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What I didn't explain in the video was how I made the worm bin. It started as a big plastic bin. 30 gallons is roughly a good size for the amount of kitchen material that 2 adults makes, so we got a bin that size. Then I drilled holes along the bottom for drainage and near the top for ventilation. I covered the bottom with screen to keep everyone who should stay inside inside and everyone who should stay outside out (centipedes love to eat worms). The whole bin went up on blocks, with a tray underneath. The majority of the bin in filled with moist paper. The moistness should be equivalent to the moistness of a wrung-out sponge.

This is the chart I made to help us remember what goes where!

Energy Audit

On Friday, we had an energy audit of our home. I had been really excited about it, too. The program sounds great- tons of rebates, air sealing, duct sealing, thermal imaging, and a ton of (arguably crummy but "free") lightbulbs.

For $99, I figured that even just the weatherstripping on the doors would be worth it. We also desperately need to replace our windows because the sills are so rotten they feel like a sponge. The program was offering a rebate of $50 per window. At least we got the weather stripping done on the doors, but that's about the only thing we got.

In the first 5 minutes, the guys spotted some asbestos tape sealing some ductwork below the bathroom. I don't remember if the building inspector had spotted that or not, but I don't remember it. One of the guys immediately said they wouldn't do the blower door test because it's too dangerous. The blower is powerful enough to agitate the asbestos and make it airborne. So that was that on the blower door test. They proceeded to do the weather stripping on the doors anyway at least. There was no doubt that the doors were drafty, considering you could see sunlight through the door frames when the doors were closed.

Then the other guy said they'd still do some ductwork tests to seal up where the ducts leak, and boy do they leak, but we encountered the same problem- that bit of asbestos tape. Not surprised, but disappointed.

When Guy #1 was doing the weather stripping, he left the plastic wrappers to blow across the yard. OK maybe he forgot? Then came the lightbulbs. Guy #2 went around and switched out our lightbulbs. We got 4 LEDs and the rest got changed to CFLs. Luckily, we got to keep all our incandescents, which we need for brooder lights. By the time the guys had left, we realized they didn't even leave us the extra CFLs we were supposed to get. The program supplies 25 CFLs, but they left with the extras. They DID leave behind 2 more LEDs and an extra showerhead, which was in addition to the one they installed. WHOOPS.

And as for the rebates, Guy #2 would only sign off on a few of them, and we only have 120 days to redeem them. No window rebate, and no insulation rebate. SHIT!!! Overall, I am really disappointed. At least we got our doors sealed up well. They didn't do any thermal imaging, but said we "probably" have insulation.

the white band in the center of the photo is the alleged asbestos

I don't mean to fault the workers for not performing those tests, but I'm definitely disappointed. I'm also planning on taking steps for remediation of the asbestos as well, and seeing what else I can do to make our house more efficient. On the advice of my friend Paul, I also plan on filing a complaint to Energize CT against the crew who came out and their lack of professionalism. I didn't go into a lot of detail in this post about all of the the things that went wrong that day, but they were numerous.

Getting Colder

I've been cold all of my adult life, and I'm sure Naomi would say the same. It seems that I can't afford to stay warm in the houses built by my grandparents' generation and heated by the systems and cheap fuel of my parents' generation. One of the reasons behind wanting to own our own home was so we could begin to deal with this problem, but there is an overwhelming number of things to consider.

How badly does our house leak? What are the most cost- effective and environmentally-friendly things to do to mitagate that? What do we replace our stupid oil-burning furnace with- geothermal heat pump, super high-efficiency bottled gas, heat only with wood? Heating with wood was another issue because we need an additional chimney, which I wasn't about to start dealing with as it was already getting cold. So I signed up for a home energy audit.

I hope that the energy audit folks will at least show us the low-hanging fruit, give us cost analysis, and set us up with some rebates. I also hope that I can talk them into not taking away all our incandescent lightbulbs so we can still use them as heat lamps in the chick brooder.

100 posts!

I just happened to notice as I was sitting down here that this will be our 100th post!  I can only imagine how many more posts we'd have if I had a chance to post as often as I'd like. I'll mostly be using pictures to recount the events of the past few weeks and months.

Yesterday was our chicken harvest day, which we've been referring to as "the chop" for a few years despite the fact that we don't "chop" our birds.  The name just seemed to stick. It went well I'd say.  We put 6 birds in the freezer, and Naomi roasted one for dinner, as we usually do on harvest day. I made a ton of schmaltz and put it in the freezer.  I've been trying to use it to make tortillas, which come out much nicer than with coconut oil.

