The idea of a greenhouse

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.

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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

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!

Spring Nesto

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

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!

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.  :-)

Spring 2012 -- All things come back to life: even blogs

Spring has sprung here in the Bioshelter.  There is so much water melting that we are running water down the mountain side--our cistern over-floweth.  

One of the really hard things to deal with is waste.  What do we do when you see other people polluting or purchasing things that will end up in the land fill?   It's hard.  I sounded pretty disgusted when I asked why my place of employment was buying apples in a plastic containers.  The staff said, "What's wrong with that?  It makes it so they don't get bruised."  I grimaced again and she said, "Why, do you want them or something?"   Without really thinking, but trying to make a point, I said, "Sure.  I'll take them." 

I've collected them all winter.  I have about 50 of them.  All waiting for spring.   Here they are!

 

I only have about 40 more to go.  What will I do with all of these trays???

I have rescued them from the landfill, but maybe only temporarily.  I'll let you know how they work.  

I planted Stinging Nettle in the salad box there, but in the apple cartons I planted two kinds of Basil, two kinds of Oregano, Echinacea, Chervil, Calendula and some other things I can't remember.  

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

I thought I'd show you the other things that have been growing: 

That is a bunch of LEEKS.  I'm using the plastic chicken cover (from a Safeway roasted chicken) to feed it water. 

 

 Here are all the tomatoes.  I MAY up-pot these directly into the green house.  Not sure if that is the best idea for tomatoes since it's still kinda cold in there.  Hmmmm.

Yeah, New Zealand Spinach.  It grew all winter, slowly but surely.  The aphids attacked it---it keeps growing.  We wash the aphids off and eat!  :-)

Bunching onions.    Yes!  I want A LOT.  Apparently they are good to keep pests away.    The a-word even (those which shall not be named) 

Lettuce.  I haven't decided if I'm going to let some of these grow up, or just eat the greens.  Maybe both.

  

Last but not least-----the califlower.   The cat has killed three little critters this week.  I hope those voles and shrews are getting the message that they can't come here and eat my califlower again this summer. 

I hope to continue writing here this season.  The season is off to a GREAT start!  :-)