Posts Tagged ‘Straw Bale’
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: cabin, Canada, cedar, clay, creek, Earthen Floor, floor, knobs, nitrogen deficiency, path, porch, rock, stepping stones, stones, stove, Straw Bale, wood
Posted in garden, Kita, Natural Building, Nitrogen Fixers, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Straw Bale, Summer Cabins, Visitor Lodge, Volunteers | 5 Comments »
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: 4th of July, berry bushes, blueberries, bon fire, chicken of the woods, dam, Earthen Plaster, fawn, fruit trees, garden, goumi, granite, Jack's Fork, Jefferson City, lettuce, lime, maitake, mortar, mosquitoes, mushroom logs, Nebraska. work exchangers, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Ozark National Scenic Riverways, plywood, reishi, russian olives, sand, shiitake, Solar, spinach, Straw Bale, sugar snap peas, sulfur, Ticks, tomatoes, tour route, trees, wind generator, wiring
Posted in Earthen Plaster, Mushrooms, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Ticks, Wind | 5 Comments »
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: alpaca beans, Anne, billboard vinyl, camper, cellulose, Charles, chicken tractor, Chickens, Compost, compost bin, connections, coop, deep-cycle batteries, insulation, Jesse, manure, off-grid, plastic drop cloth, roof, solar coop, Straw Bale, thermometer, University of Missouri, William Woods University, wind generator, wool
Posted in Compost, garden, Greenhouses, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 3 Comments »
Friday, December 25th, 2009
After some soul-searching and continued annoyance with referrals to the morning after pill I’ve decided to change the name of the Ecovillage. I’ve gone through a few different ideas and some conferring with Justin and Melainia I’ve settled on Maya Creek Ecovillage. Almost the entire watershed is on the property and it’s easily one of the most beautiful features of the land. The road that will eventually go out to the ecovillage center will pass along several especially beautiful parts. What a way to be greeted home!
It’s snowing out here on the land today. Big fat flakes dancing around in the gusty wind. There was a little snow on the ground when I arrived but it melted quickly the first day. I’ve only been out here for about 5 days.
It’s gotten colder since then, but I’m keeping warm. The propane heater is keeping the camper warm and I’ve also started using one of the kerosene lamps in the evenings, which also puts off a good amount of heat. It makes it smell a little, but nothing like the kerosene heater did.
It’s not a large area to heat, but the camper has exactly no insulation. That’s why I’m using a bunch of the rejected straw bales I have left over from the house to just wall in the camper for the winter. I’m going to hang one of the billboard tarps from the trees over the camper to keep the bales dry It’s ok if they degrade a little because I’m going to use some of the wet ruined bales to mulch the garden this year.
I started on it, but didn’t want to hang the tarp first because it was supposed to snow and I wouldn’t have been here to knock it off and make sure it didn’t just collapse and tear the tarp. Even with just third of it I’ve done it’s made a difference. I put that part up to block the prevailing winds, but I’m sure once I get the bottom done all the way around it’ll make the floor a lot warmer too.
I wouldn’t have been here because I was supposed to be in Minnesota at the family Christmas, but the same storm that’s snowing on me made a barricade of ice between here and there. Snow is one thing. Ice is another beast altogether. I’m still going up there, but just going to miss today and post-Christmas eve. I’d been looking forward to seeing everybody and I’m glad I still will.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for the winter out here. The first thing is to get the trailer baled and get the water running, especially the hot water. I’ve been worried that the water might freeze in the tank or in the lines, but I think once it’s all baled in that won’t be a problem.
The next thing I’m going to do is make a hot bed, which is basically a cold frame that you put compost under to keep warm. I’m going to try growing some greens and who knows what else in it. It’s a stepping stone to a larger greenhouse I’d like to build out in the garden area. I’ve already got some good ideas on the design.
