Welcome

Maya Creek is being developed as a sustainable homestead and retreat center in rural central Missouri. The goal is to create an environment for people to temporarily remove themselves from the often chaotic and unhealthy cacophony of modern society and to reconnect with nature while also exploring ways of living simpler, healthier, and generally more conscientious lives.  We are dedicated to learning, living, and sharing the principles of sustainability and self-sufficiency.  We will eventually hold different types of organized group retreats such as for meditation.  We are not experts on most of what we are attempting, but we are rapidly accumulating knowledge and experience of what works here and we gladly share it with anyone who is interested.

Our immediate goal now is to establish the basic infrastructure, after which we will begin expanding living spaces to host more people.    We are open to visitors from April through October.  Find out more about tours here.

Below you’ll find our most recent blog posts.  The site is structured so that the folder tabs are the main categories and the colored tabs are the sub-pages.  To learn more about who we are and our vision for Maya Creek just click on the red tab above. I post many pictures and small updates on the facebook group, Maya Creek Forum.


Adventures in Homesteading

Posted by Tao on June 16, 2013

Cattle panel tomato supports with Sydney and KitaMy summer-long volunteer, Syndey, arrived last week.  She’s a Wisconsin native who has just finished an engineering degree in California.  She’ll mainly be focusing on the food situation, maintaining the garden, harvesting and preserving food, etc.  We’ve already spent a good amount of time familiarizing her with the garden, the plants, the pests, and the tasks to keep it on track.

Garden Observations

We just put up a few cattle panels with t-stakes to act as tomato supports.  So far I’ve tried tomato cages and last year I used t-stakes with rope tied between them as supports, but I can already tell that the cattle panels are going to be my favorite so far.  They are far more stable than the other two styles, and I think the clean up at the end of the year should be fairly minimal.

The squash bugs made their first appearance several days ago and we’ve been religiously checking for eggs and adults.  I think we caught it early and it seems to be under control.  I pulled off the straw mulch on the squash beds, so they’ll need to be watered more, but taking away the squash bug shelter is more important.  I’ve laid down some boards and pieces of granite in between the plants so we can flip them over in the morning and kill the adults that shelter there.  Another trick we’ve started doing is using duct tape to pull the eggs off rather than just pulling the section of the leaf off altogether.  It works reasonably well.Peaches ripening

A lot of things in the garden are doing well.  There’re loads of peaches on the trees, and there’s even  a handful of pears and apples ripening.  The blueberries are growing ever so slowly, but the gooseberries are loaded down and the thornless blackberries are finding their stride as well.  The potatoes are looking phenomenal, and most of the other annual vegetables seem to be kicking into high gear.

The goumi berry harvest has been completed.  This morning Sydney, Molly, and I got almost a gallon of berries off one bush.  I’d already picked the small goumi plant clean for fresh eating over the last couple weeks since it ripened first.  We made juice and fruit leather out of it.  I’ll be posting a step-by-step guide on how we did it since there wasn’t a whole lot of useful information, especially on how to separate the seed from the pulp.

I’m noticing that the birds are leaving the berries in the garden alone this year. I’m not sure if that’s because the glut of rain has made earthworms and other sources of food more accessible or if the looping mp3 of predator sounds is discouraging them from staying out in the open. There certainly seems to be fewer birds hanging around the garden. It’s probably some mix of the two.  I’ll post the MP3 of sounds I’ve made in the future when I’ve perfected it.

Rain Diversions

We had a week of very heavy rain since I last reported on the root cellar in the shed leaking and alas, significant amounts of water seeped in again.  I’ve finished half of a french drain on the uphill side of the shed, and I should finish the other half later this week.  I also put a rain diversion swale in the driveway to redirect water away from the shed as well as laying down some more tarps around the shed. We got .75″ of rain last night and so far nothing in the root cellar.

Eastern Hog Nose

Eastern hog nose snake, aka "Puff Adder"

John came across a previously unseen species of snake out here recently.  It was right outside his cabin and scared him pretty good as it was an eastern hog nose snake, aka “spreading adder” or “puff adder” as it puffs out it’s neck like a cobra and hisses loudly. It’s not poisonous and will even play dead to avoid predators, but it’s certainly nothing I’d like to mess around with.

