Wind Generator, Seed Starting, and Barred Owls
Author Archive
Making Connections
Thursday, February 4th, 2010It’s amazing how many connections I’ve found by just doing what I’m doing. Jesse’s mom, Anne, raises alpaca only about 15 minutes away from here. She’s offered to let me take her “alpaca beans” off her hands, some of which are already well rotted. I’ve only gotten one small load so far since it was muddy and now everything is frozen solid.
While I was talking to her she mentioned she had a local guy who DELIVERED straw bales for $2/piece. They’re not anything I’d use for construction, but for stacking around the camper and eventually becoming mulch, they’re perfect.
A nice guy named Charles delivered the bales and while we were unloading the bales I was just talking with him and the fact that I didn’t have a larger propane tank came up. I tried to get one in town but they were sold out, and in any case they were pretty expensive. Well Charles said they had a couple 100lb tanks(holds what 5 grill-size tanks do, which I was using). So, I ended up getting one from them for about half of what they were going to charge me at the store in town.
Connections can be powerful, but you have to be open to them. If I hadn’t talked to Anne about straw bales, I wouldn’t have met Charles, and if I hadn’t talked to him about stuff I wouldn’t have gotten the tank. Even a few years ago I may not have been extroverted enough to just start talking to people.
I’ve actually talked to Charles a couple times now and shown him around the straw bale place. He had a lot of questions and seemed kind of excited at the idea of being able to build like that. He even asked me for the website address to find out more about it, so hey, what’s up Charles? if you’re reading this.
I had just enough bales to cover the trailer as much as I wanted to and also make a compost bin out of bales. I’m going to put fresher manure in it to break it down. The bales should keep it warm and I’m also thinking about putting some clear plastic over it to heat it up and speed it along, that’s why I left a few bales off of the south side for better solar gain. Oh, and the bales will give off heat as they decompose, adding to the heat generated by the compost which will be even hotter thanks to the bales insulative value.
I’ve also taken the chicken tractor and removed the door on one side. I found a really cheap roll of clear plastic drop cloth and stapled a couple sheets over the run and the now opened nesting box. I oriented it to run east-west, ie, face south. I also put a couple inch layer of straw underneath it. I plan on putting some bricks and bottles of water in there to regulate the temperature and hold the heat into the night.
Today was sunny with an actual high of 40F according to weather.com. I got two outdoor thermometers and set one outside the “solar coop” and one inside on the straw. I checked it this afternoon and the thermometer sitting outside the coop in the sun read 60F, and the one in the house read 100F!
I’m actually hoping the bricks and water will moderate that high somewhat. I’m going to use the solar coop to start my garden plants. A lot of seeds are supposed to get started 8 weeks before the average last frost, which is April 15 here. So, I’ll be starting several flats of seeds in the next 2 weeks. I’m sure I’ll be checking on them far more than need be, it’s my nature.
I bought a couple of T-105 deep-cycle batteries a couple weeks ago. I’ve got them all hooked up and now have juice in the camper without having to go out and turn the truck on and off. I have a wall-charger and can take them to friends’ houses to charge them every week or so when they get a little low.
I’m excited about getting a wind generator set up and be truly off-grid. I’d really like to build one, but I’m trying to prioritize as best I can. The situation as it is right now isn’t too bad, and I think having a real roof over my head should be my top priority.
I can’t imagine that I won’t have the house ready to live in for next winter, but just the same I want to be sure. I went and picked up some more of my favorite free used billboard tarps. I’m going to use them to line the inside of the roof rafters and stuff the space between with wool and cellulose. I’m taking it piece by piece since it’s hard to work with by myself and it’ll be easier to take down to fix leaks or run pipes and wiring up there later if I need to if it’s in smaller pieces. I’m going to put pieces of wood on the outside of the rafters to hold the tarp in place better since it’ll be fairly heavy with all of the insulation.
Anne, who I’m getting the alapaca beans from has a bunch of rough wool she can’t use for anything else. She said she’s been using it for mulch in her garden, but wool is an awesome insulator and even holds it’s insulative value when it’s wet, though I don’t intend it to get wet. I’m thinking about asking other people with sheep and alpacas(I’ve heard of others) to see if they have wool they can’t use. Connections.
