Amusing video

This video is amusing (economic content, rap style) and I had to share. Unfortunately you'll have to click the link to view.

So, halfway through February, still on house build, but we're close to the finish line. Amazingly, we have our "final", the last and final inspection and occupancy permit. We also have new obstacles. Both the bank and the insurance company require an electric heater (in an off-grid house!) to supplement the wood stove which is our primary heat. In case we leave at one of the few times each year the temperature drops below freezing. DH Matt is running around jumping through the hoops...most of our walls are concrete, floor also. This is not easy.

Now I have just received a call from out mortgage lender saying that the underwriters are refusing our loan because it is a non-conforming loan...off-grid house and the land value is 90%. I'm serene about that because I think they'll finalize the loan anyway. The loan we're applying for is 20% of the land/house value. It's a sweetheart deal for the bank. The issue is that banking is no longer about risk. The government assumes all risk if the loan conforms to Fannie/Freddie standards. Which this doesn't.

I asked her not to tell DH yet, though. Wait until we hear more on Monday or Tuesday, 'cause this isn't over yet.

I might tell him tonight, after he's had a glass of wine. I'd hate to ruin his weekend, though.

Winter Dreams

So, my surprise for December was supposed to be "winter stratification", which is where you take old discarded plastic containers and make mini-greenhouses for plants which need winter cold to germinate. Ideally this is done at the winter Solstice. Check your timepiece; I'm late.

What can I say, this entire building-a-house thing is complicated. Right now the complication is that I have too much stuff to fit into the small house that we've built. Somehow the obvious response, "build it bigger" does not amuse my husband nor fit our budget. So I am faced with the completely ridiculous notion of getting rid of stuff. Understand, this is not just about me...my guys need to drop a load too.

I do have the most "stuff", mostly miles of books, assiduously collected and special books, on a multitude of subjects. Special subjects, like Celtic mythology, world religions, cooking specialty food, architecture, agroforestry, shamanism and magic, art, poultry keeping, and a wall each on plumbing and electrical, gardening, roses (a wall unto themselves, my rose books), psychology and enneagrams, permaculture, aquaculture, health and healing, Chinese medicine...you get the idea. There are not enough bookcases for my books, they inhabit rooms. And fill the large dining room table, and several enormous antique amoires...and chests of drawers and boxes in the garage. I could describe the content of each of these books at length...they are well marked with tabbed pages, margins scribbled and notes written in the before-and-after pages. Parting with even one would be painful.

The other major obstacle to down sizing is my depression glass collection. This took me more than 20 years to assemble, I bought my first piece when I was 15...I have had everything. Any pattern or color you can think of in depression glass, I either have it or have given it to special friends. Any piece of depression glass, except carnival glass, that you can think of I have owned, no matter how rare. I gave a lot of it away or sold some the last time we downsized, keeping only the reds, gold, and greens. And only 3 patterns of each, with a few special exceptions. That's still a lot of glass, packed in a lot of boxes. When we owned the Victorian there were enough odd nooks and walls that I could display everything. The sunlight would work its way in through the tall windows and reflect off of the colored glass in rainbow glints. I loved to watch the sun move across the room in my office as I worked, gleaming with various colors as the light hit cabinets spaced according to the path of the light. This new house is a budget house, modern with no spare corners for a glass etagerie (or 3).

I find that there are obsessions in my life that other people don't have, and these take up space. Books, depression glass, vitamins ( I have closets full of specialty vitamins, wierd, I know), knitting yarn, gardening catalogs and seeds. I hate to sleep and have no time or interest for TV because there's something to keep me interested in every moment of the day and night. I don't know if there are enough hours and days in my life to satisfy my passion for permaculture and agroforesty. Certainly there's not enough square footage in the new house.

