I know I'm a few days early but after seeing the Academy's graduation on the news and those F-16 Thunderbird's I couldn't resist. I have served three F-16 squadrons as a Munitions Systems Specialist (or Ammo troop for short) at Hill AFB Utah with the title of honor grad and nominated for Airman of the year. There is no more amazing power and beautiful sound than a Fighter jet, whether at idle or full after-burn. I dream of sitting in one again. They are amazingly smaller than a Geo Metro on the inside but much better built :p and have more switches and knobs than a recording studio. Those beasts are so loud that you need ear protection even while at idle. I am fortunate enough to have been in a Black Hawk Helicopter, even a foot ball field sized C-5 plane in one of the photos below. Been up close and personal with a B-52 bomber, F-15 fighters, A-6 intruder tank killers, SR-21 Blackbird, F-4 Phantoms, AWAC spy planes, and so many others. I have built up sidewinder missiles, Cluster bombs, bunker busters, laser guided bombs, trained on Nuclear weapons (never seen one in Utah) and so much firepower that would take me forever to list.
I am a very patriotic man and see every military member, enlistee or family of the military as my brothers and people I will always respect. It truly is a brotherhood and that is why we moved to the Springs. I wish I could still be a service member to this day. I would love to do the work I used to do, preferably as a civilian for the sole reason of being able to stay with family. My career field at the time was sending us to Korea for a year straight and at the time we were serving 6 month rotations in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and many other crazy places even way back then. I hated the idea of coming home to see my son a year older than the last time I saw him. He was one of the main reasons I gave it all up. There just isn't many bomb building jobs in the civilian world and after many construction jobs, I landed here - this time as my next favorite job... A Farmer.
I was one of the few lucky ones that ended up staying state side somehow. I joined just after Desert Storm in the Air Force and served under President Clinton. Diana lived a long time military life with her father that served in the Air Force also way longer than me as a two star general. He was the man in charge of the whole base in Warner Robins Georgia and also served as a Fighter Pilot. My late Grandfather also served in the Air Force and my father is a Vietnam Veteran as a helicopter gunner in the Army. The military life is just in our blood. I hope my son doesn't have to lead this hard life especially in the state our country is in but I will respect what the military can teach him should he decide to serve this great nation. No matter who is in charge or the state of our country, this will always be a great nation created by the people who fight to preserve it. We give our deepest respect to warriors past and present. Never loose the spirit. Once you have served, you never can. It's just in your blood. God bless America and the sacrifices of all citizens past. Only in this country could I have had such an amazing experience at such a young age of 19.
Click the photos below for a larger photo gallery and please watch for the captions at the bottom. Happy Memorial Day ! I don't get to talk about it much so please excuse the short novel. I'm going to leave out the gory details no one likes to talk about anyway. Hard to believe we're both farmers now living a simpler and still hard life but not as hard as serving the country in the most dangerous way.
~Ken~
I can't take credit for this since I saw it on the internet but thought I would share for any goat owners that want to make feeding an easier daily task. What we like to do is give a flake of pure Alfalfa per goat in the mornings then after the grain feeding they get to run free and eat pasture grass. This feeder is also in the middle of their fenced yard (this yard is for the times we have to leave and they can't escape)
The huge bale in the cage is 1,000 pounds of grass, alfalfa mix so moving it can be a challenge. I pounded a T-post through the middle of both sides and used my tractor to drag it into the yard. I then enclosed it with metal Cattle Panels that the goats can fit their heads through to eat and still have minimal amount of waste. it's so nice having this. Their is nothing worse than having to fill feeders in the hurricane force winds impaling your eyes with hay stems. And it minimizes the knuckle head goats from fighting over feeder space.
P.s. The hay is much greener than in the photos. Diana is the master of the camera settings .. I just know how to make it click.
