The final touch for the floor

One side fit snug and the other needed a bit more chiseling.

A perfect fit

In order to get the perfect fit Ira shaves off wood with the tip of the bar.

Preparing the trestles

Ira is cutting the ledgers that will rest on the posts.

Preparing the posts

Ira scored the posts - 1" deep by 3.5" wide and cut into those spaces with the saw. We hammered out the pieces that were left and chiseled out the remaining wood to size.

Pallet-Shower Construction

Here Ira is digging a posthole: These will hopefully be the last pieces pressure treated wood we use. Future posts will be made from black locust trunks which are resistant to rot and do not require the use of cement. Instead, road bond gravel can be used which helps prevent wood rot better than cement. Cement is so caustic that untreated wood will deteriorate. A good treatment for wood is borax (1 quart of borax mixed with 1 gallon of warm water and sprayed on moist wood). Due to the square pallets and a time constraint. The shower will allow us to comfortably stay overnight and motivate us to build a sauna asap. We are using oak pallets which once carried sacks of cement. These were reclaimed from a local hardware store.

"Hardwood lumber, such as oak, was used for 67 percent of the wood in pallets at the turn of the twenty-first century. Manufacturers used a total of 4.41 billion board feet of hardwood lumber for pallets. Other wood materials used included stumpage, logs, and cants. Waste materials were sometimes used by pallet manufacturers to make fuel wood, bedding, pulp, or charcoal, among other products".
for more info: http://www.answers.com/topic/wood-pallets-and-skids

Stone Stairway

These flat stones came out of the microhouse foundation. They lead up to the what will be the main entrance to the microhouse. They were arranged and placed by Eli.

Black Locust Post

Here is a black locust tree I debarked with the draw knife. It's 20' long, I cut it in half to use as two posts for a future work shed.

Tank-Tent Expanded

We recently lengthened the tank-tent to allow for the long timbers to be protected once the sawmill comes. This photo gives a more realistic perspective of the size of one of the main brush piles.

West-Facing View of Tent

This photo was taken from the site of the future microhouse.

Blackberry Patch

This is the way the entire meadow was when I first started this project. I have managed to keep this piece in it's original form and plan to keep it like that. There are also some milkweed plants which the butterflies love. This will serve as important attractor for beneficial insects and a testimony to how it once was.

Chipping for Compost

I have made piles of pine chips and also piles of chips from all other trees. The pine chips are best saved for enriching the soil around blueberry bushes. I also use the pine chips for the sunny john. The humanure compost is up on the ridge and will only be used for fertilizing Black Locust trees, which are only harvested for their rot-resistant wood. I have been bringing compost from my garden in Asheville, which is rich in worms, and mixing it with straw from a neighbors farm. I also add big bags of organic juice pulp from a local juice bar. In this photo, on the left of the compost pile is the non-pine chip pile ready for mixing in with all the veggie matter.

Brush Piles = Swales and Wood Chips

This is one of several brush piles which I've been clearing, chipping the small branches for compost and sheet mulching and cutting the larger branches for either firewood or for building swales. To form temporary swales I lay the trees on contour on the uphill side of tree trunks to catch any falling debris. In the future I will dig trenches on the uphill side of those tree piles and fill the dirt in to form terraces that will catch rain water and allow it to percolate into the soil and prevent soil erosion.

East View

This is the view to the East; the pile of soil on the right is the topsoil which was cleared from the site and saved for later use in the greenhouse beds and exterior garden.

Main House and Greenhouse Site

This is the view from the south of the greenhouse and main house site. The main house will be 40' long by 20' wide. The greenhouse will be connected to the south wall of the house and will be 70' long by 20' wide. It will feature a subterranean heating-cooling system (SHCS) which will allow for tropical growing conditions and will virtually eliminate the need for household heating and cooling. The SHCS process involves forcing the hot greenhouse air into the soil to heat the roots of the plants, functioning like a simple refigerator system. My inspiration for this design was Jerome Ostenowski and his crew at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (CRMPI) in Basalt, CO. http://crmpi.org/Home.html Jerome has been applying sustainable agriculture and forest gardening on his land and in the surrounding area for over 25 years. He is currently teaching school kids throughout his region and surrounding states.