I also managed to successfully save all the blood, which didn't really work out last year.  This morning I cooked a slice with my eggs and it was really good- sort of like organ meat.  It had the mineraly taste of liver, but with a different consistency.  It was really chewy.   There's enough left that I'll probably eat it every morning this week.  I'm sure I'd prefer it stuffed in a sausage casing, if only I had a good source of casings. The cracklins from the rendering process tasted really good just out of the pan, but I ate some this evening (I also accidentally burned them) and didn't enjoy them as much.  I'll have to see how I feel about them next time without burning them.

I spent a good chunk of time a few weeks ago reglazing some of the windows in the house. They were in pretty bad shape, and were really drafty. I focused on the worst ones first. Now I want to do more of them, because it was so easy! It's just time-consuming, and I have to have an open window while I'm working on them. I fixed some of the cracked panes as well, which was also way easier than I expected. I really want to do some more of the upstairs windows so they don't rattle when we have band practice. Around the same time that I did the first few windows, we turned the heat on.  That was sometime around the first week of October. I also want to add weatherstripping to the doors, but that is turning into a bigger project than I expected.

one of my favorite visitors!

Fall came really quickly here, the bright red maple up above was from September 23. The summer had been really dry, and once the rain came back hard in October, all kinds of fungi popped up all over the place, especially in the lawn, and on the dead apple tree. I realized a few weeks ago that I now live with the most beautiful fall foliage in the world. I never really understood most people's fascination with fall foliage, until I was driving home one warm clear afternoon.  I found myself in total awe. The only tree in the yard of my childhood home was a Norway maple, and it never did seem to be too vibrantly-colored in the fall.  The leaves sort of fizzled out and finally dropped. All of the sugar maples up here are spectacular. The oaks are a little later than the maples, and go to a bronzy golden brown after most of the maples are done, and the yellows in the birch leaves are amazing.

Naomi and I used the leaves from a couple big maples in the yard to mulch our garlic beds. We planted a lot less garlic than we ever had. We always end up with too much, and it's too much to keep up with the scapes, mulching it, and weeding it during the growing season. With a smaller patch, we should be able to nurture it a little more and have better quality and less quantity- which also means less curing and storing. After our first attempt at mulching the beds with leaves, they all blew away on a 30+ mph-gust day. The second time I mulched them, I used some orange construction fence that I usually use for cucumber trellis to fence them in. Only time will tell if this is a good method or not.

Can't Believe It's August

Time's been flying faster than I ever imagined possible over here, and there are so many things I want to put down before they're gone forever.

Fabio and his harem

I assisted Naomi in digging some potatoes at the big garden at our old apartment a week ago today.  That would've been the 5th of August.  The potatoes in question were Yukon Gold.  From about a dozen plants, we got just over 11 lbs!  The vines were already dead, and Naomi wanted some potatoes, so we dug 'em up!  The potatoes were fist-sized, yellow with a slight red blush, and were mostly concentrated right under the vine, and not spread out from the plant.  They're delicious.  I had previously thought that this particular variety hadn't been performing that well, but they're probably just an early- maturing variety.  I could look it up, but haven't.  The first potatoes of summer is a joyous occasion!

Boily, our only senior chicken

We also dug up our garlic about 3 weeks ago now.  Most of it was growing under a canopy of jewelweed, was mulched too lightly, and just overall didn't perform well.  Due to the weed canopy, we didn't do an effective job of picking the scapes, and the bulbs just couldn't compete in reduced sun/ nutrient scavenging.  We didn't separate the varieties at harvest, or weigh the crop.  I'm going to order all new seed to plant this fall and start over.  Some of the varieties we had been growing were never great producers or storers, so we'll try again, but with less varieties this time.  We had about 12 different varieties until now.

We've been putting the chickens to work, as well as ourselves.  I think I speak for us both when I say that we really want a lot of this grass gone, or at least transformed into something more useful.  We especially need more garden beds for next spring, when I hope to have a lot of our favorite foods back in action in our lives and our landscape.  There are at least 3 brush/ wood piles on the property that we've found, and we've been mining one for it's accumulated leaf litter, and subsequent black gold that's resulted as a by-product of its buildup under a pile of brush.  The tricky part is that japanese knotweed has managed to begin colonizing the pile, so we sift carefully before transferring this basically free organic matter to our newly- turned beds.  So far, we've got two beds in addition to our tomato garden.  One is a nursery, where we're overwintering various plants until we find more suitable locations for them next year.  The other one has been seeded with fall greens, which have already begun to germinate!

