One Long To Do List

We didn't mean to take so long to post but Kirk is the main blogger and he's been too busy. So here's Cheryl, to tell ya what's been happening. We are well pleased with our FirstDay Cottage it got us through a cold long winter with both comfort and affordability. We used somewhat less than 2 1/2 cords of wood for heat. The second floor was rather cool but still livable (63-65 F) while keeping downstairs an average of 68 F. And after we add the attached greenhouse we'll have a nice amount of additional heat wafting up there for free.

Speaking of the attached greenhouse, that project has experienced a delay due to design difficulties. It will be sitting a few feet below where tons of snow slides off our metal roof so we've decided to get the input of a structural engineer before settling on a design. Consequently we chose to slip that project to the end of the list and for this growing/building season concentrate on the permaculture design, garden, detached dome greenhouse, barn, and root cellar.

In the late spring we faced the tough task of removing trees again to open up a food growing space and to protect the house and future structure sites from falling tree damage. White Pines grow tall and have shallow root systems making them susceptible to coming down in storms. We had to remove nearly 50 of them which was hard for us but the results are very nice. The house area is still well-wooded but much brighter now and storms won't be so worrisome anymore.

We received our permaculture design the end of April from Sarah Bostick of The Edible Landscape and it's very cool. Generally what we seek to do is create a system following the ways of nature which incorporates we humans into that system. Such a design includes various animal life and makes use of each animal's natural behaviors to the betterment of the overall system. Another focus is on edible landscaping--meaning that plantings are beautiful but also edible and functional structures like a large trellis to block the sun from entering the south side of the house is covered with grape vines again bringing together function, beauty and food. The design has extensive garden beds to the south of the house incorporating a 42' diameter circular area of beds & paths with many additional beds partially surrounding the circle which include 4 very large beds for growing the large crops like corn, squash, beans, melons & grains. The entrance to the garden will be through an arbor supporting Japanese Yam vines. Much more to the design which includes turning part of the existing forest into an Edible Food Forest (i.e. fruit & nut trees form the forest canopy) while keeping much of our forest in its wild state.

On the clean clothes front we now have our clothesline (yay! no more drying clothes in the house on a rack) and she's a beauty. Here are a couple pics of her maiden voyage. She runs from outside the upstairs window which is adjacent to the washing machine to a large maple about 50' distant. Clothes are pulled clean & wet from the washer, you reach out the window and pin them to the line and send them off to engage with the wind and sunshine. Much $$ and world resources saved without a dryer and the clothes last way longer since they're not being dismantled fiber by fiber every time they get dried.

We created the circle part of our garden beds for this year's growing. That took 2 full hard work days in the blistering sun (& with coal in our pockets and uphill both ways!) providing us with planting beds on June 6. The methods used for the beds were sheet mulching (lots of layers of organic matter such as manure, rotted leaves, grass clippings, compost) and hugelkulture (using wood from logs to brush as the first layer and then other organic matter layers above). Then to top off all the beds we used 4 sheet thick wet newspaper like papier mache to fully cover everything and finally 4+ inches of straw on top. All nicely watered periodically throughout building process (several pics showing process). To plant you pull the straw aside down to the newspaper, make a hole just big enough in the paper and plant your seed or seedling along with some nice compost. This is labor intensive to create but minimizes labor thereafter as there is almost no weeding to do and little watering since the beds hold moisture so well.Though we got a late start we planted quite a lot in our new beds from potatoes, squash, cukes, beans to tomatoes, melons, carrots, chard, kale & more using seed except for tomatoes and a couple of other seedlings. The garden is doing well-pics don't really show it. By their third year these sheet mulched beds will explode with growth!














Breaking News Here's a pic of the huge (22' x 16') Hardy Kiwi Trellis going up on the west side of the house. Brian is building it with saplings from our land sturdy enough to hold up the serious vines and heavy fruit that will eventually be climbing all over it. We'll get the vines planted late summer or early fall and won't see them produce fruit for about 4 years. However, even while there's no food coming from this magnificent trellis, it will much sooner be giving us a fantastic shaded patio space!

We also had Brian build us a temporary garden shed on the side of the temporary chicken run using saplings and slab wood from the land. Here's a pic during construction.

The Barn! Cheryl found a design online done by an architect in NY (Don Berg) for a small, stoutly built barn designed for affordability. We chose one that's 20' x 24' with a loft (overall 20' tall) and with a 12' side run-in shed to house Ollie, our tractor. And on the other side we'll be building another shed to house dry firewood. Here's pics of current progress. On left the guys are lifting the huge beams into place. The finished barn will have shiplap siding stained woodland green and an ivory metal roof to match the house. There will be a high door to the loft equipped with a hoist.

We've just ordered the geodesic dome greenhouse from Growing Spaces in Colorado. It'll be 22' diameter and have great solar features: large water tank to store heat & raise some fish and solar heating running through the growing beds as well. This greenhouse, if used intensively, will feed 4-5 people. Check them out! Our kit will be arriving August 8 so we'll be growing in it this fall/winter!!

