Pictures of Taos

We just checked into a motel outside Kansas City, MO.

The post about Earthship HQ will be up a little later. I still have to finish writing it and may end up breaking it into two parts. There are a lot of pictures. For now, here are some pictures of Taos, New Mexico.

Remember that you can click any of the images for a much larger, really big version.


View from behind the motel:




Stuff we passed on the way to Earthship HQ:







Cow crossing and some cows that probably don't use it:





Bus Stop Ice Cream and Coffee Shop:



Most Beautiful Steel Bridge, A.K.A. The Gorge Bridge:





Then, in the distance, this:



...turned into this:



Stay tuned!

Quick Note

Thank you all for following along with us. I appreciate your comments and the emails. That I'm able to share this with you means a lot.


- CheeZ

Post Title

We just pulled in to Taos, elevation 6,950 feet. The lady at the front desk tells me there's a ski resort around here.

Don't mind me. I'm a little tired and just kind of looking to decompress so I'm going to ramble for a while while I still have it in me. I'll get to the vegetables in a bit, though it's not quite as extensive as I thought it would be. I'll have to follow up on the topic later.

Maybe it's a good thing to have these travel entries to practice on. I think I need to get in the habit of doing a daily recap. This should help.

Redline picked up a new camera today. The pictures are much better quality, as you'll see. Of course, that means we took quite a few to test it out; probably more than was really needed.

We made a detour when we got word that there was a petrified forest in Arizona. The idea of a petrified forest conjured up some wild images in my head. Turns out it's a bunch of stuff laying on the ground. I'll admit I lost interest upon discovering that.



We've enjoyed the landscape and the weather has been pretty wild. Big clouds dropping big rain that you can see from miles away. And something that looked like a funnel cloud.





The terrain in New Mexico has been pretty dramatic. Lots of majesty towering over the interstate. We also saw a tow truck towing a truck that was towing a boat.






We talked a bit about the food he plans to grow while he lives out there. It's important to note that there will be two different places that will be tasked with producing food. The interior food production will produce most of the necessary food, but because it'll be fed with greywater, he won't grow any subterranian vegetables like onion, carrot and garlic. That stuff will have to be done outside in the greenhouse, which will be fed by collected rainwater.

I'll talk about this more tomorrow. In the meantime, here's most of the list. There might be more. He'll know for certain once he finishes the install on his laptop. Seems he typed out most of the stuff so he didn't have to remember it. Sounds familiar.

Grain
Buckwheat
Amaranth (technically not a grain, but quite awesome).

Vegetables he's certain of:
Purple Carrots
Roma and cherry tomatoes
Bok Choi
Red Cabbage
Alfalfa/Bean Sprouts
Wheat Grass
Beets
Celery
Purple Corn
Cucumbers
Garbanzo Beans
Mushrooms
Red Onions
Green Onions
Parsley
Bell Peppers (orange/yellow for sure, maybe some red and green)
Saurkraut
Garlic

Vegetables he may or may not grow:
Eggplant
Greenbeans
Jalapeno
Water Chestnut

Fruits to be grown inside:
Strawberry
Blueberry
Avocado
Lemon
Kiwi
Banana

Some fruit trees that he'll plant. If they live, great. If not, no biggie:
Apple
Olive
Date
Grapefruit

In addition, he'll grow a lot of herbs and spices.

I'll follow up on this after he gets access to his notes. There's a lot more to say.

That's it for tonight, folks. Gotta be up to get to Earthship HQ. I'll close out with more pictures from the drive today.


- CheeZ

Next Stop: Taos, New Mexico

We're about to leave Flagstaff. We're not in a big hurry because we're only going as far as Taos. We'll sleep there tonight and visit Earthship HQ tomorrow. There's a community outside Taos that consists entirely of earthships. Should be sight to see.

They offer a self-guided tour of a fully functional earthship. We'll spend several hours there and we'll take a lot of pictures and a lot of notes. Seeing a live example should help me visualize this a bit.

---

Washed down some vitamins with the last of the goat milk this morning and liked it a little less than I did yesterday. Maybe that means I'll like it more next time. I hope so.

Today, we'll be talking about the fruits and vegetables we're going to plant. My entry later tonight will have a lot of info about that.

Time to saddle up.






No, that's not me. It's not Redline, either. Just your regular-old donkey-riding donkey rider.


-CheeZ

Goat Milk

EDIT: Something's wrong with the image uploader. I'll try it again before we head out. Pretty tired last night. Thought I published this. Also looks like the pictures are kind of blurry, but you can probably make out what the stuff is supposed to be.

EDIT2: Fixed.

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Alright. We're stopping in Flagstaff for the night for some food and a good night's sleep.



We've done some goofing around, and we're happy we took the time to see the Grand Canyon, but this is not a travel blog. We'll have a lot to think about when we get to North Carolina. Among potential distractions, one of them is pretty key to the project and we told ourselves that given the opportunity, we'd take a look at it:


Goat milk is going to be a large source of fat, protein, riboflavin, calcium, phosphorus and potassium. In addition, the goats will be our only source of cheese, and our only source of milk. This whole thing will work better if I'm able to stomach goat milk.

We went to the grocery across the street to pick up some grub and noticed that they sold cartons of goat milk. I've never had it. Redline has, and he told me to point out that this is the wimpy, ultra-pasteurized version. This is true, but it's still goat milk. Some people think they taste the same. We'll see. I'm going to try it in a little bit and I'll write it up after.

Some no-frills guacamole:


Yes, that's a cherry tomato sitting with what's left of an avocado.

-Later-

Ok, I tried it. While there are a number of similarities, the fact is that goat milk is a little different from cow milk. Smell, initial flavor, visual appeal, drinkability are all similar. There's an aftertaste that just isn't there in cow milk. It's not gross or anything, but it's there, it is unmistakable, and it is a presence I'm not accustomed to in milk.

It reminds me of goat cheese. Maybe I should have expected that. I've never gone out of my way to eat goat cheese (and this could become another potential hurdle later). I don't hate it, but with soooo many other great cheeses to choose from, I just never got around to it, and never tried very hard to make the time.

-Later Still-

I've now had three cups of goat milk. When I drink the milk by itself, I seem to focus on the aftertaste and it's still a bit foreign. As a supplementary test, I drank a cup of goat milk with a slice of bread covered with lots of Nutella. I couldn't pick up the aftertaste over the gobs of chocolate. Without the aftertaste, I have a hard time telling the difference.

I don't think it will be an issue, but that's easy to say while I'm standing on this side of goat milk every day for months on end.

More tomorrow.


-CheeZ

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon exceeded every expectation. It didn't even look real. Words like huge, enormous, gigantic . . . They don't come close to touching it. I don't know what six billion people looks like, but the canyon is so big it looks like it could hold us all.

Right now we're just south of the Grand Canyon, sitting in the parking lot using the wifi of some internet coffee shop. We're trying to figure out where to stay the night. A shower and some sleep would really hit the spot right now.

The drive is taking longer than we thought. We're averaging about 50 miles per hour. Between the heavy load and the hills and trying to get better than two gallons per mile, we're looking a bit more like the tortoise than the hare. So long as we keep going, we'll get there eventually.

I'll leave you all with some pictures from the day.

Somewhere outside Flagstaff:


The rig. All the heavy tools and things are under the plywood. The tarp is covering personal gear:


Redline:


Check out the shoes. Like gloves for the feet:


One of the Grand Canyon's brave residents:


This picture kind of sums up the experience. It looked like a movie backdrop:


Absolutely incredible. I'm glad we made the effort. I'll try to post one more entry when we stop for the evening.


-CheeZ

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