Whittled Down

New perennial edibles

2013-05-08T09:44:00.001-04:00

We've been busy establishing perennial edibles that will feed us for years to come once established. Here are a few of the plants we've added this spring:

Ramps! Some are in their second year, some are new transplants.

Sea kale. Perennial with edible shoots, leaves, florets.

Perpetual Sorrel.

Sylvetta, or perennial arugula. Delicious.

Blueberries!

Beach plum.

Huckleberry and wintergreen.

Gooseberry.

Before and After: Custom Built Pantry

2013-05-07T13:30:00.000-04:00

There was evidence of a past pantry off of the kitchen in our house. An improperly repaired floor showed us where a wall used to be, and the worn floorboards next to it evoked years of walking back and forth to retrieve dry goods from storage. But when we bought the house, those old footsteps led...straight into a wall.


Behind this door is a wall, where a doorway used to be.

So, I did my favorite thing--exploratory demo. What I found was a shoddily covered doorway, filled with a piece of sheet rock. In fact, the frame was still exposed, just painted to match the wall. We decided to rebuild the old pantry a little differently than the original. Rather than a long, skinny wall that would have blocked off a south-facing window, we made a smaller closet.

The pantry-to-be.

Once we got to this stage, I panicked. My vision of a beautiful walk-in pantry with counter tops seemed impossible--it was so much smaller a space than I imagined. We spent a couple of days hemming and hawing, measuring and drawing, and eventually, inspiration struck.


Don't worry, it's just the lens. We may be amateur builders, but we're not THAT bad with a square.

We used salvaged bookshelves that we got in bulk from the local EcoBuilding bargains, which required an enormous amount of sanding and cutting, but they look great and saved us a bundle.

We measured everything we anticipated would go in the pantry. We made single-wide shelves just big enough for pint or quart mason jars, put in a counter-top outlet for the bread maker, crock pot, and various other appliances and an under-counter outlet for our large dehydrator. The space beneath the lowest shelf is high enough to accommodate the dehydrator and a carboy of beer with a water lock. The top shelf is big enough to hold larger counter top appliances that we don't use as frequently, like the stand mixer.

The result is a pantry that's the perfect size to store all our dry goods and some of our preserves (the extras will go in storage in the basement). It's also a functional prep space, especially good for fermentation projects that need a dark corner to sit in and do their thing. It's done wonders to keep ongoing projects from cluttering our precious kitchen counter space.

I love working in tiny spaces; it's such a challenge to make the most of an area with design constraints. I supposed that's why we focused in on this tiny pantry when we have a whole big house to renovate. Once you're used to building tiny, it's hard to go back.

How not to make maple syrup at home

2013-03-12T09:06:00.000-04:00

What follows is a summary of our first attempt at making maple syrup from our backyard silver maples:

Step 1: Get up early. Place 5 gallons of collected sap in your biggest lobster pot.

Step 2: In the cold, build a makeshift fire pit out of random bricks. Make a fire out of brush you have lying around. Place pot over fire.

Step 3: Talk excitedly about how cool it will be to have homemade maple syrup in a few hours.

Step 4: Wait around for a while, stoking the fire, wondering why it's still not boiling after two hours.

Step 5: Get distracted. walk away and build a pea trellis, roast some coffee, whatever.

Step 6: Realize the fire has almost gone out. Restart it. Still not boiling.

Step 7: Repeat steps 4 - 6 until it is nearly dusk.

Step 8: Build a rocket stove. Hope it will get hot enough to boil the sap.

Step 9: At dusk, give up. Transfer pot to outdoor gas burner.

Step 10: Give up for the night. Turn off heat, cover pot.

Step 11: Resume boiling the next morning.

Step 12: Once enough liquid has evaporated, despite the lack of boiling, bring reminder inside to finish on electric stove.

Step 13: Rejoice! It's finally boiling!

Step 14: Despair! It boiled over! Your stove is now covered in proto-syrup and a not insignificant portion of your already tiny yield is gone. (Regrettably, I do not have pictures of this step.)

Step 15: Rejoice again! 30 hours later, you have made 1.5 cups of homemade maple syrup. It's not much, but it's all yours.

So yeah, our first attempt at home scale maple syrup production was kind of a disaster. But we did get delicious, backyard harvested nectar of the gods out of it. We learned some important lessons--mostly that you can't boil such large quantities of liquid over a fire without more surface area, and also that you can't get bored and walk away from a fire and expect it to magically boil your sap.

We are still collecting sap from our trees and will do another boil this weekend, because we are gluttons for punishment.

