On Our Way to Indoor Toilets

Last week, our neighbor-friend-backhoe operator Cedar dug the hole for our septic tank, and we had the tank delivered the next day. The pit seemed quite large, until it was filled with an equally voluminous concrete box. It arrived on a truck, with an intrepid driver who expertly operated the fancy hydraulic arm with great precision, to ease it into the space.

Now this tank can hold a lot of poop. You may ask why we chose such a large tank, especially considering that most of the wastewater from our home will go into a graywater system. The septic will basically handle the three toilets, and the kitchen sink. The answer is not so spectacular. Only that another system was recently installed nearby, and it is the same sized house. Evidently, the tank sizing goes by the number of bedrooms, which stands to reason that it would effect the amount of effluent a household would generate.

At some point, Cedar will return to connect the plumbing, backfill the hole, and dig the leach line trenches so he can install the infiltrator. We are genuinely on the path to becoming a civilized household! Soon, I can invite you over to "do your business" in my flushing toilet. Ahhh, what a day that will be. It's not that I mind the outhouse so much. Well, maybe our roof-less, frigid-seated, insect-infested bucket pooper is kind of a bummer. Outhouses need not be as skanky as ours, but when I consider that I haven't had indoor plumbing to call my own since I moved to the Mattole almost eight years ago, well, let's just say I'm looking forward to not needing to don a polar fleece suit and a headlamp and walk 30 yards if I've got to shit in the middle of the night. It doesn't happen often, but the times it does are enough to remind of the advantages to come.

The Larder

I seem to be having difficulty regularly posting here. It's largely due to the new habits of my three-year-old. She no longer naps in the afternoons, leaving me without my mid-day space out, web-surfing moment, in which I have written a lot of my posts. I also used to write a lot after she went to bed, or even in the evening while she was playing with her dad, but the computer is now occupied with her nightly obsession with Angelina Ballerina, or one of her other DVD's, until we are all dead tired at about 9 PM. That pesky time change leads us all to the barn earlier these days.

Anyhow, back on topic, the subject of my post today is the larder, particularly how excited I am to take stock of the wares I've canned, accumulated, dried, grown or otherwise stashed for our family's consumption between now and April and beyond. The weather of winter has fully and completely arrived, meaning very short days, regular cold, cloudy, and rainy days, and cold nights. I've noted over the years here that all growth of plants basically stops, or progresses painfully slowly, during these months. Even though many of our local plants don't die back as in places where it snows, many do, while others simply pause as if mid-sentence, and wait for longer days and warmer nights to begin to stretch again. Even the grass tends to pause.

While the garden and native plants are stuck in winter limbo, we still have plenty to eat, though not as great a quantity of fresh produce as in the summer. Here is a list of what I've canned up to line our (forthcoming) pantry shelves:
2 cases of tomato
6 tomato paste
10 zucchini relish
35 or so jars of jam (apple ginger jelly, blueberry, strawberry, peach, and blackberry)
16 quarts of apple juice
1.5 cases of red tomato salsa
2 cases green tomatillo salsa
~12 tubs of pesto (frozen)
about 30 winter squash
6-8 cups of dried white beans
dried herbs
two frozen chickens whole
a several month supply of cured garlic
about 8 cups of home grown wheat berries
frozen strawberries
locally-grown frozen beef


I still have yet to can/put up:
pumpkin
green tomato chutney
saurkraut

Even though it's winter outside, we're still eating:
fresh cabbage
fresh carrots
fresh broccoli
fresh greens
fresh beets
the dregs of the tomato, eggplant, and peppers

I don't think our garden produce will last through like I always try to manifest, but it will only be a few months where we won't have anything.

Days left until the first spring planting: About 90.

