What it is

6/7/2009
Project: a paid-for, small footprint sustainable lifestyle. We have the land (oh, and what it took to pay for that land. I have moved every 2 years of my marriage to capture capital gains.) Our goal is to build a small sustainable house and grow some of our own food while practising permaculture and living a more environmentally friendly lifestyle than the usual suburban model. Well, that's my goal. My husband's goal is similar but includes a large shop and several pickup trucks lying around the yard waiting to be projects.

We've already lived in a solar powered house (only solar power) and grown summer crops in an organic garden. Now (deep breath) on a new property we're aiming for a solar- powered house and growing organic food (because who knows where it's been before we saw it). Four season growing. I wince just writing about it because every single day we have no idea what we're doing. It's all a learning curve. A steep curve, the kind I'd loathe to be graded on. We've planted. Rabbits have feasted. Enough said.

This project has been a long time in the making. My husband, Matt, and I (friends call us M&M) have a goal to live a small carbon footprint lifestyle. We are joined in this venture with a somewhat willing (must I eat Beans? :0 ) fourteen year old son. He has a fall back position in his Dad, my ex, a "groovy" conga drum playing yoga instructor who eats (and more importantly to my son, cooks and serves) red meat. I have today suggested to my son-who-would-not-eat-his-dinner that he would be welcome to purchase, feed, and butcher (and store) his own meat; a nice cow (or whatever they call them when they're meat animals) or lamb, and that his father would probably participate in certain aspects (certainly the cooking and eating, although I fear he's on his own when it comes to manure).
He's thinking it over.

I must impress upon you that we are not righteous vegans or vegetarians. I have been both in my chequered past, and I had to be very righteous,and anemic, to stay that path. I may return to that path in the future; it is the most sustainable. So please, no indignant noises from almost fellow vegans/vegetarians...at this point in my life I crave, and carve, roast chicken once a week. People change. It's just that I have always been reluctant to kill what I eat. I can manage a chicken (well, a noisy rooster and a turkey that got into my garden and ate all of my salad greens...it's amazing how much garden produce one turkey can eat, and so quickly) and fish. I have killed a rabbit, and couldn't eat it afterwards. I don't listen to beans when I harvest them . Well, I do, but I always make a bargain to save some seed and give them immortaility in return for their young. A Faustian bargain, but luckily for me beans are not philosophers. My husband cheerfully goes along with this (note; he has never killed or plucked a chicken) as long as he can buy cheese and doesn't have to own or milk cows or goats. I would be up to owning and milking goats, maybe cows, if they just gave milk year-round. But, they have to have young ( and thery don't even do pathenogenesis, it somehow always involves a male goat or frozen bull sperm, at which point I check out). These young have to be managed (somehow?) and at that point for me the entire system breaks down and buying cheese looks like a bargain.

I crave chickens. To raise, for eggs, not to eat...though if you've ever lived with 2 roosters your ideas about eating chickens change. One rooster is charming. Two roosters are competing to see who can crow first, loudest, and most often. Hint; kill the one who spurs you. Now that we've settled that I really am bloodthirsty...chickens are feathered characters who don't mind (or for the most part notice) if you eat their unborn young. And, you can't/don't feel the least bit guilty about it because everything else in nature is also trying to eat the chickens or their unborn young. In fact, by the time you bring a few eggs out, or genteely sacrifice a non-laying chicken, you feel victorious because you GOT THERE FIRST. Before the weasels, mountain lions, bears, rats, and racoons who all had the same game plan. Did I mention we live in a very wild area? Suits us, but every meal is wrestled for with nature red of tooth and claw.