Backyard sugaring

2013-03-10T10:57:00.001-04:00

While or house didn't come with any sugar maples, it came with two large silver maples. Silver maples can be used for syrup, they just have a less ideal sugar to water ratio. But I've heard that they may be more well adapted to continue producing as climate change threatens the maple syrup industry.

Being Vermont-raised, the prospect of backyard syrup production is pretty exciting. I ordered some used equipment for cheap on eBay, and we tapped our trees about a week ago. The three taps have yielded 5 gallons of sap so far, which will likely make about a pint of syrup.

Today we have beautiful spring weather, and we are boiling the sap down outside in our fire pit. I'll be sure to post an update when it's done!

Prepare to graft

2013-02-19T09:55:00.001-05:00

There is a cherry tree in a parking lot near us that produces delicious little sweet cherries. Sweet cherries are more difficult to grow in our area, so this well adapted tree is somewhat unusual.

We happen to have an ornamental, flowering cherry tree in our yard. Not being much for ornamental fruit trees, we plan to graft it over to a fruiting cherry, using scion wood collected from the above tree.

We collected pencil sized pieces of last year's growth, labeled them, and stuck them in the fridge. When the stock tree is leading out this spring, we will attempt to graft these branches on. It will be our first experiment with grafting. If it works, we will have a fruiting cherry in less time than it would take if we planted a new tree, and it'll be of a variety we know grows well in the area.

Mushrooms from local waste

2013-02-03T13:37:00.001-05:00

Some of our local cafes offer bags of their used coffee grounds to take at the door. This is ideal because here lies a prepasteurized growing medium already at the perfect dampness for mushroom cultivation and prepackaged in bags just like you would do normally preparing a growing medium - all that's left is to add the spawn.

Here are two bags I started today with some oyster mushroom spawn we ordered from Fungi Perfecti. I'll keep you posted on their progress as they colonize and hopefully fruit!

I will have to rig together some kind of container to put them in when it comes time for fruiting to keep the humidity high - especially in these dry winder conditions here in New England.

New girls

2013-02-02T13:41:00.001-05:00

We answered a Craigslist ad for three hens in need of a new home. Our flock was decimated this year by a series of unfortunate events, and we went from 6 to two hens. Now we're back up to five, assuming the introduction goes well.

Pantry in progress

2013-01-21T14:59:00.001-05:00

We spent the long weekend building a super deluxe pantry. It's small but designed to stay organized and allow room for fermentation and other projects that need an out of the way spot to hang. Here's an in-progress shot:

Exploratory Demo Payoff

2013-01-13T19:30:00.000-05:00

Before

My favorite phrase since becoming the owner of a 125-year-old house has been "exploratory demo". I mean, who doesn't love tearing stuff down? Especially when tearing stuff down undoes inappropriate modifications to the house and might even uncover something beautiful.

After exploratory demo

Tonight, after a long day of wallpaper removal (not my kind of demo), I had the urge to vent my frustration with some good old fashioned smashing. The target of my pry bar? Hideous cardboard ceiling tiles in the stairwell.

Since we moved in, the whole stairwell didn't seem right to me. The ceiling, in addition to the horrible tiles, seemed low. At one point, the whole upstairs had obviously been boarded off from the rest of the house to reduce heating costs. And I had already removed an ugly makeshift doorway from the top of the stairs. But, I thought maybe the sloped ceiling meant there would be stairs to the attic hidden in the wall.

Well, there are no attic stairs hidden in the wall. Instead, under the makeshift ceiling is a beautiful full ceiling. The kind you could hang a chandelier from. The kind that you could hang an over-sized oil portrait in. Gorgeous. It's a little hard to envision with the framing still in place, but I'll post a picture once I get it out.

I'm trying to determine approximately when the false ceiling was installed. The concealed portion has just one layer of wallpaper on it, where the walls below have 4-5. Does anyone know when this type of ceiling tile came into fashion? They're the kind made out of cardboard that fit together with a tongue and groove mechanism.

Chicken Coop Construction

2013-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Chickens have been an important part of our lives for many years now. When we bought the house, it was only about 3 weeks before we brought home a handful of baby chicks to raise. We built this home for them over the summer while they grew to outdoor-sized hens.

Our last coop was made of plywood and looked awful. We went for the cute factor this time. Using cedar shakes also meant no large materials to haul, a big advantage since we don't have a vehicle that can transport 4x8 sheets right now.

Permaculture F.E.A.S.T.

2013-01-08T09:11:00.002-05:00

This fall, we had the amazing opportunity to donate our new property as a design site for the Permaculture F.E.A.S.T. permaculture design certification class. Over the course of a 12-week class, a group of 16 budding permaculture designers visited and analyzed our site, then created 4 beautiful potential designs for the property. In addition to the 4 master plans, we also received a plan for one detail from each of the students.

