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Spring Greening

Friday, March 25th, 2011

It’s been wonderful seeing the fruit trees and berry bushes come back to life. They have so much more vigor this 2nd year compared to the 1st year when they were dealing with transplant shock. There are even a few plants I thought died last summer that are setting out new leaves.

I’ve been doing some serious sheet-mulching around all the perennials I planted last year. I’ve laid out about 5 cubic yards of compost I get from the composting operation the city runs in Columbia using people’s yard waste. I’ve been putting it on about 4″ thick, and it I’ve made about 500 sq. ft. of raised beds with it.

I planted bird’s foot trefoil on most of it, which is a nitrogen-fixing ground cover. Tick trefoil, another kind of trefoil, grows here natively but gets to be a couple of feet high and makes these burrs that stick to clothes and fur. The bird’s foot only gets to be a few inches high and makes a really beautiful yellow flower the bees love.

Dr. Greenthumb or: How I Stopped Weeding and Learned to Love the Plants

In all the paths I’ve thrown down some dutch white clover seed, which is a really low-growing clover, and like all kinds of clover it fixes nitrogen. There’s a ton of wild mustard, some kind of parsley, and a kind of deep-rooted plant I haven’t identified yet, growing in all the beds and paths. I’m in the process of re-wiring my brain not to see them as weeds. I’ve been pulling some of them out and throwing them in the compost pile, but to make it seem less like weeding, now I think about it as harvesting nitrogen.

For instance, wild mustard has edible leaves, makes a small flower that looks and tastes exactly like broccoli, and it does without me even having to do anything. But the thing I’m most excited about, which I recently learned is that it’s a trap crop for flea beetles. A trap crop is a plant that a pest prefers to the one you’re trying to grow. Last year the flea beetles shredded my radishes, turnips, eggplants, and did quite a bit of damage to my potatoes. After I thought about it some more, I think there were already flea beetles here before, I just sheet-mulched on top of their previous food source.

The flea beetles really liked my turnips too, which was fine with me since I really don’t like turnips. I didn’t even harvest several softball sized turnips last year and they were starting to grow again (turnips are biennial). They’d gotten woody and weren’t good for eating, but rather than composting them I just replanted them near where I’ll be planting my potatoes this year so they’ll act as another kind of trap crop.

I’ve also planted comfrey roots around a lot of the major fruit trees and berry bushes. They put down deep roots and pull up a lot of subsoil nutrients, and then I’ll come by maybe 3 times a year and chop all the leaves and spread them around the base of the plants I want to fertilize. It’s basically like growing your own fertilizer.

Hop Trees

Since I plan on making beer for awhile longer I’ve put in a raised bed for hops. Hops are a vine and can grow a foot a week. They need a really big trellis, and in one of the books I have it says to put in a 13′ cedar pole and put string coming down like a tent around it that the hops will grow up. So, what I did is just cut the tops and some of the branches off of a couple of living cedar trees. I’d already cut the lower branches flush or I would have left stubs on them as well.

Cedars don’t coppice so these should die now and be resurrected as hop trees. I think I can train them to grow up the fence and then into the structure of the cedars. It might be kind of a pain to harvest, but it’s worth a try, and if I have to I’ll just cut the rest of the branches flush and use string.

Pruning

I’ve done my first real pruning after reading up on it in a couple of my books. In some ways it’s kind of painful to cut off any of the precious growth. I have to keep reminding myself that it isn’t a huge loss, because it still has a lot of stored energy that it’ll now go where I want. I’m just telling that grape vine, “hey, look there’s this awesome fence for you to grow on over here.”

I pruned back the large wild russian olives that border the eastern side of the garden. They’re not really olives, but they do make a small edible fruit that birds like so they’ll act as a trap crop for my berries. They also fix nitrogen, but nitrogen fixers don’t share much of the nitrogen they store until the roots die back. Basically, when you prune the top of a plant, it automatically prunes it’s roots. With a nitrogen fixer that means I’ve just freed up the nitrogen nodules on its roots for other plants to use, such as my grapes, and in essence I’ve fertilized them.

Permaculture Design Certification

I started expanding the garden before I left for the permaculture design certification course I took in Wisconsin last week. I already knew a lot about permaculture before taking the class and had a good idea of what I was going to do in the garden already, but I’m looking at things slightly differently now. Things are starting to click faster, and I’m seeing more of the relationships between things. It was really kind of the perfect time to take the class because I get to come home and immediately put it into action while it’s fresh in my mind. I also just generally feel energized from all the great ideas and people I met in the class. I hope some of them are reading this and come visit when they get a chance.

Kita

My plans for the immediate future are to build a dog house for Kita, my new dog. She’s 8 weeks old now and can leave her mom, so I need to a place for her to live. She’s half belgian malinois and half carolina dog, both of which are herding dogs so she should be a smart one. I got the pick of the litter and she seems to be the most friendly and intelligent one of the group, at least when I’m around. There are still some puppies that need a good home, so if you’re interested e-mail me.

