Archive for the ‘Recycled Materials’ Category

Rock, Wood, and Clay

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

It’s turned into something of a running joke here at MC that just about any problem can be solved with rocks, wood, or clay.  Andrew and John made replacement stove knobs from pieces of wood, and I built a replacement starter for it from clay.  We also cleared a path along the creek, and to deal with all the creek crossing and drainage we either used rocks as stepping stones, or logs for steps or water diversions.  We planned on making a wooden bridge, but opted for redirecting the path and using stepping stones instead.

House Progress

John, Jesse, and I finished putting in the base layer of the earthen floor last week(clay and rock).  It will probably take a month to dry, and so during that time we’ll be working on the porch area.  The wall on that side is not well protected from the weather until it gets built so it’s a priority.  We’ve already done some prep work, prepared the back wall and cut and cleaned the cedar support posts.

Straw Bale Cabins

The straw bale house has performed amazingly with all of the above-average hot weather.  So much so that we’ve started dreaming up a small ultra-cheap and easy one-room straw bale cabin design.  Our current cost estimates put it at about $300 for ~80 square feet.  If it performs anything like the main straw bale house it may be all-season housing.  We’ll probably begin on that later this week.

Garden Deficiency

All of my new garden beds have been quite a disappointment.  The new beds have some severe nitrogen deficiency. I noticed that there is quite a bit of wood chunks mixed in the compost I get from Columbia.  I think that it’s not finished composting, and when I mix it up by spreading it onto the beds it’s like turning a compost which reinvorgates the decomposition process and locks up the nitrogen for months.

I’ve added blood meal and urine to the beds and it has certainly helped, but some of my crops have died and others are stunted and will likely be delayed significantly.  I think the key to using that compost is to make the beds in the fall so they’ll be ready in the spring.

Inhabitants

As far as inhabitants of MC go, John has been here for about a month now.  Tom arrived from Canada via 31 hour bus ride last week and will be here for a month or so.  Andrew from St. Louis spent 10 days out here helping on the creek path.  Jesse spent the last week out here and I think he plans on spending this coming week as well.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in garden, Kita, Natural Building, Nitrogen Fixers, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Straw Bale, Summer Cabins, Visitor Lodge, Volunteers | 5 Comments »

Rocketing into Fall

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

It’s hard to believe that the building season is already coming to an end.  The house isn’t as far as I’d hoped, but I’ve begun to get used to that.  As long as the progress is tangible it’s hard to get too depressed.  Watching the granite footing go up with Emily’s hard work has been exciting and has turned the house into a work of art.  The loft and interior wall studs in conjuction with the first half of the base layer of earthen floor have added a new dimension to the interior and although it’s still probably a whole building season from being done the finish line is in sight.

With the first light frost of the year and the leaves changing and finding their way to the forest floor where they’ll keep the tree roots well-mulched and cozy I’m reminded of my own winter preparations.  It would be easy to get stressed about all of the work still to be done over the next couple months, but I know I’ll get it done. Just knowing that I won’t have to spend the winter cramped in my tin can of a camper again is enough to keep my spirits high.

My most pressing project is getting the rocket stove done.  A rocket stove is a type of wood-burning stove similar to a masonry stove in that rather than the heat going straight up and out of a normal chimney, the flue runs horizontally through a bench made up of really heavy materials like rocks, bricks, and clay so that the heat is absorbed inside the house before the stove gases exit.  This means that the temperature of the air leaving through the flue is only a hundred degrees or so, even though the stove burns cleanly and efficiently at over a thousand degrees.  After setting up a mock-up of the heat riser guts of the stove at the last work party there are at least 3 new stoves in the planning stages by impressed observers.  I foresee many winter nights and days spent on the thermal mass bench in the future.

