winter begins, house pictures w new siding

Thanks to Krsnadev Kevin Innes for helping fight some drafts in my house, it's very warm and cozy

 Looking west from the wild plum patch, Kevin and Kate Lanes house on the distant ridge (resting atop the outhouse peak:)

Sunrise to the East from the Garden

Fun spring project #2

The pictures speak for themselves what went on here

rented mixer, sand on left & clay on right 

Cutting the fibers shorter w a handy and versatile power tool

Mix it all up and smear, throw, pat, daub...whatever technique you find helps the mud plaster to adhere to the 'slip straw' wall.

Slip straw is thinner straw-bale like construction with added mud (sand/clay mix). Mine is 6 inches thick and wont insulate like an 18"thick strawbale wall, but...hey, it's just a workshop space. 12ft by 16 ft built four years ago and finallly getting plastered over, yay!

If you choose this construction method I recommend you get some help and feed them and love them, check out these cuties

These laddies were indispensable 

Oh what a dazzling spring day! to tie up a loose end on my acre, enjoying the company of friends and feeling in my heart-of-hearts the abundance that comes so naturally to the body each day. Furthermore, I am feeling that the wealth and mystery of this human mind can definitely and positively be trained to be exquisitely happy. Today i would describe this process as striving to have just the right degree of reverence for (and just as important, detachment from) the diverse phenomenal events and actional expressions of this world. Then, by training the mind with gratitude & reverence, shoot it out at just such an angle toward the horizon on the landscape, propel the mind with squinty eyed concentration beyond the scope of the gateway senses and mind's observation and reduction/analysis and its possible, just every bit possible that you will be visited by a feeling of serenity that is nothing short of humankind's greatest secret and best option for maintenance in this day and age. transcendence, immanence the same: life joy, pain sorrow, death all fervently coupled in the ecstacy of now:) Praise to the Most High, Baba ki Jai!

Fun Project # 1: the throne house

This is my composting toilet project, the culmination of a few earlier experiments, that has finally been given adequate time, money and joy to build.

Over a number of relaxing spring days, I framed this outhouse 4'x6' on three courses of block, with 61/2' high walls, 45 degree metal roof, sided with pine boards and finished sheetrock for a smooth interior. The windows are salvage and needed squaring up, casing and trim, glazing on all the panes and two replacement panes. The door was louvered top and bottom, but i removed those slats and put in wood and a nice piece of tempered glass for a sunset view.

The outhouse also doubles as a library museum of National Geographic magazines. I currently have 1935 thru til 1995, special thanks to my grandmother and grandfather Steen, who collected and shelved these jewels of earthly education. My lovely grandparents are now both 93 years old and live in their home in Candler, west of Asheville. Thank you two honeybears, I will be glad to see you monday night and stay with you most nights of this week:)

Here's how it works: poop down the chute and aim your pee to the funnel. Its not hard to do, actually the funnel catches your pee!

Here's the science: poop turns to nearly odorless dry nuggets in the absence of water (pee) and when mixed with carbonaceous materials like hay, pine bark or wood chips, the nuggets will readily compost. Because the 'chamber' of blocks underneath the building is enclosed, the poop must be pitched out into the sun and rain in order to begin its real digestion into rich, dark Humanure!
Wahoo lets have a poo!

The pee is diverted into this canola oil container. Leading to the question, what to do with the pee? But first lets look at what Urine is...

Urine has Urea, which is the form of nitrogen elimination common to all mammals. It is a water soluble white solid with two NH2 groups joined to a carbonyl or CO. Urea is a common fertilizer used in big-scale farming, and it has the most nitrogen for its weight (standardly, 46-0-0). However, it must be sealed tight before use on account that it is so readily water soluble that it will spoil by drawing moisture out of the air :o! If you are not familiar with the role nitrogen plays in plant protein synthesis, or do not understand the nitrogen cycle and its implications for human growth and civilization I recommend you read this book*

Urea is human pee has another compound attached to it called Biuret, which is toxic to plants and although nitrogenous does not lead to protein formation.
In fact, plants do not actually use Urea for protein synthesis, not until soil bacteria have converted it into Ammonium or nitrites can they make use of Urea fertilizer. Also, farmers must be more careful with Urea on account of its excessive water-solubility; it is easy to overuse it and even to lose much of it to leaching esp. in high rainfall areas.

If you are doing small-scale plantings organically i recommend blood meal (12-0-0) which releases slowly as well as fish meal, also called fish emulsion, which delivers P and K, as well (3 to 5-1-1, N-P-K) These are more expensive, but easier to handle and safer to use.

This is a cabinet called 'fertilizer land' attached to the front of my outhouse. Lots of nice things in here for nurturing the diversity of edible plantings that makes up 50% of my hobby headspace :) Inside there is Kelp meal, azomite, and bone meal for trace minerals, greensand for breaking up clay soil and binding sandy ones, soil acidifying pellets for blueberry bushes, the fertilizers above recommended and finally Copper and Neem for natural just-in-case fungicides. I would like to add space for 'garden-tool' land, 'hose' land and all other manner of 'lands' attached to the exterior of my outhouse that make planting projects even more fun and organized!

Here's the final skinny on human pee: it may indeed be used as fertilizer.  Typically it is safe to apply to plants cut with water on at least a 1:1 ratio, in which case the toxins are not usually an issue unless applied repeatedly to the same plants or patches of ground, garden, pasture or plantation. According to many studies study, Urine also has potassium and phosphorous, the two other plant MACRONUTRIENTS. Just be careful that your pee comes from a healthy human who is not using strange pharmaceutical drugs that may or may not leak out of them.

the clean-out door

 You may visit me with or without advance notice and make your deposit anytime while flipping past 1950's car adverts on your photographic trip to Bhutan! No charge for the first visit:)

* Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production by Vaclav Smil.