Her main job is going to be guarding the garden as well as the house and livestock(currently just the guineas and chicken). I’ve been reading dog training books and looking into classes.

I’m designing the dog house based on the dimensions of her parents and taking into account she’s a she. I’m going to make the place out of pallets that I’ll stuff with alpaca fiber and wrap in billboard vinyl. I’m even going to insulate the roof. The door will be angled towards the south west so it’ll catch the cool summer breezes, as well as have a good line of site directly to the garden entrance and driveway. The house will also get shaded by the hops trellis in the summer and have good sun in the winter when the hops dies. I’m also considering putting a straw bale compost bin to the north west of the dog house to block the cold winter winds. The house will have a shed roof slanted to deflect those cold winds as well as have a gutter attached that’ll fill up a watering bowl. Does she have a smart alpha dog or what?

I’m going to try to dumpster dive most of her food, but I also just got a book that shows recipes on how to make an all vegetable feed that provides the right mixture of proteins, nutrients, etc so that I can actually grow her own food rather than raising animals to feed her. If she wants meat I expect her to eat rabbits, mice, gophers, etc. The person who wrote the vegetarian cat and dog food book had a border collie that lived to be 27 years old, that’s 189 in dog years! It was almost a new record, but I have to believe that no dog would live to be that old if it didn’t like the taste of its food.

Summer Apprenticeships

This is my favorite time of year, when no one’s around yet and I can just wander around observing, thinking, and planning the projects for the year. I’m starting to zero in on how and where to build the summer cabins, and I’m settling on a plan for the cistern at the house. The vision for the garden is coming into focus, and I’ve got spots for the shed/greenhouse and ponds picked to maximize their relationships to the other elements. I’ve got a plan for a small root cellar made out of a 55 gallon drum, there’s a half-built top-bar beehive that needs to be setup, and there’re probably a hundred other projects to work on.

I hope to have at least a couple summer apprentices, which I’ll put to work on any and all of those tasks. I don’t like the word ‘intern’ or ‘work exchanger’. ’Apprentice‘ says it better, even though I’m no master craftsman. Besides, putting an apprenticeship on your resume sounds way better than an internship or work exchange.

I am starting to acquire quite a bit of useful knowledge and wisdom I can share, and there’s plenty to learn for everyone involved. These aren’t paid positions, although I will provide room and board. I have guest tents on covered platforms with mattresses in them. I’ll also provide all the rice, beans, and potatoes you can eat as well as whatever’s ripe in the garden. Throw in a little spice and excitement in the form of dumpster diving excursions, and what more could you need?

For all the short term volunteers I’ll be holding work parties every month, typically on the second Saturday. However, this next month it’ll be on the third Saturday, April 16th, because this will be a garden work party and the average last frost date here is April 15th. There’ll be plenty of planting, sheet-mulching, and weeding(ie nitrogen harvesting) to be done!

Publicity

On March 29, I’ll be a guest on Evening Addition. It’s a radio program on KOPN, which is a community radio station in Columbia. I’m not sure specifically what we’ll talk about since he deals with a lot of different issues, but it’ll obviously have to do with everything going on out here. I’ll be using it to schlep for interns and volunteers too. You’ll be able to listen to the archived recording here.

On April 22, Maya Creek will have a booth at the Earth Day event in Columbia at Peace Park. We’ll have the soil blocker out for demonstration and have an assortment of beans and seeds for people to plant and take with them. Our table will be on Elm St. right by the entrance to the park.

On July 9, I’ll be giving an hour long class at Fiber U in Lebanon, MO. I’ll be talking about using waste alpaca and llama fiber as insulation and mulch, as well as giving them some permaculture tips on pasture management.

Tags: alpaca wool, belgian malinois, berry bushes, billboard vinyl, bird's foot trefoil, carolina dog, cedar trees, chicken, cistern, Columbia, Columbia Earth Day 2011, comfrey, community radio, Compost, coppice, dog house, dutch white clover, Evening Edition, Fiber U, flea beetles, fruit trees, garden, garden party, grapes, ground cover, Guineas, herding, hops, Kita, KOPN, livestock, midwest permaculture, nitrogen, nitrogen harvesting, pallets, pdc, permaculture design certification, potatoes, pruning, root cellar, russian olive, summer cabins, summer internships, tick trefoil, trap crop, trellis, turnips, vegetarian dog food, weed, wild mustard, work parties
Posted in "Weeds", Animals, Beer, Booth, Chickens, Cisterns, Class, Compost, Dog House, Dogs, Dumpster Diving, Flea Beetles, Food Preservation, Ground Covers, Guineas, Hops, Interns, Labor, Natural Building, Nitrogen Fixers, Permaculture, Plants, Pruning, Publicity, Radio, Root Cellars, Sheet Mulching, Soil Blocks, Trap Crops, Vegetarian Pet Food, Volunteers, Water, Wine, Work Parties | 2 Comments »

Plaster, Compost, and the beginnings of a Forest Garden

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Since my last post Dakota, Emily, and I have finished the discovery and infill coats of earthen plaster on the house. Others participated in various plaster parties and I’d like to thank them all graciously, but I especially want to thank Dakota and Emily. The infill coat was a herculean task, and took just over a month to complete. I’d guess we mixed a couple hundred batches of plaster in the cement mixer altogether, but the really time consuming part was smearing it on the walls and smoothing it out. The walls look relatively flat and it just generally made it look like a serious building. Tom Mudd, a local housing contractor, came by earlier today and told me it was “professional”.