Carpenter Bees

I’ve also had the first serious run-in with carpenter bees. They started digging holes in the earthen plaster near the top of the gable wall on the common house. They’re typically good pollinators to have around, but I don’t want them digging holes in the walls so I’ve sprayed them with a pesticide which I loath using but don’t have a suitable recourse at this time.

I’m hopeful that once the finish coat of plaster goes on it will discourage them because it should be significantly smoother and harder. I’ve got my fingers crossed otherwise I’ll have to figure something else out.

Feist perched on the lip of a rain barrel

Balancing Act

I was on the phone making plans to visit my friend Daniel in Hawaii over the winter.  He just surfaced from a 7 month tour on a submarine, and we’re planning on doing some sailing around the islands there when I come for a month in December.  Anyway, I looked up and I saw Feist perched on the side of a rain barrel having a drink.  The lip has to be half an inch wide at most.  She sat there for a good 15-20 seconds after I noticed.

Pretty impressive.

 

 

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Posted in Animals, Food, Plants, Residents, Shelter, Water |

Addressing Problems

Posted by Tao on May 22, 2013

I haven’t started on any major construction projects this year, but I have been spending a lot of time in the garden, doing some Spring cleaning, and addressing some other issues.  I’ll start of with the thing that spurred this post.  Today is the first day for pre-ordering internet service on the new fiber optic grid that’s been laid down in the area.  It was absurd watching them run fiber optic cable down the gravel road in front of Maya Creek.  City water doesn’t even come down this far, yet we’ll now have ridiculously fast internet.

New mailbox

Many of you know the issues I ran into when I tried to get an address for Maya Creek.  I’d essentially given up and settled into the PO box routine.  However, the fiber optic people saw fit to install a connection box at the end of the drive way and when I called them a couple months ago they said that they could still hook me up even without an address.  When I called today I got a different story and was momentarily crushed.  Then I was able to get in touch with the guy who told me he could still hook me up.  He looked up the house on Google Earth and then went and looked at their contract with the city.  Apparently, the city gave me an address and didn’t bother telling me about it.

So, I went from no address and crappy internet service to 30 Mbps(when the grid goes live in mid-July) and an address.  I dusted off the old mailbox I bought back when I’d been told I was getting an address and went ahead and set it up out front using a leftover cedar post.  I feel like a bonified neighbor now.

Garden Trials

The garden has been doing wonderfully.  The fruit trees are covered in baby fruit, the asparagus had a good run, and everything is planted except for the future succession plantings of various veggies.

Slug trap works on pill bugs tooOne issue I’ve run into is that I didn’t start my peppers or tomatoes early enough and the seed starting mix I used was out of a bag that got donated to me and it was total crap.  When the plants started showing serious nitrogen deficiency I went ahead and stuck them in the ground, but being as small as they are I’ve already lost quite a few.

Something was eating the leaves off my peppers and I finally caught the culprits one night, sow bugs, hundreds and hundreds of sow bugs.   A couple of nights before I’d set out a beer trap because I thought slugs might be the culprit, but wow, that trap filled up with maybe 50-100 of the buggers.  So, I’d luckily stumbled upon a control.  It still didn’t seem to be totally stopping them though, so I’ve also been spraying with a soap/cayenne pepper/garlic spray to make the leaves taste bad to them which doesn’t seem to be effective so I’m going to stop that.

Aluminum can plant collarAnother technique I’m trying out because a couple of my tomato plants were getting chopped down right at the base of their stem is making little metal collars out of aluminum cans.  I didn’t think it was sow bugs doing that, but I’ve read accounts online that they do.  There are definitely less sow bugs on the plants with collars, but I’ve still lost a couple more tomato plants.

Every year is a battle with pests in an organic garden.  It does seem to come into balance more and more as time goes on, the pest population explodes and eventually the things that eat those pests have a population explosion of their own.

I believe I brought the sow bugs in with a bunch of manure, and now that they’ve finished eating the decaying material in the manure they’re turning their sights on the next closest source of nutrition.  I have no doubt that they’ll eventually become less of a problem.

Shedding Stuff

My next project is going to be going through and organizing the shed and putting up the permanent 2-ply tarp walls.  Going through all of the stuff is going to be quite the nightmare. I’ll have giant piles of stuff to donate, stuff to sell, stuff to trash/recycle, and then stuff to keep and organize.  Not fun.

The temporary tarps that got hung up have been ripped to shreds.  The new ones will be attached more securely.  I’m also going to bury some tarps around the outside of the structure because I was getting water seeping into the root cellar.  After hooking up the downspouts and redirecting the roof water away and then laying down some tarps on top of the ground around the shed the problem has stopped.

