It was a real New Mexico kind of Saturday for me. I rolled out of bed and took my bike to the local farmers market. Then I returned to clean the trailer and grabbed the grease car. I drove about 40 miles south to Hatch for their yearly chili festival. It felt kind of like a ghetto carnival combined with town fair. The quantities of Chili and related products were impressive.
20080830
20080829
The Urban Homestead
Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne have put together a incredible summary of their LA based self sufficiency. This book covers food growing for the newby gardener, chickens, cooking, weening yourself from utilities, and making your bicycle a primary form of transportation. The hands on experience that they share through their own mistakes and successes is invaluable.
Burrito Summer
I've been trying to use my sun oven as frequently as possible this summer. Cooking outside greatly reduces our need for cooling our home as well as our gas bill since we don't need to use the stove/oven. This burrito dish has been one of my favorites for small groups of people. The burritos are cooked exclusively in the sun oven.
Recipe:
- 1/2 cup rice
- 1 cup water
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup beans
- lots of water
Beans and Rice go in separate pots in the sun oven and cook for a few
hours at 300F.
Toppings:
- cilantro
- tomatoes
- peppers
- red onion
- goat cheese
- asiago cheese
- add cooked rice/beans
Wrap in aluminum foil and heat assembled burritos for 20 min at 300F.
Recipe:
- 1/2 cup rice
- 1 cup water
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup beans
- lots of water
Beans and Rice go in separate pots in the sun oven and cook for a few
hours at 300F.
Toppings:
- cilantro
- tomatoes
- peppers
- red onion
- goat cheese
- asiago cheese
- add cooked rice/beans
Wrap in aluminum foil and heat assembled burritos for 20 min at 300F.
A Hunter is Born
Our cat, Scardy has finally caught a lizard. It is really amusing to watch our kitty chase after these little guys. I was surprised to see Scardy walking to his shady spot under our cistern with a live lizard in his mouth. He has been torturing the poor lizard for the last 15 minutes. I told him "don't play with your food".
20080827
Concentrated Solar Power (CSPs)
Concentrated Solar Power (CSPs) are the great hope for clean global energy. If 11% of New Mexico were covered with CSP plants we could power all of the United States. I put together a mindmap showing the major players in the CSP world.
20080821
Okra?
20080819
Couch deconstruction
Mustard
20080817
Almost harvest
20080816
Off to Seattle
I am taking a short trip to Seattle this week to visit my folks. This could be the last plane trip I take for quite sometime.
20080814
Volunteer Melons
Wendy pulled our first honeydew melon this morning. It came from a melon patch that sprouted from our compost fertilizer. We have already found 10 melons inside this one patch. There are 2 cantaloupe and 8 honeydews. We have melons all over the yard in other locations as well.
20080813
City Kitty with Sun Flower
Our black cat Scardy has been fascinated with plants this week. I watched him chow down on parslane and bermuda grass in the yard. He was checking out the leaves on our little sunflowers this morning. Perhaps another snack.
20080812
Equalization
Just because I have been unemployed for 2.5 years does not mean that I can sit around on my butt. I was refilling the water level on 24 of our lead acid batteries at 8pm this evening. It is not difficult, but certainly uncomfortable and I always seem to get battery acid on myself in weird places. Today I think I got it on the back of my neck. These batteries store the energy from our PV solar panels and can sustain us for about 5 days (in theory) if we had no sunshine at all. My actual experience is that just to get these batteries to a raging boil and fully equalized takes one week of us switching over to grid power and not using the batteries at all.
Remesh the DDU
Our first Dome Dwelling Unit has progressed from the rebar stage into the second stage which is remesh. Wendy and I hung 120 square feet of remesh with wire ties. The work was surprisingly easy this time around due to our usage of scaffolding. On the battery dome we had to climb on ladders which led to neck pain and slow adhering of remesh.
20080810
Cistern Stucco Drying
After about four hours of drying this is what our cistern looks like. It is still pretty damp to the touch. I suspect it will take a few days to get crispy. Not sure if we will paint it or do a thin cement color coat.
Cistern Stucco (Applying)
The primary goals of stucco'ing our water cistern was to block the light and keep the tank a little cooler. Both of which will help prevent the growth of algae and bacteria. A secondary part of this project was to try our first clay based papercrete mix. We started each mix with a bucket 3/4 full of shredded wet newspaper. Then we added four handfuls of clay and lime. The resulting paper stucco was very sticky and easy to apply.
