probably have to get a commercial well permit anyway if we ever wanted to expand into agritourism or make veggie and meat sales literally our primary income. There you have it for this week’s episode of the ‘Steadcast. Next week, hopefully we’ll be talking about getting the roof put on Barn 2.0 because… the METAL IS IN! Yeaaaaaahhhhh! Tera Lynn’s ultra-deadline of death was that the roof had to be up before the first snow, and knock on wood, we might actually pull that off. But find out next week if we’re actually able to make that happen.

Challenge Accepted The ‘Steadcast is back! We took a bit of a hiatus during the spring and summer to struggle through our veggie CSA program and get our new pork project going. which we’ll be telling you more about as we get back going on a regular schedule here on the ‘Steadcast. Summer 2016:  Worst. Evah. The summer of 2016 has been described by many around here, including several of the small farms and market gardens that we have come to get to know better over the season, as the worst veggie farming year in the Pikes Peak region in about a hundred years. Why? Well, we talked before we went on hiatus about how cold the spring was. Our “last frost” date was about normal, but normally we are pretty warm during the day and then have periodic dips below freezing in the spring. That wasn’t the case this year. So the soil temps weren’t warm enough for seed germination, and transplants were easily shocked. Then, it suddenly got hot. H-A-W-T hot. Anything that got going as far as cool weather spring crops promptly got stunted by the heat. So much so that even the broccoli plants we transplanted in early spring are JUST NOW setting their very first floret heads. “I’m not comfortable living and farming in a place that measures hail depths by the foot.” Then, the hail came. And came. And came. The Camire family over at Ahavah farm, who we’ve really gotten to know better this season, got wiped out something like FIVE TIMES by hail. Their hoophouses look like someone took an uzi to it. And it wasn’t normal kinda loose snowball kind of hail like we’re used to in Colorado. This was “knock you on your butt, crack your windshield, and roll away intact” kind of hail like you’d expect in the Midwest or something. Then with all the damaged plants, the pest insects had an absolute field day… literally, I guess. The grasshoppers were so bad this year that a friend who does pasture management advice  (Tate Smith of Regenerative Stewardship) started trying to calculate how many cows worth of livestock the hoppers represented per acre. Of course this happens our first CSA year! So, not the best year for us to be starting our very first CSA year. Luckily we gave our new customers just a wicked deal on a full season CSA program, so they’re still getting their money’s worth. But we went from 20+ varieties down to maybe 10 varieties total. And went from expecting a big bushel box per week to a grocery bag per week. But wait, there’s more! So we had temp problems. We had hail and wind problems. We had pest problems. What’s left? Oh yes…. “We’re from the state government, and we’re here to help.” That’s when the Division of Water Resources noticed the small farms of El Paso County and greeted us with a cease and desist order against Ahavah Farm, saying that they – and by extension all of us doing any amount of veg and poultry – were illegally using our well permits for commercial use. That’s about when the entire local food provider world in Southern Colorado about threw their hands up and said “Aaaaaaaaand we’re done.” As it is, Yosef and his water law peeps were able to figure out a way to get out of the Cease & Desist and save all our butts. But with some pretty significant catches. And we’ll be talking about that more in detail in an upcoming episode. In the meantime. Sharp-eared listeners will say “wait, he said something about a pork project? So…. y’all have pigs?” Check out the rest in this episode of The ‘Steadcast!   Please subscribe, rate and share!

Welcome to The ‘Steadcast, Episode 9. There’s some good “Rantcast” stuff in this one, in case you like that sort of thing. It is the 2nd week of March 2016, and spring is trying to get into the air. The Western Meadowlarks are back in full force on the farm with their melody, that like a bad commercial jingle, eventually drives itself into your soul. Our chickens are laying pretty well again. We actually had a couple dozen eggs to sell at our Friday morning networking meeting again, to the excitement of the folks who like to buy eggs from us. We raised the prices on our eggs a fair amount, since we did a better running of the numbers to figure out what we would have to charge in order to even break even on ALL the inputs needed to raise laying hens in this kind of pasture system, not just the ongoing cost of feed. Jason goes on a pretty good rant about treating your small farm like any small business. Or actually, better than most people treat their small business. Especially when it comes to selling yourself, your chickens and your farm short when pricing your eggs. Sure a backyard chicken pet owner could get away with essentially “sharing” their leftover eggs at $3.50 a dozen. But if your’re being honest with yourself as a small farmer. Small-scale agriculture shouldn’t be looked down on for so many small farms failing when ANY small business industry has as-bad, or worse, a failure rate by percentage. There’s no good reason why small ag should be any more likely to fail OR any less likely to fail than a mom-and-pop espresso shop, an Edward Jones new adviser, or a local restaurant. And since EVERY…. SINGLE… ONE of my Edward Jones classmates for the entire region from the year I joined them is out of business, maybe small scale ag actually has a BETTER percentage of success. Some links from the show: Ahavah Farm in Peyton, Colorado. They have a very good blog post about how they came up with the pricing of their chicken eggs. Permaculture Voices. Diego Footer and Curtis Stone recorded an encore episode of their great Urban Farmer series to discuss their reaction to the article “What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living.”