 

 

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Posted in Food, Newsletter, Shelter, Sustainability |

Catching up with myself

Posted by Tao on April 23, 2013

It was four years ago on April 15th that I landed at Maya Creek.  I was asked recently about my personal state of being now after this much time pouring my everything into my work here.  So this post will be a little different from my normal updates on projects, observations, and whatnot. I’ll post about more external affairs soon, but this is a personal audit of sorts.

I’ll start with the easiest aspect to describe, that of my physical condition.  I lost 15-20 pounds that first summer on the land, but gained back about 10 over the winter.  Since then the pattern has somewhat equalized so I gain 10-15 over winter and lose 10-15 over summer.  I spend about 2-3 weeks every spring being pretty sore as my body gets back into shape.

I haven’t noticed any permanent wear and tear on my body apart from the injury I got in October of 2011 when I cut my wrist badly.  My flexibility and strength has returned in the hand, but the nerve sensation is only slowly returning as is expected with that kind of injury.  I’ll probably never recover the sensation fully, but it should continue to return indefinitely.  It doesn’t hamper me for the vast majority of tasks.

All in all though, I eat better than I did, feel better, and at any given time I’m in some of the best shape of my life.  As a side note, I’ve noticed that I have a much broader comfort range than I had before when it comes to things like temperature, pain, cleanliness, bug bites, etc.

The first couple of years on the land I only had a couple people helping me, if any at all. I was so eager to see my dreams come to fruition that I worked hard day in and day out.  I started to wear down and so took in some friends and more volunteers to help out, but instead of keeping my goals small I expanded them and ultimately made more work for myself and felt less able to regulate my work schedule around my own personal energy levels.  On top of the larger project scope there was significant amounts of energy going into managing volunteers and even just maintaining relationships of all kinds to the point that I began to seriously burn out.

This year I’m scaling my volunteer help back to what it was the first couple of years and am taking my time; working on things when I feel like it, and taking time to relax and recharge when I need it.  As the zen story goes, “When hungry, eat.  When tired, sleep.”  I already feel like I have significantly more control over my life and I’m finding a pace that I can keep for the long haul.

It’s been VERY easy to bite of more than I can chew and then spend large amounts of time stressing about getting everything I’ve started to  a satisfactory conclusion.  It’s also been VERY easy to get overwhelmed when I start to break down the bigger picture into all of the steps.  My vision for the future has changed so drastically that having more than a rough outline for the future is almost waste of time in it’s own right.  Setting realistic goals in a general direction and focusing on taking things a step at a time is certainly the path to maintain sanity.  It may sound obvious, but it’s been easier said than done thus far though I’m certainly taking it to heart now.

I’ve become better at recognizing when an emotion has arisen in me and examining it for what it is rather than letting it control my thoughts and actions.  I still have a long way to go in this regard, and regularly say things or behave in ways that don’t reflect the person I want to be and who I know is still buried within me.  Yet, that person comes closer to the surface as time goes on and any progress in that direction is welcome.

The word “spirituality” brings to mind new age ideas, which don’t appeal to me.  Still, the more intimately I entwine my life with the natural world the closer I feel to something sacred.  I often feel like a child while closely examining insects, reptiles, birds, mushrooms, plants, or watching the interactions between any number of participants in this natural web of life.  It’s awe-inspiring and a large reason for slowing my construction pace down is so that I can spend more time connecting with it.  It makes me feel more alive.

Altogether, I’m happy and optimistic.  The enjoyment and satisfaction I get from completing even small tasks and projects keep me motivated and excited to continue my journey.  There are certainly pitfalls to this lifestyle, and I’ve skirted dangerously close to their edges at times.  I now have the sense that I’ve found stable footing and though there’s still some rough patches ahead I feel well-equipped to handle them while still appreciating the view.

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Posted in Experience |

Help Wanted

Posted by Tao on March 25, 2013

UPDATE: I’ve found someone for this position.  Thank you for those who applied, inquired, or spread the word!

I’m taking it slow this year, but it’s still much easier and more fun to get things done with at least one other pair of hands.  I can offer room, board, a small stipend, hands-on experience with organic gardening, permaculture, and construction, a beautiful piece of woodland to explore, a pond to swim in, a relaxed atmosphere, and some good company in exchange for your assistance on different projects and chores around Maya Creek.