Chickens! On June 24 we got 5 day-old chicks. One had a problem which we tried to help with but she died during the first night. We've got them in a homemade brooder in the center room upstairs. Two are Light Brahmas, one is a Black Australorp and one is a Barred Rock. What everyone says is true: chickens are fun to watch. Of course being bird people we're already crazy about our girls! We've decided to choose names based on personality characteristics and thus far just one has shown us her name. She is the most outgoing of the bunch and takes every opportunity to hop up on the edge of the box and escape. None of the others has done anything similar. When she's not being given such a chance at escape she's keeping an eye out for the next opportunity. Cheryl named her Sojourner. (She's the close up black one in the pic to right.)

We're hoping to build a root cellar this late summer/fall. It will be built into one of the gravel ridges on our land using cement block and we hope a living roof i.e. soil & plants growing on a slightly sloped roof.

Naturally we're hoping for a good harvest from our garden and as you know we have plans for preserving that harvest. Cheryl & Jayne did their first canning project--rhubarb sauce in mid-June and will soon be canning strawberry jam. They also have started brewing kombucha, a fermented tea made with a mother culture, which is very healthful. The big jar in pic is the kombucha & you can see the mother floating in it. (To get started with it Cheryl put an ad on CraigsList asking for someone to share a mother culture with her and she immediately heard from a man not far away willing to help her out. When she went to pick it up he also gave her a jar of brewed kombucha, a large jar for starting hers in and written directions! Good example of what the people of Maine are like.) We'll be doing both water bath and pressure canning and we also have a real sweet dehydrator to put to good use very soon.

House Update The only house project we've done since moving in is the replacement of the construction stairs with the permanent ones. We used copper tubing for the balusters and we're well pleased with the results.

Wild & Wooly A while back Cheryl went to Bee School here in Maine since we hope to have some hives later on. One of the things she learned was that there are estimated to be 25,000 black bears in Southern Maine (which is where we live). Now if you're not real familiar with Maine you might not know that Southern Maine is a small part of the state and it is where the preponderance of the state's human population resides. 25,000 bears just in the area that's populated? Well, yeah and on Father's Day one of the group was spotted on our land, unfortunately not by us--we were still sleeping. Our neighbor was out and saw the bear going through our woods toward our driveway. A couple of friends have also reported seeing cougars not far from our land. Cheryl & Jayne think this is exciting; Kirk is more circumspect.

As for family news... Jayne got a job cleaning houses and received a raise after working just a week. She works part-time applying time also to "uncolleging" i.e. self-directed learning just like she did in place of going to middle & high school. She is saving toward doing some learning/traveling in the near future. She's looking at becoming a WWOOFer (Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms) which is an apprenticeship program. There's also a possibility of her going after a cooking apprenticeship. We have offered to help fund such expeditions of learning as much as we are able. The three of us feel that in today's world going to college is no longer the best path for promising young people. Jayne has incredible potential and we are very proud of the level of maturity she has reached at such a young age. She has had several significant epiphanies in the last year or two and now has life understanding that surpasses that of many folks her senior. She is currently on a spiritual quest, the pursuit of which may well be involved in her upcoming travels... Kirk's current life situation can almost be summed up in one word: WORK. He still has the same engineering job--computer automation at hydroelectric dams--but he has gone from working part-time to working 60+ hour weeks. It works for us since he's paid hourly and we know it's temporary. He's bringing in the bucks and we're spending it to create our homestead/farm. We ended up hiring help to build this season instead of the barter thing--Brian, of house-building helper fame, is back with us and we've also found a couple great experienced carpenters willing to work cheap as they are trying to start their own business. Kirk does manage to find time for his bass playing, even has a gig this Friday night, and though his week or longer work trips are a bummer, he still feels present to Cheryl & Jayne largely because much of his work is done here at our house. We've all gotten quite good at mixing our personal lives into Kirk's work day. Finally, Kirk was stung by a yellow jacket or a wasp recently and had a systemic reaction so we hustled him off to the urgent care hoping his breathing wasn't going to be affected. It wasn't but now he needs an epi pen... Cheryl is still busy as the managing architect of creating our new life in addition to keeping our day to day lives limping along. We are still committed to avoiding going out to eat and to eating as much as possible real, healthy food which of course requires time. We've found several local farm resources so we do pretty well. Cheryl is also doing some volunteer work at the local library. She really misses the active spiritual exploration that was part of her life in Michigan and would like to find the time and energy to create that here in Maine. All in good time.

Final Words We began our journey to a new life out of desire to live differently, but along the way we realized that world circumstances would have forced us into the very thing we were already seeking. We absolutely feel that the world we're all used to is slipping away. The resources needed to keep doing what we take for granted are simply not available any longer in the quantities necessary. And the small group of rich & powerful will stop at nothing to siphon to themselves what little riches the regular people still possess. The time is now for questioning everything you have always assumed was a given. The time is definitely now for starting to do everything you can to prepare for at least some semblance of self-sufficiency. Whether we want to or not we're all soon going to be heading down a new road. There are rich resources available for wrestling with what is happening in the world: books, online news sources, blogs & articles, etc. To engage with it, however, means taking the red pill (reference from the film "The Matrix") and once you do there's no going back...