The earthen floor base layer is only a little over half done.  I held off doing the whole base layer because I wanted to bury the rocket stove in the floor so that the floor will also hold the heat.  I was more than ready to be done with the tedious work of mixing and leveling the floor.  Each batch of mix only created a couple square feet of floor space, so it would easily take 300 batches to do the whole layer.  Even after 3 weeks of running a couple of fans to dry it out it’s just now really begun to dry out.  There are two more layers, which involve a lot less material, and thus less mixing and work.  Any more work on the floor is going to have to wait until next year so I’ll have a half-gravel floor for the winter.  No big deal.

The solar power system has gotten a significant upgrade.  We’ve now got 400 watts of panel on the roof and new MPPT charge controller which is significantly more efficient at charging the batteries with those panels.  I’ve cut a couple trees down that were blocking significant sunshine and I’ll have to cut down several more before it’s all said and done unfortunately.  I also need to get some more battery capacity since we’re making way more power than we can hold when it’s sunny, but it only lasts a couple days with regular usage.

My first attempt at a brewing beer since I stopped about 5 years ago was a resounding success.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading on brewing beer with more raw materials so I can lower the price and have more control over it.  I’ve also got my first batch of wine brewing and plan on doing a lot more brewing and experimenting this winter as my pet project.  I’d like to have a lot of beverages tucked away for next year.  We go through a lot of beer and wine, and I figure this will cut down a lot on our recycling and expenses.

Emily finished the solar dehydrator that she’d taken on as her own pet project.  We’ve tried bananas, apples, persimmons, tomatoes, acorns, and herbs and they’ve all been delicious.  I’m especially fond of the fruits when they’re only partially dry and chewy.  It’s going to be a lot less depressing not seeing tomatoes and other veggies going bad because we don’t eat them or give them away fast enough.

Dakota headed out in September, and Emily has just headed back early to Ohio.  She’d expected to stay through Thanksgiving, but her father’s health has taken a turn for the worse and she’s gone back to spend some time with him.  Both her and Dakota were really crucial in getting as far as we did this year, not to mention just being good company.  Hopefully I won’t be too lonely this winter though, Justin is putting the finishing touches on his tipi cover and is planning on having a tipi-raising party in the next week or two.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Beer, Earthen Floor, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Rocket Stoves, Solar Dehydration, Visitor Lodge, Wine | 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Earthen Plaster, Mushrooms, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Ticks, Wind | 5 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Chickens, Cold Frames, garden, Greenhouses, Guineas, Humanure, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Ticks, Visitor Lodge, Wind | 3 Comments »

Making Connections

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

It’s amazing how many connections I’ve found by just doing what I’m doing.  Jesse’s mom, Anne, raises alpaca only about 15 minutes away from here.  She’s offered to let me take her “alpaca beans” off her hands, some of which are already well rotted.  I’ve only gotten one small load so far since it was muddy and now everything is frozen solid.

While I was talking to her she mentioned she had a local guy who DELIVERED straw bales for $2/piece.  They’re not anything I’d use for construction, but for stacking around the camper and eventually becoming mulch, they’re perfect.

A nice guy named Charles delivered the bales and while we were unloading the bales I was just talking with him and the fact that I didn’t have a larger propane tank came up.  I tried to get one in town but they were sold out, and in any case they were pretty expensive.  Well Charles said they had a couple 100lb tanks(holds what 5 grill-size tanks do, which I was using).  So, I ended up getting one from them for about half of what they were going to charge me at the store in town.

Connections can be powerful, but you have to be open to them.  If I hadn’t talked to Anne about straw bales, I wouldn’t have met Charles, and if I hadn’t talked to him about stuff I wouldn’t have gotten the tank.  Even a few years ago I may not have been extroverted enough to just start talking to people.

I’ve actually talked to Charles a couple times now and shown him around the straw bale place.  He had a lot of questions and seemed kind of excited at the idea of being able to build like that.  He even asked me for the website address to find out more about it, so hey, what’s up Charles? if you’re reading this.

I had just enough bales to cover the trailer as much as I wanted to and also make a compost bin out of bales.  I’m going to put fresher manure in it to break it down.  The bales should keep it warm and I’m also thinking about putting some clear plastic over it to heat it up and speed it along, that’s why I left a few bales off of the south side for better solar gain. Oh, and the bales will give off heat as they decompose, adding to the heat generated by the compost which will be even hotter thanks to the bales insulative value.