Description

The work includes help with planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, and preserving the 3,000 sq. ft. organic no-till garden.  The critical project that needs to get done this year is to finish the 3,500 gallon concrete rainwater cistern.  The hole has been dug, though it will need some more shaping. There may also be some work done on the shed and various other projects.

Other tasks will include things like helping to load/unload manure to build compost piles,  general clean up, watering/harvesting shiitake mushroom logs, and taking care of the dog and cat if I’m away.  We will either share or take turns cooking and doing dishes.

Having cooking experience is a plus, though I don’t mind teaching what I know.  You will need to be in moderately good physical shape, ie able to lift 50lbs.  Based on my goals for the year I expect we’ll have a leisurely work pace, but if you find yourself tired or feel overworked I expect you to tell me and we’ll slow things down.  I prefer a non-smoker and that you not be in the habit of abusing other substances.

Workload

I’m looking for someone who can start in May and who can stay for at least 4 months, although you’re welcome to stay on up through October. I expect that we’ll be putting in around 30 hours of work most weeks, though I’m including things like cooking, dishes, laundry in that estimate as well as the gardening/construction work.

I’ll be gone for a week here and there during your stay, in which case I only ask that while I’m gone you do general maintenance ie, take care of the dog and cat, take out the garbage, clean up after yourself, etc.  I’m also flexible if you would like to take some time off for trips during your time here though I ask you that give me as much notice as you can.

Room

You will be given the other side of the straw bale duplex, which is roughly 180 sq. ft. including the loft area.  There is no finish plaster on the walls or floor, but it will keep you dry and cool in the hot summer.  There will be a full-size mattress and some basic shelving provided for you.

Board

I typically make mostly vegetarian meals, though I am flexible to your dietary needs or wants.  Once the garden produce starts coming in we’ll likely be eating a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables from there.  All reasonable food requests will be provided, unreasonable requests would be things like filet mignon, caviar, microwave dinners, etc.  Also, candy and beer are not included, though there will likely be some just don’t count on it.  I have a large collection of homemade wine that I’ll gladly share.

Stipend

I will provide $100/month cash on the 1st of each month.  If you stay at least 4 months as I’m asking, I will give an additional $100/month for each month that you’ve worked here. For example, if you stay 5 months, I will give you $500 when you leave.

To Apply

If you’re interested in the position, please send me an e-mail about yourself and why you’re interested in it.  Please let me know about any skills or knowledge you have that may apply to working and/or living out here.  Also, I ask that you include 2 people as references as well as any questions or concerns you may have.

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Posted in Uncategorized |

Balancing Autonomy and Community

Posted by Tao on February 23, 2013

Brian, John, and Dan

Despite getting 9″ of snow yesterday we’re already plowed out here at Maya Creek.   Dan and Brian graciously liberated us today when they came over and cleared off our driveway.

I have a fascination with being snowed in out here in the woods with plenty of food, water, and warmth.  I like the idea of putting this self-sufficient setup to the test.  Not to mention just being snug and nestled away in my den peacefully waiting for Spring.  Without the ability to leave, my world suddenly becomes much smaller and in some ways that simplification is comforting, assuming I don’t really want to leave in the first place.

However, the world seems to reach out and pull me back even faster than if I lived in the city.  Instead of days or even weeks spent alone in the woods, neighbors I haven’t seen in months stop by to make sure I’m keeping warm and offer to plow the driveway.  I gratefully accept their offer and I’m reminded of how important it is to be a part of a community at large.

The toughest part of living in a community is balancing the needs of independence with the need to feel connected to each other and share in something larger than ourselves.  The balance that’s right for one person is often not the same for another, and so the boundaries become compromises.  The larger the difference in preferred balances, the harder the compromises are to make.  The compromises can certainly be made more likely to succeed with increased mindfulness, openness, and skill.

Anyone can attest to these challenges that has ever moved in with a friend only to find that even though you love them, that living so closely with them is not the best way for your friendship to work.  So it’s with a heavy heart that I tell you that I’ve disbanded our burgeoning community of permanent residents here at Maya Creek.  Jesse will be moving out within a few weeks, and John will follow suit later this year.  We are not parting on bad terms, and our friendships I hope will be better for it in the long run.

