450+ gallons in less than an hour!

It is a gorgeous day outside, and there are plenty of weeds to be pulled, but alas, I'm feeling less than optimal so I'm taking this time to write a much overdue post.  One of these days I'll finally get some sort of a regular schedule going on this blog...

We've all heard the talk about the benefit of using rain barrels to collect water, but it wasn't until my permaculture course that I realized just how much water we were 'wasting' by letting it just run off our house.  When we moved into our house, there were no gutters on, and we had a hard time keeping the basement from flooding with really heavy rains.  We wanted to add gutters to collect the rainwater, but we were also looking forward to the benefits of keeping the water away from the foundation of our house.

Enter rain barrel construction.  Now, you can buy rain barrels completely ready to go at many hardware stores, and there are even some cities that sell them or give them away.  We bought 3 barrels that were put together off 'Bob the Barrel Man' on Craigslist.  The put together barrels were about $75 and the plain barrels were $30, so we opted for doing the rest of the plumbing ourselves.  Our overall plan was to daisy-chain many barrels together uphill from our veggie beds, high tunnel, and duck pond so we can use the water as efficiently as possible.

Here we go...

Site prep -- remove grass, add gravel, repeat.

More prep work -- add cinder blocks on which to build a level platform.  This is the side of the house that will have the most barrels that will be used to water our veggies.

Here's the other side of the house -- these barrels will also be used for veggie watering, but also for duck pond flushing. The pond doesn't have a pond liner and is spring fed, but when we have a dry spell in the middle of the summer, it gets pretty low and can use some help.

Platform construction. I love building stuff. :)

Almost done.  We used left over cedar boards from our chick coop building.

Mighty fine!  

Unfortunately, we neglected to take any photos of the interim phase of rain barrel connection.  We had the barrel on the platform you see above connected to one other barrel, then one free standing barrel under each additional down spout.  So, in short, we had four barrels....and this is where it stayed for the winter.  We were thwarted by back ordered parts for the barrel connection, and by the time they arrived, it was too late in the fall to make our efforts worth it.  Now, one might think we would put the rain barrels in the garage or something so we could work on connecting them throughout the winter.....that would have been the logical thing to do.  Instead, they sat upside down just outside of the garage since the unfinished chicken tractor was taking up all the space in the garage.  Go figure.

At any rate, we finally got to the connecting part a week ago, so let's pick up there...

First, drill holes in the barrel -- watch out when that bit hits the barrel, it could send you flying!

Reason number 32879453785783280543 to marry Anna -- she can fit in a rain barrel.

Ear protection is essential -- and an adorable smile.

Did I mention these barrels used to hold Kalamata Olives, and they have not been cleaned?  Yum.

Yeah...

Duh....where did she go?!?!

And, if that photo montage wasn't enough...

We then used spa tubing to connect all the barrels.  We have caulked everything quite extensively, but we still have a bit of leaking going on.  Next time we empty them, we'll re-seal them, but it's ok for now as the leaks are really minor. 

It's a thing of beauty! I'm already regretting the high connection on the first two barrels, but alas, we were beginners at that point.  

Glorious.  About 500 gallons of water storage.  We have 5 more on the other side of the house, but we didn't photograph those.  

For those of you thinking that this seems excessive -- say you have 1000 sq. ft. of roof (not accounting for pitch), and you get 1 inch of rain.  You can collect 625 gallons of water from that one rain event.  Seriously.  The other day, the barrels were all totally full and overflowing after less than an hour of raining.  We still need to dig the overflow trenches to channel that water away from the house and into a more useful area, but the bulk of the work here is done. 

I built a toilet today.

***Warning*** -- this post is about poop.

One of the items on our winter projects list is to start using a composting toilet.  Today, I built that toilet. :) Why would we want a composting toilet when we have a perfectly good septic system? Good question.

First, flushing a conventional toilet is a total waste of potable water -- yes, the water that you flush in your toilet is drinkable (thank goodness for Fido's sake!).  You're also flushing away a perfectly good resource.

Second, what are the most common ingredients found in compost people put on their gardens?  Animal manure is a biggie!  Our plan isn't to use our humanure on our veggie garden (though you could, and it would be perfectly safe if you compost correctly).  Rather, we're planning to grow some food for our livestock (chickens, and eventually other things), feed them that food, then compost their manure for the veggie garden.  It's a way of expanding the loop so our humanure is still contributing to our veggie growth, indirectly.

Third, septic systems don't provide a good environment for 'waste' composting, and are, thus, inefficient at redirecting organic matter to the soil.

Fourth, why not?  It's a good conversation piece.

So, now for a quick rundown of how it all works.  Here's our super sweet toilet.

Yeah, I built it.  Yeah, it's just a box on legs.

