Two Month’s Worth of Trash and Terrible Faux-Pas!

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This is (four days shy of)  two month’s worth of trash: one 30 gallon bag (our town uses PAYT – Pay As You Throw – and these bags cost $2 each, which is still way too little if you ask me) and an assortment of recyclables.  I didn’t weigh all this before taking it to the Transfer Station, but I doubt it came to 6 lbs. per person per month (the value I usually put into our Riot).

On the way back from the Transfer Station Amie and I stopped  by our town’s Winters Farmer Market to see the lamb and buy some carrots. We learned that there were also Angora rabbits, which we immediately sought out.  While admiring the rabbits in their cages we asked questions of the farmer. Another mom with her two-year-old joined, right on time for my next question:

“How long do they live?”

Woah, the look on the other mom’s face! The farmer saw it too and merely gave me a sheet of paper, saying there was a lot of info there. None of it, I see now, about how long a rabbit lives. She told me that after the other mom had left (5 to 6 years, some 9 years).

The death-phobia in this culture is something fierce! We no longer tell our kids Grimm’s fairy tales, because people die in them (the gall!). Taylor Swift scored big giving Romeo and Juliet a happy ending, and the only characters that die in kids’ movies are animals.  Human characters may die only in  animated movies. One is no longer allowed to ask about lifespan of animals  in public because, dear lord, the concept of span implies a beginning and an end.

Well, more about that soon. Did you know that rabbits can die of wool block?

 

Solar Hot Water is Up and Running

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Well, that was cheaper and quicker than the PV. Took them seven hours to install the entire system. We have two Wagner collectors,  one 92.5 gallon storage tank, in a drain back arrangement (it’s basically this Secusol system), with our super-efficient oil boiler as backup (second heat-exchanger). A fun addition was the monitoring system, which the State of Massachusetts paid for. We’ll have data soon! We like data.

Thoughts on Technology in the Face of a Blizzard

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And here we go again. Nemo is upon us, starting to throw what will amount, according to the forecast, to buckets of snow. Of course the power is going to go: we expect it now. And as I alternate staring out the window with staring at the Wundermap, I realize how contradictory and conflicting my feelings are about all this.

Staring at the Wundermap, it bugs me that our power grid, our communities, our homes are not resilient. Put the darn lines underground – but who will pay for that? Why didn’t we at least get a generator?  Why are we dragging our feet on the issue that when the grid goes, the solar array goes as well? Should we get a battery backup or some other way of storing the energy? I check on the chargers, powering up all the batteries in the house. I crank the emergency radios. Did mice get into  the bug out bag again? Half that bag is electronics. We’ll have the Kindle and DH’s smartphone to go on the net. The freezer is stuffed: if we don’t open it, the food in there will stay good for a couple of days. We should move our cars to the bottom of the driveway…

Staring out the window — at the towering, whitening, waving trees, the snow horses blowing through, the raccoon’s tracks, erasing — I calm infinitely  down. I know there is a big wood pile and lots of dry firewood on the porch still. The wood stove is idle now but it’s ready to warm our house when the temperature drops, and for cooking and boiling water. The pantry is stuffed, and I just made bread. We have enough books and games to keep us entertained for weeks-years. I’m thinking, if he power goes out for a long time we’ll just put everything in our fridge in a box on the porch – latch the door so the raccoon won’t get in. The tropical fish in the heated tank would perish, but the chickens and the bees will be fine. I wish we had a cat, to take care of those mice. Amie can play for us on the cello. I wish I could play the cello…

I find more comfort, more safety in those things:  in what Ivan Illich called “tools for conviviality,” in wholesome sources of energy made available by nature, and in the fruits of hard work on our part, and in companionship. The wishes and wants that these conjure are sweet and slow.

In my work I promote both these sides.  I am trying to make my community “go solar,” working on energy “solutions” while promoting skillshares, arranging potlucks, joining in hope and despair work. But more and more I know that it is only the latter that I am passionate about because only they make me feel truly safe, fulfilled and connected. No extra machine is going to make me feel secure in the face of the fragility of our technology. I may rationalize that we need “green technology” to buy us the time we need, but I believe it less and less.

More and more it feels like just another postponement of the inevitable, and we’re the kid who did something wrong (terribly wrong), taking a detour on the way home, where the reckoning awaits. But we must and do want to and will go home to the deep and dark ecology.

