We've built a house

Judy has officially moved in to the home we've all been building for her for the last year and 9 months.  We tried to do it as naturally as possible, but there were areas of compromise.  Even with one of the walls being completely uninsulated the house doesn't get cold, underground homes are awesome!  It took a lot longer than we thought and there is a lot of finishing work to be done including the earthen roof.   For the floor we'll do an earthen floor workshop hopefully some time this year when our house has 4 walls, a roof and doors so that Judy will have somewhere to stay while we're doing it and the floor dries.  We should start on our house soon.  

Judy moves in!

Judy is spending the first night in her new home!  Not quite done, but done enough to move in.  Pictures soon!!!

Meanwhile, here is a funny video of my cat Falon playing with some seed packets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhhxmPX0pHs&feature=youtu.be

Rectangle panes of broken grass

Self Heal

Self heal filling the "Herb Circle" garden - which is a space where the trees form a circle.  This area is where we currently live till the house is built

Butterfly weed & Black eyed Susan

We've been learning to grow using perma-culture and are reading "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway.  We are growing organically, but want to eliminate organic bug sprays  and fertilizers.  The plants in the first bed haven't needed any organic bug spray, but we did have to pick off some horn worms  - not an overwhelming amount and none for a while.  But the potatoes, beans and brassicas just were not in the right place at the right time.  When you go into healthy woods, you rarely see plants destroyed by bugs, it's in balance.  Nature knows how to grow plants without our help and people that study those systems have learned to come close to mimicking nature in many ways in the garden.  A balanced garden in a balanced place shouldn't need to worry about pest control - organic or otherwise. 

Finally a house update

I have wanted to do a "real" update on the house for a while, with information to help anyone thinking of using the dry stack building method.  But with the actual work of building, getting gardens in, a booth at the Farmer's Market and trying to run a small business, there hasn't been anytime.  There is already a lot of written information on this subject though and I'll share that, along with our personal experience with you. 

Bobcat Fever in cats

We have lost two cats to Bobcat fever so we started doing all the research we could about this disease.  Even though we prefer all natural solutions, we hadn’t found a way to keep ticks off of our animals.  We tried several natural remedies but they didn’t work well or were too expensive to keep up with since we have so many animals.  We tried apple cider vinegar in their water, but some refuse to drink it.  Being in Missouri with lots of ticks and in an area known to have Bobcat fever, we reluctantly used topical drops while we kept researching. 

Fear of a date

 December 21, 2012, a date that strikes fear in the heart of so many people, prepared and unprepared. There is a danger in being afraid of a date. Wanting to be self-sufficient is certainly a life style choice and one that shouldn't be taken up in the spirit of fear. When that date comes and goes, and nothing happens, then what?

Who said the world will end on 12-21-12? The archeologists? It certainly isn't the Mayan elders. Ten minutes online will tell you that. From my research, they say that the date marks an astrological event. Their prophecy of the changing of the world, the world ending as we currently know it, or the time of the new sun, is a time period that spans many years. Some say the end of which could even be as late as 2020. They prophecy a change of times, along with some upheaval, but one where humans come out for the better on the other end.

Cattle panel shelters

This weather has been incredible and we've been working on getting garden plots ready, getting supplies for temporary greenhouses and building shelters.  We have a lot of glass won at an auction for "permanent" greenhouses, but for now we need to keep it simple and quick to be ready to get back to house building, but be ready for seed starting at the same time. 

As soon as it's not freezing at night, we'll be able to lay the first course of blocks for Judy's house in mortar  - which can't freeze at night.  There are things you can do to keep the mortar from freezing, but there is other important work to do to, so we'll just wait a couple of weeks and get back to it.  Everything is square and the "dry run" row of blocks looks good.

We took cattle panels and tarps to build a shelter over the door at the RV and used the same method to build a small shelter for some equipment.  We tied the cattle panels to the luggage rack and arched it over the door/ fridge/ battery box area.  Rebar ties were used to tie the tarp to the cattle panels.  So far that is working well.  When it's windy out though, the metal of the rebar ties sliding across the metal of the tarp rivets grating the metal of the cattle panels is quite the noise!  Something is going on with my camera besides it no longer zooming and the photo of the new awning is gone.