~Ken~
I was just looking through some old pictures and thought why not share a little bit about our story of how we ended up here in a wild twist of fate. I originally grew up in Denver and worked mostly in the mountains of Conifer, Bailey, and Evergreen as a subcontractor installing telephone lines. Skipping ahead, I then joined the Air Force and worked on a Flight Line of F-16's building bombs and missiles to load on the fighters. (I will save that stuff for a memorial day post) After my military career I decided to take a chance and move to Florida with dreams of living like a beach bum and I did for ten years living in the land of bugs and dripping humidity while working for the county water department. I think we been to almost every beach up the entire west coast of Florida. After a while I really started missing the mountains. I used to camp in Granby for weeks at a time when I was younger and never wanted to leave back to the city. Florida soon started to get old and my job was eating at me everyday having the biggest jerk of a boss where you could never do anything right in his eyes. The only job I have not been appreciated at, by the way.
While working there I started using my G.I. bill to go to school for computer networking. While I really excelled at the courses, making the national deans list for a high GPA , I started to realize I just couldn't have a job being trapped indoors. I've always worked outside. During this period, my favorite band Nine inch Nails... as you can tell with my goofy Durango decked out with NIN emblems :D woo hoo :p was touring and I was traveling all over to see them play at all the close venues. There was a fan club forum called the Spiral for the band and this is how I met my Love. Turns out Diana is a big fan too and we just hit it off through the computer like so many do these days. The only trick was she lived on the other side of the state in Orlando while I was in Tampa. This didn't stop us. It was love at first text lol.. and first sight. For almost a year we would take turns driving 2 hours across the state to spend weekends together. Diana was already an animal person. She worked at Discovery Cove training dolphins and working with all sorts of weird animals.
After hitting every theme park, beach, concerts, clubs, cold springs, horse back rides and you name it ... we did it all, I decided to take her back to my home and show her the mountains. She's always been a flat lander candy butt southern girl that never would cuss.... unless I really ticked her off of course :p It's probably coming when she sees I called her a candy butt :D
It was then after coming back to what felt like home (the mountains) and Diana just loving the massive change of scenery (if you haven't seen Hanging Lake, you have to!) that we started talking about moving away from the jobs we grew to hate and the state that we conquered together leaving nothing more to see. We even hit monster truck rallys and demolition derbys. Plus we really liked the idea of not having to drive so far to see each other all the time so it was time to move in together. There was no way I was going back to Denver. I hated it there. I thought we would go to Colorado Springs where there are so many like minded military people here and I thought I was a shoe in for a job on any of the bases. Big mistake : ( We started in a town home rental close to the Academy and after a year throwing my resume at every job imaginable, I only got two interviews. There is nothing worse that trying to fake wanting to work for a low paying and low excitement job when all you want is to earn a paycheck. One interview was even with the water company in Pueblo doing the exact same thing I did for 7 years in Florida. Needless to say I think there was some good ol boy system at play since the interview was a failure. I really didn't want to move to Pueblo anyhow so looking back now, I'm glad I got shot down. The piercings did come out and tattoos covered for the interviews ; ) I figure I'm keeping them until I'm forced to grow up someday.
After well over 100 applications I finally realized it's just not going to happen. There goes the retirement funds from my county work. Diana and I decided to take a chance and try to create our own job and we found this great foreclosure with 35 acres for the bones of a new start. You see there just isn't any Dolphins to train in Colorado nor is their any need for a missile builder .... unless you're al qaeda. Now things are getting better this year on the farm but I have to admit we have shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Most of which was Diana beating me like an orphaned Ginger when I've had my straight jacket moments. (A lot of those moments are caused by the ridiculous winds here)
We had to sell Diana's "Bat mobile" sports car as I called it because that thing wouldn't even move in an inch of snow. It's stuck in the mud at her dads house in Georgia in the photos. I gotta admit it was such a cool car you just want to lick the steering wheel and drive with your head out the sunroof. It's a Infinity G35 and it cost me a $240 speeding ticket because you just didn't feel like it was moving that fast. I stopped licking the steering wheel. Trading the bat mobile in I think was the first time I seen Diana cry.... Well almost. She still has a Nissan but it's a chicken yellow Exterra with a six banger.
We faced way more problems which I rather not think about while building our "Lil" farm but it always still feels worth it even with the long hours and small profit. And whoa you should see the look on family's face when you say your going to be a farmer :O We do understand that it's far from easy or everyone would be doing it. I just don't have it in me to give up to easily and I know we will do great in time. Turd herding isn't the most glamorous job and our gag reflexes have improved over time :p There is no way I could do it all without my hunny. She's keeping her farm hand strong.