Update: the next morning:

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Bread Pudding

With the help of my ancient but working bread machine, which makes a hearty and very slice-able whole wheat  loaf, I now bake one bread every other day. However, the ends never get eaten, and by the second day I have to cut off the entire crust for Amie because chewing on it hurts her new teeth coming in. On top of that the eggs were also piling up. The hens are back to 2-3 eggs a day now.

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So I made bread pudding/cake. We call it “potting” in Flanders. It’s not too sweet, spiced and flavorful, moist and chewy and crunchy and takes me back to my childhood. It’s everyone’s favorite. Yum!

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Wise People and Cobblers

In my journal I wrote:

Understanding comes and goes as huge, crashing waves. One recedes and the other comes. It’s hard to catch your breath.

I had just finished reading Stephen Jenkinson’s latest post, “There’s Grief in Coming Home,” when I looked up and I must have had an expression on my face for Amie asked: “What is it, Mama?”

I said: “I just read something by a man with great wisdom, a wise man. You can learn a lot from wise people.”

Amie asked: “Do we know any wise people?”

The question took me unawares. I had to think for a moment.

“We may know wise people, but we don’t know. There used to be a time when people asked for and shared wisdom freely. Now, we wouldn’t know if we were talking to a wise person.”

Amie said: “Just like there are no cobblers any more.”

This went back to her request yesterday morning that I take her to a cobbler so she could learn how to make shoes (she’s reading Little House). I explained there aren’t many cobblers now. She thought this preposterous.

“Who makes our shoes then?”

“Why, machines.”

That didn’t seem so self-evident to her, at all.

“Why?” (as in Why on earth!?)

And we talked, about machines making more, faster, cheaper. About how they do mostly everything, makes shoes, harvest crops.

This had not occurred to her. This didn’t seem right to her.

Why does it seem right to (most of) us?

Through the eyes of your child you look into the dark heart of your culture and your heart skips a beat because the dark heart is your heart, questioning itself, grieving.

Riot – January 2013 – Month 51

OVER FOUR YEARS OF RIOT!

Four year summary coming soon (Yes, I keep promising)

This is the Riot for the month of January 2013 for the three of us. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person. DH’s shuttle didn’t run because of the academic holiday, so many trips into town, resulting in:

15.6 gallons pp.

36.7% of the US National Average

Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. We cook on an electric stove. According to our solar meter, we produced 7137 kWh since the system was turned on, that’s  only 240 kWh over the last month (another dark month – you can follow our solar harvest live here). We paid NStar  because the  credit we gathered last year through our overproduction ran out last month. We used quite a bit, again because of the darkness of the month: more lighting was needed. Our 240  +  271 kWh (from NSTAR Green) makes:

511 kWh

20.8% of the US National Average

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. This is for heating water and space heating, which we mostly do with our wood stove, except for the guestroom (thermostat at 45F – no guests in there, obviously), at night and when we’re not home (thermostat at 59F). This number is going to change soon because we’re going solar hot water soon (but the Riot calculator has no provision for solar hot water). I was a co-old month! We even hit 0 F once or twice.

35.1  gallons of oil

56.9% of the US National Average

Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers:

6 lbs. pp per month

4.4 % of the US National Average

Water. This is calculated per person. This is about our usual.

483.6 gallons pp.

16.1% of the US National Average

Please Choose THIS Door

I had an interesting day yesterday. It didn’t start out promising. My car had failed inspection the day before and needed fixing, so I was dropping it off in the next town over, at Mike the Mechanic’s.  It’s not like Mike the Mechanic has an inviting waiting room or a replacement car service. It’s just Mike, who was supposed to retire fifteen years ago but forgot. So I walked five minutes in the weirdly warm wind to the library around the corner. It opens at 10 am and this was 9 am. The sky was slate grey and promising rain, the wind was laced with a chill. Across the street from the library is the Natick Town Hall. That’s where I headed.

When you enter the Town Hall there’s a short vestibule before you pass on straight into the guts of the place. It was too busy there, with lots of chatter and phones ringing. I had brought three books and my journal, knowing it would be a while before the car was diagnosed and cured, and I wanted a quiet spot. So I made myself at home on one of the wooden benches lining the vestibule.

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It was comfortable enough, despite for the occasional gust of wind as the doors opened as people came and went. It was the last day to pay the taxes and the water bill, so it was a busy place. I didn’t mind the people, and it became an easy thing, to look up each time someone passed, make quick eye contact and smile, even answer the occasional hello. In my journal, ever open on my lap underneath my book to receive my running commentary, I wrote “Hello people of Natick! I am your  Town Hall Greeter!” It felt right, in that transitional place, and it didn’t disturb my concentration.