There’s still a thin coat of lime plaster to put on before the walls are totally complete, but that’s going to wait until after the granite chunk footing goes around the very bottom of the walls. I’ve been picking up loads of free granite chunks from a counter top maker in town and I’m going to mortar the chunks together with a lime mortar. Functionally, it protects the gravel-filled bags that make up the stem wall from degrading in UV. It also acts as a splash guard and a moisture barrier for the bales and clay plaster. Aesthetically, I think it’s going to make it look kick ass.

We’ve also set up a basic tarp storage area outside the house to get all of the tools and supplies out of the house so work can start on the earthen floor. There are a couple of things that need to be done inside before the floor can start being poured, but that should begin within the next few weeks.

The garden is in decline. I knew it at the time, but I really should have done succession planting so I wouldn’t be swamped with different crops all at once. The tomatoes have come and gone, and without a solar dehydrator many of them either rotted or were given away. Emily is working on an Appalachian style solar dehydrator, which ought to be completed in relatively near future. Many of the turnips and beets went bad before they could be eaten as well, so food preservation and succession planting are the name of the game for next year.

I spent this last week weeding and working on the garden. It had been badly neglected because of all the work on the house. The flowers I’d planted had overtaken large swathes of the beds, and so had inadvertently become a kind of weed and so were trimmed back hard. I also put a bunch of compost and mulch around the fruit trees and berry bushes, as well as laying down some paths. I’m essentially going to sheet mulch 3/4 of the area around the vegetable beds and plant a whole range of useful plants in the under-story of the fruit and berry bushes. I did roughly 1/8 of what needed to be done, but it’s certainly a start and it felt good to improve the garden after all the neglect.

The majority of the work in improving the soil involves importing organic material. I’ve used compost and manure from a number of sources, some were good and some weren’t. Right now my main source is William Woods University’s horse stalls. The fine people there load me up for free, and it’s only a 15 minute drive away. The food forest section that I sheet mulched used basically two truck loads of material. Once all of the soil has been improved though, I won’t need to be trucking in material any longer as long as there’s a closed nutrient cycle and all of the waste and humanure is composted and returned to the soil.

I also spent this last week making two large compost piles, improving on my previous straw bale system. The original pile I made didn’t get compost in the very core of the pile. It just wasn’t wet at all because the mound shape had hardened and redirected all of the water to the sides. My new piles were slightly rectangular to handle the full truck load and be flat on top so the water would soak in more evenly. Also, I layered the horse manure/bedding with weeds and other garden wastes which are high in nitrogen. Horse manure by itself has the perfect C:N (Carbon to Nitrogen) ratio for composting, but with the wood shaving bedding material added it puts more carbon in the mix, so the greens help to balance that out somewhat.

I also sprinkled a shovelful of finished compost on each manure layer and wetted it down thoroughly. Then I topped the whole thing off with several inches of straw to stop it from forming that hardened surface and to hold the moisture in better. I stuck my soil thermometer in one of the piles and by the 3rd day it had reached 140F. It’s cooled a little since then, but I think that’s because it didn’t have enough water. Because it got so hot I decided to build the 2nd pile with humanure in the core to sterilize it. If a compost pile spends 24 hours above 121F it will kill all the harmful pathogens in the poop.

The two piles should give me enough compost to give the vegetable beds a good layer and re-energize them for another productive year. I’ll continue expanding the sheet-mulching of the food forest as I have time and available helpers.

I’ve got 4 new guineas in the guinea house and I’ve moved the lone chicken up by my camper as a personal tick guard. I’m going to go get her a friend soon though. I think she’s starting to go a little crazy by herself. The guineas should provide excellent tick clearance, but really I haven’t even so much as seen a tick in more than a month now.

As far as community goes, Justin has begun work on a tipi he plans on trying overwinter in. He had originally planned on making a type of yurt but has scaled back his plans as winter looms. He’s cleared out a space in the main community field and has already collected the majority of poles he needs from the surrounding woods. He’ll use the billboard tarps to make the covering. He’s also discovered a vein of paint rock, basically a type of mineral ocher that can be used as a paint, such as on a lime plaster to make a type of fresco.

Patrick has downgraded his plans as well and is going to make a simplified geodesic dome assuming he has time. He’s also cleared out a space in the central community field. He’s had some transportation issues that have been slowing him down, along with other projects he already has in the works.

Dakota and Emily left last week for a 2 week trip to visit Emily’s friends and family in Columbus, OH, but they’ll be back this next week. Dakota will probably be leaving a week or so after they get back, but Emily plans on staying until the weather heads south.