I also continue to be contacted by all kinds of interesting people who find that what I’m doing resonates with them. Keep on writing, I enjoy talking with all of you. I’ve also gone out of my way and contacted several of the local universities. William Woods University in Fulton has offered me as much horse manure as I want and a few professors at the University of Missouri have given me some good references about Native Americans that lived in this area, specifically ethnobotany(what they ate and used for medicine), but also traditions, rituals, etc.
I’m going to try to plant a lot of native plants in the garden here. Hey, if they grow here already without anyone having to do anything, think how easy they’ll be to grow in the garden. My kind of gardening.
Radical Sustainability
Friday, January 15th, 2010I’m not a spiritual or religious person, but I do take notice when the stars align. Justin and I were having a discussion last week about how solar panels, hybrid cars, and CFLs aren’t really and truly sustainable, at least not in the way I’d like to be sustainable. The next day I began reading Toolbox for Sustainable City Living, and it introduced me to the phrase, “Radical Sustainability”.
Radical sustainability means using only what you can find in nature or can scavenge easily, in other words, using things that are locally sourced. To me being sustainable means not relying on goods, especially complex ones, to be readily available for purchase forever.
The word “radical” actually means “root”, so a radical solution is a solution that attacks the root of a problem. It makes you wonder how being a “radical” got a negative slant over the last few decades, kind of like “liberal”. I guess if the root of the problem is the military-corporate-media-government complex and they’re making the definitions, it makes sense.
Long story short, I’m rad, and yes, I know the 80′s called and want their word back, and no they can’t have it.
Here’s an instance of how radical sustainability differs from regular sustainability. Say you give some solar panels and CFLs to a rural village in Africa. That’s great for however long the bulbs and panels last, but then what? They can’t make any more. If you want real sustainability you show them how they can make lamp oil from crops and animal fat, or candles from bees wax. If they need electricity, showing them how to make wind generators from easily sourced “junk” like bike parts and simple motors means they’re not SOL when one generator goes out.
This basically hints at the fact that I believe we are heading for a much less energy-rich future, and to be quite frank, the thought of how much more our society could destroy with unlimited energy scares me. I think most people view this as a “sky is falling” scenario or they want to avoid thinking about it altogether because a future like that seems painful, dreary, and downright terrifying.
I don’t believe that has to be the case. In fact, I’m totally convinced that we can live far better than we do today as long as we’re smart and prepared. Most people are totally oblivious to how much we are missing with our modern lifestyles. The personal connections to nature, food, housing, and other people have all decayed to the point where we don’t even realize what we’ve lost.
The solar panels that I ordered didn’t get processed. Apparently the shipping was twice as much as they told me when I ordered them, not to mention an additional credit card fee, so I canceled my order.
I’ve taken to temporarily using the truck as a type of generator and running an extension cord from the car inverter to the camper. I’ve been researching how I can build a simple wind generator cheaply from scavenged or easily found materials. I’m leaning towards one like the photo here, with blades built from a piece of PVC pipe, a scavenged motor from things like ceiling fans, treadmills, old printers, or even making one from magnets scavenged from hard drives and coils of wire. You can find more info on this wind generator here.
One thing I’ve noticed after being out here and looking for the simplest, cheapest, and most environmental way of doing things is that you develop a sort of MacGyver eye. It’s creative problem-solving, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t a lot of fun. Even though I haven’t built this wind generator yet, you can be sure I’ll be a proud papa one day.
In other news, I’ve got the camper about 75% surrounded with bales, but I’ve run out and my farmer friend migrated south for the Winter and won’t be back until Spring. I found another source, but it’s twice as expensive. I don’t think I’m going to bother finishing with the rest of the bales as it’s already quite comfortable in there, even when it was sub-zero here during the recent cold snap.
I’ve also taken to painting the purple “No Hunting” stripes on the trees along the property line. I’m hoping that if I can increase the wild turkey population significantly they can put a bigger dent in the tick population. I considered planting native food sources for them, but after I looked at a list of what they eat I found that there is already plenty out here for them… they just need to quit being hunted.