But the left one of the two doors was very noisy, closing with a bang, then a rattling shudder, then a final bang. I thought to hang a note of sorts to direct people to the right, silent door. Then I realized what a great opportunity this was for an experiment. So I endured the noise for another half hour and wrote down how many chose the left, how many chose the right door. To these passersby, which door they chose had no consequence: by the time the door closed – slowly – with a bang, they were long gone, outside or in. I tried to see if there was a logic to their choices: if it was perhaps the lefties who chose the right door, but no, for that first half hour, thirteen  people chose the right, thirteen chose the left.

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Among them was a man in his mid-thirties. He came in and quickly came out again, carrying a green certificate with a golden stamp on it: wedding, birth or death. By then the storm had broken and sheets of rain were blowing through, the flag right outside the door was whipping on its pole. This young man had on a t-shirt (the wind was blowing out a spell of balmy air) and had no bag or folder. He saw that his certificate would get spoiled if he ran for his car, so he sat down on the bench across from me to wait it out. He started doing things on his phone.  Here is some of my commentary:

He only has a phone. Is he reading email, checking Facebook? I feel for him. I want to offer him a book. I could lend him the Greg Bear sci-fi novel… He seems so naked without something REAL for his mind. He seems to get more antsy and upset with each flick of his thumb. It makes me appreciative of a day like this: away from my desk and “a connection” (reminder: quit Facebook!). To be disconnected and with myself for a bit, read a book in this in-between place.

He left. He glanced up from his phone at the rain that had died down, stood and left (using the left door). He didn’t hold the door open for the elderly lady who was coming in just as he left. He seemed nice but it shocked me. He is probably nice but was lost.

Time to hang my sign. It was not obtrusive, but at eye level for most, on the right door. By the time I hung the sign it was forty minutes past ten,  but I was having too much fun to exchange this rather drafty place for the warm and quiet library.

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The next one hour and fifty minutes were very interesting. It was quite obvious that most of those who chose the left (noisy) door did not see the sign (simple stripes: 27 people). They were too fast or distracted. Two saw the sign but it was too late, they were already committed to the left door.  Only two saw the sign and deliberately chose the left door anyway.

Of those who chose the right door (THIS door), only very few (13 people) obviously didn’t see the sign.  The majority did see it, but it was hard to tell whether they saw it before or after making their decision (they are the bold stripes: 11 people).

Those represented by the blocks are people who noticed the sign and let it guide their decision. The two aforementioned  people clearly saw it and decided to take the other, the noisy door anyway, and I suspect the same of two more people. Seventeen people chose the right door. Many of these stopped, read the sign out loud to themselves (or to me as they were vaguely aware of me), laughed or shrugged and said “okay!” Two people got very confused, became torn between one door or the other, and eventually chose the right door. Only one person asked me about it, and I told him the reason for the sign (both the noise and the experiment). He appreciated it all. He turned out to have come to clean these doors. He chose the right door to go out but on the two later occasions he went out, he said a happy hello to me but took the left door anyway!
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After the sign went up. thirty-seven people chose the left door, forty-two the right one.

All this was a little naughty but well concealed inside joke on my part. The book on my lap was about free will, choice, conditioning and predetermination  in so-called “open systems”. Every time someone followed the request on the sign, “Please choose this door,” I smiled because they helped my out by not making noise, but also because  they exemplified my on-going struggle with free will. Did they really choose? Or had I, by hanging the sign, taken away their choice? What sort of choice was that, anyway? What does it mean, to choose? It means a lot to me, and I’ve not yet figured any of it out.

My cell phone rang (it’s a ten-year-old model, even texting is far from straightforward). It was Mike the Mechanic. The damage was $270 and the car was ready. It had stopped raining. I said goodbye to the good people of Natick, knowing what I could do next time I found myself in the neighborhood, or any neighborhood, with a couple of hours to spare.

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Fruit Orchard on the Slope: Soil Analysis and Amendments

Been thinking about that slope: will the soil support what we ultimately want to plant there, and how do we best prepare it?

