Archive for the ‘Pest Control’ Category

Healing Up and Breaking Down

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

As some of you already know I suffered a serious hand injury at the end of October.  I was sharpening a shovel using far too much pressure on the file, lost control, and gashed my wrist open.  I was wearing gloves for protection, but the shovel caught me just above them and severed 4 tendons and one of the 2 main nerves, narrowly missing one of the 2 main arteries.

John and Jesse were nearby and we got to the hospital right away.  Luckily, I have health insurance and so won’t be gashed too badly financially on top of it.  We were in the process of winding down construction for the year anyway so the timing, if it had to happen at all, isn’t terrible.

My doctor and hand therapist both tell me I’m recovering remarkably well. I’ve gotten a considerable amount of feeling back and my range of motion and strength is starting to return. I should be good to go when Spring rolls around.

Apart from that minor tragedy, John has moved into the new mini-cabin. He’s sealed it up better, but it looks like we should have dug deeper for the insulation barrier in the floor. We’ll fix that in our future cabins.  Jesse was staying in the common house, but just departed for a month and half trip to Denver, Portland, and Seattle. I’m staying mostly with Jessica in Columbia, although I’m hoping to start transitioning back out to MC over the next several weeks.

It’s been an incredibly mild and sunny winter and the new solar array has been pumping out the power.  Our peak power output last I checked was 847 watts from panels rated at only 800 watts.  Normally you never even produce the rated watts for panels, but thanks to the reflected roof sunlight we’re probably making an extra ~25%.

We’ve started really planning and prioritizing for this coming year and have created a project breakdown to keep track of it.  The big projects will be putting in a cistern for collecting rainwater, building a mini-duplex similar to the mini-cabin we built last year, building a shed with a root cellar in it, finishing the outside of the mini-cabin, and doing a lot of interior work on the common house.  That ought to keep us busy.

All the while we’ll be maintaining the garden.  I’ve done some planning and have put together a page of garden notes.  It has on it all of the seeds we’ve ordered with pictures and descriptions.  We’ll probably add a few more plants before it’s all said and done.  On the same page I’ll record all the pertinent information on when and how much we plant, when and how much we harvest, and everything else noteworthy.  I’m also going to record the rainfall and high and low temps in the garden.

We lost all of corn to raccoons last year, but this year we’re moving the tipi up into the garden and I’m going to spend the summer in it along with the dog.  That along with the solar-powered radio playing predator noises during the day ought to minimize our pest problems as far as mammals and birds go.

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Posted in Cisterns, Firewood, garden, Guest Cabins, Organic Gardening, Pest Control, Raccoons, Solar, Straw Bale | No Comments »

Growing Possibilities

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

Visualizing the future of Maya Creek can be double-edged sword.  The possibilities for this place are incredible and less and less difficult to see even to outside observers.  On the other hand, the amount of energy needed to realize those possibilities can be stifling and disheartening.

Still, over time I get used to the pace of growth and accept that it may be many years before it even approaches what it could be.  Every year and every day is different and fulfilling, and there’s really not much more you can ask for out of life.  The work here will never be done, or at least I should hope it never ends.  As the saying goes, the day you stop learning, is the day you begin to die.

Guest Cabin Progress

We’ve finished applying the last thick coats of earthen plaster and floor to the cabin.  It’s a very labor intensive process since the infill coat of plaster can be a couple inches thick.  It’s worth it though, because it really smooths out the walls, and is going to provide lots of thermal mass to moderate the temperature.

We also installed the foundation insulation, and mortared in the scrap granite chunks around the base to protect the bottoms of the walls from rain.  We stuffed the area behind the granite with misprinted polypropylene feedsacks filled with scrap alpaca wool, which we affectionately named, “fur turds”.

Yesterday, we went looking for a screen door and found one at the Habitat Restore for $20.  It was the only one they had and it was heavy duty and just barely the right height.  We took it back and it fit perfectly.  Dumb, but very awesome luck.

John should be able to move into the place after the walls and floor finish drying in several weeks.  We’ve still got to put the metal roof on, install the doors and windows, and put the finish exterior plaster on, but we’re getting close.

Garden Raids

The garden has been under siege ever since the sweet corn started coming in.  We’ve trapped ~7 raccoons and 2 opossums, and we probably would’ve gotten more if they hadn’t finished off the 400 sq. ft. of corn completely.  The fence we’ve set up works well on deer and rabbits, but climbing critters don’t mind it at all.