So, basically, you treat it like a normal toilet, and you 'flush' with a handful (or two) or organic matter.  People use all different types of things for this -- sawdust, leaves, grass clippings, etc.  Our original plan was to use leaf litter from the forest -- it's a renewable resource, it's free, and it is already teeming with good organisms for composting.  While we still may do this, we're also going to use sawdust.  Lucky for us, our future brother-in-law owns a wood distribution company and also does carpentry.  In short, he produces bags and bags of sawdust.

For flushing -- much better than sending perfectly good water down the drain. :)

The immediate thing that people think when you talk about a composting toilet is that it is really stinky. Think: contemporary outhouses with water, chemicals, and nastiness. The same holds true for many commercially made composting toilets.  This is NOT what we're going to have.  I have visited many composting toilets that employ the system we're putting in place, and not a single one of them smells at all. The key to a not smelly toilet is the correct ratio of 'waste' to sawdust (or whatever dry, organic matter you're using).  The reason commercial outhouses and some composting toilets are smelly (and may require a lot of fans to keep it under control) is because they are decidedly lacking in the dry matter.  The whole system becomes anaerobic, and anaerobic = staaaaaaaaaaanky!  It's like a trash can with a lid vs. a trash can without a lid -- lidless cans aren't as stinky because air can get in there.

Anyway, I digress -- we're using a bucket system.  For a family of 4, having 4 buckets in rotation means emptying the buckets once a week.  This doesn't seem to bad, but we don't know what our system will be just yet, or how many buckets we'll go through.

The bucket system -- when it gets full-ish, then we swap it out for a new one.  Don't worry, that's just sawdust in there -- this is the newly installed bucket. 

Today is day 1 of the composting toilet system, we'll see how it goes.

End of poop discussion. :)

One last thing…

Yeah, we did.

Winter projects

Throughout the summer, there were many times when I said, "I am actually looking forward to winter when I can do all these things I want to do but can't because we're in the throws of the growing season."  Talk about not living in the now, but that's another topic…

So, I started writing down all the projects I hoped to get to during the winter (as well as all the books I wanted to read), and what has resulted from that is our giant winter projects list.  Some things are easy (make a wood box), some things are not so easy (business master plan), but I'm hoping we can make a significant dent in the list if not finish it. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing it is now January, so we better get cracking! Nothing like a massive to-do list to kick off your year, right? :)

Here is the list in it's entirety:

• Office organization -- we have a little room that doubles as our 'theater' and office (we are without a TV, so we watch movies on our computer), and it has been the catch-all for the 'I don't know what to do with this' stuff since we moved.  I'm going to organize those things and build some shelving to help organize the place a little more.
• Fire poker -- Anna's dad has this amazing fire poker, and I was going to try to make one.  Turns out, they're manufactured right in here in New England. Considering my metal-working skills are about nil, we're going with purchasing this one.
• Under-counter shelving/cabinet -- our kitchen has no cabinet uppers (I actually really like this about it), which means limited storage.  We have a breakfast bar that we don't intend to use as such, so I'm going to build some sort of cabinet to put under the bar that will serve as a liquor cabinet/glassware storage.
• Over stove shelving/plate rack -- again, limited storage in the kitchen.  We are going to install some shelving and a plate rack (think vertical plate storage) to free up some of our cabinet space.  This will be an 'upper' of sorts, but open shelving.  We're not building this one, but the plate rack does require us to finally make a decision on plates since they're size dependent.
• Wood cover -- we don't have a dedicated wood shed, so we want to make/get a cover for our wood that is stacked outside.  This can be as simple as leftover metal roofing that we put on top of the pile.
• Book shelf bonanza -- we have amassed a number of books over the years, but we don't have a lot of book shelves here.  I'm going to build a bunch.
• Sourdough perfection -- we have a sourdough started that is a few hundred years old.  We haven't quite mastered the art of gluten free sourdough, but we're working on it.
• Organize/clean 45s -- we were lucky to get my dad's turntable and record collection, which includes a fair number of 45s.  They aren't in any order (except for the ones in boxes -- and those have a card catalog -- glad my dad's so organized!), and they could use a cleaning.  I'm hoping to develop a system for them so we know what's where.
• Drying screens -- we need to be able to successfully dry some of our crops -- herbs, beans, etc.  Last year, we just sort of hung them around or laid them out on the deck.  They really need air from all sides, and we lost a number of beans because of this.  I'm going to make some framed screens and a shelving unit to hold them.
• Composting toilet -- we'd like to be able to start making humanure -- yep, humanure.  This involves composting our waste.  It is perfectly safe, we just need to get the system in place.
• Develop a master plan -- this is a biggie, and it will probably be ever evolving.  We need to put down in writing our plan for this farm.  To whom are we going to sell our products?  On what things do we want to put most of our energy?  Where are we going to sell -- farmers' markets, CSAs, wholesale, farm stand, all of the above? Like I said -- this is a biggie.
• Finish caulking -- we had an energy audit a while back, and I'm slowly making my way through sealing a lot of the cracks in our house.  It's a tedious, slow process, but it makes us warmer and more efficient. :)
• Smoking room woodbox -- now that the smoking room looks so beautiful, we need a place to store wood by the fireplace.  I made a super sweet woodbox for our tiny stove upstairs, and I'd like to make one for the smoking room fireplace.  
• Maple syrup plan -- we tapped about 8 trees last year, and we want to really expand our maple syrup production. We need to make a plan for sap collection, storage, and where the heck we're going to put our sugar shack!
• Black trumpet dogs -- this is more of a research project.  We have lots of black trumpets on our property, and we'd like to teach our dogs to find them for us.  I mean, they have truffle dogs, why not trumpet dogs?  I'm confident we can do this.
• Chicken tractor/bachelor pad -- our male ducks are beating the crap out of each other.  This is due to the fact that we have too many males and not enough females.  Since we're vegetarians, we're not too keen on killing our males.  So -- we're building a bachelor pad for them.  It is basically already completed, we just need to order the roofing and put it on.  It is mobile, and we'll be able to rotate the ducks/chickens around the garden when we want.
• Root cellar plan -- obviously, we can't put in a root cellar until the ground thaws, but we WILL have one next year. We must!  So, we need to figure out where it's going to go, and what it's going to look like.
• Yoga room -- we have a temporary yoga space right now, but I'd love to make our permanent yoga room plan a reality.  Some of this is out of our control, but once the opportunity presents itself, we're on it!
• Squash storage -- we're growing a TON of winter squash this year as it is something we're hoping to sell sooner than later.  Squash doesn't go well in the root cellar because it is too humid in there.  Right now, we have boxes of squash under our bed (actually a pretty common storage method), but we'd like a more organized setup.  I'm going to build some shelving specifically for storing winter squash on the other side of our bedroom -- it's a really long room, and it's cold, which is good for squash storage.
• Firewood -- we have an entirely separate list for places in the woods that we want to cut firewood, but I'll spare you the boring details.  Suffice to say, we want to put up enough wood for next year and the year after.  The winter part of this is just felling the trees, we can buck and split it in the spring/summer/fall sun. :)