Recent Additions: Interior Walls

Looking down the Hall toward the front door




Kid Bedrooms




Master Bedroom




Kitchen, wall between the kitchen and the master bedroom




Looking down the hall toward the kid bedrooms



I thought I would take a moment to share some photos of the interior walls in the midst of their framing. They've been up for several weeks, but the big rain and roofing project has taken priority, and we are not yet back to framing. However, even at this point, the walls are exciting, because it now allows a visitor (or future occupant) to feel the flow of the rooms, and begin to feel the shape and dimensions of the rooms.

Roof Metal

Maybe I just need to whine a little that it's going slowly to enable a faster rate of progress, because yesterday we made a great push on the metal. We finished the north roof, and most of the carport, and started on the south roof before it got dark last night. Today we are rained out, but we'll get back to it tomorrow. It feels SO great to get so much weathered-in space.

Beyond roof, my house is full of people I love right now, dear friends who come to visit every fall. People are camped out, struggling to stay dry, but we all pile in to the yurt for dinner, collectively cooking, sharing music, laughter, play, and love. I can't wait to have our house available to house everyone under one big embracing roof.

The Painful Slowness of Roofs

I realize I haven't written a lot lately. I'm sure you can all forgive me, once you find out that we had our first true storm of the season beginning last Tuesday morning. And guess which day our roof metal arrived. Yep, Monday. There were two holes in our roof that we couldn't cover until we got two particular pieces of metal. The subsequent trim, detail, and plywood in that spot took the better part of a day, and in the dark, Karl and Drew had to resign themselves to the fact that no more metal, nor tarpaper, would get onto the roof until the storm was over.

So we went into the storm without tarpaper on the north sloping roof. Which, though I've come to see wasn't the end of the world, meant that half of the house behaved rather like a sieve. And though the south roof was tarpapered, and therefore mostly dry, the entire house was wet, dripping down the north walls, through the skylights, and between each gap of plywood. It felt rather like an abandoned warehouse, except for a few glorious moisture eddies, where our remaining windows and our brand new woodstove were stored.

And, as luck would have it, Drew was busy with an aikido workshop this week, so work was slowed yet again. And FINALLY, late this past week, we have resumed laying metal. I've had a few moments to drill sling and feel like I am accomplishing something. We laid the tarpaper on the north roof on Thursday, which feels like a huge relief. It's lightly raining today, and the house is dry. We're pushing again, since we're supposed to have more heavy rains Monday. It appears the winter weather has fully arrived. I am looking forward to getting fully weathered in! After the roof is on, then it's clerestory windows, and doors, and then we're completely dry. I hope that can happen this week.

Finishing the Wheat: A Backlog Post

This post has been on my backlog list for some time now. For convenience, I am linking to previous wheat entries: Walls and Wheat, and Eat Your Wheaties.

Way, way back in July, I harvested my long-awaited crop of hard red winter wheat, which was growing in two long beds inside the garden fence all throughout the winter. It took a long time to ripen, since we had a lot of cool, foggy weather in the late spring/early summer. But at last, I harvested it, and dried the bundles in the mudroom and in the open sun.

Now, this process is one of those lost homesteading arts that everyone in the old days knew how to do, but since no one grows wheat anymore, there isn't anyone around who can tell me what to do. I do have the luck of having a written source that describes how to "flail" the wheat, which basically involves beating it with a stick to get the grains loose from the dry seed heads. The ideal flail is a broom handle with a shorter stick attached to the end with a leather "thong", as the literature puts it, so that it can swing freely. You know, you get a little momentum going and it really whacks the stuff.

But since I haven't grown wheat before, nor has anyone I know, I don't have a flail. So I found a stout piece of redwood, left over from another project, with which to beat my wheat. I assumed it wouldn't be so hard, since the grain was pretty dry, but it actually took quite a bit of beating, and thorough beating at that, to get the maximum wheat grain out. Thoroughness normally wouldn't matter, but since I had such a small harvest, every last grain was VERY important to me!





Once the grain was flailed, I then winnowed the chaff from the grain, which involves a very high tech process of slowly pouring the grain between two containers outdoors where there is the right amount of wind. Pour too quickly, and none of the chaff blows away. Pour too slowly, or when the wind is gusting a little, and the hard earned wheat berries dive into the grass, never to be seen until next winter.