We’ve got a new solution though that I think will work.  We’re going to set up a stereo hooked up to a small solar power system.   We tried it out for about 5 days and the garden was left alone all that time.

Playing conservative talk radio seemed like the best bet, because it has the most yelling and angry sounding voices… and it’s just scary in general.  However, I had the idea of making a long MP3 recording of the sounds of common predators in the area and having it loop.  I’ll probably throw in some weird tiger roars and other foreign animal sounds too just to keep ‘em freaked out.

The tomatoes are still coming in pretty heavily, and so are the squash and cucumbers.  I’ve been dehydrating a lot of the squash and tomatoes for winter soups.  They should go well with the ~50 lbs of potatoes we’ve got left from out harvest earlier this year.

The Possibility Alliance

Last Saturday Jesse, Jessica, John, Nic, and I went up to the Possibility Alliance in northern Missouri to take a short class on sustainable forestry.  It was actually more about just seeing the place and meeting the people.  It was a short, but sweet visit and I was really excited to see a project working that’s so similar to what I currently hope Maya Creek will turn into.

They’re creating a sustainable community, teaching workshops, and permaculture certification.  All just for donations!  I’d noticed that all the places that teach these types of skills and certifications were really pricey, and it seemed to defeat the point.  Most people interested in learning these skills don’t have a lot of money, and if you think the skills are that important then I would think you’d want to give as many people access to them as you could.

Today John and I went back for a more in-depth tour.  We got to explore the site fully and get a lot of questions answered.  The amount of energy that Ethan exudes is staggering, and I’m amazed he’s able to maintain it.   He and others at PA are part of the superheroes organization which ride bicycles in superhero attire offering help to people.  Perhaps he really is a superhero in more ways than one.

I’ve created an album of photos from the tour here.

Visitors

We had a nice visit from Bob and Kelly earlier this month.  They were out from California looking around the area at permaculture related projects.  They’re planning on moving out this way in the near future, and are planning to help out at Maya Creek after they get settled.

Nic just left to help set up a camp at Burning Man.  He was here for about a week helping us put in some earthen floor and just checking the place out.  He came down from Minneapolis, but has been traveling around all over.  It’s always nice to have a new person with new stories and perspectives come and share that with us.  I’ll be seeing Nic again at Burning Man in a few days.

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Posted in Guest Cabins, Intentional Communities, Organic Gardening, Pest Control, Raccoons, Solar, Solar Dehydration | 5 Comments »

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.

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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.

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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.

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Posted in Chickens, Compost, Dumpster Diving, Earthen Plaster, Guineas, Raccoons, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Ticks, Visitor Lodge, Wind | 2 Comments »

A Little Bit of Everything

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

As usual, sorry for the blog hiatus.  Time has just been zipping by, but that’s what happens when you’re busy from sun up to sun down.  So, let’s see what’s new.

I’ve planted a ton of new fruit trees and berry bushes in the garden.  At the last minute I decided to try some blueberries and put three plants in this evening and added some sulfur to acidify the soil and mulched them with dried out cedar needles.

I also planted two different varieties of Goumi, which fixes nitrogen in the soil and grows an edible berry.  It’s related to the Russian Olives that grow here wildly so I figure it’ll do fine.  I planted them in among the fruit trees so that when I cut it back its roots will die back and feed the fruit trees.

The garden looks amazing and the first thing I do every morning is go check on it and just soak it all in.  The sugar snap peas have started coming in full tilt and there’s more lettuce and spinach than I know what to do with.  The first little green tomatoes have appeared on the early variety tomato plants, and there’s already some little zucchinis in the making as well.

I have a work exchanger from Nebraska who I’ll call “Dan” for privacy’s sake among other inside joke reasons… He’s been helping me since early May.  He’s staying through the 4th of July weekend when I’ll be holding an earthen plaster party and having a large bonfire down at the lake.  If you’re interested in coming just shoot me an e-mail and I’ll get you info.

Mid-way through May I also had a couple visitors from St. Louis who stayed for a week and helped me raise the wind generator.  I would’ve raised it sooner but it had been far too windy, and now that it’s up the wind hasn’t come back.  I’d like to have gotten higher above the trees but it just wasn’t easily done without cutting a bunch of trees and having a lot of ugly guy-wires all over the place.  I may have to cut the tops off a few trees to get some better air flow, but it still spins regularly.  I’m thinking about getting a small solar setup to augment it in the meantime.