On my way back from painting some trees yesterday I decided to stop by the lake to check it out. On the way I ran across a herd of wild turkeys. I’d estimate there were at least 25, but maybe more. So that’s a pretty darn good start. Seconds before I snapped this picture of the lake I saw a coyote running up the hill on the other side. He may also be happy about the turkeys…
Tomorrow Justin and Melainia are coming out to visit along with Jesse and Tracy, a couple that lives towards St. Louis. I know Justin and Melainia wanted to help out with something, but there’s really not that much to do just yet. I might just run my cold frame, greenhouse, and wind generator plans by them and make plans to actually work on it another day.
Maya Creek Christmas 2009
Friday, December 25th, 2009After some soul-searching and continued annoyance with referrals to the morning after pill I’ve decided to change the name of the Ecovillage. I’ve gone through a few different ideas and some conferring with Justin and Melainia I’ve settled on Maya Creek Ecovillage. Almost the entire watershed is on the property and it’s easily one of the most beautiful features of the land. The road that will eventually go out to the ecovillage center will pass along several especially beautiful parts. What a way to be greeted home!
It’s snowing out here on the land today. Big fat flakes dancing around in the gusty wind. There was a little snow on the ground when I arrived but it melted quickly the first day. I’ve only been out here for about 5 days.
It’s gotten colder since then, but I’m keeping warm. The propane heater is keeping the camper warm and I’ve also started using one of the kerosene lamps in the evenings, which also puts off a good amount of heat. It makes it smell a little, but nothing like the kerosene heater did.
It’s not a large area to heat, but the camper has exactly no insulation. That’s why I’m using a bunch of the rejected straw bales I have left over from the house to just wall in the camper for the winter. I’m going to hang one of the billboard tarps from the trees over the camper to keep the bales dry It’s ok if they degrade a little because I’m going to use some of the wet ruined bales to mulch the garden this year.
I started on it, but didn’t want to hang the tarp first because it was supposed to snow and I wouldn’t have been here to knock it off and make sure it didn’t just collapse and tear the tarp. Even with just third of it I’ve done it’s made a difference. I put that part up to block the prevailing winds, but I’m sure once I get the bottom done all the way around it’ll make the floor a lot warmer too.
I wouldn’t have been here because I was supposed to be in Minnesota at the family Christmas, but the same storm that’s snowing on me made a barricade of ice between here and there. Snow is one thing. Ice is another beast altogether. I’m still going up there, but just going to miss today and post-Christmas eve. I’d been looking forward to seeing everybody and I’m glad I still will.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for the winter out here. The first thing is to get the trailer baled and get the water running, especially the hot water. I’ve been worried that the water might freeze in the tank or in the lines, but I think once it’s all baled in that won’t be a problem.
The next thing I’m going to do is make a hot bed, which is basically a cold frame that you put compost under to keep warm. I’m going to try growing some greens and who knows what else in it. It’s a stepping stone to a larger greenhouse I’d like to build out in the garden area. I’ve already got some good ideas on the design.
My next bigger and much more expensive project is to start generating some power. I didn’t really want to spend the money just yet, but I found an awesome deal on some amorphous silicon thin-film panels. They were only 98 cents/watt, which is outrageous considering the next cheapest I’d ever found before was $1.74/watt and that was at this same web site. I ordered 10 Kaneka 60W panels from Sun Electronics in case anyone else is looking for cheap panels. The next cheapest place I found was Affordable Solar, but even it’s best deal is $2.69/watt and most of them are much much more.
The camper has a battery-powered lighting system and I have an small inverter I can use for now, but 600W will be way more than enough for just me. Even just taking the minimum average hours of full strength sunlight per year and minimum panel efficiency I should get at least 1.5 kWh/day or roughly enough juice to use my 90W power hungry giant laptop for almost 17 hours/day. Obviously I wouldn’t use my computer that much, but it gives you an idea.