Wheat Berries with Chaff, ready for Winnowing

All told, my dear wheat harvest readers, I collected eight precious cups of wheat berries. Not even enough to make one batch of bread. Nor enough to sow the same amount I planted last year. Certainly, I made some gardening mistakes, which I will remedy this year. But still a bit disappointing. I'm aiming for a better turnout next year. Partly, this involves planting the wheat in the area where the chicken run was, hoping that the chicken poop will feed the wheat, will feed the people, will feed the bucket, will feed the fruit trees, will feed the chickens, will feed the wheat, and so on.

I've got some more work to do to finish closing those loops....

Mattole Valley Horse Races

It's taken me a while to get to it, but ten or so days ago, anyone with a cowboy/cowgirl heart gathered at the McWhorter's field for an afternoon of horse and dog sport. Seems like the winners are usually the same folks, the diehard horse people, which I appreciate from the perspective of understanding just how much work it takes to successfully train a horse to do what you want, when you want it. I still hope I will have the time and patience to go there someday, but for now, I honor the experts and enjoy watching their horses run!

There was a spoon-egg race, where you must walk or trot your horse while carrying an egg on a spoon. There was a ribbon race, where you and a partner hold a piece of flagging while riding at top speed side by side. In this race, your horses must be rather evenly matched, or you end up breaking your ribbon and losing. There was a relay race. And an "all-out" race, as in, ride that horse as fast as you can. And a trotting race, which doesn't sound so hard, but convincing your horse to trot is maybe harder than making it run.

You could bet on the horse races. You could also purchase home-baked desserts and bid on silent auction items to support the Mattole School. You could eat hamburgers cooked and sold by the Mattole Grange. And you could buy drinks from small children wheeling Radio Flyer wagons with coolers on board. Bev brought her miniature horse, too, which all the little kids wanted to ride.

There were also two dog races, one for small dogs and one for big dogs. We are pretty convinced that our little cattle dog is the fastest dog in our humble little valley. We trained with her ahead of time, having her run between Karl and Drew here at home, knowing that if she could just maintain her focus, she would win hands down. And she would have, too, if she hadn't gotten confused by Karl standing off to the side. I had asked him to take pictures of the race, so I could release her to Drew. In spite of wavering off course to say hi to Karl, and then completely overcorrecting on her way back to Drew, she still took second place. So WE still know she is the fastest girl around.


Waiting at the Start Line with Acer



She's Off and Running Fast


Now, some people I know from my former city life ask me what I spend my time doing up here in the kuntry. Obviously, they don't realize what fun it is to kick back with friends and watch the horses run.

Chicken Egg Jackpot

A few days ago, Ella and I went out to the chicken run to let them out of their stylish, turquoise horse-trailer coop, and lo and behold, there was an egg lying quietly next to the chicken water dish. Oooo! Ella, Look! So we collected it, and I was SO delighted that our little hens have begun to lay eggs!

For weeks, we've been hearing the characteristic call the chickens make when they have laid an egg, but we haven't yet found any. We would rush out and have a look around the coop and the run, and walk away empty handed. But the best part of the above story is that later in the day, when I went to make a delivery of kitchen scraps to my grateful feathered buddies, I noticed an egg near the back of the trailer, and when I bent down to pick it up, I noticed a whole PILE of eggs under the bumper of the trailer! There were a whole dozen in all, two of which Ella broke before we got them all put away in an egg carton.

So the next morning, I had my first all homegrown breakfast from our land, some fresh tomato cooked into home grown scrambled eggs. Mmmmm. Nothing like it.

Here's to chickens and their fabulous ability to create so much useful resource for us humans.

Big Changes Unfolded This Week

It's been quite a week for our construction project, and some other assorted homestead endeavors...Read on...

