Hemp news, tiny house and work on the office

Hemp is now thigh high! With all of this daily rain, it's shooting up. It's not as high as other hemp growers in the valley though. Richard went to a meeting of local hemp growers this past Tuesday and met a few people growing Industrial Hemp locally. We ran into one of them at a fair in the park in Alamosa and followed him home to tour his hemp garden. His plants are 7 - 8 feet tall! He has a lot of variety though. We only have one type - Finola. Although, people have been trading seeds and plants around, so we may be able to grow more types in pots or next year.

We were also chosen to be one of the test plots for the valley. Yuck. At first I thought maybe we should just till up the plants, but that would be heart breaking. Watching those babies grow is so wonderful! And, it's the principle of the thing. We wanted to grow hemp this year to set a precedent for others to grow hemp. It would be wonderful if everyone was growing hemp in their backyards. It is an amazing plant. So, we will continue to watch our hemp plants get taller and see what happens. Richard plans on harvesting them on September 1, so the state will inspect so many days prior to that, to make sure the plants do not have an THC in them. The biggest issue is the cost, which we will bear. We have to pay cost of transportation for the inspector to come to our place (from where?) and we have to pay for the lab costs for the testing too. Kind of crappy, but it is what it is. Maybe they can bill us. Maybe it won't be too much. I sure hope not.

As it is, we are having a hard time saving for the deposit on our tiny house/shed, and I'm afraid it just may not happen before winter gets here. So plan B? Move the camper up the hill next to the office and start building walls around it, which we can then insulate. We will make a garage for it. A passive solar garage with windows across the south face, of course. At some point, we may pull the camper out and finish that space into a tiny house. So, we will see what happens. We are still waiting for the landscape company to send someone out to level the pad and put down four inches of gravel for the tiny house. They are having trouble keeping their appointments.

We got another course of Earthbags done on the office and Richard has almost all of the straw bales up. We may need a few more straw bales to finish it, and we may have trouble finding them right now. I'm particularly worried about moisture because of all the rain we have been getting in the San Luis valley, which isn't normal, as people will explain.  Whatever. I love the rain! It makes things grow. It makes our hemp grow taller and taller. Maybe the SLV's climate is changing too. Maybe the winters won't be so intense.