Sunnywood Farm site is up

We will be shutting down the Maine Smallholder blog in favor of a Web site: http://www.sunnywoodfarm-maine.com/. Rather than making regular blog posts (which we clearly lack the discipline for), we plan to use the Web site to post information that others might find useful. Topics are likely to include farming with heritage breeds, farming sustainably, incorporating permaculture principles, growing food, preserving food, living with minimal fossil fuel use, and others. We will continue to add information over time: please check it out!

Archiving Sunnywood blog—and announcing "The Maine Smallholder"

As I sit here early on a January afternoon, the winter sun is streaming through our south-facing windows, just as we intended. The high louver windows above the sliders work just as we'd planned: they catch the low winter sun from late October into early February, but exclude direct light the rest of the season, and vent heat in the summer. The NON-low-e sliding glass door has proven to be the perfect place for winter seedlings. And our cedar ceilings do something we hadn't expected: they reflect a golden glow, making the name "Sunnywood" as appropriate to the inside of the house as the outside.

Sunnywood inside and out!

Since finishing the cordwood exterior of Sunnywood in September, we have been working on the interior (and building farm outbuildings), and have come to realize that something we have often heard from owner-builders is true: the inside of the house is never finished. And while in our case we have still been constructing fairly integral elements, such as walls and ceilings, it is clear that installation of flooring, behind-stove masonry, a hot water system, bookshelves, trim, etc., etc. could go on for many years. In which case this blog would start to become a kind of home remodeler's blog. So I've decided to keep this site as pretty much an archive for other would-be mortar stuffers searching the Web for cordwood building information, and start a new site about our mixed farming enterprise at Sunnywood farm: The Maine Smallholder.

So thanks for following our cordwood building journey, for rooting for us, and especially for helping us when we needed it. Please come join us for the next stage!

Remaining doors and windows in (mostly)

South side with photovoltaic panels and some NON-low-e glass (finally)

Joe and Ben got the windows, storm door, and sliding glass door installed before everyone arrived for Common Ground Fair.

WE ARE DONE

Homestretch

So today is the last day, I think. I kept waking up all night, like you do when you have a job interview or a trip the next day.

As has so often happened since we began this adventure, serendipitous help arrived just when we seriously needed it.

17 and counting

It appears that it is only possible for the two of us to mix and lay six batches of mortar in a day if we have done all of the preparatory putty mixing and log cleaning on a prior day, and if everything goes absolutely perfectly. This means no unexpected livestock management,, no turning off the alarm clock in your sleep, no visitors,and no dogs taking off after some phantom in the woods---

Countdown . . . 25 (ish) batches to go!

Alright, so,life gets in the way. Especially farm life. This morning we had some buckling escapism to deal with, and a bit of fence reinforcement to ensure that our girls don't kid in January. Then we spent about an hour scraping and cleaning log ends before we could start mixing mortar.

There are no shortcuts in cordwood

Well, there are; but they come with a price. Most of the shortcuts we have taken have been caused by the fact that we were in a hurry. Most of them started with a phrase like, "We don't care what the book says" or "we don't need to . . ." and continued with the phrase, "we'll just . . . ." We are here to tell you that the people who wrote the books know what they are doing. Care what they say. And don't "just . . . ."

Our first all-Sunnywood dinner

While we have been consuming our garden produce and goat's milk all season, I think we may just have eaten our first all-Sunnywood meal: roast chicken, roasted French fingerling potatoes, fresh goat's milk, and a slaw of cabbage, carrots, and scallions. This meal also marks the first time we have eaten our own livestock.

A little bit of cordwood; a lot of farm

We are finally laying up cordwood for the first time this summer. We still need to fill in the four panels that surround the fifth "bay" of the house's timber frame structure. However our decision to create a farm where there was none---when Sunnywood the cordwood house project became Sunnywood the fully diversified farmstead project---means that the demands of the farm keep getting in the way.

Tarp Wood

Tarp livestock shelters, tarp hay shelters, even a tarp-wrapped outdoor shower. The person from whom we bought this land, who happens to be an abutting neighbor, was careful to include deed restrictions prohibiting mobile homes and overhead power lines. She must be kicking herself for not thinking of tarps.