This south-west facing slope, relatively sunny – somewhat shaded from the southeast and northwest, more so as you go further down the slope – will be a fruit orchard: we’ll plant blackberries and blueberries on top, and currants, gooseberries and elderberries further down. We’d also like to stick some semi-dwarf fruit trees in there if we can (cf. Garden Plans for 2013 and Beyond). We’ll coordinate all these in guilds, of course, at least at first so the guild can nurse them to maturity.

Michael Phillips’ basic recommendations for the rhizosphere (root-sphere) of an orchard are:

  1. pH in 6.3-6.7 range
  2. Calcium (Ca) between 2000-3000 lbs/acre, phopshate (P2O5) and potash (KO2) both at least 200 lbs/acre
  3. carbon-rich, fungal, porous
  4. organic matter (OM) a minimum of 3%, better 5% and above

In 2009 we had a soil test done of the soil in the vegetable patch before any plants went in. The situation in the veg garden has changed quite a bit, I should hope, and a new test is planned. We never really tested the soil on the slope, which is mainly subsoil dumped during the work on the septic system before we bought the house.  When we terraced it we added brought-in loam and spread quite a bit of compost (for the strawberries), but it wasn’t as intensively taken care of as the veg garden soil. The soil in the broad path didn’t even get that. There especially the erosion continued. So, another soil test is in order before we begin on that slope. But while waiting for the soil to defrost and dry out, I’d like to play around with the old test results and practice my “soil detective” skills.

In the following I rely heavily on Phillips’ incomparable study in Holistic Orchard (p.61-74). I also refer the undaunted reader to my Calcium in the Soil Series, a very long but (I think) valuable explanation of soil test results and some of the soil chemistry that is relevant here.  That series starts here.

  • pH and CEC

The pH at 6.4 – 6.5 looks good. But, as Michael Phillips writes, it’s the cation exchange capacity (CEC) and percent base saturation that are truly indicative (cf. Part 2 of the calcium series).

The CEC of a soil indicates how porous a soil is nutrient-wise. Our soil is 15.6 MEG/100g. That means that, in every 100 grams of our soil, 15.6 meq of soil can hold onto the goodies, both basic and acidic: calcium (Ca), potassium (K) and magnesium (Mg), that come along in the soil water, as well as hydrogen (H), and sodium (Na ) and aluminum (Al), which are not plant nutrients.  All this also indicates a fine-textured loam to clay soil and that figures with our observations of our soil.

According to Calcium in the Soil, Part 6, the percent base saturation data mean that, of the 15.6 meq that can hold on to cations, 7.9 meq is occupied, or saturated, by calcium (50.6% of 15.6 = 7.9), 1.65 meq by magnesium and 0.64 meq by potassium. So 10.19 meq/100g of soil, or 65.3% of the CEC, is saturated by bases. That leaves 35.3% of the CEC (*) for the acidic cations (hydrogen and aluminum). That explains the pH and indicates a fertile, slightly acidic soil. Acidic soils (3.5-6.0) are low in fertility because too much of the CEC is occupied by hydrogen or aluminum. Alkaline soils (8.0-9.0) are oversaturated with calcium and/or magnesium.

The fertility of this soil can be increased by adding organic matter. My soil test didn’t include an organic matter measurement, but it must be low. In any case, before contemplating this, there are more mineral considerations to be had:

  • Ratios of Ca:Mg:K

Magnesium pulls soil closer together, while calcium spreads the particles further apart. Clay soils require higher levels of calcium to improve porosity, thus drainage and aeration. The Ca:Mg ratio for us is 50.6:10, or 5:1. A clay soil that is porous enough and that is balanced (so that enough of each cation is available for plants, not tied up) should have a ratio of 7 or higher to 1.  A 5:1 ratio more resembles the nutrient holding capacity of sandy soil. Something is off here. Now enter potassium (K). According to Phillips, a good  Ca:Mg:K  ratio for clay soils  is 76:10:4-5. Ours is 50.6:10:4.1. The ratio between magnesium to potassium is spot-on for clay soils, but the main player, calcium, again throws it off.

This means one of three things: 1. either our soil lacks the calcium to make it porous, or 2. the levels of magnesium and potassium ares too high, cancelling out the effect of the calcium, or 3. both.  We’ll have to take a closer look at the absolute numbers, which we’ll do below.

  • Recommended absolute levels for macro-nutrients

Phillips’ recommendations for good orchard soil indicate optimal lbs/acre, but my soil test gives me those numbers but in ppm (parts per million). Luckily Phillips addresses this in a footnote (chapter 3, footnote 47 in case you’re curious).  The conversion formula (called the Cornell equivalent) is (Ca in ppm x 0.75) x 2 = Ca in lbs./acre.