Hello there podcast listeners, and thanks for pulling up The ‘Steadcast, the homestead and farmstead podcast you listen to instead of making the mistakes yourself. This is Jason from Gray Area Farm. In this episode, we have our obligatory updates about things that have been going on around the farm, especially the big Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2016 here in the Pikes Peak region. The winter egg strike is over, and production is slowly ramping back up. We also had the first ‘beta test’ of a volunteer work day here at Gray Area Farm, wherein we worked on the floating walls of the utility room / washing station in the barn. What are floating walls and why are they needed in places with expansive soils and frost heaving? Listen to the show and find out. Could we call the podcast “How to Train Your Chicken?” Well, Dreamworks’ legal department might have something to say about it, but I share an anecdote about Travis and my discussion about this XKCD cartoon that says “by any reasonable definition, birds [chickens] are closer related to T. Rex than T. Rex was to Stegosaurus.”  So if chickens are dinosaurs and dragons are dinosaurs, then when you’re trying to “train your chickens” to nest in certain spots, then you’re “trying to train your dragon.” It’s kid logic, but it works. Please consider pledging your support and undying love for the ‘Steadcast and what we’re trying to do here at Gray Area Farm to advance regenerative agriculture and local food by visiting our Patreon page. Even a dollar helps, and the higher levels of support come with fun benefits like farm store credit and sponsorship opportunities for your own business.

