Posts Tagged ‘Earthen Plaster’

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 | 2 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 »

Earth Day Every Day

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Happy Earth Day everyone.  It seems like an appropriate time for your bi-weekly Maya Creek update.  The last several weeks of sunny 70 degree weather have given me the chance to get a lot done.  I’ve built two new sheet mulched no-till garden beds, one of them being a 4th vegetable bed so that I can do a 4 year crop rotation, and the other is a 2nd perennial bed.  The new vegetable bed is already planted with 5 different kinds of potato, and the perennial bed is now home to asparagus and soon to have some jerusalem artichokes added.  I made a video while I was making the 4th garden bed, but I’m not particularly happy with it.  I’ll probably post it anyway after I take another look at it.

It seems that we’ve past the last frost in the area, and so my gamble on getting a few things in the ground early might well pay off.  I’ve already learned a couple new lessons in the garden.  I’m going to start planting trap crops of radishes for the flea beetles.  They attack the radishes and I yank them and burn them, seems to be the only method I’ve come across for handling them organically.  Otherwise they pretty quickly make my turnips and eggplants look like someone shot them with a really small shotgun.

I’ve done a lot of interplanting of flowers and things this year, and I’ve planted a number of perennial flowers in the perennial beds to draw in some beneficial insects.  I’m aiming to plant even more once I figure out where I’m planting the rest of the fruit trees and berry bushes that I’ve ordered.

Last year it got pretty tiring hauling the generator up to the garden to run the pump for the solar shower.  I considered setting up a small solar power rig, but it just seemed like way more time and money than it was worth.  So essentially I built a fancy solar bucket shower.  I still heat the water the same way with the black barrels under a clear plastic drop cloth, but now I just pour a couple buckets of the hot water into a small holding bucket with a faucet and shower head I stole off one of the solar shower bags, and whallah.  It doesn’t have much pressure and it comes out fairly slowly, but I can easily take a shower, wash my hair, and shave on around 2-3 gallons of water.  We were easily using 7-10 gallons with the pump system.

One of the two work exchangers I have coming this summer is heading over from Nebraska early next week.  He’s about my age and he’ll possibly be staying a couple months.  I’d been needing to get tarpopolis set up again and this was my excuse.  I’ve got all of the tarps hung again, which went significantly faster this time around now that I know what I’m doing and have all the pieces cut to the right size.  I’ve also set up the two guest tents and put mattresses and some shelving in them as well.  I’m still looking for more work exchangers, so if you’re interested shoot me an e-mail.

Apart from that I’ve set up the storage tarp area and have been moving all of the stuff from inside the straw bale place out to it and organizing it as I go.  It was kind of a disaster area in the place since I left in kind of a hurry last year when the temperatures plummeted last October, and now I’m paying for it.  It’s like coming home from a vacation and you’ve got dirty dishes in the sink, no clean clothes, etc.  I already feel a little more bounce in my step and I’m only about half way done with the clean-up.

Once the house is cleared out I can start on the roofing insulation again in earnest.  I’ve got a wonderful source of trash Alpaca wool.  Basically the wool from the legs is very coarse, and since it’s not good for clothing gets thrown out even though it still has excellent insulative properties.  I’m sure that process will go much faster with a second set of hands as well.

I’m also reading a natural plaster book and starting to refine my ideas and plans on how to plaster the building.  I’d been thinking about a lime or possibly paper-crete covering for the gravel bags to protect the areas most likely to get splashed, but I’m now thinking about covering everything in earthen clay plaster and then adding a mortared rock splash guard around the bottom.  I think it’ll look really nice and be more environmentally friendly to be sure. In the meantime, Pink has certainly been enjoying rolling around and sunning himself on the clay mound outside the house.

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Posted in Cats, Compost, Earthen Plaster, Sheet Mulching, Solar Hot Water, Visitor Lodge | 5 Comments »