CALCIUM. Calcium benefits the fruit’s skin and cell strength, which leads to lower bruising susceptibility, better keeping ability and better pathogenic fungi resistance. Phillips’ bare minimum total Ca for an orchard = 2,000 lbs/acre for a lower-CEC-value soil (below 25 CEC). Ours is 1548 ppm, so 2322 lbs./acre [(1548 ppm x 0.75) x 2].  Our calcium level is good. (The ppm bar chart on the soil test say it is too high – actually, off the charts – but this interpretation was for vegetable garden soil, not for orchards.)

NITROGEN. Phillips explains this so well. Most nitrogen in any soil is locked up in organic form (as protein) and needs to be converted into mineral nitrogen that can be taken up by plants. This conversion start with the protein form of nitrogen being ammonified, and a portion of the ammonified nitrogen can then be nitrified. This is done by bacteria and fungi who constantly immobilize (take up) mineralize (release) it by digesting it and the other soil microorganisms who have absorbed it. In a soil dominated by bacteria, nitrifying bacteria rapidly convert the ammonified nitrogen into nitrates. However, in a fungally dominated soil, the acidic enzymes produced by the fungi will lower the pH, making it unfavorable to nitrifying bacteria.  More of the ammonium therefore remains available. It is this kind of nitrogen (ammonified, not nitrified) that is preferred by woody perennials like berries and fruit trees. Too much soluble nitrogen causes problems with calcium and other mineral uptake. High levels of nitrogen, particularly as nitrate, encourages fungal diseases like powdery mildew and rust, as well as bacterial diseases. That our soil is fungal is indicated by the low level of nitrate (NO3-N) on the soil test, but…

PHOSPHORUS (P).   The right amount of phosphorus determines the nutrient density (Brix) of the fruit as well as root development. Phosphorus too is  a very fungal affair. It is made available by fungi that feed and then die and decompose and delivered to the plant by mycorrhizae. In biologically managed soils, potassium is constantly replenished by the decomposition of organic matter. Phillips recommends phosphate (P2O5) to be at 200 lbs/acre, or P levels at 43 ppm. Our P is only 12 ppm, a marked deficiency in phosphorus. This indicates something wrong with the “fungal machine”  in my soil, no doubt because it was at the time of the test so disturbed and eroded. Phillips writes that getting this phosphate system working is challenging. You kind of have to already have in order to get it. The trick here seems to be organic matter: a good quantity of that with a good population of beneficial fungi in balance with bacteria (brought in by enough, not too much nitrogen) should do the trick. Ha! I will have to do some more research here. Maybe now, after several years of non-disturbance and checked erosion, the phosphate levels are up again?

POTASSIUM (K). Phillips recommends 20o lbs/acre of potash (KO2) or P levels at 83 ppm. Our potassium level is very high at a whopping 243 ppm. As we saw, potassium plays a large role in the cation balancing act. Our high levels of K  are which is reflected in the skewed  Ca:K ratio and the recommended 1:1 to 1:2  ratio for P:K  is also well off.

CONCLUSION. If the new test on the soil on the slope comes back looking like this, then it seems like we will need to bring the Mg and the K down, the P up. The Ca and pH can remain the same.

One recommendation I found was to add gypsum to leach out the excess potassium and magnesium. Gypsum (calcium sulfate) would also up the calcium without changing the pH (which is fine).  It also helps slow the nitrate release of decomposing organic matter. However, Phillips warns that the calcium cation saturation needs to be over 60% before adding gypsum  to lower excess magnesium, otherwise the sulfur in the gypsum will take out the calcium first. Mmm. Then the potassium will need to be increased. Wood ash seems a possible candidate for this: it is 20-30% calcium, with 4% potassium, but only 2%  phosphorus, magnesium, aluminum and sodium. It may, however, increase the pH, and also, because of its potassium content it should be applied only when active growth has engaged, so wood ash could be my liming agent after planting…

A new soil test is in order, because these numbers are just too out of whack for me to make sense of. One thing I know for sure, though: we will also want to add lots of organic matter. That’s where the hugelswales come in. And that’s another post.

