I forgot that I even wrote that last post. Not much has changed (hence the continued lack of writing), and a lot has changed.
I moved back to the northside, among friends, into a collective house where rent is one hundred dollars cheaper for me (from 262.50 to 156.25), and even that can be worked off by trading labor on the house for $10 an hour. I’m so happy to be living with my partner and her daughter, along with other friends. It’s what I’ve wanted since the beginning of our living together.
The yard has substantial southern sun- i.e. it has been in gardens before, and it will be again. We’re keeping 6 lovely chooks in a coop and run (that was already here when we moved here, sitting full of weeds) that I’ll hopefully expand to be a two paddock setup, with a chicken tractor for short excursions around the yard.
There was already a little cold frame, and I’m in the process of building a greenhouse out of scavenged wood and windows (still figuring out the roof, the “best” option looking like buying clear corrugated plastic roofing panels). It’s 13 feet east/west, and 8 feet north/south. I’ll have a raised bed along the front of it, and in the back, black plastic drums full of water and a compost pile under a shelf for flats, a closable chicken door (the greenhouse is positioned right next to the chicken yard) to let the chickens in during the winter to get some sun and add their body heat, and possibly a cob oven in the back corner with a chimney letting the smoke out, ala a combination of chad’s idea and ernie’s idea. I don’t really expect to be able to grow in there in the dead of winter, but it’s fun to play with the possibility. If I had the opportunity, I’d follow Mike Oehler’s advice and bury the greenhouse in a hillside so it was insulated on all sides but the south. I hope to build some hugelkulture beds, and I want to dig a little pond for froggies to live in (and to practice sealing a pond naturally, either by gleying or by doing the pigs work (basically mucking in the mud for a while), ala Sepp Holzer). After all that, I’d like to hook up a Jean Pain compost pile to an outdoor shower, dig and build a root cellar, and build a sweatlodge or sauna. I’m also excited to have a stock tank swimming pool in the backyard for next summer.
And for this winter, I’m living with wood stoves for the first time! I’ve wanted this for like 6 or 7 years. It’s a three story house, and there’s a gas furnace that we keep set to 55 F, but that only has vents on the first and second floor. There is a double barrel stove on the first floor and a smaller wood stove on the second floor, but there wasn’t any heating options existing on the third floor where my bedroom is (except to bring in space heaters). So I built a rocket mass heater, based on Paul Wheaton’s design- which is designed to be lighter weight (so a wood floor can support it) and relatively easily disassembled and removed (since I’m renting this house). And it works pretty well. It’s not quite as rockety as I want it to be, which means it sometimes smokes back into the room when the flames creep up the wood out of the feed tube. And I need to add some pea gravel among the bricks I have around the exhaust pipes for better contact and a more effective thermal mass. But its functional enough to get me through this winter, and then I can rebuild it in the spring and see if I can’t get the draw kicked up a couple more notches.
Here’s a picture of the stove fired up, but with none of the bricks around the exhaust pipes yet-
If I can get my hands on an ammo box, I’ll also be making bio-char this winter in small batches in the bigger stoves downstairs. And that’ll go into the garden or the compost pile.
Once I get around to it, I’m also excited to experiment with making moonshine. I’ve already got the sugar water all fermented up and ready. I just need to find a stainless steel pressure cooker and assemble the condenser pipe as described in Possum Living, and then I’ll be able to get cookin’. Completely homemade tinctures, here I come! (Well, I bought the sugar and yeast, but it’s another substantial step down that road)
I took a ceramics class this fall. I signed up for it in the summer, anticipating that it would help me through what I experience to be the most depressing season, and it did, but I was a lot busier this fall than anticipated and probably didn’t need the help. But I loved the class. I love throwing on the wheel. Maybe I’ll take some pictures of things I made and post them here some time. I originally got the idea to take a ceramics class when I was looking to buy some crocks for fermenting in and seeing how expensive they are. I wanted to make my own. I’m not skilled enough yet to throw as big as the crocks that I use, but I did throw a one gallon sized crock. And I made loads of other useful things besides. Cups and mugs and bowls (including some big ones), spitoons, oil lamps (that are burning waste resaurant oil), ocarinas, a tea pot, a pitcher, some jars, a butter bell, a mortar and pestel. I made a vase/jug that’s only bisqued, so it’s still porous, and I plan to use it as a slow release waterer in the garden by burying it and filling it up. Some friends and I are planning to put together our own ceramics studio in the neighborhood, so I’m very excited to make that a reality so I can get throwing again!
One more cool thing- I’m eating miso these days that I made myself late last winter! My favorite thing to eat these days is a simple miso soup with onion, garlic, bok choy, soba noodles, and my homemade hot sauce. We’ll probably be starting another batch of miso once the deep cold sets in and I don’t want to go outside anymore.
Well, that’s more than enough awesomeness for one update.
