Living in a Bioshelter

2020-10-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

Eating and Drinking through the Corona Virus (pt. 2)

Well, days 5-8 have gone by without much fanfare. Curt is sleeping way more than I am. I'm not sure HOW he sleeps all night and all day. But our symptoms are still very similar.

Day 5: I spent an hour or so talking with my cousin in Montana. He's on about day 20. He is now out of the hospital and describes horrible symptoms still. It was quite a reality check for us. We are so lucky.

Day 6: We had enough energy to make moose burgers for dinner on the grill. Yeah! The kids called and said they arrived! :-) I cried extra tears when (spoiler alert) Barbara died on "Call the Midwife."

Day 7: I woke up with blurry eyes---like a film of allergy puss over the top of my eyeballs. It makes my eyes want to close. I'm using a lot of eye drops. One highlight today. The kids.

Day 8: the State Office of Public Health called. It was very interesting. She had to ask us all sorts of questions, like: are you deceased? and how many bathrooms in your house? She asked us the names of people we saw, but didn't ask for their phone numbers, only if they had symptoms. We had to go through day by day and explain what we did. I think she was trying to get something out of us, it just sounded too boring. We got up, we slept in front of the TV, we drank, we ate, we went to bed. Not much you can embellish on.... Then just when we thought we were done, she wanted to know what we did 10 days BEFORE we were sick. Worked at home, put shelves up in the new shed, fed the worms, harvested tomatoes....I finally just said, "we don't do much or go anywhere." So that was that. She told us to call Curt's dad and Pat every day to make sure they're okay, since we stayed with them. And that was it. Is that what contact tracing is?

Good news: Curt's brother's test came back negative. We got homemade chicken soup from the kids for dinner---yum. Curt made biscuits from scratch with gluten. I ate chips.

Day 8: Today I feel like I have no more excuses to just sit around and pretend to be sick. We are both feeling a lot better.

****************

Okay....more updates. The lingering effects of the virus are TIREDNESS. We get up, drink coffee and go back to sleep until 10:30 or so every morning. Then we do a few things and then take afternoon naps. AND we still sleep through the night! It's like a sleeping sickness with stiff muscles.

We started eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It seems like we didn't have the motivation to eat well any more, even though our symptoms were better. Maybe the peanut butter sandwiches were dehydrating because a couple days we slept off bad headaches. We are just plain sick of being sickly!

In other news, Curt's brother got another test and it came back positive. Apparently he had a false negative, but luckily he stayed home because he thought, like us, he had a bad cold. So he has to start his 10 days from when he had a positive test, not when he had the symptoms. Poor guy. Curt's sister, who is 65, is still coughing and coughing. She had it worse than we did, but didn't have to go to the hospital.

We started walking. My leg muscles just hurt when I'm walking---crazy. Curt's lungs hurt and he's winded. I might be winded if I walked more than a little ways without resting my legs! Yesterday we watched the news and then THREE movies. We need some more energy somehow. Jeanie brought us some scallop soup last night. That was really good.

Curt went back to work this morning upstairs in his office, but came down a little bit ago and said he took a nap already. Oh dear. This is a lingering disease.

We DID get permission to go to the dentist or the store or where ever we want to, so I guess we are officially well.

Eating and drinking through the Corona Virus

2020-10-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

So I've always been an early adopter. Before I really knew how bad the Corona Virus could be, I was saying I want to get it first so that there's a ventilator for me when I need it. I stopped saying that about June when reports started coming in about how bad it really was.

I was so good at staying home. So good at distancing. Pretty good about always wearing my mask and protecting my bubble. But then there's family. We have one relative who has certain beliefs: it's all part of God's plan, she'd say. She continued to hug everyone and not wear a mask unless she was required to. We were pretty good at keeping that relative at a distance until finally we caved. She had just moved into a new house and she begged us to come and visit her so we could see it.

When we got out of the car, and she was waving wildly at us from the porch, obviously so excited that we made it. I asked Curt, "Mask or no mask?" We paused, looked back at her and got out of the car without our masks. In reality, they say it wouldn't have mattered since she wasn't wearing a mask either.

A couple days later, I felt blah....I laid down on the coach and declared it was make your own dinner night because I didn't feel like eating. Curt broke out the brats from Indian Valley Meats. The next day it was clear that both Curt and I were taking a cold. I blamed the day I sat out by the river with only a small sweater on. Curt blamed the time he spent with a friend who had a bad cold. But we both took naps and ate comfort food: macaroni and cheese, more brats. We commenced our usual routines when have we start catching cold: nasal washes, lots of fluid, naps, vitamins, etc.

Thursday -Day 2 of symptoms, 5 days after contact: We had an appointment for the car to get fixed and needed to drive into Anchorage to drop it off before 10am. We did that. Both of us were achy. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lay on the couch watching news. Curt did some work, but we both snoozed a lot and drank fluids. We both coughed, but usually that's what we both do with a cold. Close to 6 pm our relative called. She had tested positive for Covid. Suddenly things changed. Of course she was very apologetic and wondered how it could have happened to her, but we thanked her for telling us and jumped into action.

It was exactly three days before our grandchildren and their parents arrived at the airport. We decided to get in the car, and drop off a car at the airport for them to drive when they arrived. We sprayed it all down and left the key in a secret place for them to find. We called the car repair shop and told them we had been exposed to Covid and may or may not have it, but could we pick up our car anyway? They said they'd bring our keys out to us, so we wouldn't have to come in the shop. The sales guy stretched his gloved hand out as far as he could with the envelope containing the keys. We thanked him through the crack in the window and from behind our masks, but he wasn't happy.

Next we googled where we could get a covid test at 7pm in Anchorage. Luckily we found a place and the nurse came right out to the car with her hazmat suit on and asked us to blow our noses so she could dab in and around our nostrils. It wasn't uncomfortable at all---and that was the part I was fearing the most. I never even gagged!

We drove home thinking it was going to be a long week to wait to find out if we had it---which is what they told us. We opted for caribou bone broth for dinner---now that we were possibly seriously sick, we decided a healthier diet would be a good idea.

Friday. Day 3 of symptoms, 6 days after contact. The next morning we weren't feeling any worse and actually we were feeling a little better. We both believed we couldn't have the covid. We were certain we had bad colds. BUT, it was time to break out the fire cider. Luckily I made it this summer in anticipation of covid coming to my house.

Recipe: https://www.eatingbirdfood.com/how-to-make-fire-cider/ Note: I am absolutely certain that the best part of this is the 1 T. of Alaskan honey I add to each cup. Honey is naturally antibiotic.

I must have had 6 cups or so that day. We both took Zycam every 4 hours as well.

Although we weren't really hungry, we knew eating well would help. So we took out a red salmon fillet for dinner. Curt skinned it, I stir fried it and we put it on top of our homemade salad.

It was almost 7pm when they called. Yes, you guessed it. We were both positive for the Corona Virus. Sigh. We still didn't feel worse than had we had a bad cold. In fact, I was feeling a lot better. My cough was all but gone. I still had a stuffy head, but kept using the netty pot.

Saturday, Day 4 of symptoms, 7 days after contact.

It's still really unbelievable that we have THE COVID. My brother and I had been joking about it during the summer any time anyone sneezed. "Ha, you've got the covid. Better watch out!" So now it was our turn to call everyone and tell them. The worst part was that we had stayed at Curt's dad's house. Ray just turned 88 and just got married a couple weeks ago to his bride, Pat, 82 years old. (So far they don't have symptoms, so we can only assume we weren't contagious until after we left their house--thank God).

We felt pretty good. Nobody we called on the phone could really tell we even had colds. Curt has a cough, but he always has a cough---he has dry eye syndrome. So....no one we called was really concerned----except our grandchildren. They will now have to wave at us through the window until we are done with this thing.

Curt made us a nice breakfast of omelettes.

But by now we were getting a little stir crazy. This was a Saturday and we were supposed to be outside working on getting things cleaned up for winter. We thought about it, but decided we'd better continue to rest. What if we had a relapse, or something?

I got up after finishing another season of Call the Midwife and made some zucchini bread.

I decided to make some yarrow/nettle tea to go with it. It's oh so good for you! Note: I was tired after making zucchini bread and had to watch another episode of Call the Midwife while I waited for it to come out of the oven.

And then.......I ate too many warm slices. Yum. You only get the coronavirus once in your life, right? (I hope so, anyway)

We needed some things from the store, so I got online and placed an order.

When we got a text saying our groceries were ready for pickup, we were both anxious to go for a drive and get out of the house. We pulled up in the parking slot, called the number and told them to just open the hatch and put in the groceries because we were positive for covid. Alarms went off. The kid said, "We've never done this before." I said I was sure they had, we were just polite enough to tell them we had covid. He called his manager.

After much consternation, the manager explained that we couldn't order Night Time NyQuil because they had to see our driver's licenses and get signatures. So we asked for them to substitute Night Time AlkaSelzer Plus. That was acceptable. Finally the manager got back on the phone and proclaimed he gave us a refund for the NyQuil, but he couldn't figure out how to charge us for the AlkaSeltzer Plus, so he paid for it himself. And then he said, "God, bless you," like it might be the last time we ever see the light of day. We tried not to laugh when we saw the young boy coming out with our groceries. I think he borrowed clothes from the butcher. He had every inch of his body covered. He set the bags down on the ground in front of our car and backed away and then turned quickly and rushed back into the store. Curt got out and collected the bags and put them into the back of the car. And then our adventure was over and all that was left was to go back home.

For dinner that night I wasn't hungry. I'm sure it was the zucchini bread, it felt like a lump just solidifying in my stomach. I decided to have blueberries and yogurt (about a cup of each). That was perfect. Those probiotics went right to work and I was feeling much better. Poor Curt...all he could find was a frozen veggie burger in the freezer. He announced that it wasn't anything like the veggie burger at Red Robin. Oh well.

Sunday, Day 5 of symptoms, 8 days after contact. It's 3:05 and I'm still in my pajamas. We watched all the news shows and I washed the dishes and did some laundry. Now what? There is some controversy about how soon we can leave the house again. One of the factors is temperature. I spent quite some time looking for a thermometer in the house. I don't think we have one. We need to be without a temperature for 3 days in a row. I think we've probably done that already, but we don't know for sure.

Today I'm drinking Yarrow/Nettle tea with a tablespoon of honey. Nice stuff! I still have a stuffy head. Nothing new to report.

