Any Minute Now

EDIT: you can see larger versions of the pictures if you click on them.



When I said that yesterday was the big day, looks like I meant today. Redline is having a bit of a time packing everything before he leaves L.A. It's like a mean game of real-life Tetris. Anyways, today's the day. For real this time.

For this project we're building up the land from scratch. This is as raw as raw land gets. No utilities, no conveniences. When we first get there, we're going to have to chop down a few trees just to get the truck onto the property. Then we'll clear a space to pitch a tent and unpack some of the stuff.

The first order of business is to build a solar composting toilet. There's no sewer access. There's also no water. The idea here is to create a place where we can make, um, deposits in such a way that the material will break down and biodegrade, or compost, into a usable material known as "humanure." Here's an article from buzzle.com that summarizes the situation rather well.

Step two will either be the initial shelter or the solar shower. Not that the shower is going to be a big deal or anything, but it would be nice to have. I never asked him what the plan was for the shower, but I'm guessing it'll be something like this:

Five gallons is enough to get clean. No idea on how warm the water will get, but whatever. It's a step up from a bucket and a washcloth.

The initial shelter is the first major milestone. Redline sketched this up to explain it to me:


The round portion of the shelter will be 16' in diameter, with walls made of straw bales and covered in an adobe-type material. The picture below should give an idea on what we're talking about. The shelter is the domed structure in the back. The tire walls in the foreground are part of the earthship itself. The lumber portion is where the greenhouse will go. The greenhouse will face south to take advantage of the sun's position relative to the the northern hemisphere.



The greenhouse will provide enough space to grow a good amount of food. We're going to try for a nutrient dense garden and will include things like broccoli, spinach, strawberry, red cabbage, tomato, blueberry, amaranth and sweet potato, among others. We're not going to have tons of room so we need to get as much as we can from the things we do plant.

When I think about it, the idea of turning seed into food is amazing. Put them in the ground, add water and sunshine, wait a while, and you've got food.

We'll plant new seeds every week or so, in order to maintain good crop yields throughout the winter. We'll harvest our first crops near Thanksgiving, which should offer a neat perspective. If the plants start producing by then, we probably won't starve to death over the winter. For that, we would most definitely be thankful.

I'm excited to get this started.

And we'll be leaving any minute now. Yes, sir. Any minute now.


-CheeZ