My next bigger and much more expensive project is to start generating some power. I didn’t really want to spend the money just yet, but I found an awesome deal on some amorphous silicon thin-film panels. They were only 98 cents/watt, which is outrageous considering the next cheapest I’d ever found before was $1.74/watt and that was at this same web site. I ordered 10 Kaneka 60W panels from Sun Electronics in case anyone else is looking for cheap panels. The next cheapest place I found was Affordable Solar, but even it’s best deal is $2.69/watt and most of them are much much more.
The camper has a battery-powered lighting system and I have an small inverter I can use for now, but 600W will be way more than enough for just me. Even just taking the minimum average hours of full strength sunlight per year and minimum panel efficiency I should get at least 1.5 kWh/day or roughly enough juice to use my 90W power hungry giant laptop for almost 17 hours/day. Obviously I wouldn’t use my computer that much, but it gives you an idea.
There are a still a lot more expensive components to buy and then I’ll have to assemble them, the toughest of which will be mounting the panels on adjustable mounts that I’m going to make myself. The batteries and the charge controller will be the most expensive pieces, and the inverter isn’t cheap either.
I’ve learned to scale down my expectations somewhat on how quickly I can get things done, but not as much as I had worried I’d have to. So, building the green house and the solar power system are my main things to get done, but somewhere in there I’m also going to set up a small biodiesel production system to process waste vegetable oil for use in the truck and future vehicles and engines. That’ll cost a bit to set up as well, but nowhere near the expense of the off-grid power system.
And, as if I could get all of that done I’m also thinking about building a nicer larger guinea/chicken coop with insulation that I can fit inside the greenhouse. It’ll keep the birds warmer and they also produce some CO2 and body heat for the plants. At some point I’d like to be able to move the coop to another greenhouse though so I’m going to keep that in mind.
Other than that, the straw bale house is standing up nicely to the elements, even without plaster or gutters. The tarps certainly aren’t very charming though. Everything else said and done, I’m enjoying living in the camper. It’s cozy, everything is within arm’s reach, and it takes 5 minutes to clean from top to bottom. I hope everyone else out there is staying warm and dry.
Tags: amorphous silicon, biodiesel, body heat, camper, Chickens, Christmas, CO2, cold frame, coop, greenhouse, Guineas, heat, hot bed, insulation, Kaneka, kerosene, Maya Creek, off-grid, power, propane, snow, solar panels, Straw Bale, sun electronics, waste vegetable oil, winter
Posted in Chickens, Greenhouses, Guineas, Solar, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
The weather has shifted and things are getting downright cold around here. The first frost is just around the bend and our tomatoes don’t look happy about it. It’s been pretty overcast and the solar shower just isn’t cutting it anymore so we’ve been taking showers at the truck stop.
The metal roof has been installed on the straw bale visitor lodge and it seems to be working like a charm. It’s already weathered several intense storms without a sign of leakage. Standing back and looking at the place I can’t help but be proud of myself. I know we were aiming to get the entire place done this year, and we certainly could have gotten farther with different weather and more help, but somehow it’s hard to believe we’ve done as much as we’ve done.
We’ve started packing everything up and taking down Tarpopolis for the winter, after all, the tarps would collapse under any kind of snow load. Liz has cleaned up a large chunk of the garden. I’ve still got a few more things to do like tarping up the walls of the straw bale place and putting a metal roof over the composting toilet. The cold makes it hard to get up in the mornings, but it certainly motivates to get as much done as possible.
We had a busy weekend with a photo-journalism student coming out to do a project about us, and a couple from Kansas City came out for a visit as well. Justin and Melainia came out Sunday too and Justin helped us slaughter and butcher the guineas. In reality, he did all of the slaughtering by breaking their necks in what appeared to be about as quick and painless a way imaginable. The bodies still flopped around afterwards in a grotesque nervous system dance. After watching Justin clean and butcher 2 of the 3 guineas I did the last one to get my hands dirty and really learn how to do it.
