We put down a mixture of dryland wildflower seeds when we re-did our front yard flower garden area. We saw quite a variety of wildflowers the first year, but this year, there has been one clear dominator: flax. It is very pretty when it is in bloom; little periwinkle flowers steal the show. They are super-hardy and don’t need much water at all to survive. We see them growing wild around here in Colorado all the time.
Close up of flax flowers
When the knock-out flower show is done, they turn into little ball seed pods and we noticed they were littering the flax seeds all over our driveway.
Flax Flowers in Bloom
This is what a flax plant looks like when its seeds are ready to be harvested
The small flax seeds reside in this tiny little pod
So we decided that instead of letting them all fall, that we would harvest a few of them. First, pick a plant that is ready to drop its seeds. Then cut it down with scissors or a knife (it’s a tough plant). Next, shake it vigorously over a sheet or some other type of drop cloth. (A towel would work, but it might get the little seeds stuck in the terry cloth material.) Check out this video for a demonstration:
A cut bunch of flax
Once you have all the seeds and other things shaken out of the bunch, pour it into a bowl. Then use a sifter or a colander to separate out the seeds from the leaves and pods that also shook into the mix.
Mixture after shaking the plant out
Sifting
Flax seeds after sifting -with a few other things still, but pretty good
Flax seed is very high in Omega-3 fatty acids which is great for your heart and brain. Some studies have shown flax seed helps prevent and/or treat cancer, stroke, diabetes and heart disease. It’s also a great food in general and can be added to everything from cereal and bread to chili and meatloaf. Additionally, it’s a great additive to your chicken’s food to help increase the omega-3’s in your chicken’s eggs.
I gave the chickens a few to try and saved the rest for us
This weekend we accomplished one of the goals on our Colorado bucket lists: we climbed a fourteener! A 14er is one of the nearly 60 mountain tops (last I heard they counted 54) that reach 14,000 feet or higher. The one we climbed is called Grays Peak. We had never climbed to the top of a mountain before so we had no idea what we were in for. These last few weekends we had tried to prepare for inclines by going to Devil’s Backbone in Loveland and other close spots, but nothing would prepare us for what we went through in terms of length and altitude.
Grays (left) and Torreys (right) Peak in the distance
We met at our friends Kelly and Todd’s house just after 6am and arrived at the trailhead that is located near the town of Georgetown right around 9am. We arrived a little late, but still managed to find parking. We started the trailhead at about 11,000 feet (Greeley is close to 4,000) and would ascend to over 14,000 ft over the course of about 3.5 miles.
The trailhead starts below treeline, so there was quite a bit of pine trees and plants.
First part of the trail (Kelly and Todd walking) -still lots of plant life
Slowly though the trees thinned out until there was just low-lying brush and then just a little bit of tundra plants left. We saw a lot of wildflowers including Colorado’s state flower, the columbine.
Pretty wild flowers with mountains in the distance
Columbines growing wild
The beginning was somewhat steep but not too bad. It had a low-grade meadow in the middle that was great for catching my breath. My heart was pounding pretty hard and I could feel with each step that I was getting less and less oxygen. Thankfully Britton offered to be the mule and carry our backpack full of food and supplies.
Britton and me
We got to a point where many people were second-thinking whether or not to keep going up. I was getting winded and feeling strange with just a few steps. I had to scale boulders that were about half the height that I am. A few people were turning back. Not even the plants dared to live much further up. We sat at this juncture and had a snack for a little while. It was breathtaking in more than one way.
Looking down into the valley from whence we came as the sun and clouds chased each other
It was tempting to stop. I was spent. We had been climbing for about 2.5 hours by then. Kelly and Todd had kept going ahead of us, so it was just Britton and me alone. People said it would be about another 45 minutes to the top if we kept walking. I didn’t know if I could do more, as it was getting steeper and steeper and the air was thinning with each step. But I convinced myself to continue to do what we had set out to do: climb a Colorado fourteener.