There are a still a lot more expensive components to buy and then I’ll have to assemble them, the toughest of which will be mounting the panels on adjustable mounts that I’m going to make myself. The batteries and the charge controller will be the most expensive pieces, and the inverter isn’t cheap either.
I’ve learned to scale down my expectations somewhat on how quickly I can get things done, but not as much as I had worried I’d have to. So, building the green house and the solar power system are my main things to get done, but somewhere in there I’m also going to set up a small biodiesel production system to process waste vegetable oil for use in the truck and future vehicles and engines. That’ll cost a bit to set up as well, but nowhere near the expense of the off-grid power system.
And, as if I could get all of that done I’m also thinking about building a nicer larger guinea/chicken coop with insulation that I can fit inside the greenhouse. It’ll keep the birds warmer and they also produce some CO2 and body heat for the plants. At some point I’d like to be able to move the coop to another greenhouse though so I’m going to keep that in mind.
Other than that, the straw bale house is standing up nicely to the elements, even without plaster or gutters. The tarps certainly aren’t very charming though. Everything else said and done, I’m enjoying living in the camper. It’s cozy, everything is within arm’s reach, and it takes 5 minutes to clean from top to bottom. I hope everyone else out there is staying warm and dry.
Parting Ways
Monday, November 23rd, 2009This is easily the hardest blog entry I’ve ever had to write. I’m not very comfortable discussing my relationship publicly on the Internet, but just about everyone who knows me through the ecovillage knows both Liz and I together. I guess I’ll just say it bluntly and not get into the details, Liz and I are no longer together.
Liz is living in Roanoke, VA where the rest of her family lives and where she owns a recently renovated house. If you would like to contact her, her e-mail is liz@sayitontheweb.com.
I hesitate to speak on her part, but I know we are both disappointed that we were unable to make it work together. Neither of us are to blame for being who we are or not trying hard enough.
That said, I am making plans to return to the land alone much earlier than before. I recently bought a 16′ camper with a propane heater which I’ll stay in through the winter and continue working on the straw bale visitors’ lodge as well as possibly building a small greenhouse and/or storage shed.
I am determined to continue with the ecovillage. I feel a little ludicrous calling it an ecovillage when I’ll simply be living alone in the woods for some time, perhaps calling it an ecohermitage is more appropriate for the moment. I’m just going to take it one step at a time. I know if I build it the right people will come, or rather, if I build part of it they’ll come and help me build the rest.
I’m glad to have made several local friends, but I’m also quite happy spending time alone. I learned a long time ago how to entertain myself. I’ve got a pile of books that I’ve been waiting to read, and the construction and part-time web design will keep me fully occuppied.
I’m currently in Jackson, MS heading to the Austin/San Marcos area after Thanksgiving and will stay for a couple weeks, possibly even until Christmas. I’ll also be looking for a used diesel farm truck during that time, because you can’t beat Texas for used trucks. After Texas I’ll be heading back to the land so either the end of December or beginning of January I’ll be back out there.
Winding Down
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009The weather has shifted and things are getting downright cold around here. The first frost is just around the bend and our tomatoes don’t look happy about it. It’s been pretty overcast and the solar shower just isn’t cutting it anymore so we’ve been taking showers at the truck stop.
The metal roof has been installed on the straw bale visitor lodge and it seems to be working like a charm. It’s already weathered several intense storms without a sign of leakage. Standing back and looking at the place I can’t help but be proud of myself. I know we were aiming to get the entire place done this year, and we certainly could have gotten farther with different weather and more help, but somehow it’s hard to believe we’ve done as much as we’ve done.
We’ve started packing everything up and taking down Tarpopolis for the winter, after all, the tarps would collapse under any kind of snow load. Liz has cleaned up a large chunk of the garden. I’ve still got a few more things to do like tarping up the walls of the straw bale place and putting a metal roof over the composting toilet. The cold makes it hard to get up in the mornings, but it certainly motivates to get as much done as possible.
