Tag Archives: squash

Growing Possibilities

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

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

Guest Cabin Progress

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

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

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

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

Garden Raids

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

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

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

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

The Possibility Alliance

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

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

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

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

Visitors

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

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

Like Giant Legos

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.

Visitor Lodge with roof plateIt 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!

Liz making picklesIn 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.

Cooking some home-grown food including sweet cornWe 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.