Some people had plenty of energy (see the guy on the rock)
Soon, Britton became worried about me as my hands started turning purple and splotchy. I felt a little nauseous, I had to sit down about every 100 steps or so. He was so great. He was very patient with me and was supportive of whatever decision I needed to make. But I pushed on. Even when I felt like stopping, I kept going. I kept counting my steps. 75 steps. Sit. 50 steps. Sit. 40 steps. Sit. Finally we started hearing people coming down who had made it to the top. “Just two or three switch-backs and you’ll be there.” That really helped in keeping me motivated. “Is it worth it?” I asked more than once. “Totally!” was the response. Just. A. Few. More. Steps. I think I probably was not fully hydrated and maybe had a touch of altitude sickness. I’m not sure, but I felt like I was dragging my body along.
Finally we looked up and saw Kelly and Todd waving at us from the top. They had been there about 25 minutes already. I pushed on and through to the zenith. Victory! It was an amazing accomplishment for me. Many moments of doubt, but I pushed through it. Through the pain and discomfort. We were there!
On top of the world! With Todd, Kelly, me and Britton
It was absolutely gorgeous and much more difficult to me than I thought, but totally worth it. After climbing this mountain I know that at least half of anything you do is mental. You can psyche yourself into or out of anything. I almost wanted to cry with feelings of relief and achievement. It was incredible.
View from the top –looking toward Torreys
We had thought we might also try climbing the neighboring peak, Torreys, but everyone felt that we had done enough for one day, plus it looked like a rain storm might come in. Britton and I reached the top of Grays at about 12:30pm. It took us about 3.5 hours.
Coming down I felt great. With each step I was getting more oxygen and energy. I was even able to jog a few areas! We made it down in only about 2 hours. By 3pm we were loaded and ready to take on the crazy I-70 Sunday traffic.
Coming down off the mountain. Look how barren and rocky it is! Like walking on the moon!
It was an absolutely amazing experience in more ways than one. If you ever have the opportunity to climb a Colorado 14er, I would whole-heartedly recommend it. And just remember, a mountain is conquered one step at a time.
One thing we love to do in Colorado and that we are excited to try in Puerto Rico, is growing things and selling them. I sell our chicken eggs to a friend year round and I have some other people who like to buy them from time to time in the summer months when we get 5-6 eggs a day (or almost 3 dozen a week!). But when all of our plants start coming in, we also like to sell those, or the fruits from them.
At the Greeley Farmer’s Market a few years back (Selling tropical plants, but of course!)
We used to sell some of our plants at the Greeley Farmer’s Market, but now they require all sorts of expensive insurance and crap, so small backyard growers like us have been pushed out. But there is one great marketplace still around: Craigslist! We love Craigslist and use it to buy things we may need and we list our rentals as well as things around our house and from our garden and greenhouse.
One of our comfrey plants
Tomatoes and lots of other plants in the greenhouse this year
We are finishing up with the strawberry season at our house, but had a bumper crop this year!
Just tonight we sold some tomato plants that were overtaking our greenhouse floor. We also have some people interested in buying some of our comfrey plant crowns. We love doing it. I like writing up the descriptions and waiting for people to contact me. Britton is good at digging up plants and making them look good. Selling our garden bounty feels more like fun than work! We would be working in the garden anyway and so when we get paid to do it and we see how happy people are with our plants, it makes us all the more pleased.
For instance, the woman who bought our plants tonight had had all of hers torn apart when we had that hail storm a few days ago, so she was super excited to be able to start her tomato garden up again -and for way less than it would be to replace them with plants from Home Depot or a nursery.
Britton says lately he has been having dreams of planting an acre or so of our land in Rincon with rows of pepper plants. I am not sure how well peppers grow there, but I would imagine fairly good. And in Rincon, we would still be able to sell them -and eggs, palm trees, coconuts, mangoes, etc, etc- at the Farmer’s Market! There’s so much opportunity everywhere you look. We are really excited and summers in Colorado make us all the more ready to live a summer-lifestyle year-round.