I made a small edit to this episode based on feedback from listeners. Thanks for helping to hold us accountable to our core values. Sorry if this shows up as a ‘new’ episode on your feeds because of that. Welcome to episode 7 of The ‘Steadcast: New Year on the farm and firearm needs on the homestead featuring an interview with Dan Lanotte of Falcon personal security. Happy New Year, ‘steaders! It’s 2016! One of the things that struck me about the changes we’ve made to ourselves and our world views taking on this homesteading project is that I don’t find myself saying things like “It’s 2016, and still no flying cars.” I don’t want a flying car any more. I don’t want a real hoverboard – and certainly not those no-handle segway deathtrap firebombs they’re selling nowadays. What is “the future?” The future is when the windbreak pines are tall. The future isn’t a talking robot that serves drinks, it’s when the soil is built up around here enough to support grazing animals. The future looks a lot like what the past did. Just without the whole dysentery and wacky ranchers waging range wars and stuff. Oh… wait. Maybe not the range war part if you’re reading the news about Oregon. Yup, I went there. I think we’ve got a good show for you today. I had a fascinating conversation with Dan Lanotte of Falcon Personal Security. He’s a NRA instructor, firearm and security consultant and all around good guy I’ve known for several years now as part of the Eastern Plains Chamber of Commerce in Falcon. But first, updates around the farm: The Christmas and New Years holidays marked our mostly annual trip out to Southern California to see both sides of the family, get out of the wind and cold a little, and visit the water that Colorado is forced to take from the ranchers and farmers of the mountains and send down that way. It’s also sometimes known as the annual pilgrimage to California to remind us why it’s okay that we left California. Of course it’s great visiting with family and friends over the holidays, but stepping out of the truck back here on the farm after two weeks in suburbia? Going from being able to see basically the next house over to our 175 mile views here? It was something special. That said, we did see some promising things out there as far as the grow-your-own food movement. We gifted a special little mini-garden tray for microgreen growing to Tera Lynn’s parents. TL’s brother and his family were proud to show off a really nice batch of tomatoes and peppers they grew in their garden and they’re getting kale other winter greens going, and the across-the-street neighbors had a small flock of backyard chickens in the middle of a planned golf course community! But there are still some negative things we noticed out there: Standard factory farm chicken eggs at Walmart were going for $4.28 a dozen. We sell our epic pasture raised natural eggs of awesomeness for between $3.50 and $4.00 a dozen. $4.28 for standard factory eggs? Are you kidding me? And it’s December when we saw that, WAY after the whole bird flu thing so don’t tell me it’s still part of the whole egg shortage thing, because that’s over and done. Their organic eggs were going in the $6s and the alleged pasture raised eggs – which props to a walmart for carrying that, you can only really find those at whole foods around here – were in the $8s. I told one of my fellow reporters from the herald that, and she messaged me that I should start shipping our eggs to CA with those kinds of prices. Which at first I said “yeah, but interstate commerce for eggs is a whole thing that’s just as bad as chicken meat,” but at $8 a dozen, maybe I’ll have to research that more. And of course, going from the land of $1.71 a gallon gas to the land of between $3.01 and $3.89 a gallon gas is a big shock. Meanwhile, back at the ranch – as they say on the old westerns – the chickens made it through the two weeks thanks to original Friends of the Farm the Klunders. Well, most of them. I mentioned in the last episode that we were going to try our hand at chicken processing (FOR OUR OWN USE, CO Dept of Ag spies!) by butchering off the excess roosters and closing up that second coop. It went ok for a first try. The milk jug ghetto killing cone idea worked great, and after a bit, I got the idea behind skinning them. We went with a skinning method rather than scalding and plucking because I don’t yet have a pot and outside burner large enough to do scalding. And since they’re not broilers, we weren’t going to roast them with skin on anyway. Also, due to time and expertise constraints, we weren’t going to be saving the carcases for stock. So, I found an article on one of the homesteading magazine websites describing how to carve off the primary meat parts and bagged up the rest. So, we have the proceeds of 5 roosters in the freezer and saved our farm-sitters the work of caring for extra roosters – who were probably just going to beat the snot out of each other unattended anyway. …. the roosters, not the farm sitters. Those of you listeners who share our Catholic faith or know enough about the Church will be excited to know that Travis completed his first sacrament of reconciliation, as part of his process towards his first communion. Also, our little chicken wrangler will be turning 8 by the time most of you hear this episode! January in our family marks the beginning of a fun run of a birthday a month now through April. It’s nice out here because it gives us the excuse to go out to dinner and have a little fun during each of these coldest and snowiest months of the Colorado year. We’re still collecting wine, spirit and beer bottles from folks to build up our supplies for The Little Earthship on the Prairie. We have a fair pile of boxes for that now, but we’re going to need an absolutely absurd number of those so please, if you’re in the pikes peak region, please keep saving those for us. We’re also talking with members of the PEPNet networking group about starting a pilot composting program, where we’d give people 5 gallon buckets with lids to throw all their compostable materials in during the week. Then we’d swap them out with an empty bucket each Friday at the meeting and keep the process going. That would solve one of the main objections people have, that they just don’t have anyplace sealed to keep any amount of stuff for composting. And of course, with the new year we are looking at the plans and goals for Gray Area Farm, our family and TL’s and my outside income sources. I like what the Pryors of Chicken Thistle Farm, of the “Coopcast” fame, do with their annual 2-evening Farm Meeting that they do as a couple. We’ll probably do something like that once we get the seed catalogues in. So let’s get into the interview of the day. There is a lot of overlap between the homesteading and farmsteading world and the prepper / libertarian / conservative world. It’s not, despite what some people would think, a total one-for-one overlap. You have plenty of the hippy types in the permaculture world, plenty of social justice movement advocates and of course plenty of people of the spiritual rock-worshiping flavor environmentalists. However, when you’re out in the country you’re away from where law enforcement tends to hang out (it’s probably 40 miles to the nearest donut shop or starbucks – ohhhh, that’s not right). It’s also where you have a duty to your farm animals to protect them from predators of the four legged or winged varieties. And you have a duty to your family to protect them from predators of the two-legged variety. You also owe your animals a sudden and humane death at the end of the good life you gave them on your farm. For chickens that can mean knives and cones, but if you want to process larger animals or need to dispatch them for humane purposes if something happens to them, that means firearms. Thanks again to Dan Lanotte for chatting with us. If you’re in the Pikes Peak region, he’s a great instructor both at the basic pistol type level and up to more advanced training. As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re a professional in an industry that impacts the homesteading / farmsteading or country living movements, please contact us on facebook or by email. A few people have so far, and I’m looking forward to getting them on the show in the coming weeks. Speaking of ways to support the show, I want to point out our Patreon page. www.patreon.com/grayareafarm From one dollar a month up to however much you feel you get in value and entertainment out of the ‘Steadcast and what we’re trying to accomplish here on Gray Area Farm is welcome. It’s worth noting that many of the patronage levels include gift certificates to product that we grow and produce here on the farm. The higher levels include shout-outs and naming rights to certain parts of the operation for your business or organization. Even if you aren’t in a position to pledge any amount, please hit the share button to spread it around your social circles.