The next photo you can see our Ferret trying to escape back to Florida up the screen door. The house really needed a lot of work and if you have been here you already know that nice wood floor in the pictures still isn't done and I don't know when it will ever get done. I'm always building nice animal houses while us animals get splinters in out feet. We totally gutted it, painted everything inside and out. There is still a lot to finish it but It's no rush since we got the main stuff done good enough for now. Something breaks pretty much everyday here.
We finally put the house work aside and started on the farm work. In the photo below you can see a shed that is cut in half. We had to do that to get it home with two trips in our tiny trailer. (Don't tell.. we moved it at night so nobody was on the road out here in danger. lmao) That was one heavy ball busting.. slam them up in your throat shed. This was a Craigs List purchase with the purpose of being our very first chicken coop. We started with just 17 chickens which have since multiplied to at least 100 different birds now. The black Australorp in the photo was our smallest Australorp and she was such a great bird. We named her Lil Bit and something was wrong with her. She stayed small and never laid a single egg in about a year. One day she just dropped dead in the yard and shortly after we decided to name the farm after her and it also went with our business plan to do a little bit of everything so not to put all our eggs in one basket (no pun intended). If one thing fails (like our newbie bad luck getting goats pregnant) we would have other products to fall back on.
We actually thought about Alpacas in the beginning but we just couldn't figure out how you can make any money with them. The final pictures are of the barn when it was a work in progress and the two baby goats were our very first goats. We really need to make some of the start up cost back and if we plan everything out just right next year should be an even better year.
Wow... I didn't know I was so long winded... I'm going to stop typing now and make sure I didn't rub the letters off the keys :p
~Ken~
I been wanting to make the ducks a better house out by their pond since they spend all of their day out there. Plus they are just so messy they need their own house. The big dog house that looks like a mini barn we got cheap at a farm auction. The smaller red coop a friend gave to us and I was looking for a way to connect the two. Instead i just made an outside enclosure which gives them the option of sleeping "outside" without being in danger from the coyotes. We used pallets and free wood that we have been collecting. I'm pretty happy with the outcome. The only thing left to do is to make a hatch door on the back of the brown dog house for easier cleaning. The ducks love it and now I hope we won't have to lead the ducks home at night.
P.s. That is an old satellite dish that we used for a pond. It makes it easy to use a push broom and sweep it for clean water everyday. It's a lil dirty in the photos since it was close to the evening.
~Ken~
Granted I don't have the experience of bottle fed babies and only ones that milk off mom but our babies are so playful and loving with us every time they hear the barn door open. We just can't keep them all from tugging on our pant legs looking for play time while we try to clean the barn. I can only think the bottle feeding is much like giving them attention time. We play with our babies a lot and don't bottle feed but they are so people friendly.
We researched and debated on how to raise our babies for the longest time. Bottle feeding farms v.s. natural nursing off mom seems to be about fifty fifty. The theory behind bottle feeding is to keep the babies away from mom then pasteurizing mom's milk to feed the babies 4 or more times a day to prevent caprine arthritis encephalitis. We have our herd tested yearly and they are all free of this. We didn't like the idea of keeping the babies from the moms and I'm glad we didn't. (Once you choose they will only drink from a bottle or mom so there is usually no changing it up)
Our babies run with the herd of big goats just as they would in the wild and while they are a bunch of goofs, our mom's are always watching out for them. We even let them run with the herd out in the electrified fields and they only got out once. Were still over protective and worry that they will get out again so we put them in the fenced yard when we leave. I think the one good shock was enough to train them though. One thing we found with the internet is that you can't always get a straight and definitive answer so sometimes you just have to go with your instinct. Farming just doesn't seem to be an exact science.
~Ken~
Below is me getting mauled by the four monsters. It's going to be soooooo hard to sell them. I think were going to keep the Toggenburg "Bubba Bell" at the least.