Swales

Four weeks ago, I got a one-day-rental on a Trackhoe. If you're not familiar, think of a digging dinosaur on rubber treads.

 After an hour I had a grasp on it, after three was fairly comfortable and after 8 hours, fell head-over-heels for the smooth operation and cozy cockpit of the Kubota Trackhoe. So user-friendly and efficient. Below is a misty view of two of the longest swales. There are five total on about half an acre of east to south facing slope.

 What is a swale? Lets not get technical because I am not a technician or an engineer, I am a simple planter that desired to catch rainwater on a steep slope. So, the swale is a trench and berm system that catches water. Normally, hills are dry not for lack of water, but because the rains runoff. My observation is that a light, long rain on a hillside often moistens the soil better than a hard, fast and heavy rain followed by sun. If it doesn't runoff, it evaporates afterwards. A swale catches that water in the soil, where bushes, trees and shrubs can thrive in droughty weather. Now, some swales are designed to divert the water, say, into a pond. Mine are dead-level in order to water the entire contour, which then provides little microclimes for plants to thrive. Dead-level was achieved with the help of a 20' length of 1" wide clear vinyl hose taped around two yardsticks. Two men crouching in the grass, making slight motions and yelling out numbers to each other was all it took to tag a line on the earth with yellow spray paint and stakes. The trackhoe did the rest!

I chose to use the 2 foot wide bucket, 'get big or get out' the popular industrial ag slogan of the late 70's. Well, now it applies to permaculture, baby! dig em wide and dig em deep. I hope it was the right choice...they definitely aren't small. 

I will post some more pictures as the swales develop. The early plan is to fill the trench in with logs and compost and mulch. Then to plant the berms with probably canefruits interspersed with autumn olives and goumi bushes. Any readers with planting and swale know-how please pipe in. 

spring 13

After an absence of more than two years, I am here to resume blogging for those family, friends and followers who might be interested in my life, and the lives of people and plants in my neighborhood.

Spring has come on strong where i live. Inexorably, it bites the browngray ashen eyes of winter in a few wistful in-between weeks. Wham! there's buds and grass, and calves, and birds- worms- chomping -gnashing- jungles of insects and ticks! lots of them, raking the air to catch a host on the tip of a wee-leafing yellowhorn bush, sticking just out the top of a blue tree shelter installed to protect from wind, predation, but mainly a flag for 'human-with-weedwhacker':) Yellowhorn (Xanthoceras sorbifolia) is a little known nut tree from china that is exceptionally ornamental. check it out, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthoceras 

I woke up one day and discovered blooms on quite a few of the trees ive planted. Apples, a cherry, two peaches, a mulberry and over 60 blueberries. Nature has a way of bursting and giving an impetus to stagnant energy, a boost to lazy minerals ready to go to town on the cation exchange. likewise, i was given a boost to take my farming a little more seriously and make a cozier home for those budding bushes and trees trying to give me a first taste of their nourishing products that promise to show up after a season of sun, rain and root sucking fun:)

Today, Sea came up we made a cooperative of the blueberry crop. Together we layered tree bark mulch ontop of well-composted manure from a goat dairy in the county, then sprinkled cottonseed meal and soil acifying pellets (not much) around all 60 or so blueberries. Finally, we walked around to all of them offering a personal blessing for massively optimal health and luxuriant growth of their eerie bright blue-green leaves and red shoots. This latter step included a diluted squirt of fish fertilizer poured about the roots;)

 mulberry tree with tiny squinty-eyed influorescent and frankly WEIRD looking blooms. Some trees leaf out first, some bloom first, this guy does it simultaneous

Most of these 47 bushes on a north facing slope were planted in 2009 in what was previously virginia pine. Notice the pine stumps, that's a perfect site for blueberries. The north slope is cooler to keep the blooms delayed in case of warm february/march temperatures. Special thanks to Beth Lomski, Josh Goran and others who know their names- helped clear and plant that year.

Part of being a tree geek---besides knowing nearly all the scientific names of the most the woody species inhabiting the mixed mesic hardwoods of the southern mountains and being able to identify them by bark, bud, leaf, growth form..., *hem, hem.* excuse me.

Part of being a tree geek is that i actually sell firewood, if you would like a load of firewood custom cut to length, split and stacked and you live near Asheville north carolina, call or text. (sixoneseven) 470-94threesix.

Part of selling firewood, is that while driving at moderate speeds on winding mountain roads and moderate to high speeds on the freeway [depending on distance] is that I can identify dead trees suitable for selling as firewood. Actually, i have come to identify the species of a dead, dry or fallen tree based on its rot pattern, the way it lays and loses its bark etc. Sourwood is particularly nice for its barkless, blotchy pink and gray rot.

So, while driving like a tree geek on a winding mountain road named Hooker's Gap, i discovered some quality wood laying around that I made part of my weekly load to Farm and Sparrow bakery. More interesting however, was the discovery of an orchard of ten or more large and living chestnut trees in a bend of road that i just had to stop by to inspect/adore. They seemed to be Chinese trees, Castanea mollisima, probably 50-70 years old in various forms of health and one near dead.

That brick ranch house in the back seemed uninhabited else i would have knocked and hoped to talk about their trees. Eerie property with a nice flat and shady orchard of chestnuts.

Thats enough for now, Goodnight.