We had a busy weekend with a photo-journalism student coming out to do a project about us, and a couple from Kansas City came out for a visit as well. Justin and Melainia came out Sunday too and Justin helped us slaughter and butcher the guineas. In reality, he did all of the slaughtering by breaking their necks in what appeared to be about as quick and painless a way imaginable. The bodies still flopped around afterwards in a grotesque nervous system dance. After watching Justin clean and butcher 2 of the 3 guineas I did the last one to get my hands dirty and really learn how to do it.
I’m not quite comfortable with the neck snapping, killing the animals is by far one of the more difficult and emotionally taxing things to do, at least for most people. I’m concerned about hesitating and not doing it hard enough to kill them and having them suffer, the opposite is doing it too hard, in which case you pull the head clean off, which Justin did on the first one since guinea necks are weaker than chickens’ and he’d never done a guinea before. I’m thinking I’d like to try making a chopping block out of a stump with two nails that you bend over the neck to hold it still and cutting the head off that way. I’m sure that will cause the birds more anxiety, although I’d know I could kill it quickly and surely that way. Gruesome trade-offs, and I may end up snapping the necks, but either way I know the birds had a good life, and that’s really the most important thing in my opinion.
We would have also slaughtered the last chicken but the night before Justin came out, a fox or some other critter made off with her. All that remained was a pile of feathers and a bent fence where whatever it was climbed back over the fence. Surely the way we choose to slaughter our animals is less painful and drawn out than what nature would do otherwise.
We cooked the meat over the fire and served it with some boiled carrots and potatoes from the garden. The guinea meat was somewhat darker than chicken meat and had a slightly gamy flavor, which was actually very enjoyable. The leg meat was a little chewier, but again, it was enjoyable. I say that not just because it was personally satisfying to have raised our own meat, but because I objectively thought it was tasty.
Our goal is to be providing ourselves with all or most of our own meat, which will undoubtedly be much less than the average American consumes. It will also be healthier meat without all the antibiotics and elevated levels of saturated fats that confined animals end up with. Not to mention our animals will be living happy lives doing what they instinctively want to do, and in the process providing us with much more than just meat and eggs. We’ll be using goats like lawn mowers, using manure as fertilizer, guineas and other animals to get rid of pest plants and insects, all the while providing the pleasure of their company.
We recognize that the shear fact that we will be killing most of these animals near the end of their useful lives may seem brutal or inhumane to some people. However, the more I observe and live closer to nature and read varying perspectives on animal husbandry, I’ve begun to see it as a symbiotic relationship. These animals have evolved to depend on humans for their care and continuity as a species, in return they provide us with a host of services and ultimately even their bodies.
The alternatives are either to not have animals at all, which seems like a huge loss once you begin to recognize the immensely useful goods and services they provide, or to take care of them long past their useful lifespan until they die of old age, which is simply a fool’s errand. I certainly will not enjoy killing them, but I will do it with somber respect and gratitude by doing it as quickly and humanely as possible and being as wasteless as possible with what they have provided.
In this last week, my mother will be coming up and we’ll visit the sustainability fair in Columbia, MO as well as just showing her what we’ve done and enjoying each others company. Liz is heading out on Saturday I believe and I’ll finish up a few things and follow her a couple days later. It’s sad to be leaving all of what we’ve accomplished but we’ll be back early next year and then we’ll be permanent residents. I’m definitely looking forward to hot showers whenever we want and not dreading pulling off those covers in the morning.
I’ll continue to post blogs, I may even convince Liz to start posting as well. We’ll spend the first month or so in Virginia doing some minor improvements to Liz’s house there and then we’ll head off to visit different intentional communities, as well as friends and family on a winter voyage in a small cheap tow-behind camper. I’ve already got a few questions for each place we go, and I’m excited to see what other golden bits of wisdom they can bestow upon us and thus our blog readers as well.
Raising the Roof
Saturday, September 19th, 2009The big news is that the roof is going up quickly. Probably one of the few things that’s going faster than I anticipated. The weather has been exceptionally cooperative, all the same, we are running out of time before the cold moves in so I’ve strung two large blue tarps over the site so that we could possibly work even if the weather wasn’t great and wouldn’t have to go through the labor intensive process of covering and uncovering the walls every time the weather got bad.