We did it again and brought another goat home with us. They just keep multiplying. This girl is Magenta or "Maggie" as we call her. We have Margie and Mallory whom are sisters and now we have Margie's gran-daughter as well. As you can probably guess Margie has such good breeding lines and quality. This new girl is a lot like her. Were finally going to be back in the milk business next week thanks to her. This goat is a machine! She has so much milk that it's dripping out of her in the morning. Diana and I have to team up and take turns milking her because our hands get so tired. It's been a while since we had to milk that much and her udder is a little hard to get used to. Thankfully she is so patient with us just like her grandma. We have yet to weigh how much she's making but I would have to guess it's over a gallon a day. What a great goat.
You have to check out the first video. Millie's son and daughter were both sleeping with their eyes open an hour after they were born. It scared us at first and they haven't done it since. I wish we recorded more, it was hilarious.
The second video is our turkeys being lil "turkeys." They are the most friendly birds and are always following me around and in my business. It really sucks because your dinner isn't supposed to like you. They are the best. We're hoping to keep a breeding pair of the midget whites that we have.
The third video is the baby ducks going outside to meet their mom and dad for the first time. (the white Pekings) I never would have guessed it would have gone this way. The adults were scared to death of the babies for the longest time as if they had fangs or something. Bunch of woos-es.
The fourth video is the baby ducks being shown the kiddie pool and one flailing around like a turtle on its back. They eventually graduated to the big kid pond and made friends with mom and dad.
~Ken~
We have read a lot about using the deep litter method on various websites. We decided to give it a try and it does work. The concept being to spread dry hay over the messy hay in the barn creating layers that also keep the animals warm since the composting of it underneath generates heat. Occasionally we spread some horse stall freshener as well. It worked great all winter long. It never smelled and we never had to worry about heating the goats on those crazy cold days. However we never seen anyone say how hard it is to muck it all out in the spring.
It was the most awful experience and partly due to us not thinking to make the barn accessible with a trailer at a big door. I spent a 12 hour day just chipping away at the layers of nastiness and wheel burrowing it out to the gate. It didn't smell until I started digging into it and it was the most god awful smell ever. Armed with a painters mask which felt pointless since nothing was going to keep that smell out. A pitch fork was all I could use to break it up and it had the shortest handle creating knots all up and down my back. I then spent the next two days shoveling it all again onto my trailer then taking it out to the end of our land only to shovel it a third time. This whole process about destroyed my back and broke my will :p Before I started, the hay level on the floor was so high that my head was in the rafters. Now, so much came out I can barely touch the rafters with my finger tips.
If you decide to do the deep litter method it really does help to have a tractor that can scoop the stuff up and a barn that you can maneuver a trailer into an easy position. Lesson learned. Our new barn in the works has two swing out doors.
Another farm blunder and lesson learned is the hay you can see in the photos. Each of those bales weigh 1,000 pounds or more. It's the cheapest way you can buy hay this year and this stuff is all organic (not sprayed with chemicals) Our goat mentor got a load delivered and she had these three on her trailer ready for us to pick up. She has a tractor with a hay fork to move the giant bales. The first load o fun was when I hooked my Dodge Durango up to the trailer. I thought in my little brain that since I had the big V-8 my Durango should do just fine. Well.... I lowered the trailer down on my hitch and that weight just about lifted the front tires of my Dodge off the ground. Thankfully Mary Sue was kind enough to then let us also use her Ford diesel truck to get it home.
Onto the next newbie blunder. I don't think Mary Sue has tried to man handle these things. She said we should be able to roll these off the trailer. I know I'm not that out of shape, but these things don't budge. Diana and I were on top of them pushing with our legs only to get sand spurs stuck in our bums. Here comes our old 1946 tractor to the rescue. We pounded fence T-posts through each side and then hooked a chain to them which made it possible to drag them off the trailer and onto pallets.
I then went on to get my steel wheel tractor stuck while using it as a rototiller. Something I thought I could never do with this beast of a machine. As the wheels dug down the towing draw bar lifted the tractor up. I could spin those metal wheels like wheel of fortune. Out comes the chains again and the Dodge to pull it out.
Farming rocks. I swear. Who needs a gym? What a week :p
~Ken~
About a week ago, Oreo got to come out to play in the barnyard with all the big kids for the first time. She was bouncing off the walls with energy - take a look!
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