Applying the Pattern Language (ii): Inviting Entry, Making Connections

Back to patterns! Having a plan for the slope has re-opened my mind for the immediate front: the balcony, the level stretch of garden up top, the top of the driveway. This is what it looks like right now:

 

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I already analyzed one of the more general  problems: the negativity of this space. There are some more specific patterns that can be applied, or rather, actualized here to address that. Let’s start with the patterns that apply to approaching, entering, arriving and leaving. Alexander et.al. write: “The process of arriving in a house, and leaving it, is fundamental to our daily lives” (p.554). The first pattern is this:

 110. Main Entrance: Place the main entrance of the building at a point where it can be seen immediately from the main avenues of approach and give it a bold, visible shape which stands out in front of the building.

At our place the problem is not so much the lack of an obvious entrance, but a confusion between two entrances. At the moment there is only one way to approach our house, which is the driveway, and upon that approach you see the mudroom door and the “official” front door on the “balcony”.

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As the “official” front door leads straight into the living room, we prefer to use the mudroom door when it is cold, rains or snows. The mudroom has room for boots, umbrellas and coats and acts like a sluice, keeping the cold out. But when it’s warm we usually leave the front door open, with a screened door that allows light into the dark corner of the living room. Needless to say, in all but the situation when there is uncleared snow on the path and the balcony steps (as in the picture), visitors are confused: which door to use? Idea:  make it so that in summer and fair weather the “official” front door seems the way to go, and that in all other situations the visitor is directed to the mudroom.

But first, what to do with each of these entrances?  I’d like to apply to them the following three patterns:

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112. Entrance Transition: Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, of sound, of direction, a change of surface, of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.  

130. Entrance Room: Arriving in a building, or leaving it, you need a room to pass through, both inside the building and outside it. This is the entrance room.

160. Building Edge: A building is most often thought of as something which turns inward- towards its rooms. People do not often think of a building as something which must also be oriented toward the outside. But unless the building is oriented towards the outside, which surrounds it, as carefully and positively as towards its inside, the space around the building will be socially isolated, because you have to cross a no-man’s land to get to it. Make sure that you treat the edge of the building as a “thing”, a “place”, a zone with volume to it, not a line or interface which has no thickness. Crenelate the edge of buildings with places that invite people to stop. Make places that have depth and a covering, places to site, lean, and walk, especially at those points along the perimeter which look onto interesting outdoor life.

The mudroom fully embodies the Entrance Room pattern: it is inside the house but also feel like outside, as it is unheated and full of outdoorsy things. The visitor can’t see this, however, from the outside. In order to draw him with the promise of a Transition to the inside, we could place a trellis above the door and grow a vine on it. This would also nail Building Edge, change that transition from a mere line into a place.

The front door satisfies none of these patterns.  You walk  through and you abruptly find yourself in  the living room. This is the case in many ranches, and I don’t understand why any architect or homeowner thinks this is appropriate. It’s disconcerting for everyone!  The line between inside and outside here is filter thin, not a place at all. The tiny balcony and the roof above it are not deep enough to create volume.

This is an area that has fantastic potential!

First let’s deepen the balcony. Alexander points out that any balcony that is less than six feet deep will not be used (Pattern 167. Six-foot balcony), and here we have an example if that. It is a mere 2 1/2 feet deep and no one ever wants to sit there. Let’s knock away the surrounding brick wall and add another five feet to the surface. Depending on what material we use, we can make it straight or rounded (think adobe!). We can forego a wall altogether and make it accessible by a step or two, all around.

But this place would be too hot in the Summer, as it’s south. So let’s make it into an Outdoor Room.

patt163163. Outdoor Room. Build a place outdoors which has so much enclosure round it, that it takes on the feeling of a room, even though it is open to the sky. To do this, define it at the corners with columns, perhaps roof it partially with trellis or a sliding canvas roof, create “walls” around it, with fences, sitting walls, screens, hedges, or the exterior walls of the building itself.

Let’s add a wooden pillar and beam structure around and over it, on which we grow grapes and other deciduous vines. The bare vines will allow the much needed sunlight to enter the living room in winter but the leafy canopy will shade the balcony in summer. And they grow food too (permaculture: stack functions)! The rest of the enclosure will be done with potted figs and other plants, benches, a hammock. Let’s fill this new space with all manner of places to sit, sleep, work and play in the sun, in the shade.

This will also bring to life Pattern 168, which to me is one of the most important patterns:

168. Connection to the Earth. A house feels isolated from the nature around it, unless its floors are interleaved directly with the earth that is around the house. Connect the building to the earth around it by building a series of paths and terraces and steps around the edge. Place them deliberately to make the boundary ambiguous.