Naomi's been mad-scientisting some sort of budding duckponics system.  We bought some (not cheap!) native waterplants to act as a biofilter for Penelope's duck pond.  We need a more reliable pumping system, but the whole thing has some promise to it. 

Our brother-in-law, Roger, has been helping us with a variety of tasks lately.  If Mr. Rogers had the woodworking skills of Ron Swanson, you'd have a Roger.  He came by while we weren't home to drop off a bridge that he made for us in order to cross the smaller stream in back.  This happened to come just in time, because I started slashing lots and lots of japanese knotweed, which is starting to flower.  I definitely don't want that setting seed around here.  The bridge now leads to an area we call "the goat pen."  It's a formerly fenced-in area across the little stream that looks like it might once have been a vegetable garden.  I say formerly because the fence is still there, but has mostly been knocked down or otherwise interred by leaves and debris from who-knows how many years of dead knotweed parts.  We thought it'd be a great place for goats- assuming the fence is goat-proofed because they could eat all the knotweed they want, and hopefully suppress it's devil's-dick shoots in the spring by trampling and nibbling.

inside the Goat Pen.  I still have a lot to clear out!

Roger also helped us make the cutting board shown above.  It's the slide-out type that fits right into the cabinet face.  The old one, along with all the other cabinets and hardware, was nasty.  Naomi did most of the work, under the guidance of Roger.  I helped out here and there.  It came out really nice, and I learned a lot about woodworking, although it probably doesn't scratch the surface of what there is to know.

Over the weekend, while attempting to transplant some root crowns of comfrey, my shovel was impeded by something metallic under the soil surface.  With the help of Naomi, I finally unearthed what was the iron frame of an old piano.  It looks like I was digging in Ted's old burn pile.  The piano frame is now leaning up against the pile of old cinderblocks on the bank of the brook.

Knotweed-slashing progress

and finally, a picture of Ms. Penelope!

Updates and Observations

It rained HARD today.  It was the first time it rained in weeks.  The sky was really ominous for a bit, and we saw over two dozen birds of prey of some sort circling around too high up for us to identify them.  We put out every water-holding vessel we had and hoped for the best.  Our collection exceeded our expectations!  It only took about a half hour to fill all our tubs and trash cans.

Our only source of outside water has been straight from the brook.  That's not really a problem, but it's not convenient.  It requires walking all the way down to "the point," squatting down, and filling the buckets with silty water, and occasionally, minnows.  I only seem to be able to get the buckets half full because the water's been so low.  It's also been hell trying to get anything to regrow where they dug the yard out to put the new septic tank in.  The clover and buckwheat I put down shouldn't have any trouble germinating now.  I'd really like to have more than just grass. 

We're making progress on putting in the permanent chicken run.  I want to move the coops and the tractors out of the way temporarily while we finish.  I can't wait to be able to get those birds into the tractors and move them around.  It's amazing how much grass (clover etc etc) they've eaten, trampled, and matted down.

I figured out where and how the seepage in the basement happens.  It runs off the little roof of the hatch door, dribbles down and leaks between where the block and the stone foundation meet.  This can be easily fixed with some catchment, well placed plants, and a little back-filling.  Also, I couldn't believe the amount of water that pooled up off the left side of the front door.  Definitely need to do something there.  The driveway also totally filled up to an incredible level, cascaded over the side yard, around the back of the garage, and into the wetland soil, totally recharging the water level in the wetland area.  Where the brook and the little stream meet up (the point,)  the water level was all the way up to the grass.  I got soaked every time I walked out the back door from the sheet of water coming off the roof.  The carpet in the breezeway seemed to stay dry, so I'm still not sure why it has water stains.  Also, the chickens seemed to be happy with their tarps covering their runs, because they were all outside during the storm and weren't miserably huddled up like the used to do.

In the end, everything was back to normal.  The brook is filled up again, and gurgling away happily outside.  And a tiny bit of sun even peeked back out around the clouds.

Adjusting to Life at New House

A week has passed since we moved into New House, and we're adjusting (me slowly, Naomi is probably fine) to life here.  Some things are drastically different, some things are drastically more awesome, and some things are going to take time to adjust to (for me since I'm apparently bad at change according to Naomi).