We have moved so often, working our own way up the food chain, that I have not had my chickens in seven years. DH and I were speaking on this subject. Me: I'm buying chicks this next March. They can live in the bathtub until you can build a chicken coop. (I know two women who finally got their chickens by raising them in the bathroom). DH: I see a problem- we don't have a bathtub in the next house. Me: Yes, I've sacrificed the bathtub for space and money (this is a big sacrifice for me, usually I insist that a jacuzzi tub is essential to my mental health and well-being). DH- Yes, so the chicks will be in the only bathroom. Me: Yes, we are agreed, the chicks will be in the only bathroom. DH: You know, this is not the most productive way of expressing your wish for chickens. It is detrimental to the relationship to assert that you will purchase them. Me: Yes, but I notice that when I've been mentioning for seven years that I wanted chickens you never heard me. Today, you heard me. So next March... DH: (sigh) let's see the plan for a chicken coop Me: I have it right here, but don't you think it should be twice as large? DH: (expletive deleted)

Today I wove chicken wire around the bottom of my deer-proofed shade garden. The rabbits ate everything I planted for spring, except leeks,mustard and radishes. They ate peas; many, many peas. They ate broccoli...even artichokes. Who knew rabbits would eat artichokes? DH had successfully fenced for deer, 8 feet high because we have seen them jump 6 feet fencing. I put rubber snakes down, and hung wind chimes. This worked until the next lettuce crop was ready. Then the wabbits struck again. Any of you who have ever done any fencing...any at all, even once in your life, know what fencing is like. Unmitigated HARD work. DH Matt tells me that there is such a thing as wife points (he knows ALL about husband points )and I am earning them now. As I work HARD at fencing the rabbits out of my lettuce, I meditate on wife points. How are they spent? What is the exchange rate? My credit card has World Points, every dollar I spend is worth a penny. This had better be a better exchange rate. I have brief visions of my husband swinging upon a trapeze while performing some athletic sexual feat which I will find utimately satisfying. This reward should be something like that; by the time I finish the fencing I smell so bad (sweat) that the dog refused to ride shotgun. First time he ever volunteered for the back seat. I smell decidedly unfeminine. In the interests of self-esteem I refuse to check out my interesting look in the rear-view mirror.

DH Matt is building our house. The house looks like a barn. Or, a shop. A large shop. DH has hopes that this house will someday be his, exclusively, large shop. My kitchen cabinets must be something that DH will like when one day that are part of his large shop. The cabinet maker, LLoyd, finds this amusing. I do not. DH hopes that when the economy is back we will build a larger house. (This is not a luxury item; we each have self-employment. Including my teenage son. Businesses are just like children and they each need a private room. We won't have that for this house, but picture a family of six in 1700 s.f. and you have a better idea of real spacial needs). :0

But, it will be paid for-no mortgage. Which is the whole point, because I get chills when polticians feel the need to tell us that our economic system is sound. And, we are soon to put a kid through college. This house is bare bones. Concrete floors. I'm asking for a farm house sink for my Christmas present, because there's no room in the budget. I have a greenhouse, DH built that first. ;)

Our house will be built in the mountains of Northern California. We have wildfires and temperature extremes, so we're building with areated autoclaved concrete (say that three times real fast) which means that we've been in the planning department for a long time and our engineering still needs tweaks. Think about it; people building in forests always build with wood. We have wood, 160 acres of TPZ, timber production zone (picture a farm which harvests it's crop once every 20 years). But, wood burns. So the ideal home would be concrete block. But, concrete block is hot in the summer and cold in the winter. And when you're off-grid there is NO slack for air conditioning. Aerated autoclaved concrete is concrete block made with aluminum. Somehow, when heated (that's the autoclave part) the aluminum makes air bubbles in the concrete. That makes the block self-insulating, about R-2 per inch. We're building with 8" block, so that's R-16, perfect for our zone 6-7 climate (not certain of the zone, we're at 3500' elevation, with about 4 feet of snow in winter).

So now you're asking...why is this blog fun? She's throwing numbers at us. It's a bare bones house, we don't even get to oooh and aww over coffered ceilings. Why read this?

Well, here's the thing...can we do this? Could you build a house in California for $125K? That includes power ( solar panels and converter). Septic ( as I said to my husband today as I drove 40 minutes round trip to the nearest bathroom; bears may [and do] s**t in the woods, but Morgana doesn't). Planning fees, school mitigation fees, and all materials. Lunches for DH. It does get hungry out in the woods. And the four season gardening. (Blush) we are newbies at that. Heck, WE don't know if we can do this on budget.