I’m not quite comfortable with the neck snapping, killing the animals is by far one of the more difficult and emotionally taxing things to do, at least for most people. I’m concerned about hesitating and not doing it hard enough to kill them and having them suffer, the opposite is doing it too hard, in which case you pull the head clean off, which Justin did on the first one since guinea necks are weaker than chickens’ and he’d never done a guinea before. I’m thinking I’d like to try making a chopping block out of a stump with two nails that you bend over the neck to hold it still and cutting the head off that way. I’m sure that will cause the birds more anxiety, although I’d know I could kill it quickly and surely that way. Gruesome trade-offs, and I may end up snapping the necks, but either way I know the birds had a good life, and that’s really the most important thing in my opinion.
We would have also slaughtered the last chicken but the night before Justin came out, a fox or some other critter made off with her. All that remained was a pile of feathers and a bent fence where whatever it was climbed back over the fence. Surely the way we choose to slaughter our animals is less painful and drawn out than what nature would do otherwise.
We cooked the meat over the fire and served it with some boiled carrots and potatoes from the garden. The guinea meat was somewhat darker than chicken meat and had a slightly gamy flavor, which was actually very enjoyable. The leg meat was a little chewier, but again, it was enjoyable. I say that not just because it was personally satisfying to have raised our own meat, but because I objectively thought it was tasty.
Our goal is to be providing ourselves with all or most of our own meat, which will undoubtedly be much less than the average American consumes. It will also be healthier meat without all the antibiotics and elevated levels of saturated fats that confined animals end up with. Not to mention our animals will be living happy lives doing what they instinctively want to do, and in the process providing us with much more than just meat and eggs. We’ll be using goats like lawn mowers, using manure as fertilizer, guineas and other animals to get rid of pest plants and insects, all the while providing the pleasure of their company.
We recognize that the shear fact that we will be killing most of these animals near the end of their useful lives may seem brutal or inhumane to some people. However, the more I observe and live closer to nature and read varying perspectives on animal husbandry, I’ve begun to see it as a symbiotic relationship. These animals have evolved to depend on humans for their care and continuity as a species, in return they provide us with a host of services and ultimately even their bodies.
The alternatives are either to not have animals at all, which seems like a huge loss once you begin to recognize the immensely useful goods and services they provide, or to take care of them long past their useful lifespan until they die of old age, which is simply a fool’s errand. I certainly will not enjoy killing them, but I will do it with somber respect and gratitude by doing it as quickly and humanely as possible and being as wasteless as possible with what they have provided.
In this last week, my mother will be coming up and we’ll visit the sustainability fair in Columbia, MO as well as just showing her what we’ve done and enjoying each others company. Liz is heading out on Saturday I believe and I’ll finish up a few things and follow her a couple days later. It’s sad to be leaving all of what we’ve accomplished but we’ll be back early next year and then we’ll be permanent residents. I’m definitely looking forward to hot showers whenever we want and not dreading pulling off those covers in the morning.
I’ll continue to post blogs, I may even convince Liz to start posting as well. We’ll spend the first month or so in Virginia doing some minor improvements to Liz’s house there and then we’ll head off to visit different intentional communities, as well as friends and family on a winter voyage in a small cheap tow-behind camper. I’ve already got a few questions for each place we go, and I’m excited to see what other golden bits of wisdom they can bestow upon us and thus our blog readers as well.
Tags: butcher, camper, cold, Columbia, ecovillages, feathers, fox, frost, Guineas, Intentional Communities, MO, slaughter, Solar shower, Straw Bale, sustainability fair, tarps, Visitor Lodge, winter
Posted in Chickens, Guineas, Intentional Communities, Solar Hot Water, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 6 Comments »
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
The big news is that the roof is going up quickly. Probably one of the few things that’s going faster than I anticipated. The weather has been exceptionally cooperative, all the same, we are running out of time before the cold moves in so I’ve strung two large blue tarps over the site so that we could possibly work even if the weather wasn’t great and wouldn’t have to go through the labor intensive process of covering and uncovering the walls every time the weather got bad.