What a Drag
Our papercrete mixer had not been used in over six months so we experienced some dragging of the wheels. The papercrete around the differential had hardened, but soon after we got into the street the wheels began to turn freely.
Back at It
Wendy and I did a small paper/clay mix today in the old tow behind mixer. It felt good to go back to our old routine of waiting for the mixer to fill with water.
20080809
Roasting Green Chiles
We live about 40 minutes north of Hatch, New Mexico. Hatch is well known through out the southwest for their green chiles. Our farmers market featured a local green chile roaster this morning.
20080808
Sunset (the band)
Blonde Bill and his band Sunset stopped by this morning to load up on grease for the west coast tour. I've never seen a Mercedes so loaded down as it left my place with 25 gallons of WVO.
20080807
Kumbucha round 3
20080806
Dolma Oil
I have a thing for Dolmas. I should be making my own, but I have been buying them from Trader Joes. They come glass jars packed with oil. I have been saving up the oil and dumping it in my grease car.
Luke Iseman
We finished lathing out water tanks with some help from Luke Iseman of Austin, TX. Luke had contacted me earlier this summer threatening to stop by. Wendy and I watched one of his youtube videos which showed a pallet being cut on a table saw then dangerously falling over. I liked his reckless experimenter approach so we agreed to have him over for a visit. He also has several interesting instructables.
Cucumber Melons?
Wendy was digging around our garden with a friend from Austin (Amanda) and found this crazy thing. A hybrid melon fruit. It tasted okay and had a real nice look to it. Lots of people had warned us about cucumbers and melons being too close. They will cross pollinate and give you something wacky.
Mowing the Weeds
Using a scythe is called "mowing". Wendy has been reading "The Scythe Book" by David Tresemer. She swears this book is one of the most incredible books she has ever read.
European Scythe
Our scythe arrived this week from Scythe Supply. They make custom fit scythes for all sorts of grasses and weeds. Ours took nearly six weeks to get here the whole time we were worried about rattle snacks hiding in our yard. We had to glue the handles and attach the blade ourselves. This mean waiting 24 hours before using it so that the glue could fully cure.
Damn! Mold
Our pink oyster mushrooms have been contaminated with a mold. I had
ordered these with a neighbor and his original batch showed signs of
mold upon arrival. We were told by fungi.com that we can have a
refund and that it was probably the straw that they used for
inoculation that was contaminated.
ordered these with a neighbor and his original batch showed signs of
mold upon arrival. We were told by fungi.com that we can have a
refund and that it was probably the straw that they used for
inoculation that was contaminated.
20080804
The Grand Tour
The Grand Tour from Mikey Sklar on Vimeo.Wendy and I recently put together a little tour of the work we have accomplished at our homestead over the last two years. Our friends Jay and Ryanne from RyanIsHungry had sent us a similar video two days ago. Wendy is trying to behave like Ryanne.
20080803
Solar Hot Water and Distilling
I was listening to the audiobook "Earth - The Sequel" while pulling weeds. During the solar concentrator section I realized that it would be trivial for us to build a powerful water distiller and home hot water heater.
20080802
Irrigation Zone #3
Every bit helps. We quickly assembled a third irrigation zone to one of our east facing raised beds.
Pink Oyster Mushrooms
We went in on a order of mushroom spores with a local farmer. My pink oyster mushrooms showed up today. I hung them in our Papercrete dome. As long as we avoid contamination we should have some crazy looking edible mushrooms in a month.
20080801
DDU Water Systems
Our Dome Dwelling Units will have a variety of water systems. Only city and grey water will be available at first, but we need to leave place holders for the others.
Frog
We found this friendly little frog in our mulch today. I was digging a trench for our irrigation tube and this guy showed up. A real cutie.
Irrigation Zone #2 Complete
After a few more hours of sweat labor and a emergency trip to the hardware store for elbow joints we finished our second irrigation zone. It is working. Finally we will save ourselves a hour of watering every other day.
Dome Dwelling Unit Features
I made this abstract image on my cell phone this morning. It shows the locations for windows, sky lights, outlets, hihats and the door.
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