I'll keep updating as we go along. I wonder what's for dinner today?

The merits of canning bone broth

2020-01-05T15:12:00.001-09:00

Ever since visiting my 92 year old (retired farmer's wife) aunt this fall, I've become so curious about my life-style now compared to my Aunt's. Or mine compared to my great grandparents. I'm ready to learn time travel so I can go back and observe---any time now.

This week I've been working on canning bone broth (or stock as they used to call it in the old days). I'm wondering about the merits of doing all this work for bone broth. Is it really worth it? I know it puts an aroma through the house that makes your mouth water. I wonder if my relatives cut the bones, cooked the bones down enough to get the cartilage and bone marrow out. How often did they eat it, all winter? If the wood stove was going, I'm betting they had bones cooking. (Nobody really used a pressure cooker until WWII) Maybe they only used chicken bones. Things to ponder....

My own history with bone marrow started in 1976 when I was in Anaktuvuk Pass for 2 weeks. Our high school youth group offered to go there and teach Bible School. This was back in the day when there was one phone for the whole village and no TVs. The whole village showed up to meet the plane at the runway. We stayed in James and Anna Nageak's house while they were out of town. It was one of the few plywood houses in town. The rest of the houses were very small hovels, some still sod houses. The bigger the house, the harder it was to heat in the winter.

As luck would have it, our food didn't show up. We had ordered it at the grocery store in Fairbanks and had it sent from there to Anaktuvuk Pass. I still don't remember why our food didn't show up. Maybe the planes were full. Maybe the clouds came down and the plane over-headed. But finally one day, Melinda Lord decided she would go to one of her relative's houses and ask for some food. (She was Inupiat from a well known family living in Fairbanks). She came back triumphant with a frozen caribou leg. She explained that they took her down into their ice cellar and she could pick out what she wanted. I wished I would have gone with her now, since the ice cellars are all melting now.

She tossed it on the table and got out a sharp knife. The rest of us Tunniks (whites) watched as she shaved off thin pieces of meat for us to fry up. She ate some raw and we were horrified. Then she got to the bone. She thought she was going to have to fight for it. So she asked quietly, "Who wants some marrow?" I can't even imagine the faces we made. I only remember her eyes getting really big, and her smile growing across her face, "Really?" she asked. "Are you sure?" We were sure. Then she cracked the bone and started dipping her finger in, as if she were digging into the jelly jar. She sat and worked that bone until she licked it clean. How could I make sense of that???

When we got back to Fairbanks, I talked to my parents about that incident. I was told never to eat raw meat and besides chicken gizzards, or liver, I had never heard of eating ALL of the animal before. Of course I never really thought about how the Inupiat people survived 10,000 years in Alaska without much fruit or vegetables. There were vitamins in the marrow. Vitamins that were essential for survival in the far north.

It wasn't until the last 10 years (after I retired), that I started to be curious about the healing powers of bone broth. One year we brought our moose to Indian Valley Meats near Girdwood to be processed. To my surprise when we came back to pick up the boxes of meat, I saw people around several garbage cans. What in the world? I thought. In the cans were all the bones from everyone's moose. People were rooting through them to find the best bones. So that day I brought some home too.

I put them in the sink and scrubbed them. One moose hair can ruin the taste of the whole batch, so I cleaned them so well they looked fresh. I put the bones in a regular pot and boiled them all day. It turned into great soup. But....not bone broth. Or so I'm told.

This year I went in to get our yearly supply of Indian Valley's jalepeno bratwurst. I was later than usual in the year and it was a Sunday. I explained how sorry I was that they weren't cutting moose 'cause I wanted some bones. The gal looked to her boss and asked, "How about we give her that box that those folks never came back to get?" He nodded and so I ended up carrying out a 50 pound box of carribou legs.

So this week was bone broth week. I learned some more things.....

This year I used the pressure cooker to conserve fossil fuels. We cook with Natural Gas, so shortening the time it takes to cook down the bones makes it more sustainable. I cooked the bones for 4. 5 hours at 15 pounds of pressure. That gives all of the Collagen, the protein matrix in bones, tendons, ligaments, and other flexible tissues, time to brake down. When I took off the lid the next morning, this is what I saw. Lots of fat on top.

After reading up on fat on the internet, we decided to keep the fat instead of skimming it off. You only want to keep it, apparently, if the animal has not been farmed. That's where all the toxins are stored. Since these bones were from wild caribou, we decided it would be good for us. I did try some of the fat on my dry hands. It was good until it wore off.

I noticed, after this first batch, that the marrow couldn't come out of the bones if the bones are still in tact, duh! So that night, I held the bones and Curt cut them in half with the sawzall.

Although that opened the bone up for the marrow to come out, it didn't just float out. I ended up sticking the shish kabob skewers in the bone cavity and coaxing the long marrow casings out. Next time I will cut the joints off the bone instead, so that you can see through the bone when the marrow is gone. It requires more time sawing, but less time poking and prodding.

Finally I had all the bone broth out and brought it to a boil. I tried some and I didn't like chunks of things, sometimes meat, sometimes marrow left floating around. So I used my immersion blender to blend it all into small pieces. I added some spices to taste and it was perfect.

I cleaned out the pressure cooker, washed my quart jars in the dishwasher and then filled the jars with broth. I cooked them for 25 minutes at 15 pounds of pressure.

The jars in the video look grimy because, for the first time ever, the alarm went off on the pressure cooker. My husband was wondering why we couldn't use the smaller pressure cooker knob instead of the larger one. Note: our last pressure cooker had a circular weight that you could place on the top at either a 10, 15 or 20 pound pressure. Our new one just came with one weight. In the center of the lid was the pressure gauge.

Somehow it didn't like the littler weight and when we opened it up, two jars had NO lids! The rings were off. Yes, I did put them on tight! And the rubberized seals were off! The bone broth was mixed in with the water bath. So of course I couldn't waste it. I boiled it down and re-canned them with the proper weight on the pressure cooker.

Here's what happened after I pulled them out! You have to see how they dance!

I called my mom to see if she remembers trying to get marrow out of the bones, but she didn't. She was 12 years younger than her sister and suspects that she just didn't know what was going on. But I'm imagining on cold winter nights, my relatives would get out some bone broth from the basement (root cellar), add potatoes and carrots and had a very nice meal with some fresh bread. At -10 degrees here today....we will be doing the same thing.

New Year......New Decade....New Committment

2020-01-01T11:53:00.004-09:00

Yes....2020. I see you. You have arrived. Something my sister and I never could believe we'd ever see. Mom was doing laundry in the cement basement with the old washer. There was an electric ringer she had to put the clothes through before she could hang them up in the basement. Sandee and I were riding our bikes or trikes around before all the clothes were hung up. Mom wouldn't let us help. She thought we'd get our fingers stuck in the ringer and be maimed for life. So we were contemplating how long we'd live. It's so funny that I remember that moment so clearly.

I'm guessing it was close to New Years 1967. I would have been 7 and she, 5. We were counting the years by 5s, but since she couldn't do that yet, I was announcing each year. The grey concrete seemed to make my pronouncement of each year more profound in the moist dark basement. "Could we live to 1975?" Yeah! She and I would scream. Then we would take a lap around the 2 poles that held the basement up. Could we live to 1980? '85? 90? Each year was a resounding YEAH! Until I reached 2000. My sister screamed NO!!! We could never live until the year 2000. So I started figuring it out. In 2000 we would be 39 and 41, I told her. Would we live that long? Well our mom was 29, and we knew plenty of people older than her. So my sister agreed we could live that long. And we took our obligatory lap around the poles.

Years later when we were having our 2000 bonfire on the beach near her house in Texas, waiting for the Y2K disaster to strike, I reminded her of this ceremony we had done when we were little. She had no recollection. But she was distracted with her 7 kids of various ages (5 adopted) swinging marshmellow sticks around the fire.

It's ominous now....but we continued the game and when I got to 2020, she said no, we would never live to see 2020. I said we would. We'd only be 60 and 58. I can't remember what happened next. Maybe mom called us to help hang the clothes on the basement clothes line, but I don't remember doing our obligatory race around the poles.

In November 2018 she died of a pulmonary embolism. She predicted it back when she was little. So here I am welcoming 2020 without her. I'm the one left to remember and to document life in the 20s. So my new decade's resolution is to do more writing about life, not only for my sister....but for my grandchildren and those who come after me.

Lessons I Learned in Alaska (from my Wwoofer)

2018-06-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

Alaska, according to Shea O'Brien, 20, who grew up and lived her whole life on the east coast where everything is tame. (Note: she spent weekends hiking and time with another family....not just ours)

Really Alaskans are pretty crazy: 1. to live here; 2. to STAY here. Life is so much harder here. There's a certain practicality and toughness of the people. It doesn't work out so well for you if you aren't tough. I value their moxie. It's a git 'er done quality.

Alaskans really think they are better than every one else, even the term "Lower 48" says it all!

They all really like to talk about bears. BUT, when you mention that fact, they bring out all sorts of other stories of moose, fish, and other vermin.

Another thing: cracked windshields! No one even bothers to change them.....the nicest cars can have just totally shattered windshields.

They believe they are their own country. Everyone just kinda does whatever they want.

There's an outdoor culture here that's just wild. A certain point at the top of every mountain that runs out of trail where there are no trees and you scramble up however you can. Once you realize there's no rules and no fences, you just do as much as you can without dying!

Shea peeling logs

Shea conquers the cottonwoods

Bear terror is the worst---never mind the earthquakes, avalanches, high murder rate, moose, high cost of living, the snow and ice with extreme temperatures. Everyone just shrugs it off and eats a lot of ice-cream.

First of all, there are some really cool things about Alaska. They have their own time zone AND the whole state is the SAME area code! But they are still more than twice the size of Texas.

It's so strange that there's a near complete lack of amphibians, reptiles, and fireflies.

There's a strange lack of tree variety here. They are, for the most part, all one color and all the same height: tall.

It's crazy that you have to fly everywhere---most towns and villages have no roads to them!

The first thing I noticed about the buildings is that they are square. I started calling them lego buildings---everything is a log cabin or legos! There's a complete lack of architecture.

Pull offs are NOT NORMAL. Why are people pulling over so much? What is there to see, anyway?