I considered covering the site from the beginning, but ruled it out based on how hard and costly it would be, but looking back on the unusually wet summer we’ve had here, it would have been a good idea to do it earlier. Who would’ve guessed though?
The flow of visitors(i.e. free labor) has tapered off somewhat and Liz has injured her back somehow. That left me with the unenviable task of raising the roof mostly alone. I consulted with Tom Mudd, a family friend down the way, and he filled in a lot of my questions on how to design the roof and what I’d need. He also informed me I’d need a minimum of 3 people to put the ridge beam on. I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for volunteers so I pondered and came up with what I felt was a fairly ingenious method and managed to do it all by myself. I’ve since hung all of the rafters and cross-ties and started putting the purlins on.
It’s now become clear that we won’t be staying in the building this winter, and we’ve decided to try to leave around the last part of October. At the current pace we should have the roof done and the protective plaster on easily by that time. Our plans for the winter are to get some sort of used RV and migrate south, visiting other intentional communities, ecovillages, and like-minded people along the way. We’ll also probably spend some time in Virginia working on Liz’s house there.
In other news, we were in the news last week. We were the cover story for the Columbia Missourian which you can see here. They took some nice photos and wrote a pretty good article. It looks like the same article also got put on a number of news sites in St. Louis. A guy named Glenn who’s building an earthship in Union, MO called me tonight after reading about us on Yahoo! News. It’s great having all the cool people come to us without even having to search them out.
The garden has slowed down, but still producing a large number of tomatoes. The squash are producing a second explosion, which we could probably have done without since we’ve got two large overflowing crates of them as it is. Liz has canned about 35 jars of pickles as well as a couple jars of pasta sauce. She’s also discovered that you can use regular jars from the store to can with. Jars from things like pasta sauce and pickles will seal shut if you do them just like the special canning jars. That ought to save some money and what a great way to reuse something rather than recycling it.
The Missouri Department of Conservation provided us with channel catfish and bluegill fingerlings for our pond. It was more than a small chore hauling the pond water up to the truck to have them put the fingerlings in at the drop location and then hauling them back down. We haven’t got the road accessible back there yet so I had to make a half dozen trips with the garden cart. Next spring we’ll be getting the bass fingerlings for free from the MDC as well.
Today we took a brief break from everything and went to a “Knapp-In” in Booneville, MO about an hour away. Justin and Melainia, our friends from Fulton invited us out. Justin knapps flint and makes his own spears, at’latls, darts, arrows, bows, etc. It was really interesting watching the people knapp arrowheads and knives. Justin participated in the at’latl contest. For those that don’t know, an at’latl is a deviced used to essentially extend the length of ones arm allowing you to throw a spear or dart much harder and farther. Although he’s technically new at the contest throwing, he cleaned the floor with all of the rookies, myself included, although to be fair it was only my first time to ever try to throw one at all. Here’s a video of Justin hurtling a dart with an at’latl.
That’s it for this installment. We’re in the home stretch and the weather is starting to cool off. We’ll be working pretty much non-stop except for a brief excursion down to Mississippi for my 10 year high school reunion.
Tags: at'latl, bluegill, Canning, channel catfish, ecovillages, fish, garden, intentional communties, jars, knapping, Missouri Department of Conservation, pickles, pond, pond stocking, ridge beam, roof, RV, Straw Bale, tarps, The Columbia Missourian, Tom Mudd, tomato sauce, Visitor Lodge, volunteers
Posted in Canning, Reusable Goods, Straw Bale | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
I missed an entry, but I have to say that it’s amazing how quickly time flies by out here, especially when you’re working from sunrise to sunset.
