Maya Creek

As I stepped out of the St. Louis airport and the wall of thick steamy air hit me I began to realize that Egypt isn’t all that bad this time of year.  At least the oppressive heat there is dry.

I had a good 12-day trip with my family.  We saw all the major tourist attractions, rode camels, sailed up the Nile, and saw enough hieroglyphics, temples, and tombs to last me a lifetime.  Summer isn’t the ideal time to visit Egypt, nor is it an ideal time for me to take a vacation, but when given the chance to go I had to take it.

John and Tom kept working away while I was gone.  They got most of the first coat of earthen plaster on the outside, harvested the potato crop, and picked up a truck load of waste alpaca fiber.  Tom headed back to Canada a few days before I got back.  He was the voice of reason, hard working and wise for his age.  I have no doubt he’ll be back someday.

The severe heat forced our work patterns to change.  We’re now getting up around 6-7am and working until about noon and then depending on how we feel we’ll work a few hours in the evenings as well.  For the hot part of the day we sit in the common house and read, watch movies, nap, etc.  The hottest it gets in the house is about 80 degrees, the only problem is that the floor is not completely dry and won’t be until we leave the doors open.  That also means it’s very humid in the house and doesn’t feel as cool as it should, but with a fan going it’s more than tolerable.

Straw  Bale Cabin Progress

Despite the heat we’ve still managed to finish the interior and exterior plaster coats on the straw bale cabin, as well as fixing and reinforcing the roof.  While we wait for that to finish drying to add the next layer to the floor and walls we’re going to work on the granite footing.

We’re going to dig a trench about a foot deep and fill it with used styrofoam packing peanuts and then place the waste alpaca fiber in old polypropylene feed sacks before we enclose it in granite pieces like we did on the common house.  Insulating the floor helps to isolate the earthen floor from the outside and acts as a thermal mass keeping it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

Porch

Before I left for Egypt we finished getting the roof on the porch.  It’s dramatically increased the storage area, but it won’t get screened in or have the floor finished until next year at least.  The common house actually looks like a homestead now.

Compost Piles

John and I made a large compost pile from horse bedding, garden weeds, and humanure earlier this week.  We get the horse manure free from the stables at a local university, they even load it up for us.   By building the pile all at once it gets incredibly hot, so we put all of the humanure in the middle of the pile and use the heat to sterilize it.

Every time we fill up all dozen or so humanure buckets we’ll make a new compost pile.  The piles take about a year to break down completely.  It could be sped up significantly if you turned it, but since we’re not in a hurry and turning it would take a lot of energy and time, we’ll wait.

This is easily the hardest blog entry I’ve ever had to write. I’m not very comfortable discussing my relationship publicly on the Internet, but just about everyone who knows me through the ecovillage knows both Liz and I together.  I guess I’ll just say it bluntly and not get into the details, Liz and I are no longer together.

Liz is living in Roanoke, VA where the rest of her family lives and where she owns a recently renovated house.  If you would like to contact her, her e-mail is liz@sayitontheweb.com.

I hesitate to speak on her part, but I know we are both disappointed that we were unable to make it work together.  Neither of us are to blame for being who we are or not trying hard enough.

That said, I am making plans to return to the land alone much earlier than before.  I recently bought a 16′ camper with a propane heater which I’ll stay in through the winter and continue working on the straw bale visitors’ lodge as well as possibly building a small greenhouse and/or storage shed.

I am determined to continue with the ecovillage.  I feel a little ludicrous calling it an ecovillage when I’ll simply be living alone in the woods for some time, perhaps calling it an ecohermitage is more appropriate for the moment.  I’m just going to take it one step at a time. I know if I build it the right people will come, or rather, if I build part of it  they’ll come and help me build the rest.

I’m glad to have made several local friends, but I’m also quite happy spending time alone.  I learned a long time ago how to entertain myself.  I’ve got a pile of books that I’ve been waiting to read, and the construction and part-time web design will keep me fully occuppied.

I’m currently in Jackson, MS heading to the Austin/San Marcos area after Thanksgiving and will stay for a couple weeks, possibly even until Christmas.  I’ll also be looking for a used diesel farm truck during that time, because you can’t beat Texas for used trucks.  After Texas I’ll be heading back to the land so either the end of December or beginning of January I’ll be back out there.

Every day seems like a vast improvement over the last.  Today I expanded my tent platform, raised and reinforced the billboard tarp over it, and put the 8-person tent Liz and I bought last year up on it.  It’s actually something you could spend a decent amount of time in now.

I also got tired of not being able to find tools, parts, and things not to mention looking at the massive pile of disordered stuff under the main tarp.  It took me several hours but I finally got it looking reasonable.  I moved the 4-person tent I’d been sleeping in under the main tarp and loaded it up with well-sorted tools and other hardware odds and ends.  I then used the other half of the main tarp to set up a kitchen and table, which I’m cooking myself some potatoes and onions on right now.

The chipper I bought didn’t come with a draw-string bag that’s supposed to go over where the mulch comes out to catch it.  I tried putting a bucket under it but it just blasted in and right out.  I called grocery stores and feed stores looking for burlap bags, but no luck.  Finally it was up to my own ingenuity so I took some billboard scraps and sewed it into a simple bag with some old twine I found in a tree from when we were here last fall.  Then I punched a bunch of holes in it and wove a bungee cord around the opening end to hold it on to the chipper chute.  It works great.

Chipping takes a bit longer than I’d hoped.  Mainly because I have to trim a lot of the branches off some of the wood and it doesn’t chew the stuff up super fast either, especially the bigger stuff, but it works.  I’ve started putting the mulch down on the paths, mainly right in front of my tent so far, but once I make some more mulch I’ll do the main path.

Yesterday I spent the entire day clearing out the driveway so that the gravel people’s dump trucks could get down it and lay the gravel.  They needed it 12’ wide by 12’ tall.  The way the road was before was very closed in and it had a good feel to it.  That also made it very time consuming to clear out and now it’s not nearly as cozy feeling.  I suppose it’ll grow back or we could plant some shrubs and vines along the sides to make it feel nicer.  Anyway, there’s plenty of fuel for the wood chipper now.

The gravel guys should be out here early next week and that’ll be first big improvement I feel like.  Although, just having the camp site set up and reasonably comfortable has been big.  My next task is get the composting toilet built.  I’ve sunk one of the four cedar trunks that’ll be the frame.

I took a shower at our family friends’ house down the road yesterday.  It was the first time in 6 days and I really needed it after clearing the driveway.  It was almost 80 degrees outside and since I was sweating all the sawdust, bark, and dirt just stuck to me.  Before that I wasn’t too bad.  I think the ideal temperature for working outside is in the low 60’s.  Once you get your heart rate up it feels perfect and I don’t sweat very much.

So, yeah, my next big project after the composting toilet is the solar shower because it’ll make life a lot happier.  I’m going to get some straw bales and build a small greenhouse type thing around one of the black 55-gallon drums and then fill it with water I haul in from a pumping station in town.  I’m thinking I can extend the greenhouse part a little and the water in the tank will mediate the temperature at night and keep it warmer in there for whatever warm-weather plants I might want to grow in there.

Tomorrow I’m off to meet up with my mom and step-dad in Oklahoma, which is just about half way from their place in Texas.  I’m swapping my little civic for Gary’s truck.  That’ll make things a lot easier, I won’t have to take as many trips with the little trailer and I can finally start on the garden with some loads of compost.

By the way, I also got a PO Box in town today.  You can find it on the Contact Us page, but it’s PO Box 876 Fulton, MO 65251.