Stock panels for pasture fencing

So, leave it to my brother to ask me to explain why we chose to install stock panel perimeter fencing. It occurred to me that if he had this question, others might as well. So for all of you with an incurable curiosity about livestock fencing, here is our answer.

First of all, everyone has to approach fencing in a way that works for them in their situation, in terms of thinking about short-term and long-term resources and goals, what kind of livestock you plan to have and for what purpose, how many animals, how much land, whether you plan intensive rotational grazing, etc., etc.
Most people will tell you to use some variation of electric fencing, whether it be New Zealand style or whatever. And it is certainly easy and cheap up front. But if something shorts it out, it's immediately ineffective, both at keeping livestock in as well as keeping predators and marauding dogs out. And tall grass, or snow, or a branch, or all manner of things can short it out. So it requires constant vigilance. Plus, when it's working, you have to worry about zapping yourself on it---or your neighbor's kid or your grandkids doing the same. Based on the kind of farm and lifestyle we want to have, electric doesn't fit.

The next thing many people recommend is woven wire. We did the dog run with it, just to see how it would go. What a pain in the neck. It is really hard to do anything other than a straight line on level ground with woven wire. You've got to stretch it, and it really needs wooden posts, which will rot unless you are willing to put pressure-treated wood into the soils that will feed you and your animals. It is impossible to unroll and work with in a wooded area. And if something falls on it, or your animals challenge it, either of which is fairly likely, you've got to redo an entire stretch of fence.

Stock/cattle panels make sense in both the short and the long term. Short term: they are fast and easy to install using T posts. They do well over uneven ground. It is easy to carry them into and install them in wooded sections that would be impossible to run woven wire through, and impractical to run electric fencing through. They don't need to run in a straight line, and in fact are stronger when curved and bent around corners, trees, rocks, etc.. The t-posts are easy to whack in among tree roots. Gates are a snap.

Long term: They last a long time with little maintenance. Stock panels are strong. T-posts won't rot. The stock panels are easily moved if you decide to rearrange your fencing or carve up paddocks differently. If something falls on a stock panel fence, you can just bang the affected panel back straight and reclip it to the T-posts. You haven't lost a whole stretch of fence.

We are in this for the long haul. All things considered, we figured that stock panels cost about twice as much as woven wire, and that this was one of those up-front infrastructure costs that is worth it, and will repay us for years to come. And, like anything else, it's a choice to spend this money over other things that people might decide not to live without (like . . . hot running water).

(We are indebted to Gene Logdon's ruminations in All Flesh is Grass, for providing us with a sane, common-sense perspective on pasture fencing for small farms.)

The Coop de Ville and a half mile of fencing

The chicks, which have now begun to look like smallish chickens, have been in the completed "Coop de Ville," as Joe calls it, for about two weeks. We have installed a small pen covered with netting in the front where the young birds can get used to the outdoors and their surroundings while remainng relatively safe from hawks. Eventually we will need to let them range around the farm and take their chances.



They were pretty surprised by the big, bad world at first, but they got over it. 

We have been feverishly installing fencing so that we can go fetch our sheep. The grass is so tall, and needs grazing desperately! For a variety of reasons, we have decided not to use electric fencing. We are taking Gene Logdon's advice regarding a small pasturages and starting with good perimeter fencing, using stock panels and metal posts. We need to keep predators and neighborhood dogs out as much as we need to keep sheep and goats in. We will figure out how to carve it up and rotate animals as we go forward. We have completed nearly a third of the necessary 2460-odd feet so far. But fencing during the height of black-fly season? This is either evidence of, or the cause of, our complete mental deficiency.

Tacking . . . toward Sunnywood Farm. With incremental progress.

Given the acceleration of political, economic, and environmental deterioration around this fragile world, we have put completion of our cordwood house on hold in order to develop food-production and farm infrastructure. The Sunnywood blog will be evolving into the Sunnywood Farm blog. (Yet there is more cordwood building to come in July and August).