Names of everything are so straight forward and literal. The street names are funny enough (Denali, Northern Lights, but the creeks....we passed Mountain Creek....duh, a creek coming from a mountain; then goat creek, then 20 mile creek. Hmmm I wonder how long the creek is? At least the names are consistent....it doesn't end. No John Doe memorial street, or civil war battle field creek. It's just very clear how everything got its name. I just can't stop: there's a lake called Beach Lake with a little trail going to the beach. Oh look! There are a couple eagles flying around this river: Eagle River. So funny!

Mosquitoes are the size of quarters---you can see 'em and git 'em.

Lessons I learned the hard way:
1. Bring a raincoat 100% of the time, especially if you are sure you won't need it!
2. Hiking boots means actual hiking boots, not work boots. There's a difference. Whatever you THINK the weather's gonna be, you're wrong.

So if you are visiting Alaska......be prepared.

****Cindee Karns, scribe

Is Silence Really Golden?

2018-04-25T10:56:00.001-08:00

The last day of my 58th year around the sun turned out to be a whopper! All was fine---despite the very unusual wind---until I lost cell service around 11am during a phone call with my mom. Not to worry. I have a land line and could call her back. The winds started howling. The empty pots outside the door starting hitting the door and flying around in small tornados. I made my way down to the greenhouse with 2 armloads of wood to split to start the stove. I'm telling you, the wind was so cold, it was sucking heat out of the greenhouse so fast! We are so lucky that the roof didn't blow off since last summer Curt fell off the roof putting the last screws in and decided to leave the last screws until this summer.

Anyway, it was nice sitting next to the stove. But still, the wind howled. By the time I got back up to the house, I had internet service again and thought I'd watch a TV show and wait for the wind to die down. It never happened and my phone died. Since I couldn't do much outside, I thought I'd go to town. I needed my restless leg medicine. , I knew from experience I wouldn't sleep much that night without it.

I went down the 31 stairs to the garage and remembered ---after I punched in the code to the garage door--that it was an electric garage door and it wouldn't open. So I walked back up the 31 stairs to check on the "speck," our junk car we keep for visitors. Curt had just charged it up the day before so it would start. I got in and no matter what I tried, it just wouldn't turn over. So.... back down the 31 stairs to try the Suburban, our boat puller that we don't drive in the winter. Curt had also charged up the Suburban. What a crazy racket the Suburban made. I'm guessing we need a new starter. So.... I thought I'd go back up the 31 stairs to have lunch and think about my options. Maybe the power would come back on.

An hour later----still no power. I decided Curt would know how to open the garage door without power, but I had no cell phone battery left. Choice one: get out the emergency cook stove that has a phone charger on it, or go down to the car and charge the phone. Back down the 31 stairs. Yes, I started the car in the closed garage. I did leave the man door open so the fumes wouldn't be that bad, but the kept wind slamming it shut. Luckily, the phone came on before I lost consciousness (just kidding--it wasn't bad) and I called Curt. He picked up and explained that there's some string next to the garage door motor. I couldn't see a string by the motor, but there was a different string by the door. I pulled and tugged. I dragged a log over to stand on to get a better look, but to no avail.

What to do? I got back in the car and started it again. I blocked open the man door so I wouldn't die and I started watching You Tube videos to teach me how to do it. I had already done what those videos said to do. I tied a piece of wood onto the string to see if that would help me pull it. Nope. Then I glanced over to the other garage door and that string was different. It had a loop. I pulled it and VIOLA! I heard a snap and pushed open the garage door! I was FREE AT LAST!

Driving to town was no easy feat either. The wind was pushing me all over the road---debris was flying. I drove by a guy walking. He had his elbow over his eyes and shirt over his mouth and nose, so I turned around. I was going to pick him up. By the time I caught back up to him, I saw he was carrying what looked like a whiskey bottle, so I left him walking. I swerved around a tree that was down. A truck in front of me (happened to be my neighbor) turned in there and later I found out, she had her chain saw in the back of the truck and cut the tree out of the road.

I made it to Carrs and luckily the generator was working so the cash registers could still work. I went to the pharmacy and THEIR registers were not working. I begged for my pills -- just enough for the night and I'd come back the next day. She took pity on me and wrote an I.O.U. which I'll have to go and pay today sometime. So with that, I ventured into the dark aisles with my cell phone flash light gathering the stuff I needed---not much: milk, yogurt, salad, fruit and cinnamon. When I started whistling, since it was so creepy in there, my neighbor found me (the one who cut the tree out of the road) and we went through the aisles together. Just as we finished our shopping, the generator died. That meant only those with cash (not even checks) could buy their groceries. What? I saw a woman in near panic, "I've GOT to have matches! We can't eat if I can't buy matches!" Another said that Walmart was out. Someone else told terrible stories of the carts going crazy over at Fred Meyers (since no one wanted to take them back) and they were damaging all the cars in the parking lot. So..... I had to abandon my cart and drive home. All that and no way to buy groceries.

When I arrived home, I decided to get out the emergency radio that I haven't used in 8 years or so. I became so aware of how much I rely on noise: TV, or music, radio, or books on tape, or podcasts. All of that was not possible. I made a mental note to start practicing working in silence. So, I happily pulled down the wind-up radio. Wouldn't you know? You have to replace the batteries every 5 years or so or they won't take a charge! What kind of an emergency radio is that? So....I went on the hunt for batteries. So lucky! I had 4 AAs still in the charger that were charged. Ah.....the sound of voices warning me that there's a wind storm out there. Ahhhh.

So....what to eat? I wanted comfort food and my granddaughter had just told me about the wonderful banana bread she ate. So--because we have gas appliances, I pulled the frozen bananas out of the freezer and let them thaw (no microwave to defrost things) and started mixing. When I turned on the oven, it didn't sound right. Then I remembered ...... no electric start. So I abandoned my banana bread and made rice on the stove. But to light the stove I had to find matches! So funny! My matches were totally dead. They had oxidized or something. They wouldn't strike on the box. So I knew there were emergency candles and lighters upstairs in the bathroom, so I lit a candle and brought it down---even though the sun is setting at 9pm now and I didn't really need a candle. It was useful to start the stove with anyway.

With warm rice in my belly, I wondered what I should do next? Curt wasn't coming home until 10pm or so. We usually watch a TV show or two and then go to bed. Oh....yeah....bed. All the sheets were in the washer and it didn't finish its spin! I wondered if I should try and hang them on the clothes line or would they just make their way down to the river at the bottom of the hill? I left them in the washer.

It started getting cool in the house. I decided instead of going outside to haul and split more wood to start a fire, I would go put my long johns on. With no good book to read, or TV to watch, I curled under the blankets on the couch and listened to Public Radio. The cat curled up next to me and it was very cozy.

When Curt came home at 10, he said HE had cell phone service, why didn't I? Hmmmmm. I re-booted my phone and, what do you know? I had it too. So.....we turned off the emergency radio and we watched "Lost in Space" on his cell phone. Creatures of habit, I guess.

So today, while I treasure hunt down the mountain and in the woods for all the things that blew away, I'm pondering if I'm really up for a long emergency? I take pride in being prepared. But am I prepared for silence?

Homer's Natural Built Birthing Center

2017-07-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

Curt and I took time to stop at the Birthing Center in Homer. We were so impressed!

The entry way.

The waiting room/living room.

The guillotine --- cuts off the airflow so the heat doesn't go up the rocket stove leaving the bench cold.

The pizza oven above the wood input on the rocket stove.

The top of the heat riser is a stove top in the kitchen

The rocket stove mass heater bench.

The clean-out for the horizontal chimney

The pantry----adding driftwood really makes it more natural.

Nice little wooded details added and then the extra detail of the whale tail!

Clay TV stand----very artsy. Fake fire place

The birthing bathtub---details of stone

Bottles adorn the wall between the entry and the bedroom.

Artsy Windows

Nice cubbies in random places.

Cindee with the head Birthing Lady (Doula?)

The walls are 8 inches clay-straw, 8 inches of clay brick in the middle and 8 inches of clay-straw on the outside. The building took 4-5 years to complete and it is approved by the city of Homer.

There's a bear in my Subaru!

2017-06-11T12:39:00.004-08:00

BEAR ACTIVITY! Arg.

The neighborhood black bear found us.

Cathy, my intern, and I were unloading plants from the Subaru and taking them down to plant in the orchard area, right below the driveway. Cathy had just been up to the garage to look for a shovel. We decided to use our hands to plant with.

Maybe five minutes later I hear something. I decide it was Curt. I call out to him, but he doesn't answer. I decide that he has his ear buds in and is working in the garage. Then....another noise. I decide to go up and check it out. I'm calling for Curt. When he doesn't answer, I start calling for the neighborhood dogs to come to my rescue. I walk slowly up the old garden steps next to the garage. Since I'm still calling for dogs, I think it's got to be Curt working in the garage. Just as I'm about to stick my head around the corner of the open garage door, I see garbage all over the garage floor. I knew then, it was the bear. Dang.

I jump in Curt's car and I call for Cathy to come up. She of course didn't want to come up next to the garage, so she climbs up the cliff and jumps in the little mazda. I lay on the horn. What a dump horn that is---why didn't I jump in the Suburban---something with a substantial horn?? I roll down the window and we still hear the bear in the garage. We can't see anything though---it's a black bear in the dark garage. We start calling the bear out of the garage. No luck. I decide to open the 2nd garage door to see if that would move him. Sure enough. He moseys out of the garage and right next to Cathy's window that she is struggling to get up. He's heading to the driveway. Good, we think. bear picture

Then he takes a wiff at my Subaru. I remember the cinnamon gum in there and more importantly, the bag of trash I should have emptied. My last Wwoofer loved chocolate, so we splurged more than once on expensive chocolate bars and some reese's cups. He comes back around and decides to check it out. Bear Picture Gingerly he steps into the back of the open Subaru and makes his way to the driver's seat. He starts picking through the garbage bag that's on the passenger's seat floor!