I severely downsized (by storage spaces rented, not by elimination) when we lived at our last place, a 1200 s.f. mobile home which was intended to be temporary while we built our "real" house there. One year turned into two, and we still hadn't built because our building site had soil stabilization issues. One entire side of the hill eventually collapsed and we gave up on that site...and I realized that I had put 2 years of my life on "hold" , in "storage". So this time I am truly downsizing...not placing in storage. it's really a challenge because I have to leave enough of my obsessions so that I'm really involved in life and not waiting for life to begin again. It greatly helps that we'll have two greenhouses and lots of land to plant on. Still, this is a winnowing period for me, a cutting away of old interests and passions to make way for the new. it's exhausting.

Hoop Houses Failed

We had an unusual winter storm here recently, three feet of snow fell in one weekend. And, my hoop houses failed. Heck, I can't even find the edges of my raised beds. Those lumps over there may be the peas. I have to admit, I am worried about my fava beans. The rest, of course, was an experiment. I spent a few hours shoveling snow off of some of the hoop houses....I uncovered perhaps a third. I harvested some carrots, bok choy, and turnips. The rest are still under snow. My broccoli was mostly okay, cabbage also fine...the corn salad and miner's lettuce I wouldn't worry about in any event...also fine.

So next year I would prefer metal hoops...or at least 3/4"plastic placed every foot. Agribon is too delicate for snow country, although it was fine for even heavy rain. The expensive new fabric, dio-betalon PV film, was well worth the money. The hoops collapsed, as this was a heavy snow; our legendary "Sierra Cement" weighted down with water which will feed the water needs for most of California when it melts in the spring. That dio-betalon film looks more like something woven by fairies than a good snow protectant. I am convinced now, though.

I love this new bok choy (pictured above), both for the color and the flavor.I would call it "purple bok choy", but Johnny's Seeds calls it "Red Pac Choi". Ah well, tomatah, tomatoe. I will add that this is a hybridized seed, not good for replicating by saving seed. That would usually make this on my "no-no" list, but this stuff is too good to miss. How about you, any too-good-to-miss hybrids that you can't resist planting?

The Latest on the Mortgage

So, the money situation (Heloooo Obama?!) is so tight with the banks that we might get our mortgage. Lending practises are tight to the point of insanity. And, Understand, we're talking a loan of 20% of the valuation of house and land. I actually want to go a bit high on what we need, and purchase gold with the balance as a hedge against the mortgage. If gold appreciates then the economy is under water and we need the help. If it doesn't appreciate or loses value then the economy is sound and our usual streams of income are solid and we don't mind the non-movement of gold. This is my idea of mortgage insurance.

It doesn't help that our property is odd to a mortgage lender...off-grid, dirt roads ($25K of gravel, actually, but to them it doesn't count), large acreage. Finding insurance is difficult...wildfire zone, and all that. The lender asked if we had a "comp", a comparable house which was off-grid and large acreage. Actually, we do...the house we sold nine months ago.

Some friends of our are talking about walking away from their mortgage. Even though they love their house. His business isn't what it used to be...down about 50%. As is the value of their house. it just makes economic sense for them to walk away, as the property won't be worth the money they'll be paying monthly for it for at least a decade.

I used to think that a mortgage was a moral valuation...your word of honor to pay, because you agreed to. Now, as I watch corporations (legally defined as "people") walk away every day from underwater commercial mortgage I have realized that this is another form of cultural naivete on my part. The corporations are "bad citizens", as they do always set a new and lower moral tone for the nation (and, I'm sure, internationally). But when they raise the stakes the other players (Poker, it is the National Identity) have to match the ante or fold. Which brings us to the Wikipedia definition of the quaint word, "mortgage. "This comes from the Old French "dead pledge," apparently meaning that the pledge ends (dies) either when the obligation is fulfilled or the property is taken through foreclosure.": So, thanks to the corporations we can drop the word "Mortgage" once and for all and call it the "dead pledge".