There seems to be a theme lately. Things break and sometimes we fix them and sometimes we have someone else fix it. I suppose that I like to pick my battles.
We were over at one of the rentals and the current tenants are moving out at the end of the month. The management company we hired suggested that the yard be cleaned up a bit. Mulch, weed removal and turning on the sprinklers. All pretty basic stuff. When we were working over there, we noticed that they had the AC on (compressor outside was running). It wasn’t a very hot day, and we wouldn’t have had our AC on, but we just kept about our yard work and didn’t think much about it. Cassie was a weed pulling, rose and tree triming machine!
One thing about Colorado is we have tenacious weeds. They grow even when it’s hot and there is no water. As a result anytime we put down rocks or mulch the standard operating procedure is to put down some kind of weed barrier. The landscaping stores sell a fabric that is supposed to keep the weeds down. And it does…For a while. Then the fabric starts to break down, or the weeds just start growing in the fabric. I’ve come to find that it’s worthless as a weed deterrent.
Plastic was used along the fence, landscape fabric on the left
Instead what I have found works really well is the thickest plastic you can find. It seems to last years and NO weeds come up thru it. I removed a bunch of rocks, removed the remaining fabric and put down the plastic weed barrier then put the rocks back. It’s quite a bit of work, but it should be good to go for a number of years now.
After all the rock was moved back in place with plastic instead of the fabric
After we put the mulch down in other areas of the yard, the fertilizer and replaced the fabric with plastic we noticed that the A/C compressor was still running! I figured this indicated a problem so we took a closer look. There was ice forming on the coolant line! I have no idea how long it had been running for, but it needed closer inspection.
Ice Growing on the Compressor Line!
I found that the blower motor on the furnace wasn’t running! This caused air to not move across the AC coil which meant that it just iced up both outside and inside! Who know how long that AC had been running and not shutting off! Good thing we just happened to be working at the property. The tenants were clueless!
I looked up some info on the internet and from previous experience I figured it was the run capacitor. They are prone to failure, but also are the cheapest/easiest part to replace. I pulled the capacitor and got a replacement at a local store here in Greeley. Rick’s Appliance. The guy who works there/owns it, Rick, is super honest and every time I’ve gone in the store he has been very helpful. So for $6 I got a new capacitor.
Run Capacitor for the Blower Motor
I got to the house the next day and the ice had melted off the AC parts and I threw in the new capacitor. Turned the furnace on and….fan still wouldn’t kick on. The blower motor fan just buzzed. I did get it to start by pushing it by hand once but it never worked on its own. I figured the next part to replace was the motor.
Finding HVAC parts is I think, intentionally hard to do online. It’s as if they have their own club and if you’re not in it, you aren’t going to find what you need online. They want you to pay someone to fix your stuff. I found a motor at a place near work. It cost $80 and is a universal Mars motor. I was a bit skeptical about using an aftermarket part; I almost always want to get a direct original equipment manufacturer (OEM) replacement. This causes less hassle with things that don’t fit correct or that might have small differences. In this case however it was nearly impossible and would have cost ~$400.
Blower Motor in the Furnace
I put the motor in, wired it up and turned it on. Worked like a charm! It did take my time and $86 total (plus tax) but I learned a lot in the process and I had time to do it. There was no great rush or pressure since the weather here is between seasons and we don’t need AC or Heat. Estimated cost to hire an HVAC person to do what I did: $500!
And it was quite apparent what had caused the motor to burn out: the furnace filter hadn’t been changed in a year! The filter was all bent and sucked inward. Remember to change your filters often, monthly even, if you use your furnace year-round.
Yep, back in the garage on the floor with my blue shirt on..lol
All in all it was a productive few days. We saved a lot of money by doing things ourselves and we had the time to do it. I think I want to turn the old motor from the furnace into an electric wind generator. We’ll see. As is I am learning all about furnaces and that’s something I won’t need in Rincon…but it never hurts to learn. The Honda Civic is small but can hold quite a bit! (removing debris from the yard)