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This will draw us outside, to the blueberry patch, the espaliered pear tree, the path to the vegetable garden and the apiary to the right. To the left it will draw us to the pond and the dwarf orchard. To the front it will draw us to the slope with its berry bushes and trees. This is really only possible if we get that slope planted: there can be glimpses of conviviality from the street, but there must also be privacy. And even in winter it will draw us out by the eye. When standing in front of the big living room picture window, we won’t be stopped short. One more bonus: that continuation on the same level outside it will make the living room seem bigger and, depending on the material we use, it will absorb the light and heat of the sun in winter and reflect that into the living room.

 

balcony

Back to our original question: how to decide the visitor’s question which door to choose? When we’re done both will stand out and look inviting? I don’t have an answer yet. Maybe it will come when we look through the  patterns at the next area: the driveway and the car place.

Soil and Water Works: Hugelswales

It cannot wait to get started in the garden, in particular to start the big Soil and Water Works. I want to plant stakes and dig dirt and maneuver wheelbarrows and roll rotten logs downhill. I even want to roll some of them uphill, that’s how desperate I am to get started. For today I figured out how to tackle our slope. Not the bottom part of the pit (yet), but that will follow naturally once we get that slope under control.

The slope is too steep and was filled in with bad soil after septic works before we bought the house. Because it is too steep it erodes from the excess roof and hilltop run-off. This makes planting anything on it or adding good soil difficult. We terraced it three years ago. But the “path” was too broad and, because unchanged, still too steep, so it kept on eroding. Because it is so steep it is hard to mow, and the weeds overtook what grass was not washed away. Result: the path is unused and the beds off to its sides are inaccessible and untended.

The solution? Hugelswales!

hugelswalediagramsmall

Hugelswales are on-contour swales filled with wood. The swales (trenches, ditches) intercept runoff and store it while releasing it to the soil underneath (video of a swale plume). If you fill them with scrap wood (of which we have a lot, in all stages of rot), turning them into a Hugelkultur, that wood will break down and the cellulose will create an even better sponge, releasing not just the water but also all the nutrients from the wood.  It’s only strange to call this a Hugelkultur (“Hugel” means mound) if you can’t imagine the mound turned upside down.

The swale will be packed with wood too rotten to burn, twigs, and everything in between.  While packing it in, we’ll fill in the gaps with wood chips, soil, compost, leaves and all the nitrogen rich stuff we can get our hands on (find some neighbor who mow their grass and don’t use chemicals). On top we’ll put wood chips that our neighbor is happy to supply us with. The swale will thus become an on-contour, level path, about three feet wide. As the wood breaks down these paths will settle and sink, so we’ll simply keep filling them with more woody debris.

The soil from these trenches will be moved downhill to form a small bump up, then a gentle slope down toward the next swale. I’m guessing these will come to about 5 to 7 feet in width. I might add a bit of wood at the bottom of these as well, but considering that we’ll eventually plant perennials here I wouldn’t want too much settling here since we won’t be able to keep topping it up. We might have to bring in soil for this, since we know the dirt on the slope is rocky and none too good, though the soil in the terraces should be in better shape by now.

This is a 2009 image. Some of the trees have been cut down in the meantime (marked by red X-s).  I wish I were a little more savvy with the visuals, but you get the idea.

newslope2

On the top right you see the pond we’re planning to dig into the slope there. The idea is for the top swale, if it overflows, to overflow into the pond (so that swale will have to line up above the pond) and for the pond to overflow into the second swale (which will be underneath it). I’ll have to think of a way to connect the swale paths on the sides.

What to plant in this massive Hugelkultur? This will be a woodsy (carbon-rich, fungal, acidic) environment, so woody perennials is the way to go. A mix of blackberries, blueberries  and elderberries in the top two beds and a mix of currants, gooseberries and elderberries in the bottom bed. These latter three are shallow rooted, a must because we’re close to the septic leach field at that point. And in between, some small fruit trees, perhaps? Most of these will be for 2014, however, since this system will need settling and the soil will need work. We’ll start with cover crops and woody mulches.

I can’t wait to build me an A-frame and get digging. It’s going to be -4 F tonight, though (-20 C), and all of the town’s  ice skating rinks are in business, so I’ll bet the ground’s a bit too frozen right now. But this is what it looks like in Plangarden, which is very un-permaculture straight.

plangarden24jan2012small