Wow. It was a little like getting to be on one of those TLC home makeover shows, only a million times better because the designs were gifted to us by people who share our vision for an abundant, sustainable future.

Now that it's mid winter, we are busy refining these plans, deciding what we can tackle in the coming growing season, and ordering plants so that we can hit the ground running come spring.

To everyone who helped produce these wonderful designs for our new home, thank you.

Here's a taste of what the class came up with:

This group's plan featured a luxurious wood-fired hot tub and a 3-year implementation plan.

A bioshelter that makes use of our old barn and a graceful winding layout were our favorite elements of this design.

We love the edible food forest and outdoor kitchen proposed by this group.

This group focused on borderlines between public and private spaces. Since we want to invite community members in to learn about permaculture principles, we love these ideas for opening up our home while maintaining privacy.

On the last day of class, many of my classmates asked me if I just felt more overwhelmed now, seeing the work we have cut out for us on paper like this. What I actually felt was immense relief and gratitude. Before, we had half an acre of insurmountable blank slate. Now we have direction. And because I took the class, I know the people who created these designs. They are part of my community now. I hope that the class will stay involved with our project, drop in for tea, pick some paw paws, maybe even help us tackle some of the hard projects. De-paving party, anyone?

Whittled Down Caravan in Popular Science Magazine!

2013-01-07T19:03:00.000-05:00

We are super excited to be featured in the January 2013 issue of Popular Science magazine! You'll find us in the print edition on page 61 and online in the You Built What?! feature. We had so much fun working with Popular Science to bring the Whittled Down Caravan to a new audience.

The article also makes an exciting announcement: we are working to finalize the plans for the Caravan and make them available for download. It's going to take us a few months to finalize the plans, so email me if you'd like to be notified when they are available.

If you're finding your way here from Popsci.com, welcome! You can catch up on our Whittled Down Caravan adventures here. We also hope you'll explore some of the other sustainable living DIY projects we've featured on this blog, like:

Come back and visit for updates on the Whittled Down Caravan as well as our newest project: turning our 1890s brick house and yard into a permaculture demonstration site.

Before and After: Sheet Mulching

2012-10-28T14:34:00.003-04:00

Welcome to our side yard as it appeared when we bought the house back in May. This may be one of the ugliest spots on the property, with its inexplicable cheesy little strip of perennials in the middle of an already narrow strip of yard. The perennial patch was more grass than flowers, and featured a giant rotting stump. While we still don't know exactly what we want to do with this space, we knew this "garden" had to go.

Because this side yard is the closest potential growing space to the house, we imagine it will be intensively planted. Most likely, it will be planted as a "forest garden", a system of food-producing perennials and beneficial companion plants. We decided to sheet mulch the entire thing to start to build the soil and create a blank slate to fill with plantings next year. We also took the opportunity to get two fruit bushes we already have in the ground--a josta berry (which is a cross between a gooseberry and a black currant) and a Nanking cherry.

Sheet mulching is a great way to prep soil for a new garden. After removing the rocks and the stump and transplanting the perennials I wanted to keep, we cut everything else back and covered the area with cardboard. We scavenged large boxes from appliance stores and bike shops for a few weeks to get enough to cover the area. Next, we put down an inch of compost. Finally, we topped the whole thing off with several inches of leaves, some of which we collected from our neighbors' curbs and some of which came from our own trees. Hopefully, the cardboard will suffocate everything underneath it over the winter, and that material plus the compost and leaves will break down and create nice rich soil for spring planting.

Special Delivery

2012-10-06T10:11:00.000-04:00

We received a very special package in the mail last week.

When we left New Mexico in 2010, one of the last things we did before hitting the road was to harvest our garlic. This wasn't just any garlic. It was a special variety of hard neck garlic found growing wild behind an abandoned adobe house in the small town of Chamisal. A garlic enthusiast carefully cultivated it, bringing this tough as nails (and super spicy) garlic back to life. We got the seed from the local farmers market and intended to keep propagating it ourselves.

While we were blogging from the road, a reader invited us to dinner at their home in Illinois. We had a fantastic time meeting them and their family, and I am telling you there is nothing like a good home-cooked meal in the middle of a few months on the road. As a parting gift, we left them with some of the Chamisal garlic.

They planted it, and kept planting it every season since. Our seed stock, on the other hand, went bad and we thought we had lost this special garlic variety forever.

When they emailed us recently and told us they were now growing several hundred heads a season (wow!) I was ecstatic. I was so touched that someone else was keeping this special garlic alive and thriving. And even better, they sent us some seed to plant this fall at our new house.

I can't wait to get this in the ground.

Thank you, Vigor family! And happy garlic planting!

Maker Faire 2012!