I’ve also taken the chicken tractor and removed the door on one side.  I found a really cheap roll of clear plastic drop cloth and stapled a couple sheets over the run and the now opened nesting box.  I oriented it to run east-west, ie, face south.  I also put a couple inch layer of straw underneath it.  I plan on putting some bricks and bottles of water in there to regulate the temperature and hold the heat into the night.

Today was sunny with an actual high of 40F according to weather.com.  I got two outdoor thermometers and set one outside the “solar coop” and one inside on the straw.  I checked it this afternoon and the thermometer sitting outside the coop in the sun read 60F, and the one in the house read 100F!

I’m actually hoping the bricks and water will moderate that high somewhat.  I’m going to use the solar coop to start my garden plants.  A lot of seeds are supposed to get started 8 weeks before the average last frost, which is April 15 here.  So, I’ll be starting several flats of seeds in the next 2 weeks.  I’m sure I’ll be checking on them far more than need be, it’s my nature.

I bought a couple of T-105 deep-cycle batteries a couple weeks ago.  I’ve got them all hooked up and now have juice in the camper without having to go out and turn the truck on and off.  I have a wall-charger and can take them to friends’ houses to charge them every week or so when they get a little low.

I’m excited about getting a wind generator set up and be truly off-grid.  I’d really like to build one, but I’m trying to prioritize as best I can.  The situation as it is right now isn’t too bad, and I think having a real roof over my head should be my top priority.

I can’t imagine that I won’t have the house ready to live in for next winter, but just the same I want to be sure.  I went and picked up some more of my favorite free used billboard tarps.  I’m going to use them to line the inside of the roof rafters and stuff the space between with wool and cellulose.  I’m taking it piece by piece since it’s hard to work with by myself and it’ll be easier to take down to fix leaks or run pipes and wiring up there later if I need to if it’s in smaller pieces.  I’m going to put pieces of wood on the outside of the rafters to hold the tarp in place better since it’ll be fairly heavy with all of the insulation.

Anne, who I’m getting the alapaca beans from has a bunch of rough wool she can’t use for anything else.  She said she’s been using it for mulch in her garden, but wool is an awesome insulator and even holds it’s insulative value when it’s wet, though I don’t intend it to get wet.  I’m thinking about asking other people with sheep and alpacas(I’ve heard of others) to see if they have wool they can’t use.   Connections.

I also continue to be contacted by all kinds of interesting people who find that what I’m doing resonates with them.  Keep on writing, I enjoy talking with all of you.  I’ve also gone out of my way and contacted several of the local universities.  William Woods University in Fulton has offered me as much horse manure as I want and a few professors at the University of Missouri have given me some good references about Native Americans that lived in this area, specifically ethnobotany(what they ate and used for medicine), but also traditions, rituals, etc.

I’m going to try to plant a lot of native plants in the garden here.  Hey, if they grow here already without anyone having to do anything, think how easy they’ll be to grow in the garden.  My kind of gardening.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Compost, garden, Greenhouses, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Greenhouses, Radical Sustainability, Recycled Materials, Solar, Ticks, Wild Turkeys, Wind | 10 Comments »

Hitting a Stem Wall

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Filled rubble trenchWe haven’t made much progress in the last couple of weeks.  We got delayed roughly a week due to the rain, but we finally got the drains in and filled the rubble trench with gravel and tamped it down.  Unfortunately, not much else has been done for the last week.  I’ve been searching and searching for a source of broken-up cement, also known as “urbanite”, as well as rocks that we could mortar together to build the stem wall.  I haven’t had any luck.