Well, Cathy and I start up the Mazda and put it in reverse. That of course did not phase the bear and we decide it wouldn't be able to get out the back of the car again. Who wants it going out the closed window? So I get out of the car. I call Curt on the phone---nervously--- to bring the bear spray down from the house. By the time he comes down, Cathy and I are yelling at the bear to get out of the car and the bear is turning around in my driver's seat. He honks the horn with his butt. (The steering wheel was wet afterwards---let's hope it was slobber. The horn startles him some and he starts coming out of the back of the car. So nice of him to step around all my plants. Bear Picture

Then, instead of running off like a good bear should. It decides to go after Latte, who was just sitting there watching the whole spectacle. She ducks under the suburban and the bear barks at her and pounces on his two front feet. If you haven't ever heard a bear bark---it's a warning sound. He claws under the suburban to try to reach her. Bear Picture We are all screaming at the bear to leave. Reluctantly he leaves the cat and saunters to the top of the driveway. But he stops and just looks at us, like "so what are you going to do, make me?" Bear Picture Curt, Cathy and I start moving forward, yelling. Curt has the bear spray at the ready along with our house sign "Karns" because he couldn't get it untangled from the bear spray. Too bad I didn't take that picture. It looked like he was going to paddle the bear with the board. Anyway, Curt had to escort that bear all the way down the driveway and across the road so he'd leave. Bear Picture

We then practiced with the bear spray to see if it would have reached the bear. That stuff only sprayed like 3 feet and so it might have just made him mad. He kept about 5 feet away from us.

Anyway, he's been a real nuisance around the neighborhood (IF IT'S THE SAME BEAR). A neighbor took this picture of him at the post boxes at the bottom of the hill. Bear Picture

Needless to say our guns are loaded. We would NEVER shoot a bear unless he were chewing on a leg. It's just too dangerous with so many houses around. But we DID go out and buy 4 new cans of bear spray.

Lesson learned: even if you are working and talking right outside, always turn on the radio. That was always my Wwoofer's job this year. When he left, I just didn't do it. Dumb.

Part II: Rammed Earth House

2017-05-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

MAY 2017

House looks great from the outside----no one lives in it yet.

Finishing touches around windows and doors.

Nice color on the walls. Some sheetrock.

Hard to plan all of the electrical and other wires ahead of time.

Is the bubble bursting???

2017-01-21T13:39:00.001-09:00

We moved into the Bioshelter 10 years ago and role modeled a different kind of western living. We learned so much, but we also realize it’s not enough. Curt and I are really taking a hard look at retirement. How do we reshape a system? It’s so much easier to start over. I think we should become Amish and go live in the woods at the cabin. Curt isn’t so sure, but the system we are in, our culture, is really becoming more and more DE-generative and the possibility of something that’s regenerative seems out of the realm of possibility.

If suddenly Big Ag can’t feed us there would be a crisis, so we’d be forced to change. So how soon is that crisis coming? I read 1491, a book about before Columbus arrived. It seems the woods were abundant food forests that the indigenous cultivated. Could we do that? Maybe, but in a crisis situation, it’s better to have the life boat already built. So how do you build the ark, if it hasn’t even started raining?

I think our culture is almost at the edge—the crisis is almost here. It’s so hard to know. We have to take exponential growth seriously. This video helps explain it. Please watch it.

These days hockey stick graphs are everywhere and they seem to be getting worse every year.

CARBON EMISSION GRAPHS

From: Skeptical Science

CLIMATE CHANGE GRAPHS

http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/images/uploads/LandOceanTemp.gif

ENERGY CONSUMPTION GRAPHS

https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world-energy-consumption-by-source.png

And the next hockey stick graph we aren’t really allowed to talk about: too many people. The UN put this graph together.

So how do we get these graphs to change? How do we use less energy and have a better life? How do we use less water and have a better life?

I think oil consumption is my number one concern. If that bubble bursts we are in big trouble.

Thinking about our big ag system made me do some research. This came from the University of Ottowa, so this might be Canadian statistics. It takes 400 gallons of oil to feed one person for 1 year.

20% is the farm equipment;
16% is the transportation;
13% is irrigation;
8% is live stock;
5% are pesticides.

I’m wondering how much it is to feed our Alaskan family? How many gallons of gas do we use to go to Chitna, put the boat in, motor up and down the river dip-netting? How many gallons do we use to pull the boat and a 4-wheeler to the mountains to get a caribou? How many gallons do I use driving to town to get seeds, or to Palmer to get manure? If there’s suddenly no more oil……Curt and I don’t know how to live without it. And we are not very dependent on the Big Ag farms.

It stresses me out to know that when the fictitious Beverly Hillbillys struck oil, they paid $0 to get the oil out. Now we may be using a barrel of oil to get a barrel out of the ground. Here’s the quote: “If we have energy returned on energy invested (ERoEI) = 1 then the net energy is zero. We use as much energy to gather energy as energy gathered.

Here’s the historical numbers from the Energy Matters blog site is: “ERoEI for finding oil and gas decreased exponentially from

1200:1 in 1919
5:1 in 2007.

The EROI for production of the oil and gas industry was

about 20:1 from 1919 to 1972,
declined to about 8:1 in 1982 when peak drilling occurred,
recovered to about 17:1 from 1986–2002
declined sharply to about 11:1 in the mid to late 2000s.”

So where are we now??? How much energy does it take to pull more oil out of the arctic? According to Peak Oil, for things to keep going as we are used to, we must have at least an ERoEi between 5 and 7.

Okay, I’ll stop now. I’m beginning to feel like Chicken Little. “The sky is falling.” Who wants to come to the cabin with us and live off the land??? ☺

Reflections on my Biome

2017-01-16T12:44:00.000-09:00

I’m so confused about my biome. I can’t understand it. Where are the boundaries? It reminds me of OUR TOWN, the play. Here’s the quote I’m remembering from it.

I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick. He wrote Jane a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: It said: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America…Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the mind of God – that’s what it said on the envelope.

So my address would be Cindee Karns, AlaskaBioshelter, RamValley drainage, Eagle River Valley, Anchorage; SouthCentral; Alaska; and then the rest and finally: the Mind of God. The Mind of God is the coolest.

Permaculture says to design from WHOLE to PARTS and to look for patterns. What’s my whole? If I work on designs for all of my biomes, will that thinking process of mine somehow seep out into other’s thoughts of their biomes? Since Permaculture also says start with observations, that’s a good thing. It gives me some focus, but then I get lost when I’m hearing a podcast about the similarities between Italy’s President and our in-coming president. That’s a pattern and if you look closer at other countries you can see other similar patterns in leadership. What pattern is that? Do I have a responsibility for that Biome?

And then I go out to shovel snow. I don’t hear the birds that I know winter here. I hear snow blowers all around me. That’s a pattern. Is that a sign of our pattern of oil dependency? Or am I just observing that because I have a shovel in my hand and am feeling a little elite in my attempt to become part Amish. J

Eklutna Lake

I often think of who might have come back to this valley in ancient times: where was the glacier? It’s still astonishing to me that Knik was the named because it was the END of the Knick glacier when the town was founded. Amazing. We still have a glacier hanging above us I think. No telling when it will be gone. Soon I fear. It sends water down to us—on both sides of our neighborhood. Many of us drink it right from the stream.

I see cottonwoods everywhere---an awful tree to partner with in terms of a heat source, but they are responsible, along with the willow and other water-loving plants, that sprouted and grew really fast because of the water source. All of those leaves over the years have turned this valley into a place of soil, a place that can be cultivated, albeit with LOTS of rocks throughout.

There are many animals up here, but they are also down in the valley: moose, bears, coyotes, rabbits. We could have warm clothes, bear fat and meat to eat, but I’m not sure we could feed the current population in our neighborhood. We have plenty of year round birds to entertain us: ravens, eagles, chickadees, nuthatches, and stellar jays, and my favorite: the grouse. Our nocturnal residents help us keep our vole populations down: owls and coyotes, but unfortunately they eat the grouse too.

So, if I think of my ancestors, I don’t think they would have settled here. Even though there’s fresh water, and SOME spruce trees, it’s 1 mile up on the side of the mountain. They might have lived in the valley after the glacier receded. But not up here.

It certainly makes me wonder if I should live here? I rely on fossil fuel to drive that mile up and then another 10 miles to town. We use lots of electricity and natural gas to stay warm. We have to import our wood because we live in a cottonwood forest. However, it all might be changing. Our summers are now warmer and I see the cottonwood struggling, but so are the birch and the willows. There isn’t enough water or snow melt. Apparently this area used to be covered in PINE trees before the last glaciers covered our area. Maybe that will be the new tree?

-->

The mind of God……up here in the mountains. What pattern is that?

The Largest Community Garden in the US.

2017-01-15T13:10:00.006-09:00

Largest Community Garden in the US

The Shiloh Field Community Garden just happens to be in Denton, TX where my son and his family are living. Today we toured it (11/23/16) and talked to the founder, Gene Gumfory. This garden has been open for seven years and they have learned a lot, most of which is very relevant for the Central Urban Farm in Anchorage, especially since both gardens are on church property.

The Shiloh Field Community Garden prides itself on being a teaching, sharing and growing garden. They welcome everyone. There are 159 individual 15x15 garden plots for anyone to use for free. You simply have to register each year. There are no fences around the garden, but each person can add fences to his/her own plot. It is open 24/7 so that gardeners can come and tend their gardens as they need to. Water is free and is supplied by the church, as are wood chips. However, they don’t allow sprinklers.

Gardeners are encouraged to use organic fertilizer, but that is not supplied by the garden.

Here is the sign that is up at the

entry of the garden.

Across from the private plots they have a large orchard with pecan, pear, plum trees. Toward the back of the acerage is another type of community garden. It relies on the community, church members, students from the two universities located in Denton, K-12 studetns and even some court-ordered community service volunteers to grow, harvest and weed the gardens. Each Monday, Thursday and Saturday mornings at 8am before the heat begins, they start arriving. They all must sign up in order to work there. Homeless or hungry people are encouraged to sign up as well to work side by side learning with the more experienced volunteers. During harvest season at least, each volunteer is allowed to take home his/her own food for that night’s dinner.

To access free fertilizer, they now have horse farms delivering to them directly as well as the tree companies. In the fall, they put out an all call for raked leaves and people just bring them. They also have all of their chicken manure. The long rows of compost mixes right there on site and stays very hot all year.

The garden also boasts 3 high tunnels for winter growing, 15-20 doz eggs a day, honey, blackberries and grapes. All of the extra food is shared with many, many organizations who feed the poor. In Denton 1 in 5 persons lives below the poverty level.

Gene recommends a committee of 4 or 5 to run the garden, which is not what he has. He is trying to manage it himself. He also recommends that every community garden organizer join the American Community Garden Association. They have lots of ideas there, he told me.