2012-09-29T21:25:00.001-04:00

We are having a fabulous time at Maker Faire in NYC!

We have the Whittled Down Caravan on display, and Tristan brought his cigar box instruments to share. They have been an unexpected hit with makers of the young persuasion.

If you visited us at Maker Faire today, drop a comment to say hello!

Whittled Down at World Maker Faire New York!

2012-09-09T17:22:00.001-04:00

The Whittled Down Caravan will be at Maker Faire in New York this September 29th and 30th!

We are so excited to be headed down to the NY Hall of Science to join other makers from around the world at this the mecca of the DIY movement. Seriously, if you're anywhere within 6 hours of NYC, you should think about making the pilgrimage.

We're sprucing up the wagon in anticipation.

Are you going to Maker Faire?

First Tomatoes of The Year

2012-08-08T19:49:00.001-04:00

Let it rain!

2012-08-03T19:37:00.001-04:00

We've been having an extreme drought but in the past week we've been getting our afternoon summer storms. Today on a walk I was lucky enough to find both chicken of the woods and oyster mushrooms!

The Latest Zucchini Disappearing Trick

2012-06-29T23:07:00.001-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Zucchini Relish! Guaranteed to disappear during your 4th of July bbqs.

New Flock

2012-06-26T22:10:00.001-04:00

What did we miss most about having access to land?

These ladies.

Before and After: Guest Bath

2012-06-26T20:17:00.005-04:00

The first complete room redo we tackled is finished! Well, let's call this phase one. Phase two involves a composting toilet, a new floor, and maybe a nice tiled shower. Phase one involved basic cleaning and prettying up--it's amazing what some paint and some elbow grease can do.

Somehow I managed not to get a picture of the sheer disgustingness of the shower. It took us a good three hours with nasty chemicals to scrub this baby clean. And oh, the mold. Mold everywhere, especially behind the perennially drippy sink and under the baseboards.

Anyway, here's the before:

After smashing the vanity:

Mold City

And now:

Clean lines

New sink, and a bamboo mat to mask the linoleum underneath

Yellow trim, a little cheerier than I imagined it.

Clean shower!

And all for about $200! What do you think?

Favorite Summer Breakfast

2012-06-17T09:07:00.001-04:00

This is becoming our favorite summer breakfast: poached eggs with fresh greens, and today some homemade white bean dip. Yum!

The Lovers

2012-06-04T21:51:00.002-04:00

This doodle, presumably by whoever put up the drywall over this plaster wall (a contractor? the previous owner?), was revealed to us as we removed the drywall in the process of doing some repairs. The plan was to take this plaster down, because it is severely damaged. I can't bring myself to do it now.

Homeward Bound

2012-06-03T09:58:00.001-04:00

We're bringing the gypsy wagon home from my parents' place up in VT.

Wave if you see us on 91 or 89 today!

We Bought a House!

2012-06-01T10:29:00.000-04:00

Today is our one-month home-owning anniversary.

Tristan and I have adapted our DIY lifestyle to many housing situations over the years. From group houses where we painted walls and scavenged furniture, to our own rental apartments with gardens and even chickens, we always found a way to make our space our own. In 2010, we took it to one extreme, building our own tiny house from the ground up. We thought that was a lot of work, but it's nothing compared to our new project: a neglected old house on half an acre.

Maybe some tiny housers will be disappointed that we decided to buy a regular old house. But I have been longing to put down some serious roots, metaphorically of course, but also literally in the form of perennial food crops. And I have a soft spot for old houses, having worked at house museums and for preservation organizations. This one still has good bones, but a few more years of neglect and it would have been in serious trouble.

Some day I will write a longer post about the process of buying our first house. When I was researching this gigantic decision, I found it hard to come by resources by people like me, who shared my priorities and financial situation. I didn't think I'd be able to buy a house this young, having spent my entire adult life working relatively low-paying non-profit jobs. But I wanted it. So badly. And so I compulsively saved all I could, hoping that one day it would work out. For those of you out there in a similar situation, I hope to share why I decided to buy a house, how I saved up for it, and what kinds of choices I had to grapple with.

This is our DIY dream. We wouldn't have this house if we hadn't lived frugally for years, and we wouldn't be able to afford to fix it up if we didn't have the skills/willingness to learn to rehab it ourselves. As we take on this project, we have a few guiding principles:

We will take care to preserve the house's original character.
We will take advantage of salvaged materials and use environmentally friendly products.
We will create systems that allow us to live sustainably here; growing our own food, reducing our household waste to near zero, and reducing our energy use.
We will share. We want this place to embrace community. We will share our produce, our knowledge, and space in our home and yard.

And so begins a new phase in our adventure. We look forward to sharing it with all of you!