As for the future of Maya Creek, I intend to continue pursuing a healthy, self-sufficient, and sustainably-minded lifestyle here, but rather than building a permanent community on the immediate property I would like to see it become a temporary retreat for those needing to take a break from mainstream society’s onslaught of consumer-driven wage slavery and gain some perspective by connecting more directly with their real needs and the natural world.  I would very much like to see this place become a venue for workshops, skillshares,  potlucks, meditation and organizational retreats, and other events that are in-line with the goals of improving ourselves, connecting with each other, and integrating with the natural world.

Common house after thunder snow storm.

The main difference now is that I’ve recognized my need to have a certain level of control over my home, as I’m sure both Jesse and John can relate to.  Visitors are still invited to come stay and participate in life and projects here at Maya Creek, but any visit will have a beginning and an end.

I still want to be a part of a community, but I’ve recognized that I need a level of separation between myself and the community that’s physically impossible here right now.  I believe my ideal community is relatively autonomous with people sharing meals a couple times a week, coordinating on issues that affect everyone involved, lifting each other up in times of need, and sharing certain tools and resources that make sense for large groups of people but not individuals.

In some ways the local community that already exists here in the surrounding area could meet many of those needs for me and I hope to connect more deeply with it in the future.  The influx of visitors and helpers drawn to Maya Creek will certainly have its own transient communal culture and will help connect me as well as the local community to the larger global community.  I also hope that Maya Creek can act as a beacon for people seeking a similar situation and perhaps draws in some new like-minded neighbors as well.

So that’s the latest update.  There’s been some hard lessons and big changes here, but I’m optimistic about the future and in many ways relieved at how events have unfolded.

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Posted in Community, Experience, Friends, Newsletter, Residents |

Duplex Disaster and Recovery

Posted by Tao on December 20, 2012

We had a serious failure in the duplex, but were able to save the vast majority of the building thanks to some helping hands.  The following videos cover briefly the cause of the fire and then the reconstruction results. I took more footage of the recovery process, but I will save that for a longer length video at another time.

And now the recovery.

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Posted in Community, Power, Shelter, Sustainability |

Passing Through Customs

Posted by Tao on November 16, 2012

It’s been said that the reason for the “success” of the human species is our ability to adapt to almost any environment.  We make clothes and housing to mitigate temperature changes, cook inedible foods to make them edible, etc…  However, in modern American culture and much of the industrialized world our environment is becoming increasingly homogenized.  You can walk into any Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, gas station, you name it and know exactly what to expect.  The seasons only moderately affect our daily routines as we go from an air-conditioned/heated home, to an air-conditioned/heated car, to an air-conditioned/heated office, etc.  Henry Ford’s assembly line ideology has been applied to our lives, it accelerates our interactions and reduces stress caused by negotiating unexpected situations.

Here at Maya Creek our environment is constantly in flux.  The weather and seasons have a much more direct impact on our lives and routines.  Newcomers have to be shown such basic things as how to use the bathroom, how the sink works, how to take a shower, how to use a rocket stove, etc.  In the future things like the sink and the shower may come to look and behave more as their common counterparts, but for the meantime the standardized environment doesn’t exist.  In fact, the environment that exists right now didn’t exist a few weeks ago, and has been constantly changing and evolving over the last 4 years.  We’re passing through customs on a regular basis.

Starting out here with nothing but wilderness and a tent forced me to start addressing immediate needs.  There was no outhouse there was just a shovel and roll of toilet paper, then there was just a bucket with some sawdust, and now the outhouse.  Every time we upgrade a system we have to learn new ways of interacting with it, and through that we develop new techniques.  Some of those techniques get left behind, but some of them carry forward into the next incarnation and affect our future plans.  In essence, we’re reacting to our environment and our needs, and the systems we’re developing are evolving from that.  Sure, we have some long-term goals in mind, but huge portions of my initial plans have changed and continue to change.

Living in an ever-changing environment has its challenges.  Every new visitor has to be trained on all the different aspects of life here, and even the people who live here full-time have to be trained once modifications have been done or someone figures out a better way to do something.  Things often get broken, misplaced, and none of our systems are where we’d like them to ultimately be.

That said, I believe the pluses drastically outweigh the negatives.  Because we’re constantly looking at our customs and how we do things with a critical eye we’re developing great problem-solving skills that extend to all aspects of our lives.  There’s a sense of self-confidence that develops when you figure out a better way to sift clay or empty dish water, and that too spreads to other facets of our lives.  When unexpected challenges arise, which they inevitably do even in the highly controlled mainstream world, we’re better equipped to address those challenges.