I left with lots of ideas---especially signage.

Watch their video!

IT'S REALLY ALL ABOUT DESIGN

2015-08-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

I love touring people through the bioshelter! Every Thursday this summer folks come out and I get to tell them about how we live lightly on the planet. This last Thursday a gentleman toured and at the end, even though his eyes were glassing over with so much input, he summarized, "So really it's all about design." He nailed it on the head.

To live permanently on the planet humans need to design systems that work with nature so that we aren't harming the planet. In our bioshelter home that means that we use the rain water for all of our needs and then return the surplus back to the environment as clean or cleaner than when we captured it. That means we feed worms all of our waste products (anything that's not plastic), so that we can return that surplus back to the environment. That means we used all biodegradable materials (except for the roof) to build our greenhouse. The walls are made of clay we dug from the ground, straw we got from Palmer, and sand we got from Alaska Sand and Gravel with windows destined for the dump from Craig's list. For insulation, we packed the clay covered straw in between two walls 12 inches apart and plastered the outsides of the walls with natural clay plaster . We also built a rocket stove with some firebricks, which is covered with an Alaska clay and sand plaster to warm the greenhouse.

Designing for sustainability is easy to talk about, but actually doing it is much more difficult. Stores that sell building materials shipped up here from thousands of miles away, make building much easier. The immense amount of carbon that is spent to get those building materials here is also a huge concern. The materials being shipped are highly toxic and many will never disintegrate, even though the homes they are placed in will only last 50 years. The immense amount of carbon that is spent to get those building materials here is also a huge concern. It is not sustainable.

It's time to change the way we live. We need to design and plan for a future that stops harming our fragile ecosystem.

So the question is: how can you design this change? An easy way to begin is to start growing your own food or buying from local farmers, and then composting the excess waste. Growing your own food means you are not spending carbon for your food to be sent to you from the Lower 48! Usually food is flown over 1,500 miles to get to your plate. Some people are growing food, but are still importing fertilizer made from chemicals to fertilize their food. Without going into the health concerns of adding chemicals to our food system, we can design a system that utilizes a natural fertilizer source: animal manure. And it's local! Designing a local food system that includes animals, especially when they have other benefits like meat and eggs, is extremely environmentally friendly.

This is only the beginning of the design process. Designing systems for fodder or for watering those animals and plants, or for gathering produce from the wild, or for feeding the microorganisms in your soil, or for better ways to share food with each other, or share the work load....these are all things that you learn in a permaculture design course.

It seems to me that more and more people are feeling the need to become more and more self-sufficient, localized, and healthy. It's time. You can get a kick start by taking a permaculture design course this winter. It's all about designing your sustainable future and our planet's future simultaneously.

1st Rammed Earth Home Being Built in Butte

2015-08-14T12:53:00.002-08:00

I was lucky enough to attend a tour of the first rammed earth house being built in Butte! It’s an amazing, albeit expensive way to build a house! According to the architect on the project, if you were to simply build a stick-built house with 12 inches of insulation, you would pay 15% of what this house costs to build. Here’s why.

There are 10 people working for 10 weeks. The material has to be made on site. There is a lot of equipment that needs to be rented.

But what you end up with is a semi-natural built home, and I'm betting it will last a lot longer than the 50 years a standard home is built to last.

First you measure out the materials.

The sand went into the bobcat bucket first and was leveled off. Then they added 2 5 gallon buckets of D-1 rock.

Next, they dumped it into a giant round mixer.

Only one bag of Portland Cement, which makes up about 8% of the walls. That’s important because Portland Cement is extremely dirty to make and is responsible for atleast 5% of greenhouse gases each year! The cement is what holds it all together.

I asked why they couldn’t use clay and one of the answers was that it is hard to find a big quantity in nature and to buy it is cost prohibitive. I’m also not sure it would work because of the way they are building the walls.

Next they added the dyes. The 5 gallon buckets behind the woman were all filled with pre-measured dyes. She collected 3 different bags out of 3 different buckets and handed them up to be mixed in.

They had done 2 test benches to decide which colors to use. Here is one of them.

Each layer is another batch with a different color in it. They ended up not liking these colors, but went with a warmer version of these.

Then they added water. It looked like they didn’t measure, but were able to go by what it looked like.

I noted that this is a cake recipe since they were mixing all of the dry ingredients first before they added water. I’m sure it’s easier that way.

Next they delivered the material up to the guys on the scaffold. You can see that it does not look like a glob of mud, it’s just moist enough to RAM into place.

The ramming process was the biggest part of the production. All of these forms had to be shipped up from Washington State. The builder has experimented with all sorts of forms and found these metal ones to be able to withstand the mechanical ramming process.

Note that there is wood on one side, the inside, to produce a smoother wall.

It’s a lot thicker than it really is. In total the wall is 2 feet thick, but what they are doing is ramming an 8” wall on the outside, placing 8” of insulation in the middle, and then ramming another 8” on the inside of the wall. They are staggering all of the seams so there is never a straight through passage where air can flow in.

This is actually an outside corner. The outside wall, inside insulation and then the wall continues at a 90degree corner to make the wall of the bedroom.

You can see the batches of material they rammed by looking at the layers. When they get close to the top, they pour a wet batch to seal the top of the wall. When they pull off the forms, it looks like this.

Each place that needed an input like electric, or gas, or TV cable had to be planned for, so they could do the wiring later. So this signifies that something will come into the room there and then once it’s in the house, it will be wired or piped in the floor to other rooms in the house.

So this is what the footings look like.

The outside wall is the taller poured concrete---it’s 8 inches and the materials will be rammed all the way up the wall of the one story home. They do one wall at a time. The middle white strip is for the insulation so it doesn’t have rebar. The inner wall is 8 more inches of the rammed earth material. They will put the plumbing under the poured concrete floor. (yikes) There will be 6 inches of foam on top of the slab. So the floor will come up to the inner 2x6 that’s laying flat. The electricity and piping will go above the insulation, but under the floor.

They are adding a vapor barrier between the inside 8” of material and the insulation, but the architect said that was overkill since any moisture can get in the walls and nothing that’s in there can rot. So it doesn’t really matter. There will be an HRV unit in the home to bring in fresh air every hour since it is so tight. If all goes as planned, the home will be a 6 star energy efficient home. 15,000 btus per hour

Of course I couldn’t take pictures of the roof yet! But the plan is to have a regular standard roof. There will be beams on top of the rammed earthen walls to attach trusses to. There will be 18” of foam blown in the ceiling and then an impermeable membrane covering the ceiling of the whole house.

The reason that they didn’t just do a poured concrete home, was that they are looking for ways to build cheaper in the Aluetians. The folks doing this are from the Aluetian Housing Athority. If all goes well, they could bring this type of home to that bioregion of Alaska in the future. There will be sensors built into the walls and they will take measurements for 2 years before they decide if they should build more of these homes.

Check out the boxes that they have to build for the windows! It’s too bad they can’t bevel the windows like we can with our clay windows.

That’s 1.5” plywood around there! It looks like it should be able to hold up to the ramming. This is the bathroom window form. I believe the form will be pulled when it dries and that outside plywood frame will stay to put in the window.

They are planning a lot of glazing on the south side of the house, of course and not any on the north side. There is a chance that it will be too hot in the summer, but the hope is that all the walls and floors will collect the heat in the day and give it back at night. The question remains how much will you have to heat it. I forgot to ask if they will have a standard boiler. I imagine they will.

To get an update to summer 2017: https://bioshelter.blogspot.com/2017/05/part-ii-rammed-earth-house.html

Homemade Earth Box

2015-01-02T18:48:00.000-09:00

Homemade Earth Box Tutorial!

Last summer I had great success with greenbeans in the greenhouse, which were planted in my homemade, self-watering Earth Boxes and I only had to water them twice a month.

This is how I did it. I had a 14 gallon tub left over from some storage that I got rid of. I decided to use it. It's always better to find something to use rather than to buy something new.

Next, I cut the lid at the top ridge, leaving an edge. That piece would eventually fit into the bottom of the tub. I used my husband's moose knife and it worked well.

Next, I drilled 3/4" holes all over the piece of lid for drainage. So you can also water the plants from above if you want to.

Then I made a place for the wick, so that water could be wicked up into the dirt from below. I used two plastic cups. I placed a cup in each corner and traced the bottom of the cup, flipped the cup and then traced the top of the cup as well. I cut between the two lines so that the cup would stand up approximately half way above the lid. I drilled a hole in the middle and then sliced tabs from the center hole to the edge of the circle and bent the tabs down.

Before I place the cups in the holes, I used a soldering iron to melt holes in the cup about every inch around the cup. You could use a drill or maybe a knife. Whatever works best for you.

The idea is that when you place soil inside the cup, the water that sits in the bottom of the tub will get wicked into the soil and from there the soil in the tub wicks the water from the cup keeping the entire tub of soil moist all of the time.

In order for the lid to rest above the water reservoir with all the soil in it, I needed to have something sturdy to hold it up. I used PVC pipe. I used the hack saw to cut several 2 1/2" pieces of pipe.

I have also used plastic frozen juice containers, or some plastic Stevia containers. That also works well.

Then I placed the lid and the wicks down into the tub on top of the short pvc pipes.

Before I put the soil in, I needed to add a spout to pour the water into the tub's reservior. I made the pour spout really tall and I'm glad I did. The green bean vines hid it really well. I cut the pipe off at a 45 degree angle, so that the water could enter the tub. If it were cut at a 90 degree angle, the water would simply stand in the pour spout and not make it into the water reservoir.

I cut another hole for the pour spout in the corner of the lid and then slid the pour spout in.

The last step was to put an overflow valve in. I wanted the overflow right under the height of the lid, so that if I watered it too much, it would overflow outside of the tub rather than drown the plants.

I bought a little drain piece, drilled the hole and pushed it into the tub. So that it wouldn't fall out, I bought a small rubber ring to hold it in place.

Lastly, I filled the tub with soil to the top of the bin. I chose not to put the weed blocker on it.

I could have taken black fabric weed blocker and covered the bin. The rim of the lid could fit tightly over the tub to keep the weed blocker on. To plant seedlings, I would simply cut a slit in the fabric for the seedling to fit in.

I simply planted the seeds.

I added water into the pour spout until the excess came out of the overflow drain.

Beans grew without much attention from me at all.

INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL PLASTER

2014-06-07T13:37:00.003-08:00

At the end of June we are hosting an Introduction to Natural Plaster Workshop here at the Bioshelter. I realize that I really know almost nothing about Natural Plasters. But Sasha, our instructor, is so enthusiastic, she assured me that she could teach 20 people how to become really good natural plasterers in a weekend. I took her offer.

She tells me there are so many benefits to earthen plasters. The first and obvious one is paint. Our paints are so toxic and off-gas like crazy.

Make shelves

Add texture

"Indoors, products that contain volatile organic compounds release emissions when you use them, and to a smaller degree, when they are stored. You can be exposed to volatile organic compounds at home if you use cleaning, painting, or hobby supplies that contain them. You can also be exposed if you dry clean your clothes with home dry-cleaning products; if you dry-clean your clothes at a professional dry-cleaners; or if you use graphics and crafts materials such as glues, permanent markers, and photographic solutions."

"Long-term exposure to volatile organic compounds can cause damage to the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system. Short-term exposure to volatile organic compounds can cause eye and respiratory tract irritation, headaches, dizziness, visual disorders, fatigue, loss of coordination, allergic skin reactions, nausea, and memory impairment."

What I especially like is the benefits clay has for my allergies. The natural finishes help people with chemical sensitivities and respiratory issues too. For health reasons alone, you should bring these natural plasters into your current home and retrofit it into a healthier place to live.

I really like that I can dig clay out of the ground and use it. It's a local resource (if you can find it) and so fun to play with! It brings be right back to my play dough days. Remember those days? Full of fun, no pressure, no need to hurry to finish. It feels like that when you are working with clay.

If you find a local source, it is so much more sustainable than shipping paint up from the Lower 48. It has a much cleaner carbon footprint than paint does and the look is so much more earthy than having just paint or wall paper. And the clean up? So easy. Toss it out the back door! It doesn't harm the environment at all! It turns back into earth. How great is that?

Clay plasters are natural, environmentally friendly, and life-enhancing, adding character and warmth to any space. What is almost magical is that clay allows a building to "breathe." High moisture content moves in and out of clay depending on what the room needs. A good use of a clay wall might be in a bathroom, where moisture from baths and showers are always present. This helps the durability of the walls, roof and foundation.

The only question left is: why didn't I know this sooner?

You can join us for this weekend workshop/retreat: June 28th and 29th. We'll gather on Saturday morning around 9am. Saturday we will focus on base plasters. A healthy organic lunch and dinner will be included. Saturday night there will be a lecture/slide show by Sasha to see other possibilities. It's strongly encouraged to bring a sleeping bag and use some floor space in the bioshelter or the greenhouse to sleep instead of driving home at night. It saves energy and allows us to get a good start on Sunday morning learning finished plasters. Breakfast and lunch will be included that day and we will finish at 5pm.

This is a great opportunity to work with Sasha Rabin, who has been practicing and teaching natural building since 2002. She has dedicated her work to encouraging people to engage with our built environment, and through that process reconnect with world around us. She currently lives and works at Quail Springs Permaculture Farm in California.

To save your spot for this awesome workshop, click HERE. Enroll before June 15th for the early bird special discount.

SOURCES

"A Fine Finish: Natural Wall Finishes, Nontoxic Paints and Clay Plasters."Mother Earth Living. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2014. .

"Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) En Español Volatile Organic Compounds Change Easily from Liquid Form to Vapor." U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Apr. 2014. Web. 7 June 2014.

Learning how to build with Clay/Straw

2013-10-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Why clay/straw, you ask? Good question. Regular cob adobe type buildings like they have in the desert don't work in the subarctic. 1. the clay walls conduct the cold (which is good in the desert, not so good in the cold) and 2. the freezing of the walls in the winter turns the cob mushy and it can't hold a roof or any structure. So insulating with clay/straw in a timber frame structure is what works best for Alaska. There are problems however. Alaska's short summer means that anything thicker than a 12 inch wall can't get dry before winter. If it's not dry, mold starts to appear and then rot.

So to make a house with clay/straw you have to start by making clay/straw bricks. With a form, you can stuff the form with clay/straw and make an 8 inch brick. The bricks are added to the clay/straw walls on each side. So as soon as summer's over, or the next spring, the bricks are added and the wall becomes a very warm 28 inches thick. That works---well, at least below the Alaska Range.

All homes in Alaska are made extremely air tight. We have fancy air-exchangers to move the air out of the house and back in again to stay healthy. With clay/straw, the walls breathe. Moisture is wicked in and out of the house as the humidity inside and outside of the house fluctuates. It's natural. There's no off-gassing from the sheet rock, paint, or other man-made building materials. And when you go into a clay/straw structure, you can just feel the difference.

These are only a few things we learned in the Clay/Straw Workshop taught by Lasse. All of us gathered Saturday morning in the bioshelter for an introduction to building with straw and clay. We took notes, learned theory and learned about building with clay/straw bricks. And then we went to work.

The first task was to break up the clay. We dug the clay out of the mountain in chunks and it needed to be turned into powder----an arduous task!

Next, Lasse had us doing it the ancient way----mixing clay and water with a hoe in a bucket. That, too, was arduous. It's important to understand how much we take electricity for granted.

Then Lasse got out the drill with a big paddle on the end and started mixing the clay with water in various thicknesses to teach us about different slips for different projects.

Look at his fingers---they are just coated.
That's a cream consistency, so it's #2 slip---
just want we wanted for our clay/straw.

Look at how thick that is---like a milk-
shake. That is a #3 slip

Next came the straw..... local straw from Palmer.

Out came the pitchforks and we went to town tossing the straw in the air while another person poured clay like dressing over a salad. We tossed and tossed and added more clay and tossed and tossed.

More tossing!

Bridget tests the straw to see if it is
completely coated, but not too much.

Auri tests it too!

Finally the time came to start on the wall. The lathe should have been 1x strips cut from any lumber using a table saw, but since I had no clue---I bought lathe. Don't do that. It's way too expensive.

First we had to "water proof" the bottom of the wall. It would have been much easier to do this BEFORE we built the wall, but again---we didn't know. So we snaked some EDPM rubberized membrane between the rocks in the trench and the 2x4s. We needed to make sure that no water came up from the ground into the clay/straw walls.

The trick is to get any water to go under the rubberized membrane, not on top of it. We mixed perlite with #1.5 slip until it had the consistency of a rice crispy bar. We tamped down the clay/perlite between the 2x4s.

OKAY! We were finally ready for the clay/straw. One of the other cool reasons to use clay/straw is that mice don't come in. They don't like the clay. The other reason is that you can take a lighter to clay/straw and it will not burn. That is a huge advantage.

Lasse explains what to do with the clay/straw and how to stuff it.

A very interested class

Avoid the voids---stuff the corners well,
but don't stuff the rest of it---
The more stuffed in it is,
the less it insulates.

Liz starts stuffing/placing

Notice how we put the lathe up the back side of the wall before we starting putting straw in. The walls have to be ready before clay/straw can go in.

These are the CHASES. The rocket stove pipes
will come in and leave the greenhouse
through these holes.

And now you can watch the wall go up.

Curt's checking the loftiness of it to make sure folks aren't getting carried away in their stuffing.

The stuffers continued stuffing while the rest of us kept tossing straw or churning clay slip, or breaking up the clay chunks. We had a great assembly line.

The sun came out that afternoon and we couldn't help but sit down and soak it in. Most of us still sun-deprived from the dark winter.

Good Conversation.

Tea Time---reflecting on the process.

Poor Liz is tuckered out!

And we finally called it a day! Everyone was tired and sore and inspired.

What 10 people finished in a weekend. A great start!

The walls go up....

2013-10-13T13:56:00.005-08:00

Solid timber walls, not 2x4s

We had hoped to place 12" diameter trees or timber in the ground from the mill at Indian. That didn't happen, since the sawyer got the flu. We were not planning to build two greenhouses, but that's what needed to happen now: an inside and an outside wall. We needed dry lumber fast and the only place we were sure of was Lowe's, since they store their wood indoors. I tried Spenard, and several other small mills in the valley, but no one could get dry wood to us fast.

So 2x4 walls 12" apart from Lowe's meant that we could stuff the clay/straw in the middle.

When it was snowing, we took that time to pre-build the walls in the garage, so this side went up fairly quickly.

As we were following the plans, we realized that we needed one more three foot drop. But I was so sick of digging, I really wanted to quit. So we got out the tape measure to measure where the roof would end if we quit with what we had. That was SUCH a wise thing to do. It wasn't until then that we realized that I hadn't ordered enough roofing. I had measured the roofing as if it were going to be flat, but in actuality it was a steep angle, the hypotenuse! I loved Geometry in school, but it certainly didn't occur to me that I needed a longer piece of roofing because it was an angled roof. So, my wish came true. We couldn't go down one more level because there wasn't enough roof! :-)

Notice that we had to dig trenches for good drainage and fill the trenches with rocks or urbanite. Urbanite is broken up pieces of concrete and is getting more and more popular as a recycled building material.

Luckily a guy in Anchorage took out an old sidewalk at his place and offered the pieces for free on Craig's list. So I went and loaded them up and brought them home. We had so many rocks that came up from the ground, I only needed the urbanite on a couple of trenches.

It was about at this point that we realized we might not make the deadline of June 1st. I had 10 people signed up for the course. I had Lasse committed to coming. It was getting stressful. Luckily Curt had some time off of work and could work with me all day.

I started racking my brains trying to remember who had kids in the neighborhood. Luckily I found two boy scouts. They worked two days and I didn't even take their pictures! We couldn't have finished without them!

From the garage roof.

Slowly but surely.

You can tell I was really tired, because I didn't take any pictures between here and the roof.

But if you look carefully, you will see it's only tacked on. It's not permanently attached.

Nick came to help with the roof on Thursday and Friday.

Saturday morning the class started and the roof was up.

The digging begins

2013-10-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

Cold, cloudy, not much like spring....we began the process of building the northernmost clay/straw greenhouse in the United States. I happened to notice that Erica Weisner put out a call for anyone who wanted to be included in her new book on rocket stoves in greenhouses. I jumped. She would give me her plans for a small fee. I would follow them and then do research for her so that others could learn. I was happy to help pave the way for rocket stoves and I was excited to be included in her book. We started out with the best of intentions.