Timbers & Tank-Shed

Trees waiting to be milled. Most are white pines and tulip poplars. A few oaks and hickories will be used as well. This is one of two piles of timbers. Around 40 usable trees have been felled so far. All wood will be treated with sodium borate (Borax) to prevent bugs from entering and causing damage. The white tarp in the background is covering 10, 260 gallon tanks which were used to import olive oil from Alava, Euskadi (Spain). They are now being used to form a shed, covered by a billboard tarp (24' x 40') http://www.billboardtarps.com/ which once advertized a Mexican Mariachi Band. It now houses a ton of tools and supplies and has a 2600 gallon water capacity!

North Ridge

Close-up of pentagon-tent and "Sunny John" in the background. Drew did a great job building it; it has a clear roof and East-facing window. The walls are covered with wood from old pallets and will soon be covered with the long de-barked rounded pieces of the timbers milled for the main house.

Base Camp

This tent was made by Red Sky Shelters in Barnardsville, NC. (http://redskyshelters.com/) It is supported in the middle by a 21 foot Tulip Poplar trunk. A good friend, Drew Hudson, came up in June to spend his vacation contributing to the project. His first task completed was debarking the poplar with an antique draw knife. The following day four friends helped in raising and staking out the tent. A few days later Drew and I built a small deck out of pallets and scrap plywood with a cinder block foundation; producing a level platform - you can set and orange down and it won't roll off!

Photo by Kristen Stanton

Scenic Drive

I currently live in Asheville and I will commute to the land until I have a livable space there. The drive takes 45 minuites and this is the first of many scenic views. Looking West: Photo by Kristen Stanton.

The "Sunny John"

At the end of May we broke ground to build a small "sunny john", composting toilet. In this photo Eli is starting the first posthole. The soil is very rocky, great for building terraces and muscle. The "sunny john" is a moldering toilet that uses no water and when used correctly, produces no more smell than a conventional flush toilet.

Just what is a moldering toilet anyway?

A moldering toilet is simply a waterless toilet that is built to allow for very long term slow decomposition in place – the waste molders, rather than composts, much as leaves and plant debris "molder" on the surface of soil through the action of bacteria, fungi, and microorganisms. With moldering, the "technology" applied for waste treatment is mainly isolation, and simply time itself! All that is required is a temperature and humidity stable aerated vault that can support enhanced growth of fungus. There is no heat generated and consequently no nutrient is 'burned' out of the pile - all of the nitrogen in the waste AND that generated by decomposing microbes is sequestered in the finished product. Virtually no carbon is consumed because there is no high temperatures to create carbon based 'greenhouse gases'. After a year or more, all you are left with is half the mass of the original waste converted into fine, lite weight black humus suitable for application back into your landscape and virtually all of the moisture (80% of the original weight!) evaporated into the atmosphere.

http://www.sunnyjohn.com

Living the Dream

This photo was taken in May 2009.
South facing view of the lower meadow. An heirloom apple tree sits in the middle wild blackberry plants and surrounded by forest.

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World

The most influential model for this project was the community of Gaviotas in the Savannah of Colombia. The book, Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, by Alan Weisman, tells the story of Paolo Lugari and his coordination of developing a tropical utopia that applied regenerative design to boost Colombia's economy, reforest a "wet desert" and integrate the local culture in all their initiatives.

Gaviotas is a village of about 200 people in Colombia, South America. For three decades, Gaviotans - peasants, scientists, artists, and former street kids - have struggled to build an oasis of imagination and sustainability in the remote, barren savannas of eastern Colombia, an area ravaged by political terror. They have planted millions of trees, thus regenerating an indigenous rainforest. They farm organically and use wind and solar power. Every family enjoys free housing, community meals, and schooling. There are no weapons, no police, no jail. There is no mayor.

The United Nations named the village a model of sustainable development. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called founder Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world."

http://www.friendsofgaviotas.org/Home.html

All Hail Madison County!

Shelton Laurel: Pop. 350

This blog was created to document the evolution of the land I purchased in February 2009. I am now the steward of 7.8 acres (3 Ha) in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. Shelton Laurel is home to around 350 people and is situated in the northern tip of Madison County where it borders Tennessee to the North, East and West. Agriculture is the traditional backbone of the economy of Madison county. Known as "The Jewel of the Blue Ridge" Madison County boasts some of the most mountainous terrain in the state, over twenty organic farms and three farmers markets.