I considered covering the site from the beginning, but ruled it out based on how hard and costly it would be, but looking back on the unusually wet summer we’ve had here, it would have been a good idea to do it earlier. Who would’ve guessed though?
The flow of visitors(i.e. free labor) has tapered off somewhat and Liz has injured her back somehow. That left me with the unenviable task of raising the roof mostly alone. I consulted with Tom Mudd, a family friend down the way, and he filled in a lot of my questions on how to design the roof and what I’d need. He also informed me I’d need a minimum of 3 people to put the ridge beam on. I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for volunteers so I pondered and came up with what I felt was a fairly ingenious method and managed to do it all by myself. I’ve since hung all of the rafters and cross-ties and started putting the purlins on.
It’s now become clear that we won’t be staying in the building this winter, and we’ve decided to try to leave around the last part of October. At the current pace we should have the roof done and the protective plaster on easily by that time. Our plans for the winter are to get some sort of used RV and migrate south, visiting other intentional communities, ecovillages, and like-minded people along the way. We’ll also probably spend some time in Virginia working on Liz’s house there.
In other news, we were in the news last week. We were the cover story for the Columbia Missourian which you can see here. They took some nice photos and wrote a pretty good article. It looks like the same article also got put on a number of news sites in St. Louis. A guy named Glenn who’s building an earthship in Union, MO called me tonight after reading about us on Yahoo! News. It’s great having all the cool people come to us without even having to search them out.
The garden has slowed down, but still producing a large number of tomatoes. The squash are producing a second explosion, which we could probably have done without since we’ve got two large overflowing crates of them as it is. Liz has canned about 35 jars of pickles as well as a couple jars of pasta sauce. She’s also discovered that you can use regular jars from the store to can with. Jars from things like pasta sauce and pickles will seal shut if you do them just like the special canning jars. That ought to save some money and what a great way to reuse something rather than recycling it.
The Missouri Department of Conservation provided us with channel catfish and bluegill fingerlings for our pond. It was more than a small chore hauling the pond water up to the truck to have them put the fingerlings in at the drop location and then hauling them back down. We haven’t got the road accessible back there yet so I had to make a half dozen trips with the garden cart. Next spring we’ll be getting the bass fingerlings for free from the MDC as well.
Today we took a brief break from everything and went to a “Knapp-In” in Booneville, MO about an hour away. Justin and Melainia, our friends from Fulton invited us out. Justin knapps flint and makes his own spears, at’latls, darts, arrows, bows, etc. It was really interesting watching the people knapp arrowheads and knives. Justin participated in the at’latl contest. For those that don’t know, an at’latl is a deviced used to essentially extend the length of ones arm allowing you to throw a spear or dart much harder and farther. Although he’s technically new at the contest throwing, he cleaned the floor with all of the rookies, myself included, although to be fair it was only my first time to ever try to throw one at all. Here’s a video of Justin hurtling a dart with an at’latl.
That’s it for this installment. We’re in the home stretch and the weather is starting to cool off. We’ll be working pretty much non-stop except for a brief excursion down to Mississippi for my 10 year high school reunion.
Like Giant Legos
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009I missed an entry, but I have to say that it’s amazing how quickly time flies by out here, especially when you’re working from sunrise to sunset.
It took weeks of waiting for a dry spell to put the bales up. It’s been a really wet summer here in Missouri. July had twice the average rainfall and August hasn’t been much better. As you can imagine, stacking the bales was extremely exciting and at first it seemed like we’d have the whole thing done within hours like. However, we did run into our share of problems.
It’s been difficult juggling all of the details that go into designing and building a house as well as keeping up with a regular job. We had to stuff between the bales because where the baling twine wrapped around the bales it was more compressed left gaps when you pushed the bales together. This eventually lead to the corners of our walls bulging out, although it didn’t seem like it at the time, I believe the bales slowly moved outward as we banged other bales into place.
After we got it all up and put the roof plate pieces on top we covered it all for a few days of rain. When I took the tarps off I disovered that a couple places had actually funneled water into our wall. So, we started replacing the wet bales and as we were doing that I accidentally pushed on one of the walls and the whole thing fell down. After most of the day getting that wall back up a gust of wind blew through and knocked half of another wall down. As you can imagine we were starting to get pretty discouraged.