Anyone who knows anything about farming knows that there is a steep learning curve. So despite our years of reading and workshops, nothing compares to the real thing. Every morning and evening we do battle with our small but stubborn Nigerian dwarf dairy goats, who delight in kicking over the milking pail, and refusing to let down their milk.

The 16 heritage-breed Buckeye chicks were tiny little balls of fluff when I brought them home a few weeks ago, and when I fed them I would say, "Come here, little peepers!"

Now they have outgrown their second box. When we open it to feed them, some descend, beaks-first, upon our hands, while others mount a mass escape. Our feeding-time crooning has changed to "Keep your beaks to yourselves, ya little savages!" Joe is in a coop-building frenzy so that we can get the killer chickens out of our greatroom.

We have six or so sheep arriving soon. As soon as we can get enough fencing installed. There is no fast, easy way to install fencing. Although we have discovered better tools than the sledge hammer/step ladder system we used for the goat paddock.

The weather has rendered all normal planting schedules irrelevant. Even though I planted my peas early, even by Maine standards (where it is a point of pride to have your peas in earlier than your neighbors), they are already balking at the warm weather. Same with the cold-weather greens. But it's not warm enough at night for warm-season crops.

Our garden plan comprises 14 beds, and I have prepared and planted three so far. Our driveway contractor had offered to haul away the sod and topsoil he scraped up, and bring back some loam. But I liked the looks of our sod/topsoil, and I had no idea what his "loam" would be like. So instead, I'm busting up and screening mountains of sod, one 30-inch screenful at a time. This is a time and place where fossil-fuel-powered equipment would be useful.

Diggiging holes for apple trees today under an unseasonably hot sun, plagued by clouds of early black flies, I longed for someone with a backhoe to rumble by. We have found, in situations like these, that it is essential NOT to regard the whole task at hand, which leads to immediate psychological defeat. Just like the winter when Joe moved all of the cordwood for our house, on snowshoes, with a plastic sled: it is imperative to concentrate on one small piece of the work at a time. And before you know it, you're done. Incremental progress.

I have decided that this will be the Sunnywood Farm motto. Incremental progress.

We are Sun-powered!

(with a capital "S"!)
After a long, dark winter of limited Internet access and limited posting, we are now the beneficiaries of electricity from the sun. Well, from the sun via solar modules, a charge controller, batteries, and assorted other gadgets. And courtesy of invaluable assistance and consulting from John, without which we would still be power-free. We haven't wired in any lights yet, but I am currently connected to the Internet without running the generator! Best of all, we have installed a Sundanzer DC refrigerator: no more buying ice, lugging ice blocks, emptying drip pans, etc. for the icebox. (However we learned a lot through the icebox experiment: I'll do another post on that soon.) Even after two days of overcast rainy/snowy weather, our small PV system is powering our 5.8 cu ft refrigerator.
We hung the modules from the fascia rather than mounting them on the roof, as we were concerned about the wind and associated lift on our shed-style roof. This will provide nice shade to this section of the house in the summer, but may well be too low to allow our low winter sun in when we need it---we may need to relocate the panels eventually.

 

All the water we want!!! ---and other updates

A while back we mentioned that our excitement over our Bison water pump was dampened (sorry) by what the Bison folks surmised was a break in our water line that caused the pump to lose pressure. We thought we were looking at a long winter of 200-stroke primes and water-line excavation come spring, but it was manageable. Well, a few weeks ago we got up one morning to discover that no amount of pumping would produce any water. I bathed with what was left on the woodstove and went off to work, wondering how on earth we would manage with no water, leaving Joe staring bleakly at the pump. Late that evening I returned, to find Joe sitting at the table, looking, I thought, insufficiently miserable for someone who had no access to water. "Go over and try the pump," he said.

"Why?"

"Just try it."