The first task was to find the corner posts of the new building. Sounds easy, right? We had the side of the garage which we presumed was straight. All we needed to do was to find the other 3 walls.....on an uneven slope....in the cold.... I made a long tape measure with duct tape and twine, so that we could measure longer than our 50' tape measure could reach.

We started with 4 ft out and we knew eventually it would be 3 ft down. So we placed a post every 4 ft from the garage on both sides.....

starting at the top and moving down the mountain in what we assumed was a straight line. We used a plumb bob to make sure each post was vertical.

Then we tried to find the bottom corners and make sure they were square. Some of you reading this might see the error in our ways. We just had no idea about how to come up with square corners. We did A LOT of math that day. Listen up, kiddies, you really DO need to pay attention in Math Class. We had additional troubles since the ground was still frozen where we wanted to pound our stakes in.

We tried and tried to get the corners square. It wasn't working. We decided that maybe the twine was stretching, so we abandoned the project until we bought a 100' tape at the store the next day.

We did the 3,4,5 triangle method, and still it didn't work. Then we thought we'd try measuring the diagonals and found that we couldn't make that match either. We were out of luck. It was close, just not as close as we wanted it. Then it snowed!!! May 15th or so. We couldn't believe it! That put us back a couple of days. June 1st was looming and we had to have the roof up. Too bad there was no way to get a little back hoe over to that spot.

As we continued the more we kept wondering how we would dig out the dirt during the winter? It wasn't long before I realized we would need to dig the levels now---before we built the walls. Curt started where we thought the steps were going to go. It would be a huge amount of work to get ready before June 1.

So I hired my friend Nick. He and I worked on it for 8 hours the first day. Curt and I continued working on it. We started at the top since that was unfrozen and worked our way down the mountain. Sometimes Curt had to pick ax through the ice.

Finally we were ready for the posts. I had ordered Alaska Timbers from Indian. I wanted this to be an all Alaskan, all natural greenhouse. Sadly the sawyer got the flu and couldn't get out of bed to deliver the wood. Because time was of the essence, we had to scramble. On Craig's list we found some old railroad ties. We borrowed the neighbor's snowmachine trailer and went to get them. Yes they leach into the ground some, but on the other hand, I support railroads and we need to do something with the old railroad ties rather than throw them in the landfill. Why not reuse them?

But then came the problem: ICE! Not just the stuff we could expose to the sun and let it melt. It was more like permafrost. We needed to call in the big guns! :0)

11 holes with that thing! It was crazy!

Curt and I held on to that auger for dear life so it didn't swing around when it hit a rock and kick you in the ribs. That hurt! We stopped every so often, got down on our knees and dug all the rocks out of the hole so we could do it again. We kept it a week and got the outside holes dug. I had wanted inside posts as well, to hold up the roof, but after we did the outside ones, I was willing to listen to another idea of Curts: BCI beams. Manufactured in Oregon, but.....no more drilling? I went for it. I was done with drilling.

It took a little bit of effort to get those humongous railroad ties in place too.

Thanks goodness for the dolly!

We brought it to the edge and
flipped it down onto the right
level.

We lined it up on the hole

We had to level it on its broken piece of cement

Curt lifted it in.

Once leveled we tamped in dirt all around it

We were so happy to get rid of the auger and wanted to rest, but June 1st was coming fast.

The old garden cart needed a rest though. Curt worked it hard!

The idea of a greenhouse

2013-10-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

I first heard of a rocket stove in my Permaculture Design Course in 2010 and knew at that minute I was in love. In permaculture you look to your excesses/waste to use as resources. Let me tell you, we have branches and sticks galore around here. I have already planted several hugel kultur beds with our excess sticks, but still we have more. So, why not have a rocket stove?

It also helped that my friend was moving south and needed to get rid of his clay. He offered it to me and I snagged it: several tubs worth. AND, he shared the secret spot where he dug it out of the earth .

It was a warm sunny fall afternoon---a year ago---when we decided to start planning for a greenhouse. I invited the state's guru on Rocket Stoves to come over for a consult, Lasse Holmes.

Lasse Holmes, Homer, AK

Chewing on a piece of grass and asking us all sorts of questions about our needs for a greenhouse, Lasse planted the seed of building with straw/clay as a building medium. He wondered if we needed to grow all winter or a lot of it anyway. But whatever we did, he said we needed a roof first. A rocket stove with a clay bench absolutely needed a roof. So I began designing a greenhouse to house my rocket mass heater.

Solarium in the Bioshelter

Now why do we need a greenhouse, you ask? We have such a lovely solarium, right? Well, Bob's clever design was to make sure the sun goes over head in the heat of the summer, so that we don't cook inside our cave. So it stays relatively cool inside our house, really not warm enough for a greenhouse. (Well, this summer was an exception) PLUS, it is our greywater recycling system, housing our indoor wetlands and a pond, which means the dampness is a perfect place for aphids-- my sworn enemy.

So before I could begin
designing the new greenhouse, I needed to tear the old one down. Yes, I already had a greenhouse. We built it with scrap wood and plastic, but it was so hard to regulate the temperature, nothing really grew in it.
However, it was in a great location----against the southwest facing wall of the garage on a slope. So I started designing my new greenhouse in that same space.

Here is my original thought. I would simply put some concrete piers along the side of the mountain to hold the posts for the walls and then add the wood scraps and recycled windows. I had no plans of making it difficult by digging out layers. Unfortunately, the more I showed people my idea, the more they told me it wouldn't last. If I wanted this greenhouse to last longer than a couple of years, it needed posts put down three feet into the ground. Well, I thought, if I had to put posts in, I could have something like Mike Oehler's greenhouse. I really liked the idea of gardening while standing up and also if there were a cold sink at the bottom, I could keep it warmer at the top. But I planned to take my time digging out the layers after I got the roof on and the stove in. It would be a task for the winter time.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/423830246/
polycarbonate_clear_hollow_sheet_pc_double.html

Spring rolled around and things started to get serious. I needed to order the roofing. But how much? I made a sketch and put the stairs against the south side to keep the sunlight streaming in. I ordered six 25' panels from a guy over in Birchwood, not far from here. Each panel was 4' wide. I started organizing the class Lasse would teach on June 1, so that we could learn how to fill the walls with straw clay. Of course the roof had to be on BEFORE June 1, right?

When I handed Curt the design, he looked at it and looked at it some more and decided he needed something with a few more details. I had been wanting to try out google sketch up anyway, so I tried it. I have about 15 different plans, but we settled on #8. The real trouble with the design, however, was that we really didn't know the slope of the land and it was steeper toward the back of the garage than the front of the garage.

Curt cut down a small tree and we ran a string from the top of the roof to the top of the tree creating a 90 degree angle with the help of the level, and we arrived at a number. It reduced nicely to 3/4, so the rise was 4 and the run was 3. To somehow draw that when the ground wasn't even? That was beyond what I learned in High School Geometry. So I just started drawing.

It seemed like spring would never come. Finally I got outside around April 1st and started shoveling off the mountainside to encourage more melting. I was sure we could start working on May1 and could easily have the roof on by June 1.

Building with clay/straw in Alaska Part 1

2013-04-16T12:06:00.002-08:00

Prelude: Why clay/straw? It is natural and will return to the earth one day. It is very fire resistant because all of the straw is covered in clay. Mice don't like eating straw covered with clay and lastly, it breathes---the moisture wicks in and out of the building making it very healthy. The question: what happens in the Anchorage area? Will the clay freeze and crumble? We don't think so. But life is always an adventure, right?

What a glorious day it was to work on a clay/straw model of this summer’s greenhouse project. I went down to the garage early to build the frame of my model greenhouse. Since we’re going to have 2x8 walls, I found scrap wood that might represent 2x8. I then scrounged for some sticks to use as lathe strips and found my old 1/2x1/2 sticks I used for Christmas decorations one year. I nailed them all together with tiny nails. Some holes I had to predrill so they wouldn’t split.

I had made a cardboard model the night before so I had something to go by. I wanted the cardboard to fit on the outside of the model, so that we could see where the terraces were going to be. Alas, I didn’t plan on the thickness of the wood----I’m sure it’s a common mistake. I took note to change my Google Sketchup to show the thickness of the walls.

I finished the other side and was ready for the class to begin. I noted that had I been a better carpenter and better at planning out my pieces, I would have had shorter 2x8s at each section to denote the falling slope we are building the greenhouse on. I could have put a piece of roofing on it so that it would slope. But, such is life. I didn’t like to use that scary circular saw very much anyway.

My workshop participants arrived and we were ready to start. I introduced them to the 4 different stations I had set up. One was breaking up the hard clay, another was mixing the powdered clay with water to create slip, and another was cutting pieces of straw to provide the cob with tensile strength. Next was the straw/clay mixing tub, to mix the wall insulation. We carefully looked over the pucks we made at the last workshop and chose the recipe we liked the best. Finally there was the tarp with a bag of rough sand and ¾ in. rocks. Once the slip was ready, they could start making mortar.

It wasn’t long before we moved all the stations outside into the sun. The garage was too cold and we didn’t want to shut the garage doors and leave the sun outside alone. So… everything came outside.

The clay had been stored in the garage and it was VERY cold to mix. Note to self: next time buy some rubberized gloves.

We tried mixing the clay/sand/rocks in a tub. For the real greenhouse, we’ll use a concrete mixer.

For the first batch of clay/straw, Bridget used her hands. She and Ian kneaded it much like you would knead bread.

It was such cold work on the hands, we pulled the tarp outside too.

We ended up with a model that looked like this. Obviously we should have waited for the inside straw/clay to dry before we put the outside covering on it, but we did learn that even though it looks goofy, apparently it’s good to have straw sticking out. That straw collects the rain drops that might otherwise run down the side of the structure and allows the drips to drop away from the clay walls. So, maybe the inside walls will be nicer/smoother looking. But we saved that for another day.

All in all, it was a great day playing in the mud! Next big task: melting the snow on the building site. Ashes anyone?

(I'll go and take another picture from the top down, so you can see the clay/straw stuffing on the inside of the frames. It was fun!)

** If you would like to learn how to do this, you can sign up now for the first of several workshops this summer: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6280935447

If you want to stay connected to the on-going workshop listings, subscribe to my clay/straw updates here: http://eepurl.com/u3AM1 If you would like to know about other things going on at the bioshelter, sign up for the monthly newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/llOcb

Snow and sun! Wow!