At some point I expect our evolving culture here to slow down, and while I won’t miss cold bucket baths for example, I know that the experience has made me a more adaptable and resilient person.  Passing through customs at Maya Creek may not require a passport, but you will certainly have an eye-opening foreign experience that may leave you a better person for it.  I know that’s been my experience thus far.

Posted in Community, Experience |

Battening the Hatches: September/October 2012 Newsletter

Posted by Tao on November 3, 2012

September was spent doing a lot of earthen plastering on the strawbale duplex. We managed to finish the 1st coat on the exterior and interior and got the 2nd, much more time consuming coat, on the interior of my(Tao) side of the duplex.

It would have been nice to finish the interior of both sides, and especially nice to get the finish plaster and floor in so that we wouldn’t have to move out to do that next year, but since the 2nd coat of interior plaster is still drying on my side there’s no way that was possible.  It’s been exactly a month and the 2nd coat is almost dry.

Anyway, that’s where we decided to cease major construction for the year and give ourselves a healthy amount of time to prep for winter. Prepping for winter includes taking down all of the tarps, tents, the pop-up camper, cleaning out the garden, spreading compost, and generally cleaning up and battening the hatches to stay warm.

The Common House

Yesterday I built some shelves for the pantry, and it’s actually being used for pantry-like functions for the first time in its existence. Having our food spread out in an easy to see and accessible way is probably more novel than it should be. I feel like I’m standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open.

Moving the kitchen in and out has become one of the dreaded spring/fall tasks. Until we finish the walls and the floor of the common house we have to move everything out to work on it. We were hoping this would be the last year we’d have to move it in and out, but we’ll have to do it all again next year as well.

We’re prioritizing the finish work on the common house for next year. The water system(hot indoor on-demand showers!) is the driving force. It’s also getting old explaining to every visitor that no, the common house isn’t done yet. We want to have at least one nice finished place to show as an example of what can be done using these sustainable techniques as soon as possible.

Rocket Stoves!

We’ve also been working on heating for the winter. I just finished work on the rocket stove in my side of the duplex. Jesse has the first phases of his complete, and John is gathering materials for his slightly more complex design.

The only thing I would do different on mine so far is to use 5″ flue pipe instead of 4″. Still though, it works remarkably well, and since it basically just burns twigs and small branches I can collect enough wood to burn for 4-6 hours in just a few minutes and I don’t even have to chop anything!

The draft created by the chimney effect and the insulated burn chamber are really exceptional. The sound it makes reminds me of the sound the space shuttles made(past-tense boo!) when they were taking off.  I find it very soothing.

I set mine up with a small cooking area as well as a platform to keep things hot.  I’ve cooked a couple batches of ramen(don’t judge me) on it so far, but I see a lot of tea being brewed in the future.

Harvest Festival

The harvest festival went well, although we’re contemplating moving it later in the year and using it as a time to celebrate our accomplishments for the year and to essentially close out the building season. We had a good turnout of friends and neighbors though, and I believe everyone had a good time.  The homemade hard lemonade certainly didn’t hurt!

Adventures in E. Coli

Many of our neighbors are hesitant to eat anything we’ve grown since word is out that we use humanure to grow our food. With that in mind I ran some tests for e.coli(Thanks to Sarah for acquiring the tests!) just to make sure we’re doing things correctly.

I tested our garden soil that I hadn’t added humanure to, some that I added humanure to last year, straight 1 year old humanure, and 1 year old composted alpaca manure. The results are in! The alpaca manure showed 4 e. coli colonies on the 2 tests, which is within safe limits, there was 1 e. coli colony on 1 of the tests that just had plain garden soil and there were no e.coli colonies found on any of the 7 tests that were done on straight humanure or soil amended with humanure.

Let me repeat that, despite doing more tests on the humanure compost and humanure-amended soil than on the other samples, we were unable to find a single cell of e. coli.  In other words, our humanure compost is totally safe!

We believe the alpaca manure didn’t compost as thoroughly because of how compacted it was.  The manure came from cleaning out the alpaca stalls in the spring and had been tromped on all winter.

While that should put everyone’s mind at ease I doubt the fecalphobes, ie most of society, will be too reassured. In order to utilize our humanure while still compromising with the fecalphobes we’re now only applying the humanure to the fruit trees and using alpaca manure on the veggie beds, despite it showing higher levels of e. coli than the humanure, although still within safe levels.