The stem wall is what the bales will sit on and is built directly over the filled in rubble trench.  I’ve thought I’d almost found a supply of building material a couple times, but they’ve all fallen through.  Now we’ve moved to plan b (pun sadly intended), I’ve ordered about 1,000 misprinted polypropylene feed sacks which we’ll fill with gravel and build our stem wall out of.  A couple of strands of barbed wire will be put in between each course of bags to create tensile strength.  I ran the whole thing by a natural building guru online and he said that’s been tried and tested and as long as we make sure to cover up the bags to protect them from uv-ray degradation, it should last indefinitely.  He did suggest double bagging them so that’s why I ordered 1,000.  We’ll still probably have some left over, but I’m sure we can find a use for them down the road.  It’ll probably be slightly more than building with urbanite, but we won’t have to buy any cement.

Pinkie chillin'It’s been oppresively hot and humid the last week, which hasn’t exactly been motivational in getting work done.  Liz and I have been working down at the lake cleaning up the gazebo, fixing the steps, and removing the trees from dam and along the shore blocking the gazebo view.  The roots in the dam can weaken it and cause it to fail.  We’ve also become fond of swimming in the lake.  The water in the first foot or two is extremely warm, and it gets cold very quickly beneath that.  At first we didn’t know if we liked it or not, but it actually gives you a lot more control over the temperature than a uniformly heated swimming hole.

Gazebo with trees clearedThe trees right along the water have been pretty hard to get out since they lean out over the water which means I have to secure them and wench them back so they don’t fall in the water.  I let one fall in the water though so it’ll become fish habitat.  We’ve turned in our application to the Missouri Department of Conservation to have our pond stocked for free.  There was a rumor going around that you had to open up the pond to the public to fish in, but it’s not true.  They’re going to stock it with large mouth bass, bluegill, and catfish.  We’re also adding a grass carp or two to control the duck weed floating on the surface and possibly some fathead minnows which eat mosquito larvae and make excellent bass food.

Speaking of trees, we sadly also had our application for donated trees from the big nursery around here denied.  Apparently they had a good year and didn’t have anything left over.  We talked to another group that had applied and they were told the same thing, so maybe it wasn’t just us.

Liz's engagement ringOn the happier side, I’m proud to announce that Elizabeth Stanfill and I are now engaged.  I know some people are shocked since I’ve never been one for traditional things, especially something as institutionalized as marriage, but meeting the right person can change your perspective on things.  I considered getting her a ring without a diamond at all, but none of them seemed right.  Then I hit upon guaranteed conflict-free diamonds with recycled-gold bands.  So, it’s somewhere between traditional and sustainable.  We don’t know when the date is yet, probably sometime late next spring in Virginia where most of Liz’s family lives.


Daniel flowersOver the course of the last week or two there has been an explosion of color as a wide variety of wild flowers have begun blooming.  We woke up one morning to find Daniel had collected a bouquet after his morning run.  He added to it later as he found more and more kinds.

Large labeled mapWe’ve also discovered something that has changed our road construction plans for next year.  I went down to the county assessor’s office and got a print-out of the satellite imagery of our property with the property lines overlayed on it.  It appears that we do own the land right along the road all the way down until Jerry Austin’s farm equipment area.  We’d been under the impression we didn’t own the strip directly along the road and so were going to have to build a much longer and more difficult road back to where we plan on building.  Now we’re looking at simply cutting across a few small gullies and connecting up with the more well-established road back to the lake and middle field beyond it.  The other road we’d been planning would have gone along Maya creek and been incredibly beautiful, but would have involved some bridge-building, drainage control, and just a lot of manual labor in general.  We’d still like to make a trail along it, but if we can get away without having to do all of that we will.

garden-june-27The garden has gained new life.  A lot of plants that didn’t look like they were going to make it, such as the beans, a lot of the transplants, tomatoes, etc, have greened back up and started growing.  A few things that initially looked very promising have faded such as the onions, and the peas looked good, then looked bad, then looked like they might be getting better, and now seem to have petered out again.  We’re hoping that next year the manure will have broken down and be more accessible to more of the plants.