A new work exchanger, Joanie, should be arriving this coming weekend for several weeks to help out. Also, Jessica, who’s actually from Fulton has been camping out in her van for a few days. She’ll be leaving for California in a few weeks, but is hanging out until then.

The weather has been getting progressively nicer. It’s not as hot or humid, and there have been plenty of blue skies filling up the battery banks. It’s actually been kind of nice needing to use a blanket on some nights.

I know I’m missing a lot of different things that have happened, but I’m going to make it a priority to post once a month. So stay tuned, and check out the flickr feed for more pics.

Tags: C:N ratio, clay, Compost, Earthen Plaster, Food Preservation, forest garden, granite, horse manure, infill coat, lime, mortar, plaster, sand, solar dehydrator, straw bales
Posted in Chickens, Compost, Guineas, Humanure, Raccoons, Sheet Mulching, Straw Bale, Ticks | 4 Comments »

A Gravity All Its Own

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

There have been a lot of great developments at Maya Creek in the 6 weeks since my last blog post. I’ll start with the oldest and work my way up to the present.

The roof has been completely insulated. Dakota and I spent 2 days blowing insulation into the roof space we’d created between the rafters with used billboard tarps. The inside of the roof isn’t the prettiest, but I’m planning on getting some kind of fabric or saris, and hanging them up over the tarp to make it prettier and to add some character. Even without doors or windows it’s noticeably cooler and less humid inside the house.

After the roof was finished we started preparing the walls for the earthen plaster. That mainly involved stuffing cracks and spaces with straw slip, essentially straw dipped in a clay/water mix about the consistency of cream. We also taped off some parts that we wanted to protect from the plaster. Afterwards we made a gritty adhesion coat out of flour paste, sand, and clay. The adhesion coat was smeared on all of the non-straw surfaces that were going to get plastered such as wood, parts of the gravel bag stem wall, and the metal compression wires. We also stuffed some of the spaces between the gravel bags with cob to minimize the amount of plaster that would have go in there to even it out.

Next we rented an air compressor and stucco gun and blasted the straw bale walls with clay slip, the clay/water mixture about the consistency of heavy cream. At that point I bought a cement mixer and generator to help with the mixing and it has already been incredibly helpful in mixing the plaster as well. While I could see mixing plaster by hand for a small project, the cement mixer has probably doubled the speed at which we’re plastering both with the time it takes to actually mix and the energy saved and used on applying the plaster.

The 4th of July: Get Plastered weekend event was a resounding success as far as I was concerned. 14 people showed up at one point or another and there were a dozen that helped with the actual plastering. It was extremely gratifying for me to see my old friends getting along so well with my new friends. It took us a good 6 hours to get 3 of the outside walls done and we finished up the last wall in a couple hours on the 2nd day. Dakota and I built a dock at the lake just in the time for the party and the bonfire was quite impressive, seen here with flames only half as high as they got to be.

It sounds cliche, but it really is hard for me to put into words how grateful I am to everyone who has helped me along the way so far, not just the people at the plaster party, but all the support I have gotten with the ecovillage project. It is fueling the progress here, not to mention giving fire to my determination to see this through. Without it, this simply would not be possible and so I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I have an optimism about the future that I have never experienced before as an adult.

Whew, now that I’ve let that wave of emotion sweep over me let me get back to the business at hand. I have a new work exchanger, Emily. She arrived from Ohio a day or so before the plaster party. She’s inquisitive and hard-working and we seem to get along well. Dakota was planning on leaving after the plaster party, but seems to find it harder and harder to leave. This place seems to be developing a type of gravity all its own because he’s not the only one.

Over the plaster party weekend I talked with Justin and Melainia and they wanted to start construction on a DIY yurt. I’ve already seen some of the initial plans on it and it seems fantastic. They’re wanting to start some time this summer and I couldn’t be more thrilled. They’re already good friends to me and I welcome them whole-heartedly as the first community members apart from myself. The construction of a small dwelling in the actual ecovillage area fits in exactly with that I’d envisioned for the first phase of the main ecovillage area construction.

I’d only met Patrick once before early this spring. I liked him after that one encounter, but after the plaster party weekend he’s already entered the ranks as a good friend as well. He’s been building a geodesic dome about an hour or so from here and hung around an extra day after the plaster party weekend. He seemed to be at home here and I was sad to see him leave. I’d already been conspiring on how I could get him more involved here when he e-mailed me and said that he had to be a part of Maya Creek sooner rather than later and wants to build a small dome here this summer.

There’s this sense that the pieces are starting to fall into place and that my “start building it and they will come and help you” strategy is working. I feel like I’ve been able to attract exactly the kind of people I’d been hoping to find. The ecovillage seems to be well on it’s way to becoming an actual village and not just a wild man in the woods.

So, getting back to the more hum-drum ecovillage news. The plaster is still going up. Dakota, Emily, and I have already significantly improved our plastering methods and are moving much quicker than I had thought possible judging by how much we got done at the plaster party. It’s quite a relief since it was beginning to look like a herculean feet to finish the next 2 coats, especially since the next coat involves 3-4 times more plaster than the discovery coat we’re still applying does.

