The end of strife...

Yay, spring is almost here!
Well, it's Valentine's day, and that means the llama has seen her shadow, and winter is MOVING OUT!

That's the fervent hope, anyway. The weather lately has been VERY reasonable, and my springtime vision is starting to take some rough form.
First, some updates.

OUR HOUSE
We have been back in our house now for a month or so, and we are managing quite nicely. I am a bit behind on the mortgage payments, much to my chagrin, but my lender is pretty cool about it, and I send in as much as I can, when I can send it. At least all of our other bills are caught up, and I expect a gigantic tax return to put everything back in it's rightful place.

We have been very seriously pursuing a refinance option, and through that we intend to put the house on a permanent foundation, add some solar panels, and finally bury a water tank in the ground. It won't be much money at all, and I had been thinking at ALL, I would have buried a tank last fall, since I had the excavator onsite!

Our water pump requires a new housing, because it froze and cracked (again, long story)
Thankfully, I can order a new housing and get that sorted out. For now, it means we live without running water, which we are surprisingly used to by now.

SPRING PROJECTS

Greenhouse: After seeing some other local Alberta people and their greenhouse designs, I have decided to build one of my own. Last year, I had no way to protect tiny little seedlings from the VERY late frost, and all of them died at the beginning of June. I wanted to try some melons, cucumbers and tomatoes, but they really, really need a good head start with a greenhouse.
My greenhouse will be made of electrical conduit plastic pipe looped in a quonset shape, attached to some rebar at the ends, and covered in UV treated greenhouse plastic, which is not very expensive. The whole thing should cost me about $250 or so, and I have a lot of the materials sitting around already.
To see the inspiration for this project, see www.albertahomegardening.com or www.northerngreenhouse.com, which sells the 11ml poly that I will eventually cover it with.
The greenhouse will incorporate the chicken house, and during the winter, the chickens will live inside it, and hopefully create lots of nice compost for me, as well as consuming insects and converting waste food into delicious chicken and eggs. In the summer, and when it's good weather, the chickens will inhabit several portable coops, which will be inside a permanent perimeter area to protect from the zillions of coyotes in the area, and the local dogs.

GARDEN:
I will be constructing a large number of raised beds, which will be filled with llama manure and topsoil, which I have a lot of. I will be renting a bobcat to move all the dirt into the beds, which I'm sure would take me weeks to do by hand...no thanks.

Tires: Last year I obtained a number of large tires, which I used to contain some of my garden. The tire idea was fantastic, and I will be doing it again with certain types of plants, like cucumbers (in the greenhouse), melons, squash and potatoes. Things like carrots, broc, peas and the like, garlic, onions, cabbage will be grown in raised beds, bordered by 2 x 6 boards that I have sitting around. I will be practicing "interplanting", another permaculture concept. Onions and carrots together, carrots and tomatoes, basil and asperagus, brocolli and marigolds (well, anything and marigolds.) These beds will be combined with perennial flowers of all sorts, chosen for their ability to increase veg yields, and protect from insect pests. The garden beds will have trees interplanted, also chosen for certain properties, like fruit production.
Watering: After having watered by hand last summer, and with the hose, I have decided that I need some automation. There are some really low-tech, inexpensive watering options, not fully automated, but only need to be refilled every week or so. Some use a spike on the end of a pop bottle to trickle water directly to the root zone, which is an amazing use of an other wise useless waste product!

FOREST GARDEN:
This is different from regular gardening, in that, most of this will be permanent plants that take several years to mature and start producing. The general idea is to create a "forest" of plants that can be regularly harvested for food, but require little to no maintenance or replanting. These "forests" can be incredibly productive, using very little land, and become more and more productive as they mature. Again, this is an idea from the permaculture movement.
The plants I intend to place in this "forest" will be fruit trees, like apple, cherry, plum and apricot, berry bushes like Saskatoon, blueberry, goji, nut bushes and trees, smaller berry bushes like cranberry, strawberry plants, both wild and domesticated, and inbetween will be annual plants like clover, and other "weeds" that are actually tremendous accumulators of minerals because of their tendency to grow deep roots.
Eventually I would like to have several acres of permanent garden, and it will become part of my U-pick operation, and I expect to make a bit of money from it in time, but for starters, it will at least grow food for me and my family, as well as the chickens.

FRIENDS:
After this last years fighting with every type of government official, the neighbors, and the county, we have finally concluded the stupidity. The trailers are gone, the neighbors are more or less ignoring us, and most of the llamas are gone. We have one left, and she patrols our property every day. She was supposed to be gone too, but I asked to keep her, and the guy who picked up the rest gave up trying to get her in the truck after 2 hours.

Our friends are still very determined to make a go of it here, and we intend to support them in any way we can. After some more research, and getting some quotes, we figured that we can set up another residence for about $60,000, which would consist of a septic expansion, and another mobile home on a permanent foundation, plus the addition which we will build fairly soon. If all goes well, and God is with us, we will be very financially stable, with the potential to be debt free in 7 years or so.

RENEWABLE ENERGY:
In addition to the wind turbine that needs a couple hundred bucks in repairs, I've found a goldmine of solar panels in the US, selling brand new panels for $1.24/watt, which is about 20% of the price you'd find anywhere else. You have to buy lots, but that's not a problem, I need a lot! For about $2500-$3000 I can rid us of the generator trap forever, saving us about $250/month. The payback time will be less than a year, and no more oil changes, filling propane tanks, and paying gobs of money for electricity. Win-win all around.

I will be taking pictures of my projects as they commence, starting with the hot frame I'm building to start some seedlings outside (probably April).