Winter Goals

We’re organizing ourselves for winter projects. Those include working on organizational aspects such as becoming a non-profit organization, restructuring our volunteer program, and getting training as meeting facilitators. I personally plan on doing more introspective work, meditating, reading, taking long walks, etc.  Oh, and I’ll also be working on editing together the video footage we shot this year into something presentable.

 

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Posted in Newsletter |

August 2012 Newsletter: It’s Liveable!

Posted by Tao on August 30, 2012

The heat wave broke in mid-August and our energy levels went up along with a noticeable improvement in everyone’s spirits.

We’ve continued to re-evaluate what is possible with the remainder of the year, and have begun prioritizing.  The duplex topped the list, followed by finishing the root cellar so that we can move all of our tools and materials out of our makeshift tool tent.  The last thing we’d like to accomplish is put the finish coats of plaster and floor in the common house to keep the dust down this winter.

That said, the last few weeks we’ve almost solely focused on the duplex.  We’ve gotten better at stacking bales so that the corners are more square.  The key is not to stuff the spaces around the corner bales to tightly or it’ll push them out.  Apart from stacking the bales, stuffing the gaps, and trimming them we’ve also put in several electrical outlets connected to our off-grid grid.

To put the outlets in we nail the outlet boxes to plywood stakes, cut out space for the box in a bale with a chainsaw and then drive the stake/outlet box into the wall.  The electrical wire is just tucked in between the bales.

For the roof we installed two pieces of tarp as interior liner and used trim to secure it to the roof rafters.  Then we packed in scrap alpaca wool to fill in the space made by the liners and the 2×12 rafters.  We sprayed the wool with a borax solution to keep pests out and help with fire resistance, though wool is naturally fire retardant and straw bales coated in earthen plaster won’t burn.

 

 

Next, we put another tarp over the alpaca fiber to keep critters out of it and to act as secondary barrier like tar paper in case the metal roof ever leaks.  Lastly we put on the metal roof.  The only thing left to do on the roof is to put the gutters on.

Apart from putting in a couple more wine bottles in our walls to let more light in we’re ready to start plastering.  Earthen plastering is a very labor-intensive part of straw bale construction, though we generally find it to be satisfying work.  We hope those who joined our August 18th workshop felt the same way!  Luckily we’ve got a couple of new volunteers showing up early next week.  They’re well aware that we’ve got a bunch of plastering for them and so that should speed us along.

Our goal for the year is to get the base coat of plaster(it’s one of three coats) on the interior and exterior, and then to at least get the second coat or infill coat of plaster on the exterior, but hopefully the interior as well.  We’d like to build our rocket stoves before winter too, but we may have to make due with kerosene heaters if time doesn’t permit it.

The Drought

We managed to get all of 1/2″ of rain last weekend, and it looks like hurricane Isaac may deliver us some more hopefully.  The problem is that’s all the rain we’ve gotten this month.  Out average rainfall for August is typically 4.25″.  I have no idea what kind deficit we’re running for the year, but we may have gotten 2″ since the end of April. Even the wild trees are dying.  It seems contained to dogwoods and maples at the moment, although you can tell the oaks and other big trees are stressed too.

Apart from the tomatoes, peppers, and a few other plants we’ve essentially given up on the garden for the year.  You can’t win them all.

1st Annual Harvest Festival – September 29th

In other news, we’ll be holding our first ever harvest festival.  There will be a wine making workshop, archery, disc golf tournament, hiking, swimming(weather permitting), home-brew tasting, a potluck dinner, and camping. Everyone is invited, just please RSVP especially if you plan on camping and/or want to stay in one of our guest tents.

 

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Window Bucks

Posted by Tao on August 15, 2012

We finished construction of the window bucks today.  We’re using small high-efficiency double-glaze low-e windows which we were able to score from a couple different places for $25/each.  I wish we’d used pre-built windows and doors in the common house.  Unfortunately, we’re not skilled enough carpenters yet to make doors and windows that seal well.

These bucks are known as floating bucks because they won’t be secured to the frame, but will simply rest on the bales and be held in place by compression.  We’ll put some screws on the outside of them so that they bite into the bales.

All that’s left is to stain and oil them.  Then we’ll be ready to start stacking bales!

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