Maybe we'll revisit this list in the spring -- I'm going to say that the winter projects list deadline is the day we plant seeds.  At that point, it is most definitely no longer winter….we hope!

Seal it up!

One of our long term goals for our house is to use alternative energy whenever we can, and eventually, we'd like to be completely off the grid.  Before we even start to think about what sort of energy we'll be using (wind, solar, micro-hydro...), we want to make sure our house is as energy efficient as possible.  A couple weeks ago, we had an energy audit done by the great folks at the Midcoast Green Collaborative. It was a really awesome experience.  If you've never had an energy audit, here's the run-down:

They come to your house and ask you a bunch of questions about your energy consumption: how much your utility bills were for the past year, what sort of sources you use for heat, what sort of humidity generators you have in the house (watering house plants, an aquarium, humidifier, pot of water on the wood stove, etc.), and other questions associated with general energy use (including the length of our showers).  Then, we did a house tour during which they pointed out a lot of things that we could easily fix (putting insulation on the exposed pipes in the basement, for one).  Here comes the really cool part, though.

www.buildingdoctors.com

www.tlc.com

All the windows, doors, flues, etc. in the house are closed, and they attach a fan one of the external doors.  They then proceed to suck all the air out of your house, they measure the pressure differential between the work the fan is doing and what is flowing into your house (through all the leaky spots!).  With the fan still going, they walk around the house feeling for drafty areas, and it is pretty amazing how many leaks there are!

Then, they walked around with an infrared camera to see any leaky spots that were out of reach or so small we couldn't feel them.  If I had one of these cameras, I'd be walking around with it all the time.

Not our house -- www.energytribe.com

We learned that there are a lot of leaks in our house, but we also learned a lot of really easy fixes that pretty much everyone can do for cheap to save some energy.  For one, all outlets leak. There is a REALLY cheap, easy way to fix this.  Get some outlet insulation for the outlets in your house.  There are pre-cut foam pieces for this.

www.greeningneighborhoods.com

Punch out the holes for the outlets, take off the face plate, put in the foam, and put the face plate back on.  Save the pieces you punch out to make room for the outlets, and for outlets you rarely use, add the foam piece to a childproof outlet cover, and put that in the outlet.  Voila!  Insulated outlet.  :)  This is so easy, I can't believe I've never heard of it before.  They make them for light switches as well, so do those too.

Next on the list....caulking all the spaces between our support beams and the walls.  This one is daunting for me as my caulking skills are minimal.  I'm practicing in the basement first so that I can not make our house look like crap.

I just wanted to share about the outlets since it is so ridiculously cheap and easy.