It took weeks of waiting for a dry spell to put the bales up. It’s been a really wet summer here in Missouri. July had twice the average rainfall and August hasn’t been much better. As you can imagine, stacking the bales was extremely exciting and at first it seemed like we’d have the whole thing done within hours like. However, we did run into our share of problems.
It’s been difficult juggling all of the details that go into designing and building a house as well as keeping up with a regular job. We had to stuff between the bales because where the baling twine wrapped around the bales it was more compressed left gaps when you pushed the bales together. This eventually lead to the corners of our walls bulging out, although it didn’t seem like it at the time, I believe the bales slowly moved outward as we banged other bales into place.
After we got it all up and put the roof plate pieces on top we covered it all for a few days of rain. When I took the tarps off I disovered that a couple places had actually funneled water into our wall. So, we started replacing the wet bales and as we were doing that I accidentally pushed on one of the walls and the whole thing fell down. After most of the day getting that wall back up a gust of wind blew through and knocked half of another wall down. As you can imagine we were starting to get pretty discouraged.
Over the course of the last few days we’ve finally gotten the roof plate lined up and assembled, as well as getting the wire tie-downs attached, and stuffing and closing up the rest of the roof plate. It was quite a bit more work than I expected, but the walls are all secure and sturdy. I haven’t tightened it down all the way yet which is going to involve trying to get it all level on top which it isn’t quite at the moment.
Anyway, it’s been really exciting seeing the building rise from the ground. It has a real sense of space to it now. I’ve improved my tarping technique dramatically so when this front comes through later today it should be all snug and dry. Now it’s time to get everything together for the roof!
In other news we lost a couple of chickens to an animal. The chickens finally figured out that they could fly over their fence and they got out one night and all but one got eaten. We’ve since clipped the last chicken’s wings and it hasn’t been able to fly out any more. We’d also been letting the guineas roost in the trees but the night after we lost the chickens we lost a guinea to something, probably an owl. So now we’ve started feeding them in their coup at night and closing them in.
The garden is still producing like crazy and Liz has made several large batches of pickles, trying out different recipes to see which we’ll like. We still have to wait another few weeks before the first batch will be ready. We’ve got an overload of squash still and a lack of recipes or desire to cook it, but we just got some new cookbooks and hopefully that will open up some new ways of reducing our stockpile. In the meantime we’re toying with the idea of spending a Saturday at the farmer’s market in town and seeing if we can’t unload some of it there.
We have had some run-ins with pests in the garden but nothing too major until a couple weeks ago. The deer finally found our garden and ate all of our precious sweet corn. And let me tell you that was the best corn I’d ever had. It was so sweet I’m pretty sure it could have been classified as a dessert. Liz put up two strands of fishing wire around the whole thing. It’s something we found in a Mother Earth News magazine that said the deer wouldn’t push on it hard enough to break it and wouldn’t jump over it because they can’t see it. It’s certainly worked so far and I’ll keep you posted on how successful it is.
The other pests have all been bugs, and we’ve stuck to just picking them off so far. We’re starting a bunch of flowers and plants that are supposed to attract the predators of those and other garden bugs. We’ll also be building some other habitat for frogs, lizards, and other helpful garden creatures. It takes a little while to build up their populations, but how easy will it be once they’re there and going.
We’ve been interviewed and photographed by the Missourian, a newspaper in Columbia again. They say that we’re actually going to be on the front page some time soon and I’ll pass it on when that happens. We’ve got a couple coming up from Florida next week and I think one of my friends will be passing through with some of her friends on a cross-country trip around the same time as well.
Tags: cookbook, Deer, fishing line, Missourian, Mother Earth News, pickles, recipes, roof plate, squash, Straw Bale, tarps, Visitor Lodge
Posted in Chickens, Guineas, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 1 Comment »
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
It took us about 2 weeks of digging, but the foundation is finally dug. We still have a bit of leveling and finishing to get done today, but all of the really hard stuff is done. It wouldn’t even have taken us 2 weeks if we hadn’t had to stop for a couple days every time there was a hard rain. We were also helped along by Liz’s idea to dig the sub-floor out to 2 different depths rather than removing all of the dirt to the lowest point. It saved a huge amount of digging.