There may be no sick days on the homestead, but there must have been for podcast production. We had almost a month off to deal with first The Great Blizzard of 2015 and then Farmer Jason’s relapse of his adrenal adenoma — that very same issue that partially drove the decision to live a more active and healthy lifestyle in the first place. We talk about some of the ways living and working on a homestead or farmstead are different from working in corporate America. The chickens don’t care —  AT ALL — if you don’t feel well enough to go out and feed them. So you have a choice: feel bad laying in bed or feel bad doing your chores. We also talk about the lessons learned from the Great Blizzard of 2015. We didn’t get all that much snow here at GAF, but we had ALL THE WINDS. It was blowing well into the 70 mph handle sustained, with 80-85 gusts. Did Barn 2.0 survive? You’ll have to listen to find out? Also there’s an important announcement: So often people ask “how do we give you money so you can continue being totally awesome, build more infrastructure and take more time planting and raising animals so later we can give you even MORE money buying stuff from you?” Okay, so maybe it doesn’t happen so often. Or… ever. But if could. Therefore… introducing the GrayArea Farm Patreon account! You can give us money to help continue making awesome podcast and blog content, put in more raised beds and irrigation, and buy more chicks! Because…. reasons! Hey, it works for PBS. Check out our GrayArea Farm Patreon account and please consider donating even a dollar or two. Every bit helps to support the local food movement and homesteading around the country. Even another patron at $1 a month shows that people care about this issue.

Hello there podcast listeners, and thanks for pulling up The ‘Steadcast, the homestead and farmstead podcast you listen to instead of making the mistakes yourself. One of the primary figures in the small scale agriculture world is Joel Salatin. He owns Polyface Farm in Virginia, wrote many of what are considered the go-to bibles for pastured poultry and beef, and is a regular fixture in movies like Food Inc and outlets like Ted Talks, permaculture voices, etc etc. One of his key rallying cries is “Folks, this ain’t normal.” Finishing cattle on grain ‘aint normal’ because that’s not what their stomachs are built for. Confined or even the woefully misleading “cage free” laying operations ‘aint normal’ because chickens are omnivores and need bugs as much as sunshine and green plant matter. Kids touring a farm asking where The Salsa Tree is because they are that far removed from where their food really comes from “aint normal.” But his other rallying cry is “everything I want to do is illegal.” The USDA and the Virginia Dept of Ag tried to shut down his chicken processing operation for being unsanitary despite independent lab tests showing his chicken being several orders of magnitude cleaner than grocery chicken. He had inspectors tell him his eggs absolutely had to be rinsed or sprayed with chlorine. Things that the entire purpose of hyper-local, know-your-farmer buying is supposed to save you from! There are a few nationwide issues I want to bring to your attention, as well as local laws for Colorado and California, where many of our listeners hang their hat for the moment. The Food Safety Modernization Act was signed into law in 2011, but like many other such laws, it’s the rulemaking process at the agency level that is where the rubber really hits the road. The FDA decided that farms that have less than half a million in GROSS sales AND sell their food direct-to-consumer or retail food establishment within 275 miles. Well, that’s fine and sounds good. But if we want to sell microgreens by e-commerce and ship them to folks in California, then the sales cap falls to $30,000. At that point we’d be subject to all these rules in here, including having our compost tested by the USDA before using it on our gardens needing to test our well water FIVE TIMES A YEAR – right now we do it yearly since it’s the same well we use for drinking water, and that’s just good personal health sense. A 9 month waiting period between having chickens or other animals in an area and planting crops in it – which would make nearly all rotational grazing / cropping systems illegal. A bill that’s working its way through committee in Congress, but doesn’t really have an awesome shot at passing, is the PRIME act, or Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption act. I wrote about the PRIME act for The New Falcon Herald this month, and had the chance to talk with Pete Kennedy, the president of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund and the spokesperson for Jared Polis, the congressman from Boulder who we talked about in previous episodes who has been working to defend products like kombucha. Check out my article about the PRIME Act at The New Falcon Herald.

The seasons continue to march along here at Gray Area Farm. We had our first frosts (Finally!) and that marked the end of the squash harvest. It also marked a chance for a few more things to break. Thus “there’s always something to do on a homestead.” You can’t defeat the prep list, you can only hope to contain it! The “noise reduction” feature on Audacity is only so strong, so headphone listeners will surely note that I recorded most of this in the “mobile studio,” aka “the truck as the kids and I ran errands.” (Protip for podcasters: take frequent breaks while recording to let the kids ask questions or get their “wiggles” out.) This is our first “interview show,” featuring Jeff Woodruff. He’s the campaign manager for Nancy Woodruff, who’s running for Los Angeles City Council District 7. We talk about foodsheds, community gardens and odd legal issues surrounding things as simple as backyard gardening and beekeeping. Topics and links for the day: Daylight savings time, seasonality, and how shorter and longer days are so much bigger a deal on the homestead than for office workers. The Tiny House propane furnace and main door lock crap out on the same day: highlights how important a backup plan, some emotional resiliency and YouTube are. It only took Los Angeles city council a hundred and thirty some odd years, but they finally got the birds and the bees talk from someone. Listener questions! Why chicken eggs have a “season” in real life (ie not in factory farms) and how to hand pollinate squash blossoms during late summer / early fall periods when you still have blossoms but the natural pollinators are done for the year.