New Facebook group

I've started a Facebook group for people in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. If you are interested, join us.

SLV Natural and Organic Living

SLV Hemp Project

Hemp is the Future:

Ever since the forward thinking voters in our state thought to give farmers and citizens the legal right to once again cultivate the non-drug, industrial hemp Cannabis species, we have been trying to figure out a way to get involved. As stewards of this planet and this special protected spot in the Valley, we have been talking about supporting the Hemp future. And as an organization -- as a center for the new agriculture and evolving eco-spirituality -- Green Desert Sanctuary is a match for the future economy that Hemp represents for all of us. Carbon negative, Hemp generally requires no support in the form of pesticides or herbicides, and only normally fertile soil. The fiber varieties can grow from 6-12 feet in height, producing massive amounts of a sustainable fiber, and the seed varieties can yield more than 1500 lbs of oil-seed per acre. The seed can be pressed to create a very nutritious oil rich in Omega's and nutrient dense, while leaving behind a "seed-cake" or meal that is very high protein.

The industrial version of hemp even provides the basis for eco-scaled forms of our modern production economy contributing raw materials to everything from paper and fiber based products like textiles to bio-plastic composite materials that are comparable to carbon-fiber or fiberglass. It can be used for creating bio-fuels and has shown great promise as a tool for phytoremediation of contaminants in everything from waste-water to the soil itself. Hemp combines with lime to make hemcrete- a superior building material which offers both structural and insulative benefits and is better in every respect than regular cement/concrete, and much much Greener!

So it has been apparent to us for a while that Hemp should be part of the future, and now we are working on a way to make it literally part of our future. We talked in the past about sending money to support people that are working to make US hemp production a reality, and now we can BE some of those people. The Colorado department of Agriculture began taking registrations on March 1 for those wanting to grow industrial hemp for this year, and we are working to figure out a way to grow hemp, as legally as possible, and as soon as possible. We've already registered our intention with the state, now we just have to find a way to actualize our vision!

So in the next week or so, we will be putting together an opportunity to help support Local hemp through a crowd-funding, slow money type project. As the state Ag folks are quick to point out, this is all (relatively speaking) brand new to everyone. One obligation of growing the hemp is committing to processing the hemp within Colorado, and it is not yet known how many, if any, processing facilities will be in existence this fall. There may not be any, so we may be working on that aspect of this project in a few months.

In the meantime, we need to get the seed in the ground, which means we need to get seed (from mysterious sources unknown, as it is still federally illegal to ship viable hemp seed across state lines) and we need to have a seed strain that can do well in our cold short growing season. Good news is that we have some good leads on a variety, which hopefully will make it safely to the farm. Even better news is that now, as recently detailed in the previous post, we have access to land, without the looming threat of bank mortgages or absentee landlords. Land which we can feel comfortable using to grow hemp. We just need some infrastructure, in terms of water resources, probably a large hoop house, that kind of thing.

Which is where you come in!

We'll be calling on you to help spread the word in the next few days, as we finalize our start-up plan and get the crowd-funding system set up. We'll be asking you to post and repost, share with your friends and twitter out to all your peeps so that we can get maximum exposure of our effort, so that we can have the most success getting the necessary funding to take advantage of this opportunity NOW! We'll also be asking you to show that you support a greener hemp-fueled future for ourselves and our communities through your contribution. And we're working to have cute, fun, and useful thank-you's for those that care about that sort of thing.

This is your chance to support the future of hemp. 
This year it is all about learning, about contributing energy to the growing hemp revolution, about being the change we want to see in the world.

Be the change! Join the Hemp revolution and contribute to the evolution of humanity and the healing of our Mother Earth.

Still cold

It is still freezing cold! Temps have not gotten above 30 F for so long now. I feel trapped in this horrid cold. Our front door freezes shut every night. Richard found my old hair dryer and uses it to melt the ice on the bottom of the door. But then it refreezes and we struggle to get out of the house again. Our windows ice over every night--1/4 to 1/2 inch, and then melt off through the day (if there is sun). I have used every single towel I have here in the house, trying to mop up the melting water.

Bathroom window

Last night I forgot to put the heater on in the living room. The main part of the house got down to 60 F overnight. Our bedroom/sunroom gets down to 59 F regularly, even with a heater and foam insulation in the windows. Last night it got down to 56 F.

I wonder what will happen in the house when the outside temps get down to -30 F? We may have to figure out how to get the old wood stove up and functioning. This is a task unto itself as we have to clear the room of furniture and other stuff (our buckets of flour...our pantry) if we want to use it. The stove is way too big for the tiny room it's in. Plus we should really get the chimney cleaned, which is another $150. The chimney has never been cleaned, according to the landlords who have owned this house for ten years or so. I'm afraid to use the stove without cleaning the chimney. I have seen the rubble of houses all around the valley---houses that burned. There is no fire department here, but maybe in Costilla or San Luis, some miles away. Too far to make a difference.

I have to move my birds (parrot and dove) out of the sunroom/bedroom because it's getting too cold in there. I guess they will share some space with the kids in their tiny room.

At least the animals outside are still doing okay, even though the goat barn still needs to be closed in better. We have to go to Santa Fe (or Pueblo) to get some clear Lexon panels for the barn siding. This will allow some light and maybe some heat into the barn. The goats would break any glass we try to use, so we are going to try those panels instead. We have to wait for the weather to warm enough that we can leave our dogs outside while we make the trip, which usually takes a full day, and has us getting back after dark. It is way too cold to leave the dogs out for that amount of time, and I don't want to kennel them for so long either.

Sometimes things just seem so hard, don't they? The cold always makes everything worse. And it's a matter of life and death for some of us, so we just have to keep plugging away, doing what we can with the time and money we have. I suppose things might be different if we lived in a decent house and had a heated barn for the critters. But, we don't.

Moving south seems like a great idea every winter. And then the summer comes and I forget how miserable and cold it is during the winter. I suppose we are blessed in the fact that none of the housing choices we were looking at worked out up here in the San Luis Valley. Maybe the Universe knows better than me, and perhaps my urge to move south of Albuquerque means more than I think. Maybe I should listen to my inner urgings. We worry about water down that way as the Southwest dries up. But at least it is warmer and there is no fracking going on (yet). Plus the livestock taxes are disturbing, so we may have to rethink that too.

Today we are headed to Taos to pay our rent while the bank is still open. That was the agreement, to deposit our check in the landlords' account. I wonder what we do if we can't get there? That seems absurd, doesn't it? But, I hate driving on snow/ice packed roads, especially on mountain roads. The forecast for the next week...freezing fog with periods of sunshine.