Over the course of the last few days we’ve finally gotten the roof plate lined up and assembled, as well as getting the wire tie-downs attached, and stuffing and closing up the rest of the roof plate. It was quite a bit more work than I expected, but the walls are all secure and sturdy. I haven’t tightened it down all the way yet which is going to involve trying to get it all level on top which it isn’t quite at the moment.
Anyway, it’s been really exciting seeing the building rise from the ground. It has a real sense of space to it now. I’ve improved my tarping technique dramatically so when this front comes through later today it should be all snug and dry. Now it’s time to get everything together for the roof!
In other news we lost a couple of chickens to an animal. The chickens finally figured out that they could fly over their fence and they got out one night and all but one got eaten. We’ve since clipped the last chicken’s wings and it hasn’t been able to fly out any more. We’d also been letting the guineas roost in the trees but the night after we lost the chickens we lost a guinea to something, probably an owl. So now we’ve started feeding them in their coup at night and closing them in.
The garden is still producing like crazy and Liz has made several large batches of pickles, trying out different recipes to see which we’ll like. We still have to wait another few weeks before the first batch will be ready. We’ve got an overload of squash still and a lack of recipes or desire to cook it, but we just got some new cookbooks and hopefully that will open up some new ways of reducing our stockpile. In the meantime we’re toying with the idea of spending a Saturday at the farmer’s market in town and seeing if we can’t unload some of it there.
We have had some run-ins with pests in the garden but nothing too major until a couple weeks ago. The deer finally found our garden and ate all of our precious sweet corn. And let me tell you that was the best corn I’d ever had. It was so sweet I’m pretty sure it could have been classified as a dessert. Liz put up two strands of fishing wire around the whole thing. It’s something we found in a Mother Earth News magazine that said the deer wouldn’t push on it hard enough to break it and wouldn’t jump over it because they can’t see it. It’s certainly worked so far and I’ll keep you posted on how successful it is.
The other pests have all been bugs, and we’ve stuck to just picking them off so far. We’re starting a bunch of flowers and plants that are supposed to attract the predators of those and other garden bugs. We’ll also be building some other habitat for frogs, lizards, and other helpful garden creatures. It takes a little while to build up their populations, but how easy will it be once they’re there and going.
We’ve been interviewed and photographed by the Missourian, a newspaper in Columbia again. They say that we’re actually going to be on the front page some time soon and I’ll pass it on when that happens. We’ve got a couple coming up from Florida next week and I think one of my friends will be passing through with some of her friends on a cross-country trip around the same time as well.
Guineas Gone Wild
Friday, July 24th, 2009
We’re starting to gain momentum again. Once we started filling and stacking the bags I felt rejuvenated. It was exciting to see the building finally rise above ground level. Things really took off this past weekend when Justin and Melainia came out to help. The larger bags filled with gravel weighed well over a 100 pounds so I was extremely glad to have the help. We’ve decided to forgo the bale curb, which was going to prevent water from wicking up the stem wall into the bales since the gravel in the bags already breaks the capillary effect. That saves us quite a bit of time and allows us to avoid using some lumber. We’re currently working on building the frames for the doors and windows which are pretty thick since they’ll be bearing some of the weight of the roof.
The guineas got released into the wild about a week ago and have been doing really well. They go back inside their coop at night without us having to do any training. They herd so close together they practically walk like one organism. They’ve also shown off their flying skills and you’ll randomly see them roosting up in the trees, especially when they get spooked. They don’t seem to be ranging for bugs very much yet so we’re going to stop free-feeding them and see if that motivates them some more.
We also seem to have a runt in the bunch which is quite a bit smaller than the other birds. It seems to have a breathing problem and you can see it breathing hard a lot of the time. I’ve also noticed it tends to split from the flock to warm itself in the sunlight. We got some antibiotics for a couple of our chickens that seem to be having a problem, so we started giving some to the runt too to see if we can clear up his problem. From reading we’ve found that they’re susceptible to lung infections caused by increased humidity since they’re originally from Africa they’re not adapted for humid conditions.
