June 2012 Newsletter

It was a very hot, dry, yet productive June.  Many people have asked about us during the recent heat wave and we appreciate your concern.  I can almost guarantee we fared far better than those who lost power and cooling by default.  We worked during the cool mornings and by around noon it was too hot for that, and we’d retreat to the common house or the lake or creek for a dip.

The temperatures in the common house hovered around 80, although if we hadn’t been leaving the doors open to dry the slip straw interior walls it may have been more comfortable.   John’s cabin topped out at 75, while our highs hit 107 on a couple of occasions. The fan seems to really be necessary to get the benefits of the coolness of the house, otherwise it can get quite muggy.  You heat up the air around you and sit in a hot pocket of air otherwise.

Framed Up

Many of you may have seen our progress through our posts in our facebook group, but we’ve made significant progress on the shed and duplex.  We rented an auger and drilled the holes for all of the cedar posts we harvested this spring.  Digging holes especially 2′ deep holes is really hard difficult work.  The auger knocked out probably a week or more of extremely hard labor in less than 24 hours.

We used a lot of the lumber we salvaged from the old neighbor’s house, but still ended up spending about $1k on lumber for both projects.  It’s amazing how quickly the structures went from nothing to a whole skeleton.  There’s still an enormous amount of work left on both structures, but it’s nice to be able to see the outline.

The next step on the shed is to finish putting in a few posts and then it’s on to the root cellar, which still has some digging left to do before plastering and putting in the roof and stairs.

We’re working on getting the foundation insulation/drainage trench dug and then putting in the gravel bag stem wall so that we can be putting in earthen floor for our natural building workshop on July 21.

We got the bales for the duplex delivered, but we won’t put them in until the base layer of earthen floor finishes drying.  It’s about $2/bale if you pick the bales out of the field, but we missed our window this year because of the early spring.  Last year we pulled bales on the weekend of July 4th, but when we started looking around all of the bales had already been pulled out of the fields.  We found a farmer willing to deliver for $3/bale so we went with that.  Next time we’ll keep an eye out earlier in the year, or find someone to let us know when they’re ready for us to pick them up.

 Workshops Rescheduled

The primitive skills workshop was a smashing success.  I wouldn’t have believed that someone could light a friction fire on their first attempt, but several people were able to do it.  The next time someone asks for a light I’ll make sure to have a couple of sticks handy.  Ok, maybe not, but it would certainly be impressive.

The flint knapping demonstration was well done and the wood-working section was interesting.  I was especially impressed with everyone’s proficiency with an at’latl after just a few tries.  It took me quite a few  attempts my first time to get it to even move in the right direction.

We had to reschedule/cancel a couple of workshops this month.  Our June 30 natural building workshop is now on July 21, we simply didn’t have the duplex to the right stage to do what he had planned for the earthen floor.  We cancelled the trail building workshop and will just have the trail building workshop we already had scheduled for October 13.

If you’re interested in attending any of our workshops please fill out the form on our website here, or if you’re in our facebook group you can just add yourself to the event.

Garden Struggles

It’s been a tough year for the garden weather-wise.  We started with too much rain, then late frosts, then 2 months of drought, extreme temperatures, and now plagues of insects.  We started getting quite a bit of summer squash and zucchini out of the garden around the first week of June, the heat seemed to take a toll on the flowers.  We got our first ripe tomato on June 28, but tomatoes need a certain temperature range to ripen and they’ve mostly been sitting green on the vine.  We’re getting some peppers now as well, and the melons are just about to ripen.

Squash bugs have continued to be a nuisance, my new strategy involves the soap spray, which I spray on the ground around the squash, which drives the adults up and can then easily be picked off.  The juveniles just need to be sprayed.  I know we’re not getting all of them because of the number of egg clusters we continue to find, but it seems to be keeping them mostly at bay as long as we’re persistent.

On a downside we got invaded by thousands of blister beetles a couple days ago and they’ve been moving around to different parts of the garden every day.  I’ve picked off 500 or more by hand and thrown them in a bucket of soapy water.  The soapy spray doesn’t kill them, but it seems to deter them from eating that particular plant.  They disappeared altogether this evening, but I’m not convinced they’re really gone.

Another nuisance are the cucumber beetles, whose population has recently exploded.  I’m going to try some simple organic controls like spreading wood ash around, spraying them with hot peppers, garlic, and maybe making some sticky traps.

 

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2 thoughts on “June 2012 Newsletter

  1. Annie Pope

    I continue to be in awe of what you guys are doing at Maya Creek. Your “dispatches” do a superb job of conveying the hard labor and emotional fortitude required for sustainable homesteading. (I came close to shedding tears on your behalf when I read about the invasion of blister beetles last week.) But what I really want to say is that the grace with which you weather the ups and downs is just absolutely extraordinary, Tao! Thank you for continuing to let us share in your joys and sorrows, setbacks and victories!

  2. Luke Lundemo

    Charlotte and I spent several days last week at Maya Creek. John kindly let us stay at his straw bale cabin. The weather was brutally hot in the mid-day, but everyone gets a lot done in the mornings before it gets too hot. What gets under reported about Maya Creek is the consideration and caring each person there shares. Feeling so well cared for, made any and all physical labors a joy. Everyone at Maya Creek had a loving and kind attitude toward each other, toward the animals, toward the immediate natural environment, and extended it to the world.
    We attended a regular Monday night meeting at Maya Creek where there is planning, reporting, brainstorming and sharing. It reminded me of the Monday night meetings we had in the 1970’s commune in Columbia that bought the Maya Creek land so long ago.
    We brought home to Mississippi a nice collection of harvest from the garden – zucchini squash, mustard greens, peppers and tomatoes and ate every bit of it. We are what we eat and we’re happy to be a bit more Maya Creek.

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