Thursday, October 15, 2009

October 10, 2009 - More Food for the Simple Life

First photo is the greenhouse as of the beginning of October, a month and a half after planting. We eat large salads at lunch and big helpings of cooked kale, collard greens, swiss chard, spinach and beet greens from this little hoophouse every day. We're completely amazed at how well things grow in here. The green 50 gallon drums are filled with water to store heat and add humidity.
We headed out one day on a wild foods foraging trip. We gathered about 1/4 bushel of wild berries (Hawthorn, Rose hips and Sumac berries) to be dried for winter teas. All three are high in vitamin C, and Hawthorn is a cardio tonic, good for moderating blood pressure and increasing vascular circulation.
The second photo shows the half bushel of Gambel Oak acorns that we gathered (took about 2 hours). We roasted these in the wood cookstove oven for 30 to 40 minutes, then pounded them with a wooden pole in a large canning pot to crack the shells, then rubbed them over a 1/2" mesh metal screen (hardware cloth) to separate many of the shells from the nut meats, hand shelled them (we're halfway done after spending quite a few hours at this), and will grind them into flour to use them in sourdough whole wheat pancakes this winter. Jeanne thinks we still need to leach the tannins out in boiling water, but in my opinion they aren't bitter at all, being a white oak, not a high-tannin red oak.
Third photo shows the seven bags of wild roadside apples (stored in the yurt root cellar) gathered so far this year (we may go out one more time, just because). We use them whole, slice them and dry them, can some as applesauce, and will grind and press the rest into cider for drinking and to age into cider vinegar.
Fourth picture shows tomato slices drying on racks in the new sauna. We found that the clay in the earthen walls holds moisture so well that drying things in here is slow, so we reverted to using our solar dehydrator, as well as a large screened rack covered with a recycled glass door (best option for drying tomatoes and fruit). Our main garden didn't produce well this year, so we ended up buying 100 lbs of tomato seconds from an organic farm in Paonia. We spent days slicing and drying them, cooking them down and canning them as tomato paste, as whole tomatoes, and Jeanne made a bunch of canned salsa.

October 9, 2009 - Pallet Woodshed - Sauna

You can click on any picture to see a larger version.
The first photo shows the back of the new structure with diagonal bracing in place (and garden tools hanging up). The roof was formed by laying pallets across the two timber purlins. The pallets were tied together by nailing them to 2x4 lumber between each row of pallets. The overhangs (needed to protect the earthen plaster on the sauna) required additional bracing in the form of peeled oak diagonal poles between overhang and wall. This structure does not even begin to meet code, especially for snow load roof capacity, so it will be interesting to see how it withstands the weight of winter snows. Peeled whole timbers (used for the purlins) are much stronger than the sawn lumber in an equivalent size. Finally, the structure was covered with recycled roofing metal. Eventually, we'll get a gutter on it to collect the rainwater.
The second photo is a front view of the building. The entire structure cost about $200.
Third picture is of the back yard with garden (some beds covered due to frost), yurt on left, then woodshed/sauna, greenhouse in back, garden expansion area in front of greenhouse.
Last photo is looking inside the sauna. Linc made the sauna wood stove from an enormous old heavy equipment air cleaner housing that we found abandoned in the weeds. It's controlled with inlet and outlet dampers, but if run wide open will glow red-hot in a matter of minutes. We added metal shielding spaced out from the earthen plaster walls after this picture was taken to avoid torching the new sauna. The sauna works really well.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

October 1, 2009 - Veggies, Hwy 550, Sauna Construction

We have a fairly slow internet connection consisting of a weak wireless signal emanating from somewhere across the canyon that we're perched on the edge of. The blog photos are very slow to load, so I've started just typing the text part while the photos load. As a result, the photos could come in anywhere on this page.
The first photo shows the sauna, in the new woodshed building, in progress. We insulated the pallet walls of the sauna with a light straw clay, formed by mixing straw with a clay slip (created from clay soil mixed in a 5 gallon bucket with water), installing one foot high plywood slip forms on either side of the wall, then stuffing the wet straw-clay tightly into the pallet wall, mashing it down and against the slip forms. The forms then get moved up and the process is repeated until you reach the top. The straw-clay dries hard and solid. Next, we applied an earthen plaster inside and out (we even plastered the ceiling, which is also insulated with straw clay). You can see the earthen plaster on the lower half, and the straw clay waiting to be plastered on the upper half.
The second photo shows the size of the radishes that are coming out of the greenhouse now. They've been growing since mid-August in a horse manure and clay-silt soil mix, with lots of sun, warmth and water, so they are huge, but still taste great.
The third and fourth pics were taken from the interior of the trusty Tercel as we traveled over Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray on our way to visit friends and talk with organic farmers up in Paonia. It is one amazing road. It's not that they don't believe in guardrails in Colorado - there just isn't room for guardrails on the edge of this road. The pavement goes right to the edge of a several hundred foot drop. People on the edge side tend to hug the center line (us included!)

Sept 8, 2009 - Pallet Woodshed & Water Treatment

With the first woodshed filled, it was time for another, larger woodshed, and a wood fired sauna for keeping clean in the winter. We also wanted to experiment more with pallet construction, as well as explore other alternative building techniques, such as light straw clay insulation and earthen plaster. Not having had any income since May, one priority was to keep the cost down, and not spend too much time on the project (so we could go find winter jobs soon). So, we embarked on a new building project.
The floor was constructed of pallets covered, and tied together, by screwing sheets of OSB down. Each pallet was supported on drystacked stone piers located at each corner and at each midspan. The stone piers were laid on gravel, and the gravel on excavation down to mineral soil. A quicky foundation, not guaranteed not to heave with frost, and not tied down to the earth (as we plan to weight the building with firewood and we're pretty protected from wind here).
Pallet walls were then erected, screwed down to the floor, and tied together with middle and top plates of store-bought lumber. A timber frame was then put up to support the roof. The timbers along the sides and back were also lag bolted to the pallet walls to prevent buckling. We then added diagonal braces on both the pallet walls and on the timber center posts to prevent racking.
About the same time, our 500 gallon cistern in the basement of the yurt, that we'd filled last autumn with city water, finally ran dry. We decided to put in a water filtration and treatment system before we pumped rainwater collected from roofs into the yurt basement cistern (which we use for drinking and cooking water).
The first photo shows our new water treatment system. It consists of a 5 micron cartridge sediment filter (blue), then an ultraviolet disinfection light (in stainless steel cylinder to left of the cartridge. The UV light runs off of 12 volt DC power from our solar system, and kills or sterilizes any viruses, cysts or other organisms that manage to get past the cartridge filter. We only use this system to fill the yurt cistern (which it looks like will happen maybe once every three or four months). We use a hand pump at the sink to pump right out of the cistern for drinking and cooking water.