I lifted the handle, getting ready to settle in for a few hundred strokes. I lifted up, began the downstroke . . . and felt resistance. Pressure! I heard gurgling. I brought down the handle and water surged out of the pump into the sink. I looked at Joe. He nodded, "Go on." I pumped again, and again, and each time, fresh, cold water gushed out. "Woo hoo! What happened?" I was pumping merrily away. "This is awesome!" Joe came over and quietly placed a small, dark object on the counter. It was a rock, about the size of a dime. "I found that stuck in the valve," he said. Apparently he'd spent the better part of the day disassembling and reassembling the pump, finally dismantling a part he hadn't been able to get apart previously. Time was never better spent. Life is good!

We have come up with a couple of makeshift methods to ease washing and bathing until such time as we get a gravity system rigged. One is a simple plastic trash can mounted above the bathroom sink, with a hole drilled toward the bottom and a spigot installed. We fill it once a day and have "on-demand" water for tooth-brushing and hand/face washing.

We have also rigged a way to shower! After looking at camp-style showers like the Zodi Extreme, which pressurizes via a hand pump, we bought an inexpensive stainless steel garden sprayer. I then headed to our local hardware store (the employees of which are my heroes, day after day). After having shown up with that blue plastic trash can, looking for help making it into a hand-washing station, they weren't the least bit surprised when I showed up with a garden sprayer and asked for help turning it into a shower. I went home with some plastic hose, a flow-amplifying shower head, some clamps, and some fittings to allow us to disconnect the tank for refilling. It's pretty slick! We fill it with hot water, pump it about 30-40 times, and get about a five-minute shower with less than two gallons. You do have to pump it again about half-way through your shower, but I have read that this is also necessary with the Zodis.

What else? Joe got the storm door installed on the kitchen side. The effect of 18-inch-thick walls is that you end up being able to stand between the storm door and the inside door: it's like an air lock! This has greatly reduced floor drafts.

During Molly's recent visit, Joe and Molly built a nifty trestle table with benches that fit underneath. This way when we don't have company, which is most of the time, the benches don't clutter up our small space, but can be pulled out when we do have visitors.

Oh, and while Ian was home, he built us this extremely cool rig for the kitchen counter extension, which in the "up" position holds the counter securely and can't be knocked aside, and which swings down between the counter legs, allowing the counter to fold down completely flat.

We probably won't be accomplishing much in the way of major projects over the next month or so, as both of us have full-time job commitments in February. Jobs get in the way of so much productive work! But we are lucky enough to have them this year, by all accounts. 

We hope 2010 finds all of our far-flung family and friends healthy, safe, and secure.

Winter Solstice at Sunnywood

It is 5:27 p.m. I have fired up the generator simply to power the modem long enough to upload this post (how much sense does that make?) and a battery-powered LED light clipped to my shirt allows me to see the keyboard on my laptop.

We celebrated Winter Solstice with family and friends---those who could make it on short notice, since the date had completely escaped us. Thanks so much to the intrepid! A skinny, not-quite-Charlie-Brown tree top graced by fat-butt Santa---ritual outdoor fire in the icy-cold wind---dogs!---good cheer and good people.

I am always thankful for the end of the shortening of days and the promise of the return of light, but found myself thankful more than ever this year. Since our necessity now is to make the inside of the house livable, we find ourselves working inside during the time of year when good light is rarest. On cloudy days we can lose good inside working light as early as 3 p.m., even with our southern glazing. Some days we are often working under generator-powered drop lights for four or more hours. I keep thinking about the sensibility of our dogs, who accept seasonal rhythms. Ciara, our big Newf, has begun barking for her evening walk as early as 3:30---something she might not do till 8 p.m. in June. If she had it her way this time of year, she'd come in at 4, eat dinner, and bed down for the night. But we must push to make this house livable so that we can get on with life, and hopefully be in a position to let Sunnywood Farm begin to live up to its name by spring.

We are still without electricity, having prioritized interior walls and closets---and firewood!--- for the time being. And while we were prepared to be without running water for the winter, we'd planned on a fully functonal Bison hand pump, which we don't really have. As far as we can tell, there is a break/leak in our line from the well, so the pump doesn't hold its vacuum, and needs one or two hundred strokes to prime. We have developed workaround systems, filling lots of vessels for washing and bathing while it's primed, but it's another complication we hadn't expected.

