Zone 6

Zone 6, Aspen springs, Colorado // Shay, 25, and his garden

Aspen springs is a massive subdivision just north of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. In the early 1970’s it was divided into six different zones that span across over 6,000 acres on both sides of US highway 160. While zones 1-5 all have electric and cell service and lower zones with septic and water, zone 6 is almost entirely off the grid. With community mandated restriction of law enforcement access, zone 6 is a lawless, generator-powered, DIY community thriving on backwoods agriculture of hemp and cannabis. Since the early 1970’s up until recently, upper zones 4, 5 and 6 have been a disarray of meth addicts and tweakers bringing violence, theft and increasingly lower property values.

In the last 10-12 years much of the drug-fueled chaos of upper aspen springs has been eradicated by pot farmers moving to the area. When I was looking for a night’s stay near Pagosa Springs I had remembered one of my friends lived in the area, my friend Shay who has a small plot in the middle of zone 6. I really wasn’t sure what to expect when taking turn after turn, driving up dirt road after dirt road, getting increasingly less maintained. When I arrived, I was damn well hoping I had the right address as the first sign read “we don’t call the police!” But I was happily greeted and showed around by Shay’s older brother Julian and I must say, the $25,000 1.2-acre lot (including the yurt) that Shay purchased last year had been transformed into something far more then I had imagined. There was a large furnished yurt with a kitchen and wood burning stove, a hand-built storage shed made almost entirely out of left-over pallets left on the property, two hand-dug pools for irrigation, one 10,000 gallons and 500 gallons, and a 100’ x 30’ x 18’ greenhouse containing 35 of the healthiest 6-8-foot-tall cannabis plants I could have imagined. The passion and determination that he dedicates to his craft certainly show in the plants. However, like every farmer knows and like any other agricultural product, anything can happen. Some summers are better than others, you go through drought, you get bugs, you can get robbed, there are natural disasters, you name it. As Shay says you just have to be positive and roll with the punches through the season. After all, nothing is said and done until the plant is grown, budded, harvested, dried, trimmed and sold.

While using various generators, he has power to heat a shower, light the yurt, run fans in the greenhouse, watch tv, pump water, fulfill general charging needs, and even phone access through a landline in the yurt.

Colorado is known for its notoriously short and tricky grow season. Compared to popular grow areas in California with more humidity and a near perfect vapor pressure deficit, Shays grow lives at over 8,000 ft. above sea level in Colorado’s dry and hot-cold climate.

Shay’s grow is an all-from-seed, 100% organic, in-ground garden cultivating 8 different strains. There are 3 rows of plants all gravity fed from three 300-gallon reservoirs at the top of his slightly sloped 100’ x 30’ greenhouse plot. The garden is given 900 gallons of water twice per week, 300 gallons per row, 16 gallons per plant. He uses a 12-seed-blend cover crop at the base of his plants which benefits the soil retention and aeration as well as helps colonization microbes and bacteria in organic soil. His base soil this year consists of peat moss, coco core, and pearl white to which he adds earthworm castings, Alaskan hummus compost, and other compost teas and periodically feeds with liquid bat guano, kelp meal, crab meal, alfalfa meal, green sand and dolomite lime.

“Aside from my interest and hunting and using rubber bullets to keep bears away, we do have guns. You know, you never want to point a gun at another person let alone pull the trigger, but you have to stand up for your shit, you know? For your livelihood, so yes we have guns.”