I’d like to put out an open invitation for a plaster party this Saturday, July 17 as well as one on Saturday, July 31. Everyone is welcome to camp for the weekend. There are a number of tents already set up on raised platforms with protective tarps. A few of them have mattresses, and I’m looking for a couple of double mattresses to throw in two of them. If you’re coming out remember to bring clothes that you don’t care about since clay can stain clothing.

In non-housing related news the garden has exploded in productivity and lushness. Many of the companion planted flowers are blooming, tomatoes are ripening, zucchini, squash, and cucumbers are growing faster than I can pick them, and my only regret is that I can’t spend more time there examining bugs, growth patterns, and generally just poking around. A couple raccoons got in one night and ravaged the sweet corn, but it’s recovered fairly well and I’ve since trapped and relocated the rascals about 20 miles away.

A couple fruit trees have died, and some are struggling. A few seem to be doing really well though, which is I suppose to be expected in essentially unimproved clay soil. Next year I’m really going to kick my compost-making operation into high gear and make it so that I can grow pretty much any plant the climate will allow. I have the sources for material and means of delivery, just not the time to do it right now.

Sadly I’ve lost two of the three laying hens I bought this year. The first one happened when the chickens accidentally got locked out of their coop one night and nested in a tree. I could hear it screaming as something attacked it and ran down and scared away whatever was attacking it, but it was mortally wounded and I had to put it out if it’s misery. The other was mortally wounded by some dogs and was likewise mercy killed. It’s really pretty depressing, and I’ve begun to wonder if the act of butchering these animals is worth the meat. I’m almost to the point of burying them in the garden and using them as fertilizer. It seems right since that’s essentially what I want done with my own body, except in the forest, not the garden. Jason is raising some guineas for the both of us, and so I should have 4 or so of them running around tick-hunting in a couple months.

Maya Creek is also now solar-powered. The wind generator doesn’t reliably produce very much power. The turbine needs to be higher above the trees, but I’m hoping that in the winter when the leaves are down and the winds are generally stronger and more sustained I’ll see more production out of it. If not I have a plan to raise it another 5-10′ and possibly trim some tree tops.

The 90W of amorphous silicon solar panels are doing the trick on these hot sunny summer days. The battery bank had been consistently topped off, but as more people have arrived and the weather has gotten cloudier, they may not be enough for what we’ve been demanding. I’ve got 2 new LED lighbulbs that put off a nice omni-directional warm light that only use 5 watts each. Over the winter I’m also going to be looking at getting a new super-efficient laptop.

In more recent news, I’ve lost my dumpster diving cherry. I spent most of the time laughing at the incredible amount of perfectly good food thrown out. I didn’t even notice a smell in most of the dumpsters and within the course of an hour or two the car was packed to the brim with a huge array of food and goodies, including a perfectly fine step ladder, which had been on my list of things to get for plastering. If I had to estimate what it would have cost to buy the stuff we got, I’d put it somewhere in the area of $200-300, if not more.

We did all of that on the way back from St. Louis where we went to an event remembering the 1877 general strike in St. Louis. The main reason we went was to see David Rovics. I designed David’s site about 5 years ago and had never met him until yesterday. He introduced me to some extremely interesting people in the St. Louis area and I’m really looking forward to getting to know them better.

Tags: 1877 general strike, 4th of July, bonfire, cement mixer, clay slip, Compost, Dakota, David Rovics, dock, dome, Dumpster Diving, Earthen Plaster, Emily, garden, geodesic dome, Guineas, hens, Justin, LED lightbulbs, Melainia, Patrick, plaster party, Raccoons, roof insulation, solar panels, straw slip, sweet corn, wind generator, yurt
Posted in Chickens, Compost, Dumpster Diving, Earthen Plaster, Guineas, Raccoons, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Ticks, Visitor Lodge, Wind | 2 Comments »

Getting Warmed Up

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Yes, I know, I’m overdue for a blog entry. As soon as the weather warmed up it seemed that everyone decided it was time to get their web page revamped. Every time I’d sit down at the computer I’d feel like I needed to be working on web work, and the blog could wait. It can wait no longer!

There’s so much to do and just not enough time to do it all. I’ve significantly cleared out the garden area along the edge and put up a 5′ tall fence. I’ve taken to throwing all of the brush on the outside of the fence to further deter deer from jumping it and hopefully it’ll be good wildlife habitat for less garden-aggressive creatures.

I decided to cut things back when I started planning out the exact fruit tree locations and realized that they’d be getting quite a bit of shade, and if I didn’t cut those trees back now it’d be a lot harder when the fruit trees are planted because the trees and branches could very easily fall on the fruit trees. It’s been sweaty work, but it’s finally done. I don’t enjoy cutting trees down, both on principal and my general dislike for running the chainsaw. It just makes me nervous handling something so dangerous.