2013-04-10T10:55:00.001-08:00

Spring Nesto

2013-02-16T12:26:00.000-09:00

The sun is shining through the snow covered branches. The solarium is warming up. What better time to go and start harvesting nettles? Since the sun has been back, they have jumped up in height and are growing so fast. I decided to make my first batch of Nesto! (that's pesto with nettles).

I decided to live dangerously and not don my gloves. I circled the solarium like a hungry wolf deciding which plants could spare their tops for my mid-morning snack. I clipped the tops of the nettles into a large bowl with my scissors and held the bowl so that they would simply drop in and I wouldn't have to touch them. I got maybe 1 cup of leaves and a couple of stings, but nothing too bad.

I was rather disgusted by the aphids who had situated themselves on the leaves of one plant, but I did not want to touch the leaves to get them off. I decided they would die in the boiling water. Sure enough after 3 minutes of blanching the nettles in salted boiling water, I could see dead aphid bodies floating on the top. I scooped out the nettles and dumped them in some ice cold water to stop the cooking. I rinsed them up and down to make sure any dead bodies would be left behind.

I rang out the water and then chopped up the nettles into small wet chunks. It was about 1/4 cup. I added an equal amount of walnuts, and about that amount of parmesan cheese, some olive oil and then I mixed it with my handy-dandy hand-held stick blender.

I'm eating it now. I'm waiting for that little feeling of warmth that supposedly comes after ingesting it. It's pretty good, but I'm kicking myself since I forgot the garlic. That would have been better. I hope the nettles grow fast now that I've cut them. I want to try it again! Soon!

Saint Petersburg calling

2013-01-17T17:11:00.000-09:00

The phone rings..... I answer it in my normal way, "Cindee."
I hear a distant voice, "Hello? Hello?"
I say, "Yes?"
He says, "Is this that fancy bioshelter way up in Alaska?"
Immediately I sit up straighter and press the phone to my ear a little tighter. "Yes it is."
"Say," he says, "I just read that article in Alaska Magazine about your house."
"YOU DID?" I burst out. I had no idea that it was published.
"Yeah. You know I first went to Alaska in 1955 with the military. I know exactly where that house is, but back then there was no Eagle River."
I'm thinking, Cool, I'm in Alaska Magazine! I'm not really listening.
He says, "Say, I think I understand everything, but how do you get those worms to eat your junk mail?"
Now I'm smiling. I add sugar---no I'd better not mess with this nice old man. "I just toss it down there and they eat it. I shred it first though."
He says, "Do you wet it?"
"No." I say. "I don't need to wet it, because I'm always throwing left overs down there. But you'd have to dampen your junk mail before you fed it to them."
"Wow," he says, "that must be some special kind of worm that can eat junk mail."
Still smiling, I say, "No, just the regular ol' red wigglers."
"R-e-d---W-i-g-g-l-e-r-s" he says as he writes it down. "Where'd you get your red wigglers?"
"From Uncle Jim's Worm Farm." I say.
"Where's that?" he wants to know.
"Gosh, I think in Tennessee."
"My mother's cousin lives in Tennessee. I suppose they have some good worms there."
Silence.
"Aren't the dyes and stuff on that junk mail gonna kill those worms?"
"Well, good question," I say. "We have an expert up here--Jeff Lowenfels, he wrote a book called Teaming with Microbes."
"T-E-A-M-I-N-G--W-I-T-H--M-I-C-R-O-B-E-S" I hear him writing it down again.
"Anyway, he says that everyone is using soy-based coloring these days and that we should only worry about printing from China."
Silence.
I say, "I haven't gotten any mail from China lately, so I'm not too worried." I hear a chuckle. "Where are you from now?" I ask.
"Saint Petersburg."
Well immediately I think I'm talking to Russia, but quickly dismiss the thought, because he certainly didn't have a russian accent. So I say, "In Florida?"
"Yup!" he says. "We've got a real nice place down here with four bedrooms."
"Wow."
"Yeah, I've always been interested in this green stuff and being green. But now I'm going to have to get me some worms to eat my junk mail. Have you ever been to Saint Petersburg?"
"Oh quite a while back we were there for a training. So I've been there all right." I say.
"If you ever get back this way again, you look us up. You can stay with us as long as you want."
Grinning now, I say, "Thank you. It was such a joy talking to you today."
"Okay then."
And we hung up. A connection across the continent to ask me about my worms.

If that just isn't amazing!

2012-09-23T15:58:00.002-08:00

Adventures of a Fall Storm

The fun part of living in this house is that there is always a new problem to solve---you never know what is going to happen next. But these adventures got a little out of hand this week!

Our solarium is really a 42x12 foot cement swimming pool. It's about a foot deep at the shallow end and 8-10 feet deep at the deep end. It's filled with gravel and plant roots. It's really a very ingenious system. This week we discovered the design flaw.

After a HUGE rain/wind storm and then another one a week later, we were aware that the cistern was getting close to over-flowing. When that happens, we simply start draining the water down the mountain. Not a big deal. We just have to watch so the water doesn't start flooding the basement.

We only drink 2 gallons of water a day at the most and that's the only water that leaves the house via pee. All of our grey water is recycled and pumped back into the solarium via the fish pond. Then the water over flows the fish pond and seeps back into the gravel swimming pool and then is pumped into the cistern for reuse. It's a great system------except when there's torrential rains.

Well, it was a "perfect" storm: a record rain fall, no electricity and a baby visiting. (Of course, after the fact, we realized we should have gone to buy disposable diapers). All was well until the electricity went out. Since we've lived here (5 years), we maybe had one other power outage longer than 2-3 hours. This one was all day about 7 hours. We watched it rain, started a fire and really didn't think much of it.

That evening when the lights came on again, I went down into the basement to check to see if there was room enough in our 1st 50 gallon drum to wash some diapers. That barrel is the one that takes all the grey water and it's where the bacteria start eating all of the food scraps or whatever goes down the drain. There wasn't. It was at the top---which meant no showers OR diapers that night. Not a big deal really. We could wait for the morning for showers and diapers.

But I didn't quite understand why it was full. I started checking and adjusted all of the air hoses and found that no matter how much pressure I added to the first barrel, there was no water going to the second barrel. I took the whole guts out of the 1st barrel and finally found a hair ball stuck in the pipe. I blew it out, put the guts back together and we were back in business. That's only happened one other time. Strange.


Can you see the rain pipe coming in from the roof at the top center of this picture?

As I was leaving, I noticed water on the floor. I stuck my fingers in the cistern to feel water at the very top. Yup. That was the source of the water on the flour. I looked down into the sump area to see if any water had gotten down there. Sure enough, there was water. I got out the shop vac and began sucking water. I emptied maybe 35 gallons of water and dumped it down the mountain toward my "hugel kultur" garden. It needed lots of water anyway. Then I turned on the garden hose and started running the cistern water down the mountain as well.

Just about then I heard some hollering upstairs. I decided the baby must've sat up by herself or something. I kept checking the rest of the systems. Low and behold another pump wasn't working---the one that sent water from the third barrel into the fish pond upstairs. I swore under my breath and started problem-solving.

Maybe you can see here that the water is nearly to the top of the bridge!

This is the over-flowing lower pond. Hard to tell since all you can see is the reflection of the lights in the water.

Just then Curt walked in the basement door and said the solarium was flooding. What? Really? How could the solarium flood? We decided to figure out what was wrong with the 3rd barrel pump first. Somehow the float valve wasn't floating to trigger the pump to pump the water upstairs into the fish pond. I'm not sure what we did, or if what we did even worked, but after jiggling and wiggling and freeing it from its plastic tie, it started working. We got the hose and added water to the barrel to check it. Low and behold, it came on, just like it was supposed to and pumped the water ---so who knows? We headed out the door pulling all available hoses with us to McGeiver some other fix in the solarium.

Water was pouring in. Where it was supposed to go into the gravel, there was a fountain of water spurting every which way! Our only conclusion was that the gravel was saturated and would accept no more water. Yes, that 42x12foot swimming pool of gravel. Obviously if the cistern pump can't pump for 8 hours when the power is out, it can't rain anymore. The heavens somehow didn't get the memo. Note: don't build this house in a rain forest.

Luckily one of the hoses Curt grabbed was the shop vac hose. We connected it to the incoming rainwater pipe. It didn't exactly fit, but I held it as well as I could while Curt hunted for the blasted DUCT TAPE, which never stays where it is supposed to be. So we used packaging tape and taped the shop vac hose onto the rain pipe and ran the other end outside the door and down the mountain. We found an old piece of flooring to prop the rain pipe up with. Then Curt taped the door closed----the hose was about an inch wide, so we didn't want every moth in the neighborhood looking for shelter in our house. So he used quite a bit of duct tape, which is why we should have stock in duct tape!

Jeanie and Auri taking it in stride.

Catching the drips

Looking up to the skylight from downstairs.

I came back into the living room where Jeanie was holding the baby, who still had 2 clean diapers left. Jeanie told me she had some more bad news: the ceiling was leaking.

What??? In the upstairs stairwell?

I'm still not sure where the water was coming from, but in my mind I imagined the following scenario. Wind blowing! Rain downpouring! White caps on the roof rolling over the lip of the skylights on the roof. So----as soon as these storms leave us and it's sunny, I'll have to get on the roof and see if that was the case. As for now, there's a bowl to catch any rain that makes its way in. (When the rain and wind died somewhat, there was no more water coming in the skylights.)

Day 2.......The train isn't running. Jeanie and baby need to go back to Fairbanks. We washed diapers anyway and then we readied the house for being alone for the next day by shop vacuuming the sump pit again and re-taping the hose to the rain pipe all over again.

Day 3 -- I drove Jeanie to Cantwell (half-way) across many, many flooded rivers. I arrived home about 5pm and guess what? The power was out AGAIN! Power came on finally about 9:30 pm. Still raining!

Day 4----Just checked the sump pit and there's no water. All of the pumps are working at the moment and as this goes to press, it is NOT raining!

Decision: no more debating about which generator to buy. We have to have one. Not for lights, not for heat, not for water----to run the pumps. Too bad solar panels cost so much.

ONE LAST NOTE: This only happened one other time in this house's history according to the builders/previous owners. They discovered the solarium flooding in the middle of the night and were so flustered and half -asleep, Lu Anne fell in the pond. Funny. I'm hoping our story gets funnier as we tell it. :-)