Speaking of wild animals we’d been lucky up until now not having any animals get into our food but that all ended in the last couple weeks. A family of raccoons found our chicken food bag and tore it open and must have eaten around 20 pounds of feed or more. I tried scaring them off by yelling and throwing rocks, then by firing a shotgun near them, and finally by letting of a leftover firework mortar after them. You’d think they’d get the idea.
But no. I put the chicken feed inside the tool tent and they ripped a hole in the tent and went to town again. That was the last straw. So I went out and bought a trap and baited it with the chicken feed. Within minutes of turning off the light to go to bed that night we’d caught one of the juveniles. I’m pretty sure there were 4 altogether including the mother. I know because their eyes glow in the beam of my headlamp. We started to take the little guy to a nearby national park which turned out not to be much of a park at all and ended up dropping the guy off with some chicken eggs for a snack about 10 miles away near a creek.
I was worried we wouldn’t be able to catch the others as easily since they’re smart critters and I figured they’d be onto us, especially the momma. So the next night I put the trap inside the tool tent and disguised it as the chicken feed back. Again within minutes of turning the light off to go to bed we’d caught the momma and boy was she pissed. She was growling and lunging at me. We let her go in the same spot we’d let the baby go hoping they’ll reunite and not return.
Last night we caught another juvenile and hopefully tonight we’ll catch the last one. I figure we’ll leave the trap around for whatever comes around. We did have a brief run-in with a opossum but it hasn’t come back. One problem is the guineas also like their feed and I caught 3 of them in one swoop yesterday, so I may have to start baiting the traps with something else.
In other news, the garden has exploded and we’ve already learned a couple lessons. The first is that we don’t need to plant nearly as much summer squash. One plant is probably plenty, instead of the 4 we’ve got now, not to mention the 3 zucchini plants. Also, we need to give them MUCH more room. We’re also going to grow a lot of the plants on trellises, like the watermelons, canteloupe, and cucumbers. They’ve probably already traveled about 15 feet or more along the ground from where they started.
A couple of the crops that I’m particularly going to focus on growing correctly next year are onions, potatoes, and tomatoes. They haven’t done so hot and they’re the main staples I’d like from the garden. So we’ll see how that goes.
Some Assembly Required
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
While not much has gotten done on the building in the last couple weeks, that’s about to change. Last week we collected 300 straw bales left in the field for us by a very cool farmer about 30 minutes from us. We had the bales sized and tightened to our specs and he only charged us $2/bale well under the average $3.50/bale, mainly because we picked them up out of the field rather than him having to collect and stack them himself. It took us about 6 trips with 2 trucks and a rented trailer to get them all. The hauling and stacking was satisfying but it did leave some nice scratched up forearms.
We’re still a good ways from being able to stack the walls, but it’s reassuring to see them there and ready to go whenever we are. We’ve got them stacked on top of pallets and covered with a couple big vinyl tarps and hopefully they’ll stay dry enough until we can get a real roof over them.
Our 1,000 misprinted polypropylene feed bags arrived in the mail last week as well. That was the main hold-up on building the stem wall, so today I’m going to the hardware store to pick up a few more things and get the gravel ordered and we should be back in business again probably tomorrow morning sometime. Unfortunately because of 2 weddings this weekend construction will grind to a halt for another 3-4 days, but after that we’re really kicking things into high gear.
Daniel announced he’s going to be leaving next Wednesday on his big canoeing trip down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. He’s been excited about it for awhile now and we’ll be sad to seem him go, but we’ll make sure to send him off right with a full belly.
Speaking of full bellies our garden is really starting to produce. Corn is starting to develop, turnips and beets are ripe for the picking and the squash and zucchinni are in full swing. One problem I’ve just noticed since getting back from our 4th of July trip is that some of the squash and zucchinni are rotting on the blossom ends. I’ve done some research and it appears to be a calcium deficiency which is easily solved by adding a little epsom salt mixed with water. I hope that does the trick.