I think a lot of people doubted that we’d actually be able to dig the whole foundation with hand tools. If there had been a lot of rocks in the dirt or it had been more compacted that may have been the case, but it was pretty much pure clay that wasn’t too awful to get out. We’ll also be able to use it to plaster the house, make the earthen floor, and build the bench for the rocket stove. Don’t get me wrong it was still a lot of hard sweaty work, but I found it extremely satisfying. Plus I got a nice tan out of it and a shirtless picture of me, of which the world can never be blessed with enough of.
It’s been exciting to see the building floor emerge from the earth. It makes imagining the rooms and the space a much more tangible exercise. It’s going to be a very nice sized building, not too small and not too big. I’m also happy that we were able to orient it for passive solar. I had begun to think we weren’t going to be able to until I found that true south wasn’t where I had thought it was.
The trenches seem to be draining pretty well for the most part, but the sub-floor needs to have the edges leveled down so that the water drains off of it a bit better. The next step after tamping and leveling is going to be laying down a perforated drain pipe in the middle of the rubble trench and leading down the drain ditch. We also need to install an duct pipe that’ll allow us to run wires and flexible tubing inside the building without going through the straw bale wall which might allow moisture to get into the bales. A drain pipe for all the faucets and the shower is going to need to be laid so that it connects up with the perforated drain pipe in the rubble trench.
We’ll also be putting in 2” panels of rigid foam polystyrene insulation on the outside section of the rubble trench to insulate the foundation somewhat. I’m not very happy about using polystyrene in the building, but I haven’t been able to find a better alternative and I want to make sure that the foundation has a little insulation. I may find out it’s not that important to have, but until then I want to make sure we don’t have a well insulated house with a heat sink for a floor.
After all that is laid down we’ll start filling the whole thing up with gravel and tamping it down until it’s all 6” below grade, and then we’ll start building the urbanite(reclaimed cement chunk) stem wall mortared together that will extend at least 1’ above ground.
In other news, I built a 4’x8’ guinea henhouse and got it stocked with 6 guineas that Daniel and I got from a poultry swap meet a couple hours south of here. It was the only place we knew we could reliably find guinea chicks that were old enough that they didn’t need a heat lamp but not so old that they’d run away whenever we let them out. I got 3 each from 2 different ladies, one group is 3 weeks old and the other group is 4-5 weeks old.
We’re going to have to keep them in the henhouse for at least a couple weeks, maybe significantly more so that they know its home. I’m also going to start teaching them to come to me with a call and giving them some white millet. Liz might take that over from me when she gets back from her weddings in Virginia on Wednesday.
It’s not dropping below 60 now and the birds just finished their 2nd night and seem to be fine. I put a cardboard box inside the henhouse and put some straw in it and then covered it with straw for more insulation. I put them in there at night since otherwise they all just group together in a corner. It’s good that they group together, but if it’s just up against the plywood their going to loose a lot of heat so I put them in the box and they group up in there instead.
I’m looking forward to letting the little guys and girls out to eat bugs to their heart’s content. A guinea can eat 200 ticks a day, multiply that by 6 and we’ve dealt a massive blow to the tick population around here. They also range up to a ¼ of a mile radius and get up to 90% of their food from ranging which makes them extremely cheap and effective. They don’t scratch the ground and they only eat grass and seeds apart from insects so they’re great to have in the garden as long as you don’t start feeding them vegetable scraps, because then they’ll start finding those vegetables in the garden.
Tags: Guinea coop, Guineas, Natural Building, Rubble Trench, Straw Bale, Tao, Ticks
Posted in Animals, Guineas, Natural Building, Pest Control, Rubble Trench, Straw Bale, Ticks, Visitor Lodge | No Comments »
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.
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.