Some of the plants don’t seem to mind one way or the other.  The squash and zucchini are starting to come in, although it’ll probably be another 3-4 days at least before we can actually pick some of them.  The corn is doing awesome, and we actually wish the lettuce would stop growing so fast.  We think we planted too much in too large of an area.  Also, some of the varieties in the mix we sowed aren’t as tasty as we’d hoped.  Some of the lettuce that looks like it should be bland has a bitter taste to it, and the arugula has a very strong nutty flavor that can be nice in small amounts but the taste has already gotten old.

We took a trip into Columbia today for “Free Mulch Day” and got 2 pick-up loads of what looks to be excellent stuff to put on the garden.  We were hoping we could use it for the paths as well but it’s got a lot of dirt and larger sticks in it that wouldn’t be too good for that.

Oh, and I’ve switched over from my own personal blogging software to a WordPress blog because it offers more features than I could ever have had time to program.  Specifically the photo stuff was killing me.  Sorry, but it means I lost all of the comments on the old posts.

Posted in Earth Bag, Recycled Materials, Rubble Trench | 3 Comments »

Day 3

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

It’s day 3 and I’m finally spending the night in a tent.  The car was fine the first night but the last 2 were pretty uncomfortable.  I wanted to wait until I had a tent platform built, which I had done by yesterday evening but then got caught up video chatting with Liz until it was dark and then I didn’t feel like setting it up with a headlamp.

I’ve already started to fall into a groove.  I go to sleep early, like around 10 and get up with the sun around 6-6:30.  Nothing is open so I can’t make calls or go get supplies, and I don’t want to break the still of the early morning with a generator or chainsaw so I’ve been clearing brush in a few spots I’d like to have people camp.  It’s probably the only time I’ve ever felt like George Bush.

Then I’ve been running around like crazy getting things from the storage unit, the hardware store, and picking up free pallets, and billboard vinyl wraps, and sawdust.  I’d read and heard that these things were easy to get but hadn’t really thought they would be.  I called a custom cabinet place nearby and they had bags and bags of sawdust, so I went over and grabbed 2 40lb bags for the composting toilet.

Tent on pallet platform

The pallets are everywhere once you start looking.  They’re hiding out behind lumber yards by the hundreds.  I bought a couple pieces of plywood and screwed them down to some pallets, and poof, a tent platform.  I also put a water sealant on it so it’ll hopefully last longer and didn’t nail the pieces together so each piece of plywood is on top of 2 pallets and can be easily dragged individually by one person if they need to be moved to a different camping spot.  And, I screwed the plywood on so I could easily take the plywood off and use it for something else if I needed to.

It’s really nice inside the tent.  I don’t have to worry about things falling over.  I feel dry and warm, and the floor is nice and smooth, no twigs or roots poking me in the back.  I’m looking around on craigslist for all kinds of things, but one of them is a twin and queen mattress.  I’ll put the queen in Liz and I’s tent and when she gets here, and just get the twin in the small guess tent for whoever.  Now that’s camping in style.

I also drove down toward the Lake of the Ozarks today to pick up some old vinyl billboard wraps.  It was a little farther than I expected, but I at least got to see some of Jefferson City and the touristy Osage Beach area.  I haven’t even looked at what all the vinyl wraps say yet.  They’re pretty massive and the bigger ones are hard to lift.  The one I did open had SUVs on it.  Who knew they were good for something?

Vinyl billboard wrap

I’m planning on putting them up over the tent platforms so everything stays nice and dry.  I’ll probably have to cut the bigger ones.  They’re like 16′x40′ and super thick.  It’s funny you can even see the photoshop .psd filename on the outer edges that are normally hidden from when they printed it on some kind of massive billboard printer.  I’m going to try to find somewhere closer that I can get them from, and also I’d like to see if they have any of the plywood panels from the older type billboards.  The place I went to today had some I saw over in a pile but they looked like they were in pretty rough shape having been left outside uncovered.

I got stuck in the mud a couple days ago, but managed to rock myself out.  I called the gravel people to come out and they said I needed to clear out the driveway so that their was 12′ of clearance both horizontally and vertically for the dump truck to dump the gravel.  So that’ll be another half day or so of brush clearing.  It’ll be nice not driving through all the mud and ruts when it’s done though.