Incidentally, a couple weeks ago I accidentally cut a tree down and had it fall on the straw bale place. It did some damage, but not nearly as bad as it could have. I’d actually taken extra precautions because it was near the house. I had a wench set up and had it under a lot of tension pulling it away from the house and cut an extra large wedge, but somehow the laws of physics decided to throw me a curve ball. I’ve since chopped the tree up, along with some others and will be inoculating them with shiitake and chicken of woods mushroom spore plugs in the next week.

I’ve successfully been driving the truck around without being hassled. So far I’ve picked up all the supplies I’ll need to raise the wind generator, supplies for the plaster that’ll cover the gravel bag foundation wall, a load of horse manure, and a heaping load of compost. The compost came at a price though. I didn’t realize that the new trailer that I’d been given couldn’t handle the weight I put in it. The person who gave it to me told me that he’d used it to haul compost and so I just filled it up. I didn’t realize anything was amiss until I pulled into the driveway and was clearly dragging something… it turned out to be the whole trailer. The neck part basically just bent, and I’m not sure what I can do to fix it. The guy who gave it to me does welding, but I’d feel bad asking him to fix this. I’ve considered just flipping it over and using a sledgehammer to bash it straight, but even if it’s effective it’ll still be weak.

Despite the tree falling on the roof and trailer breaking things have been generally good. I put up the gutters on the front part of the house and have been harvesting rainwater. All of my seedlings seem to be doing well. I was worried for awhile that some of the older seeds weren’t good any more, but they just took a little longer. I’ve got one of the garden beds planted with cool weather crops. I’ve added nesting boxes and a run to the old guinea coop in preparation for the chickens.

I’ve met some interesting people in the last few weeks as well, and everyone always seems to bring me things. A couple people from Columbia came out and brought me 3 loaves of freshly baked homemade bread which was absolutely delicious. I’ve even been invited to come out to the next bake so I can see how it’s done.

Yesterday, a guy that lives a little over an hour from here came up for a visit. He’s building a geodesic dome, and it turned out we had quite a lot in common. He brought me some great stuff that he’d got dumpster diving behind a Trader Joe’s. I’m quickly getting on board with the dumpster diving idea. It’s not exactly sustainable, but it’s certainly making good use of things that would otherwise just go to waste. You wouldn’t believe the perfectly good stuff that people throw out. He’d even found working power tools in hardware store dumpsters!

As with every post, I’ve got to talk about the weather. It’s been unseasonably warm here, it got up to 82 today and right now there isn’t anything close to freezing temperatures in the forecast. I’ve been sleeping with the door and windows open, and I installed a cat door on the screen door so Pink wouldn’t just tear a hole through it. He didn’t like it at first, but he’s getting used to it. The nice weather has made it all the harder to spend time inside working on the computer.

My next projects are getting the fruit trees in the ground, getting more manure, and raising the wind generator. I’ve had a lot of offers for help getting the wind generator up, but there’s quite a bit of prep work I need to do, and even then I need to think about exactly how it’s going to work and what people will need to be doing. I’m trying something a little… unconventional, but I’ll save that for my next video post.

Tags: chainsaw, chicken of the woods, Chickens, Compost, Deer, fence, garden, Guineas, Mushrooms, roof, shiittake, trailer, trees, wind generator
Posted in Chickens, Compost, Deer, Guineas, Mushrooms, Reusable Goods, Straw Bale, Wind | 3 Comments »

The Big Thaw

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

It’s finally happened. The weather has warmed to the point it’s no longer miserable to be outside. In fact, it’s down right pleasant and judging by the chorus of crickets and peepers, the wildlife would agree.

The change in temperature has been swift, but I remember being struck by how quickly the chirps and hum of nature disappeared last fall. One day it was there, and the next it wasn’t. Two days ago the woods were completely silent at night except for the occasional owl hoot, and yesterday it was as if everyone got the memo.

As the days have gotten nicer they’ve also begun to pass much more swiftly. That tends to happen when you’re constantly busy, web work in the morning and projects in the afternoon. I have to slow myself down at times because it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the sheer scope of everything. I’ve taken to making to-do lists every other night just to keep that next step in perspective.

I’m aiming to start setting up Tarpopolis again at the beginning of April. Once I empty the house out then I can start working on the interior roofing again, and after the last frost is past the plastering can start.

Until then I’m focusing my energy on the garden. I built a trellis in the garden and cheated a little by buying some bagged garden soil to plant the sugar snap peas in. I’ve also got a lot more seeds in the mini-greenhouse and coldframe although I’m a little worried I may have to restart some of them since I think I might have cooked them by not paying attention and opening them on a sunny day.

Due to some ridiculous beaurocratic wrangling with the DMV I wont’ be able to get a plate for the truck until early April. Which severely hampers my rotted manure collecting operations among a host of other things I need the truck for. I do have a plan on how I can still use it, however, it’s not exactly legal so I won’t post the specifics here. Big brother may be watching.