ROOF SHEETING


The Roof with All its Plywood



The crew finished sheeting the south roof on Tuesday, and the north roof, with the exception of where it joins the garage roof, and the entry way (due to sequencing needs), on Wednesday. It's really different inside the building now, darker. We can now clearly see where the sunlight is traveling, especially with the clerestory windows, and we can track the day across the southern slab.

However, even though the roof now has plywood on the whole thing, we do not yet have our roof metal in hand. It is on order, and we're hoping it will arrive next week sometime. In the meantime, we are hoping we won't have any major rain. Should the weather deteriorate to precipitation, we will likely cover the ply with the roofing felt, as a temporary measure. But that's not going to happen, right?! Here, in Humboldt County in September?

WINDOWS


Living Room




Clerestory and Windows in Kid Bedrooms




Office Area and Music Nook, with High East Windows




Windows on the Outside, on the West Wall




On Wednesday, the Valley Lumber truck delivered all of our windows, except the ones we ordered the same day, and the three sliding doors. We're holding off on those until we fill up the house with sheetrock, for ease of delivery. Drew couldn't help himself from installing just one that first day, before he unleashed his full installation prowess on Thursday. He and Aaron installed all the main windows in the house. Today they worked on getting to the clerestory window installation, but had several details to work through, specifically the eave of the clerestory, and the venting at the top of the south roof. All in good time.

Having the windows in dramatically changes how it feels to be inside the house. It just feels so much more INSIDE. Like a real house, even without the doors. I couldn't have anticipated that difference. One thing we are fretting about a little is that the windows we bought have Low-e glass, which basically means it is coated to reduce the amount of infrared heat that can pass through. The windows on the north, west, and east walls all have a super-duper performance coating on them, but we have a reduced coating on the south windows, because we WANT heat to come through our south glass. We're hoping we aren't cutting out too much of our solar gain.

EXTERIOR WINDOW SILLS


Michael Bringing in a Melanine Form for Windowsills



Today, Michael poured most of our exterior window sills, which are made from concrete, and burnished down to expose the aggregate. The idea is to give the windows a little bit more of a beefy appearance.

INTERIOR WALLS


Wall Between the Massage Room and the Living Room





Wall Between the Entry and the Main Room, with Three Windows



As if all that wasn't enough, we built some additional interior walls this week. The wall between the entryway and the music area had to get built to finish the roof, because it connects the two levels of roof. This wall provides the main living space of the house with three zen view windows to the east, which will allow morning light into the otherwise south facing living-kitchen-dining room. I like it. Also, Karl continued that wall onto the lower level, which divides the massage room from the living room. When I took the photos this morning, it looked like shown here, but by this afternoon, it was covered in plywood. Karl also built the wall between the entry way and the massage room, and framed in the coat closet in the entry.

Me thinks it was a rather good week!

Roof Roof Roof

There is the roof, going on!



Inside our bedroom, with a ROOF!



Undereave detail, with the rim joist, and cedar tongue and groove, and redwood faux rafters



The patio overhang lattice, all recycled redwood...it will have clear covering






At last (breathing a sigh-of-relief), we reached the place where we could begin placing plywood on the roof. We have been dramatically slowed the last several weeks by our choices of finish on the outer edges of the roof. There are faux redwood beams/rafters sticking out, and on top of that is tongue and groove cedar wood, and there is a cedar rim joist/fascia board. All these steps had to be completed around our crenulated roof edge before we could begin putting on that sheathing.

But yesterday was the day, and it feels SO good, and exciting. I'm grateful that it's moving forward after so long of a time of it feeling like nothing was happening. Karl thinks that maybe the ply will be done on Monday. Even better, our window order is arriving next week, and pretty soon, we will be building interior walls, and preparing for a sheetrock crew. There's still a lot of other things to do, too, like the septic, and utilities, and a garage slab, and and and and. Well, you get the point. I need to keep reminding myself to take it one step at a time. And breathe! Construction life can get one a little riled up.