I'm gonna start off with some of the bad things so I can move on from them into the awesome.  For starters, my commute is an hour long, but at least I've traded the rat race on the interstate for a pleasant bob along a two-lane road through beautiful country, at least until I have to cross the river.  For the first week, we didn't have any internet access (not really a big deal on its own) but the part that sucks about it is that I'm in a totally new place in a region where I've never lived before, and I don't know where absolutely anything is.  I learned really quickly where Home Depot is because I've been there every single day, sometimes twice.  Without internet access, I was very productive.  I can guarantee I wouldn't have gotten half the work done around the house had I been able to look at non-essential stuff for as long as I pleased.  I went to bed before 9:00 every night except the first one, when we went to a party.

We were also here for the first week without our chickens, and of course, Penelope too.  That was hard, because it didn't feel like home without our birds.  My dad graciously took care of them at our old place.  He even said he would miss them when they moved here!  I spent every waking moment that I wasn't at work preparing for their arrival by making new hoophouses that they could live in while I put in their more permanent fence.  On Friday, with the help of a friend (and his trailer!) we moved the coops here and set up the new hoop/tractors.  The birds seemed happy to be on nice fresh grass and have tons of bugs to eat.  Some downsides are that they're in the direct sun now, whereas they've always been under a canopy of oaks.  As a result, they've been hot.  We rigged up some high tech (lean something against the fence) shade panels for them today, and they liked that.  I improved the door on the little coop so it pulls up like the big coop, and attached the wire to the coops a little better than I had previously with staples.  On Saturday, with the help of our brother-in-law and his son, we took down the old run and brought it here to be reinstalled. 

old run's worth of wire

New people-sized gate posts

the Tweeters flopped out.  Notice Fabio in the front

the Big Birds, and the old gate! I'm thinking about adding it to the end of the tractor for easier access

The week before we moved here was spent putting in some 4x4 gate posts for the big-sized gate I'm going to put in.  No more tiny gate! Yay!  I'll have to bend at the neck slightly to walk through instead of crouching all the way down to go through the waist-high gate we used to have.  I can't wait to have everything permanently set up.  That will be awesome.  I have dreams of rain water collection with a gravity feed so I don't have to haul buckets every morning.

Our new little kingdom

The topic of hauling buckets leads me to my next point-  our well failed the potability test.  We had already been drinking only bottled water just until we found out, but we're stuck on it for a few more days.  We had been showering and washing our dishes in the well water anyway, just not drinking it.  This morning we shock chlorinated the water, and it has to sit for a bunch of hours.  I've been hauling water up to the house from the brook.  It seems I can never escape hauling water!  It makes me wish I had some buckets with plastic handles rather than just the metal wire one.  It'd be so much more comfortable.  Tomorrow I'll be bucket-bathing in brook water before work.  Hopefully the shock treatment will be enough, and things will be back to normal in another week.

I think I will miss our old floodplain place in that I don't have an endless source of drift gifts like we used to have.  All our buckets, trash cans, tubs, and wood came from occasional floods that would carry stuff downstream to us.  I guess the upside to that is that if I need something, buying whatever it is will give me a better quality, just not free.  Maybe I'll upgrade to some buckets with handles. 

On to the good-  I love this house!  I've been sleeping like a baby, thanks to the babbling brook directly outside our bedroom window and the cool air coming down off the hill in the evening.  Things are progressing slowly, mostly because I was preparing for the arrival of our birds, and that left Naomi stuck inside unpacking by herself.  I hope to make it a two-person effort this week and get the kitchen locked down and move on to the other rooms.  The ancient dishwasher didn't drain on its trial run, and then on every subsequent run, so I bought a new one.  It'll be coming this week, as well as a new washer, which we've never had.  I'm excited!!!

We got our little garden of tomatoes, peppers and strawberries started.  I started them all from seed about two months ago in preparation for spring planting, and once the house deal started coming together, we decided to hold off planting them.  Now, it's really late to be planting them, but at least its done!  That area of the yard gets great sun exposure, and I think they're going to take off.  I'm hoping to get some cucumbers in for Naomi this week, and maybe some beans.  That's probably all I'm going to try to plant here this year, so I can focus on the mountain of projects that need to get done, like rewiring the electrical outlets in the whole house. 

I forgot the rest of the tomato stakes back at the Big Garden

already- established blueberries doing their thing

So, things are coming together.  There is more to talk about, but those are the big things.  Now that we're back online, I hope to get back to more regular updates.  The Big Garden is taking off!  I picked a billion fava beans today, and lots of other stuff is going well over there, but I'll save that for a future post.