I’ve got several new sources for manure which I plan on taking advantage of. I’ll be adding a 4th vegetable garden bed as well as a 2nd perennial bed and then I’d like to add at least a small layer of manure around the perimeter of the main beds where I intend to plant berries and fruit trees in a couple weeks. All in all I’m probably looking at 8 full loads of manure and another 2 or 3 of free mulch from Columbia for the paths. It’ll be a good workout and warm up for the coming construction season.

A couple weekends ago Justin and Melainia came out and we burned a bunch of the brush piles that had been built up over the last year or so. I wanted to make bio-char out of them by putting them out before they’d turned to ash. The charcoal holds a lot of the nutrients in the ground so that they don’t wash away. Unfortunately I didn’t have any water so we just let it burn where I’ll be adding the new vegetable bed. The ash will still be good source of potassium for the plants.

One point of excitement was when we all 3 came back with bunches of brush to find flames leaping from the humanure pile which was maybe 20 feet away from the fire. It was amazing how quickly the pallets caught on fire as well, and putting the whole thing out wasn’t easy with the aforementioned lack of water. It was tempting to stomp on it, but it would be the equivalent of stomping out a giant flaming bag of poop on your doorstep. Justin made this excellent graphic which is certainly t-shirt worthy should the opportunity arise.

I was considering planting standard size fruit trees, but there really isn’t enough space in the garden for that. Instead I’m going to plant a lot of semi-dwarf and dwarf trees and have a big variety of different kinds of fruit. I’m hoping that these trees will serve as sort of the genetic stock for the eventual food forest in the ecovillage center.

Typically you don’t want to start a fruit tree from seed because you don’t know what kind of fruit it will have, for instance an apple pollinated by a crab apple probably won’t have very tasty fruit. However, if you start some of the trees from seed and then graft a branch from one of the tried and true varieties that I’ll have growing in the garden here then you’ve got something you know will be tasty. Of course, any trees grown like that will be full-size since size is determined by the roots and they won’t have the dwarf root stock, but that’s what would be more appropriate for the ecovillage anyway. Standards produce a lot more fruit and do so for many more years than dwarfs and semi-dwarfs.

I’m also waiting on the truck plate to pick up the pipe I need to raise the wind generator. I’m hoping I can get that next week and get it up and running soon. I did manage to fix my gas generator which hadn’t wanted to start since I got back so I at least have some power until then without having to go recharge my batteries at my friend’s place every several days.

I also picked up some trash along the road with some help from a friend last weekend. I noticed that people had still been parking at the driveway to the old cabin and littering it with more beer cans and bottles since I cleaned it up last year and posted the “No Trespassing” signs. Clearly they didn’t get the message so I lugged some of the 30 or so old tires that someone graciously dumped in the old root cellar and placed them as a barricade across the driveway entrance.

There are still another 30 or more tires in a ditch just down the road. I plan on using some of those in the garden to grow potatoes in, and saving the ones that are in decent shape for other uses down the line. A lot of them are really too far gone to do anything with and I may end up hauling them to a special tire recycling place not too far from here. I also posted a homemade “No Dumping” sign in the hope that it might make some sort of difference as far as future tires are concerned.

My current struggle of the moment is getting water in the camper. It appears that simply opening the main drain valve didn’t empty all the water out of the pipes and at some point the water froze and burst the water supply line in two different places. Neither spot is very easy to get at, but I’ve only had to cut minor holes so far. I’m on my 3rd attempt at patching them and each time I’ve gotten closer. In fact the last time they held for a couple hours, enough for me to take my first hot shower in the camper, but then one burst and the second started leaking. I think I’m finally on the right track now though and I should have it taken care of in the next day or two.

I’m also looking to get 3 or 4 laying hens and keeping them around this time. I considered guineas again as well, but I wouldn’t be able to actually have them out and tick hunting until late July again. They also don’t have the benefit of easily collected eggs and aren’t going to handle the winters as well. The chickens have stinkier poop, but I think if I only let them free range around the campground and construction site every other day or so then it won’t be too big of an issue I’m hoping. In the future I’d like to get guineas again since they have a wider tick-hunting range and they’re just kind of cool, but I’ll save that for another time.

So that’s where I’m at. I’ll probably start having visitors out on the weekend of March 27 weather permitting if anyone’s interested.

Tags: ash, bio-char, burst water pipes, Chickens, coldframe, Columbia, crickets, DMV, dumping, dwarf, fruit trees, gas generator, grafting, Guineas, humanure fire, interior roofing, license plate, manure, mulch, peepers, perennial bed, potassium, root stock, seeds, semi-dwarf, signs, standards, sugar snap peas, Tarpopolis, truck, used tires, vegetable bed, wind generator
Posted in Chickens, Cold Frames, garden, Greenhouses, Guineas, Humanure, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Ticks, Visitor Lodge, Wind | 3 Comments »

Maya Creek Christmas 2009

Friday, December 25th, 2009

After 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.

Tags: amorphous silicon, biodiesel, body heat, camper, Chickens, Christmas, CO2, cold frame, coop, greenhouse, Guineas, heat, hot bed, insulation, Kaneka, kerosene, Maya Creek, off-grid, power, propane, snow, solar panels, Straw Bale, sun electronics, waste vegetable oil, winter
Posted in Chickens, Greenhouses, Guineas, Solar, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 3 Comments »

Winding Down

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

The 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.