Water Buffalo

If you've read any of this blog then you'll know that DH Matt and I are aiming at a permaculture agroforestry project. Since our crop (trees) takes 20 years per cycle we need to pasture animals under the trees, both for income (breeding, meat, milk) and to keep brush down. We've looked for years at goats, which most small farms in this area have. We've looked at milk goats, meat goats, and hair goats for yarn production. We've looked at Nubian goats, LaMancha goats, and Oberhasli goats. Goats make sense for this climate and hilly terrain, which is why most people here have them. Still neither DH Matt not I can warm to goats. Matt doesn't like that they are prey animals to the prolific mountain lion population here. Their eyes creep me out (sigh).

We've considered sheep, but as this is goat country the few people here who raise sheep have problems finding a shearer...hair sheep have hair instead of wool, but they are basically meat animals and we want dairy animals. They are also more preyed upon by the local wildlife than are goats. Sheep are also difficult to milk. Cattle don't work on our land; they are grazers and we need less finicky browsers. Cattle also vastly prefer flat ground.

The January/February 2010 issue of Hobby Farms ran an article on water buffalo. We read about the Riverine (dairy) water buffalo, and it just made so much sense. They are large enough to deter predators, mild, friendly and smart, produce rich milk, and are browsers who need no grain supplement. The are "people lovers", very social critters who will hang around people for the company. Their milk makes delicious cheese and butter and they can be milked with minor adaptations to standard small farm milking equipment. They are resistant to disease and to parasites (the same reason we chose ducks instead of chickens). They can be acquired for the same price as a dairy cow, about $500, and they are already being raised in a similar Mediterranean climate to ours in Italy. Water buffalo are "easy keepers", needing only hay or straw and a salt lick.

We are researching tree fodder (another project) and dietary needs of water buffalo right now, as well as trying to find a pair of heiffers. We hope to use AI (artificial insemination) instead of a bull, both because we don't want our WB to inbreed and because we want to import Italian bull sperm from the dairy herds to improve our stock. My husband has volunteered me for the AI project...I told him that I thought that this was something best hired out.

New Duck Shelter

The ducks have been out of the bathtub and into an outside enclosure for about eight days now. I feel like a new woman...a woman who can sleep at night.

DH Matt and I found a 7.5' x 13' x 6'h kennel kit at Lowes, for $250. It took us a morning to assemble and another few days to gather extra materials...chicken wire for the top and bottom, tarps for their shelter. I ended up wrapping another 3' high layer of chicken wire around the perimeter base after I saw the ducks panicking and putting their necks out through the wires. Whoever coined the phrase "bird brain" knew what they were talking about. The result is rather like a Fort Knox for ducks...as it must be to foil the local fox. Of course, the fox is quite spoiled on cat food it collects from our back porch and probably can't quite collect itself to the effort of killing ducks.

I created a warm "house" for the ducks inside the kennel using two layers of hoop house. DH Matt and I pounded garden stakes into the ground, 2' apart (6 hoops) and set 8' 1/2" pvc pipe onto the stakes, bending them to form hoops. Then I set a second row of 10' pvc pipes 4" out from the first. I covered the first, interior set of hoops in heavy Agribon cloth for insulation, then layered a waterproof tarp over the second, exterior,set of hoops. I used 1/2" pvc pipe clamps to make everything tight. As it turned out, the ducks were agoraphobic so I had to cover the entire setup with an exterior tarp before they'd venture out of their shelter.

photos to follow (when Kodak dies and a better software company eats their meal)

As it turned out I was still rising early to feed and water the ducks. I regularly made my son a few minutes late to class due to duck tending. I had to serve them several times a day. Then my new feeder and new water unit arrived from Fleming Outdoors. What joy! I had ordered their 16 lb plastic feeder when I first thought of moving the ducks. Now their feed empties down for them automatically. And with the Low pressure Automatic waterer hooked up to a garden hose, the ducks are self-watered. I have a project in mind for them for a bathing pool, they do miss their nice warm twice daily tub baths. And I do still feed them bean sprouts, tomatoes or lettuce twice a day. They are rather spoiled duckies.