Dan and I have gotten a lot done on the interior of the roof, and tomorrow we’ll be filling over half of it with cellulose insulation made up of recycled paper.  I also put quite a bit of alpaca wool scraps in there, but it was nowhere near enough and apparently all the other alpaca farmers sent their scraps to the gulf to help with the oil spill.

I’ve also installed the basic wiring for the house and put in the breaker box.  I used the chainsaw to cut out the depressions for the switches and outlets, and then attached the boxes to a plywood wedge and pounded it in between the bales to secure it.  I left them jutting out a little over an inch so that they’ll be flush once the wall is plastered.

With the help of my dad, Charlotte, Jessica, and Dan we’ve also got a bunch of mushroom logs inoculating.  Right now there are 3 different kinds, shiitake, chicken of the woods, and reishi.  I have another large bag of plug spawn for maitake(hen of the woods), which I need to get plugged in the next few weeks.  I won’t actually have any mushrooms for at least 6 months, possibly a year.

The main trees that needed to be removed from the dam have been cut down and piled up for the bonfire on the 4th.  The roots can penetrate the heart of the dam and cause leaks.  There’s quite a few more trees that need to come out though and there’s already enough wood down there for several large fires.  While I was clearing one day I almost stepped on a fawn in the reeds by the lake.  It was clearly scared, but just hoping that I didn’t see it or would ignore it.  I somehow just expect animals of that size to run, even if they’re small.

We also cleared the tour route and cut back the grass so ticks won’t be a big issue when I give tours.  The ticks haven’t been bad, and the only reason I get them at all is because Pink brings them in on his fur and they fall of in my bed in the camper.  I’m working on getting a lavendar oil/water mix to spray on him so that hopefully the ticks won’t hold on to his fur.  The mosquitoes are just now getting kind of annoying and aren’t nearly as bad as they were this time last year.

I’ve got 200 pounds of hydrated lime slaking in preparation for making lime mortar, i.e. lime putty and sand, which I’ll use to mortar rocks against the foundation wall of the house.  I’d come up with the plan of using the rocks surrounding the foundation wall at the old cabin.  My dad told me that they actually got the rocks from an old farm house that had been on the property so far, so this would be the 3rd time they’d been used.  However, I passed a granite counter place in Jefferson City that just had piles of broken granite pieces and I’m talking to them trying to see if they’ll sell or let me have it.  In which case I might have a really pretty foundation wall material, not to mention a great material for mosaic counter-tops, furniture in-lays, etc.

I took a fantastic trip down to a place called Jack’s Fork in south east Missouri.  It’s actually in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.  We went canoeing one day, and exploring water falls and springs the next.  There also a bunch of really interesting caves.  Surprisingly, the water was almost perfectly clear.  I have a bunch of fun and interesting stories from the trip and I’m contemplating whether to post that kind of stuff on the Maya Creek blog.  I know I make this pretty personal, but it has a pretty specific scope.  Let me have your input on whether I should branch out or not.

I’m having a hard time believing it’s June already.  I still think I should have everything done to live in the house this winter, but I’m getting a little anxious.  The trip to Jack’s Fork this last weekend and the wedding I’m going to in North Carolina this coming weekend have me feeling like I’m not getting enough done.  I had a couple other trips planned later in the summer, but I may have to cancel them depending on my progress out here.  I’ve definitely got one new work exchanger coming out at the beginning of July from Ohio, and very possibly a second one from New Jersey coming at the same time.  Having help is fantastic. It’s great to get so much done, but also to have someone to hang out with.

Hopefully, I’ll be getting back to my regular 2 week posting rate, but we’ll see.

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Posted in Earthen Plaster, Mushrooms, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Ticks, Wind | 5 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.

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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.

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Posted in Chickens, Cold Frames, garden, Greenhouses, Guineas, Humanure, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Ticks, Visitor Lodge, Wind | 3 Comments »

Radical Sustainability

Friday, January 15th, 2010

I’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”.

toolboxRadical 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.

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Posted in Greenhouses, Radical Sustainability, Recycled Materials, Solar, Ticks, Wild Turkeys, Wind | 10 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.

The Hand-dug Foundation

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.

The 6 new guinea chicks

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.

The Guinea Henhouse

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.

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