In the month since my last post things have really started to happen. We picked up our two good friends from the airport who will be staying (working) with us all summer, the notorious "excavator week" has come and gone and we have made immense progress raising the frame for our cabin. To say that we've been making moves would be an understatement. But, all that comes later. I have to first fill in all of my loyal readers (most of whom undoubtedly share my last name and know all this already) on those fateful first days and weeks on the property.
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| What we had to carry up to the campsite in the first few days |
It went up in 1 day, simple, protected from the rain and even had a wall on one side to shield us from what was sure to be the hot and glaring sun any day now. We also set up a tent just down the hill from camp. It would act as our bedroom until the cabin was built and move-in ready. Being for 6 people, it seemed terribly lavish. We were so used to sleeping in Felix's tiny, light-weight backpacking tent. Now, not only is our tent big enough to stand-up in but we fit a full-sized mattress and even a dresser. We're really living the life.
All was good for the next few days. We were setting things up. Unpacking. Felix built us a bathroom which was a highly sophisticated hole-in-the-ground-type. Meanwhile, I set up a nice cook-station where we have our 2-burner propane camping stove and worked on painting and filling a couple new-to-us dressers that we plucked off the roadside in New Haven, CT a week earlier. At this rate, we'd have electricity in 2 weeks and the cabin would be done by June.
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| Until... |
Needless to say, this is the first time that we really learned Lesson 1. It was raining for the 2 days prior. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking "Wow, finally. Its so peaceful outside. Unglaublisch." Little did I know Felix was thinking the same thing in the wee hours of the morning. Foolish we were. The kind of peace we both heard that night can only be accomplished in the earliest hours of the morning and ONLY when there's snow on the ground. The tarp that we hung above our sleep tent collapsed from the weight. Our main tarp also ripped from the weight and let the snow blanket all of our belongings. Camp was ruined. Luckily, little serious damage was caused. Everything was, of course, frozen and as soon as the sun came out that day, defrosted and got moist. Toilet paper, blankets.. We spent that day building a new, weatherproof and indestructible camp. It was much bigger this time and we changed the orientation to instead welcome the few hours of afternoon sunlight.
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| Note the awesome circus-like tarp in the back that we use as a wall and the frame Felix build to give our camp a little structure |
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| Kitchen |
That lesson, that homesteaders have no control, quickly became a theme for the next few weeks.The weather did not cooperate. Here's Felix warming his toes and me warming my butt by the mini-fire we built in the kitchen during a particularly cold and soggy day.
After we felt confident with camp, the projects continued. I worked on re-clearing our clearing. Its about an acre and will someday be our garden/orchard/chicken coop/whatever else.. Whoever did the initial clearing of the land about 7 or 8 years ago did a bad job, we soon discovered. There were piles of brush and logs (some as big as 12' long) everywhere. Some trees were fallen and forgotten about, just lying where they were cut. What could have been cords and cords of firewood or nice building logs were just left to rot. There were at least a dozen long and deep holes scattered throughout the clearing- the remnants from old perc tests, which are used to determine if that location would be a good site for a septic system. I slowly made a dent on that project while Felix took action building us a proper shower. While we lived in the yurt, we showered using water that we boiled on the wood stove and diluted down to give us an ideal temperature. Then, we poured it on ourselves or eachother while standing outside. Rustic but it worked and, really, is not as bad in the winter as you would think. His idea this time was to allow for us a little luxury. To use our faithful wood stove, one or 2 water barrels (the normal blue ones, food grade) and gravity to give us our own sustainable and free on-demand hot water system.
Before all this could happen, we needed water. We are blessed to have a feature on our land that we've been calling "the ravine." Its a low and moist spot just east of our future home-site. We've seen it in most of the seasons of the year and while it always holds its moisture, its far from a creek. In late summer you can just feel the dampness left behind by the snow and rain from months before. Initially, we'd pump the little bit of standing water left from the snow melt until we can dig a proper shallow well. That plan did not work out as anticipated. We have a pump but it just didnt have the horsepower to make it up the 45' of head from the ravine up to camp. By asking around in the community we found out that in Vernon, the neighboring town, there was a natural spring where many locals fill up on water, avoiding the highly chlorinated town water. We found a couple huge 275 gallon water tanks, called "tote tanks," for free on craigslist and our idea for unlimited water was born. We'd leave one tote tank near camp at all times. The other, lighter of the 2, we would load onto the truck when we needed water and bring it to the Vernon spring. We'd use our little gas-powered water pump to pump the water from a 5-gallon bucket (that we would bring and place under the running water) into the tote on the truck. Then, we'd drive back home, all the way up to camp, and pump from the full tote to the empty one. When the truck-tote was empty, we'd take it off the truck and Voila! We have lots of water at camp.
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| Transfer from one tank to the other |
It works great and we've been using that system ever since.
Back to the Hot Water
Now, this was and still is Felix's baby. For a full description and many more pictures you have to go to his blog. You'll find the link on the right hand margin of my page. Yes, yes its in German. That doesn't mean you can't look at the pics! All I have to say about our hot water system is that is was the most frustrating and horrible thing we've done yet on our land but it is, by far, the most awesome. It took him weeks of planning, hours at the building supply store, and tons of learning curves to overcome. In the process of building us a warm shower, Felix taught himself how to solder (a skill he had never learned previously).
Basically, the system is as follows:
1. Pump water from our tote tanks into a smaller water tank that is raised in the air and sitting on a platform
2. Start a fire in the wood stove
3. Open the valve to a spigot that has been placed at the bottom of the small, elevated water tank
4. Gravity will allow the water to flow through a copper coil that is inside a piece of chimney pipe and then snake through 6 "ventilation-type holes" that were already part of our wood stove (see pics)
5. The water is warmed from its time passing through the wood stove in copper pipe
6. Stand in the super cute shower stall that Felix built and the water will flow out of the shower head above
Amazingly, the amount of copper pipe that the water flows through seems to be exactly long enough to create the perfect showering temperature. We had to play with the stove a bit to find the ideal conditions i.e. how much wood is in the fire box, how open the flues are, etc... In general, it takes about 2 or 3 minutes from the time that we start the fire until we begin to shower. It is truly the most impressive and awesome thing that I have ever seen Felix build. This one small creation has increased the quality of our lives 10 fold. And now, our old system of boiling water and mixing it was cold water, seems incredibly inefficient in comparison.
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| Shower stall with platform for water tank |
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| In the end, the copper snakes through all of the holes |
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| Final product |
That's where we stand now. Our basic needs are met. We have a dry and stable camp to hang out in, a roomy and comfortable place to sleep, a semi-easy way to get unlimited amounts of water whenever we need it and, finally, a nice warm shower whenever we feel like it. In the end, those 2 weeks turned into 4. I was able to get done a fair amount in the clearing. Next time, I'll share some photos of that. Beside all that I mentioned, we also made a lot of progress preparing our cabin site. We cut down the trees that were standing directly on or immediately next to the cabin's pad, the site where the cabin will actually sit on top of; Its footprint. We (I) moved a lot of brush into 2 huge piles in the clearing, just waiting for a good opportunity to have a big fire.
We were now ready for visitors. Next post.. our German friends arrive, changing camp life and doubling our manpower, our journey toward electricity, and the infamous excavator week which challenged us in such a hardcore way but allowed us to make more progress than ever imagined.
Lots of love,
Becky
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| Our 1st big brush fire - a noteworthy event for every homesteader |
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