Tomorrow I’m going in to Columbia to see about this 8 hp wood chipper I found on craigslist.  If it goes well I’ll be able to mulch that brush and use it for the garden and the paths around the campground.  If there’s room I’ll probably pick up another 55 gallon drum or two while I’m in Columbia.  There’s a recycling place there that sells them for $6.

Composting toilet initial stages

My other big project is getting the composting toilet built.  I’ve already sunk one of the 4 cedar posts that’ll hold it up off the ground and form the frame for the walls.  It’s quite a task, but enjoyable work.  I find building stuff in general, especially something as environmentally friendly as a nice composting toilet out of recycled materials very rewarding.

The journalism students came out on my first day and interviewed me and I gave them a tour of the property.  They were here for hours and they even came back to re-shoot some stuff the next day.  It went well and the story is supposed to run in the Missourian some time next week.  I’ll post a link to it when it comes out.

Showing them around made the need to clear up the tour route very obvious.  I’ll try to get to that somewhere between getting the garden going and starting on the straw bale place.  I’ve pretty much decided to give one tour a week on Saturdays at 2pm.  It’s quite a walk and takes awhile so I don’t want to be doing it all the time.

The creek was higher than I’d ever seen it when we went walking around and it was beautiful.  I don’t think I’ve ever been out here during Spring as an adult.  I’ve always come during the heart of summer, but there are quite a few flowers, both on the ground and on the trees.  You can also see a long way off without all the leaves on the trees.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Humanure, Recycled Materials | No Comments »

Arrival

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Well, I pulled onto the land this evening and hung a large tarp in the trees where we stayed last summer with the help of a head lamp and the car headlights.  It’s been raining here, but I lucked out and it hasn’t rained since although it’s supposed to tomorrow and the next day maybe.   I’m overwhelmed with all kinds of emotions.  Relief at finally being here, anxiety at the amount of work to do and figuring out what needs to be done next, excitement over the amount of work to do and figuring out what needs to be done next.

I already hate our gas generator with a passion.  It’s like running a lawn mower.  It drowns out the relaxing sounds of owls, frogs chirping, crickets, etc and makes me feel deaf.  I can’t wait for solar.

Tomorrow some journalism students from the University of Missouri are coming out to see everything and interview me.  I’d normally want a little more time to get things in order but they have to turn their report in by the beginning of this next week so I said sure.  They wanted to see the beginning, they’ll get the beginning. A guy in the woods with a tarp over his head.

I’m waiting to set up the tent until I can build a simple stand for it.  Bradley, a guy building an rammed earth bag house in Tennesse where I crashed last night on the way out here recommended it and I agree.  Being up off the ground will help keep things drier, cleaner, and it’ll be nice to have a flat surface to set things down on.

He also gave me some great ideas for replacement tarps.  Apparently a lot of billboards have their advertisements printed on giant pieces of thick vinyl that they just throw away afterwards.  It’s like a super tarp that lasts way longer than regular store-bought tarps.  Plus, who doesn’t want to see a Whopper on their ceiling every day.  Oh, maybe that’s a minus.

I’m thinking part of my preparation for visitors and getting things rolling will be to get some of those pieces of vinyl or more used tarps from places so that people will have nice places to set their tents up.   It’ll give me a good opportunity to lay out the camping area how I’d like it too.

I also realized with the first tour coming tomorrow that I’m going to need to at least clear out a decent foot path from the old cabin, along the path where the road will be, through the field where the ecovillage center will be, down the road to the lake and back out.  I already warned the journalism students that they’d be walking through the woods basically and that it might be raining.

The other big items on my to-do list are to dig a little drain ditch for a few of the bigger puddles on the road in here.  Then I need to call about having some gravel laid down, preferrably something from a dry creek bed instead of a quarry for environmental reasons.  Then I’ll start work on the first composting toilet, and then the solar shower, a small make-shift tool shed, a small garden, and then start on the house.  It’s gonna be a busy year.

Posted in Recycled Materials | No Comments »