Yet nothing can convince me that we don't have so many unexpected things to be thankful for this season, and we are very glad to be where we are and where we're headed. Happy Solstice and happy holidays!

Posting reduced till we have power

(Not that I don't have plenty of places to charge my laptop.) In fact, we have an Internet connection---DSL via our phone line, which is at present running tenuously on top of the ground from the nearest utility pole in to Sunnywood. However the darned DSL modem is useless without electricity. In a pinch we can get service with the generator, but who wants to do that? And since the town library only gives patrons an hour of Internet access at a time, posting may be limited for a couple of weeks until our solar system is in place (we are still awaiting shipping of one part). I will try to post some photos and a more complete update this weekend.

The cordwood was the easy part

We are here to tell all of you intrepid folks who sweated along with us over the summer, mixing mortar by hand a wheelbarrowful at a time, cleaning logs, screening sand, and building cordwood masonry walls . . . that THAT was easy! Physically grueling, yes, but creative and satisfying. Getting the inside of the house livable has been another story.

Every task is a learning curve, and learning curves involve mistakes. Some of which can be rectified/redone, and some of which we will have to live with.

Take the plumbing. Somehow, when we were divvying up tasks, I got the plumbing. (I am still deeply suspicious about how this happened.) We have a simple graywater system, no blackwater or septic---how hard can that be? I guess I imagined that we could replicate camp setups from the old days and run black hose into a hole in the ground. However in organized townships there are plumbing inspectors who require schedule 40 traps and vent pipes and sanitary tees and cleanouts. But, for goodness sake, with a graywater system we're only allowed to have three drains. Two sinks and a bath; count 'em, THREE.

Jerry at the hardware store lent me his plumbing book, complete with plumbing diagrams and color photos of all of the parts. The plumbing inspector reviewed the system I drew out and said it was great. So I bought the parts, cut the pipe, and assembled everything (kind of like tinker toys with really stupid rules). I asked the plumbing inspector to come look at it before I glued the PVC. "This is fine," he said. "But what you could do," he said, looking at the ugly PVC running up, down, and across our walls, "is run those vent pipes under the floor next to the waste pipes."

"We're allowed to do that?," I screeched, wondering why on earth he hadn't mentioned this when he looked at my schematic.

So I dissassembled everything, bought new parts and started over. The under-the-floor parallel vent system was much harder. Everything was so rigid that the gluing was nearly impossible. You've got about ten seconds after applying the glue and joining the parts to get things aligned right. I hit my head on the sink about twenty times and knocked the pipe glue all over our newly oiled floor boards. I am not sure Joe had ever heard such a colorful combination of northern NJ and backwoods Maine. The plumbing inspector arrived to inspect our system just as our test bucket of water was leaking out of the trap connection.

I had also volunteered to build the kitchen counters, even though I had no clue how to do this. Two and a half weeks later, let's just say that that the sink only fits into the hole before you've screwed everything down; not after. And that I probably won't be finding any work as a carpenter.

Even Joe, who is proficient at just about everything, has had his share of issues. Just ask him how long it took, and how many specialized drill bits were consumed, to drill a hole through one of the logs for the propane connection (and why we weren't using the piece of PVC we'd laid into the wall for this purpose)? And what happened when he set the Bison water pump into its carefully prepared platform on the completed countertop (and why we don't have water yet)?

By the way, the plumbing inspector mentioned that when Maine adopts the uniform building code in 2012, a person won't be able to build a house like ours. "The average new home will require 8 to 10 inspections, and all home designs will have to be approved by an engineer," he said. Even without a mortgage, you won't be able to build what you want on your own land with your own money.

More neighbor love

I forgot to mention that our neighbor Richard---who has been very good to us but is clearly having a hard time getting his head around our project---graced us with two more of his neighborisms the other day.
"Startin' to look almost home-like," he smiled, walking in. Then, frowning, "Well, camp-like, maybe." He smiled again, reassuring us. "I've seen worse!"