Tags: butcher, camper, cold, Columbia, ecovillages, feathers, fox, frost, Guineas, Intentional Communities, MO, slaughter, Solar shower, Straw Bale, sustainability fair, tarps, Visitor Lodge, winter
Posted in Chickens, Guineas, Intentional Communities, Solar Hot Water, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 6 Comments »

Like Giant Legos

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

I 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.

Tags: cookbook, Deer, fishing line, Missourian, Mother Earth News, pickles, recipes, roof plate, squash, Straw Bale, tarps, Visitor Lodge
Posted in Chickens, Guineas, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 1 Comment »

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.

Posted in Earth Bag, Guineas, Organic Gardening | 9 Comments »

Consider it Dug

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

It took us about 2 weeks of digging, but the foundation is finally dug. We still have a bit of leveling and finishing to get done today, but all of the really hard stuff is done. It wouldn’t even have taken us 2 weeks if we hadn’t had to stop for a couple days every time there was a hard rain. We were also helped along by Liz’s idea to dig the sub-floor out to 2 different depths rather than removing all of the dirt to the lowest point. It saved a huge amount of digging.

I think a lot of people doubted that we’d actually be able to dig the whole foundation with hand tools. If there had been a lot of rocks in the dirt or it had been more compacted that may have been the case, but it was pretty much pure clay that wasn’t too awful to get out. We’ll also be able to use it to plaster the house, make the earthen floor, and build the bench for the rocket stove. Don’t get me wrong it was still a lot of hard sweaty work, but I found it extremely satisfying. Plus I got a nice tan out of it and a shirtless picture of me, of which the world can never be blessed with enough of.

It’s been exciting to see the building floor emerge from the earth. It makes imagining the rooms and the space a much more tangible exercise. It’s going to be a very nice sized building, not too small and not too big. I’m also happy that we were able to orient it for passive solar. I had begun to think we weren’t going to be able to until I found that true south wasn’t where I had thought it was.

The trenches seem to be draining pretty well for the most part, but the sub-floor needs to have the edges leveled down so that the water drains off of it a bit better. The next step after tamping and leveling is going to be laying down a perforated drain pipe in the middle of the rubble trench and leading down the drain ditch. We also need to install an duct pipe that’ll allow us to run wires and flexible tubing inside the building without going through the straw bale wall which might allow moisture to get into the bales. A drain pipe for all the faucets and the shower is going to need to be laid so that it connects up with the perforated drain pipe in the rubble trench.

We’ll also be putting in 2” panels of rigid foam polystyrene insulation on the outside section of the rubble trench to insulate the foundation somewhat. I’m not very happy about using polystyrene in the building, but I haven’t been able to find a better alternative and I want to make sure that the foundation has a little insulation. I may find out it’s not that important to have, but until then I want to make sure we don’t have a well insulated house with a heat sink for a floor.

After all that is laid down we’ll start filling the whole thing up with gravel and tamping it down until it’s all 6” below grade, and then we’ll start building the urbanite(reclaimed cement chunk) stem wall mortared together that will extend at least 1’ above ground.

In other news, I built a 4’x8’ guinea henhouse and got it stocked with 6 guineas that Daniel and I got from a poultry swap meet a couple hours south of here. It was the only place we knew we could reliably find guinea chicks that were old enough that they didn’t need a heat lamp but not so old that they’d run away whenever we let them out. I got 3 each from 2 different ladies, one group is 3 weeks old and the other group is 4-5 weeks old.

We’re going to have to keep them in the henhouse for at least a couple weeks, maybe significantly more so that they know its home. I’m also going to start teaching them to come to me with a call and giving them some white millet. Liz might take that over from me when she gets back from her weddings in Virginia on Wednesday.

It’s not dropping below 60 now and the birds just finished their 2nd night and seem to be fine. I put a cardboard box inside the henhouse and put some straw in it and then covered it with straw for more insulation. I put them in there at night since otherwise they all just group together in a corner. It’s good that they group together, but if it’s just up against the plywood their going to loose a lot of heat so I put them in the box and they group up in there instead.

I’m looking forward to letting the little guys and girls out to eat bugs to their heart’s content. A guinea can eat 200 ticks a day, multiply that by 6 and we’ve dealt a massive blow to the tick population around here. They also range up to a ¼ of a mile radius and get up to 90% of their food from ranging which makes them extremely cheap and effective. They don’t scratch the ground and they only eat grass and seeds apart from insects so they’re great to have in the garden as long as you don’t start feeding them vegetable scraps, because then they’ll start finding those vegetables in the garden.

Tags: Guinea coop, Guineas, Natural Building, Rubble Trench, Straw Bale, Tao, Ticks
Posted in Animals, Guineas, Natural Building, Pest Control, Rubble Trench, Straw Bale, Ticks, Visitor Lodge | No Comments »