of toys:
Nicole & I struggled with the idea of a tractor for a while. In only 3 years we’d had such an impact on the land with barely any power tools, and a tractor will greatly augment our ability to affect it further.
We believe a few things will keep us in check from expanding too much. At the end of the day, the winning argument was that our projects were going to happen, regardless of how much I suffer through them. A tractor will certainly take care of a lot of heavy lifting.
We’ve been having static electricity problem in the house so we decided to take humidification seriously. Pots filled with water on the stove tend to be noisy so it was time to go legit with an actual kettle.
Friends gave us this great device
one vinegar bath later, it’s back in business.
We haven’t had static electricity issues since the kettle came online, unlike its modern counterparts, it will never break.
It occurred to me that with the basic premise of commerce being that specialization and trade yields more better products for both parties. The only reason we trade with countries like China isn’t that they make better items (like for example how Germans make better cars), it isn’t that they have access to resources we don’t have. It is, as we all know, that they make it cheaper, the single reason for which being that they are far enough away that horrible work conditions can happen without us feeling guilty about it.
In short; trade with China is interesting only because we get to exploit their people.
If we got to exploit people at home, we wouldn’t be trading with China. Fortunately if people in our towns worked under the same conditions, we would be up in arms about it. And if China didn’t allow exploitation of its people, we wouldn’t be trading with them.
And so it’s interesting to ponder that the only “trade specialization” China has to offer is being far away enough geographically & culturally from the Western world that we’re cool with their being exploited. Or we can in good conscience say that we are ignorant of it because we have no visibility into the issue.
Globalization has a tendency to create these “out of sight, out of mind” incentives which work heavily against good working conditions and the environment.
The “toupet” tree
Ice growing out of the ground
The tree that decided to fruit out of nowhere
The wtf tree limb
Since we moved to Vermont and adopted to live off-grid, often times in ways similar to life 100 years ago, I’ve been fascinated to see how many cultural artifacts from yesteryear are still used today by our generation . We are no longer cognizant of what their purpose is within today’s culture, yet we still use them as our own, sometimes sprinkled with inconsistencies. It’s been a very interesting yet tiny glimpse into how culture finds it way through the ages.
Through the years I’ve compiled a list of observations, some may be obvious yet I was oblivious to them, some pertain to rural life Vs city life, all I’ve observed since we moved to Vermont.
The scene of Christmas stockings by the fireplace came to be as folks hung their socks to dry by the fireplace. It never occurred to me until I actually looked at the Christmas perfect picture of all our socks lined up by the fireplace while snow was coming down outside. The only difference being that our socks were in fact stinky & soggy.
All the state fairs are in the Fall following the main harvests. They are a time to come together and rejoice about the fruits of a long Summer’s worth of work. Having been born and raised in cities, the relevance of this timing was completely lost on me.
Eggs are prominent for Easter because it’s right around the time that chickens are starting to lay again (they stop or slow way down during the Winter).
Yule logs are a Christmas desert because of how incredibly important wood was to keep warm during the cold months. There is a lot of meaning to the imagery of a Yule log, I used to think “neat, it looks like wood” and took it as a feat of cooking rather than the reverence to an essential resource that it is.
I’ve come to feel a lot more connected to old tales happening in the woods. It is amusing that new stories (video games) are created today which emulate the feeling of being in the woods from the experience of these tales rather than the actual experience of the woods. This is true of many other “visuals” we get from these tales, from wood stoves to other artifacts present in old cabins. We don’t have to have experienced them to know that they belong there. How many times have I seen woodstoves represented without chimneys, or other inconsistencies. Scenes are painted from previous painted scenes, and some details get lot in the game of telephone.
Having experienced all of the following in the dark: fog, glowing eyes, owl movements, animal noises, wind noises, creaking trees; I now know where ghosts and other unsavory monsters came from. Ghosts is clearly fog and the many shapes it takes especially with a light source in your hand. The image of the ghostly figure is present in so much of our culture (Harry Potter) it was a good “aha” moment to see where it came from one dark night outside. Equally as spooky and “aha” inducing was, and this is just a supposition on my part, the origin of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. One night I was outside taking a leak and I saw eyes moving through the woods in exactly the same swigging motion. The image of the well known cat jumped at me, and I can’t help but think that Lewis Carroll has had a similar experience. In my case however, it turned out to be a not-so-magical deer.
The expression “breaking ground” actually literally translate to the action of breaking ground because well, that’s the first thing you do when building something. Again, some of this stuff may be obvious to some already 🙂
Crockpot cooking was invented to cater to recipes requiring extended periods of cooking; but the recipes in question were made to cater to having a wood fire going all day. In fact many recipes and even basic ingredients find their origin in wood fire. Today, a recipe is simply of a goal to achieve, “Here’s how you make X”. I’ve come to realize most recipes which are corner stones of a culture find their roots in what is going on at the time. For example, It’s cold, you have a fire going all day, one too many roosters the meat of which isn’t exactly tender, it’s mushroom season and wine isn’t a issue where you live: shazam! coq au vin is born. The funny part as I’ve said before is that while the recipe made a lot of practical sense in times previous, now most people don’t have a constant source of cooking heat, don’t have one too many roosters, and don’t have mushrooms growing nearby. So we build crockpots, we breed roosters, and grow mushrooms, ship this shit left and right and get ourselves a mid-summer coq au vin. It’s a bit absurd to think of a cultural corner stone being artificially induced of the sort, yet understandable that one would go through such absurd lengths to recreate something delicious. I just wonder if some of the culture is getting lost as the recipe translate from something rooted in the people’s life experience in a particular place and time, to something that can be recreated at will with no further meaning than the taste.
That’s all I have for now, I might find more 🙂
2017-12-25: Pine tree + ice storm + sun = Christmas tree with lights.
2018-07-01: How so many religions have gifts and sacrifices to deities. Animals are often brought into the woods to be “processed” by nature. You can even hear the coyotes coming over the hill and finding the bounty. Everything happening at night feels supernatural.
2018-07-01: The idea of a forced resting day (such as the shabbat). I keep going every day and never rest, sometimes I wish I was obligated to do so, I wouldn’t feel bad about ignoring all the things that need to get done.
One day you’re finishing up the wall under a gorgeous sky
the next day Winter shows up and makes nice days seem so far away
The struggle has begun and will continue on for the next 6 months.
Wood heat is the absolute best thing in the world, firing our Sweet Heart for the first time this year was cause for much celebration. We finally get to use the stove for canning. 
We pulled most of the tomatoes before the first frost of the year.
That we get hit with completely unforecast high winds; like last time, old timers tell me they’ve never seen something like this. We lost many trees, and among other things, the solar panels went flying. I will definitely take this new reality in consideration for future building projects.
The only photo taken during, it didn’t last very long but it was completely insane.
The aftermath, the forest is a mess of huge trees having domino’d on one another
Right at the edge of the field, looks like the storm has made some decisions for me.
Well fuck
Fortunately, none of the panels were cracked. We were back online on battery the same evening and I brought back 2/3rd of the panels the next morning (which is plenty in the Summer). I bought ground anchors and will modify the panel holders for more strength. It’s amazing they moved, they weight a ton.
Towards the end of Winter, we’ve had the great privilege of observing a robin build a nest in a small pine right next to the house. We’d see it pick dry grass and go in the same tree over and over again. We found the really quaint nest it built.
Working on the beehives a few days ago, which are close to the nest; the robin would take off and start chirping in alarm relentlessly until I left. This happens every time we get close to the nest.
We soon found the reason why:
I really like how the inside of the nest is made with finer material. Thinking about mama robin choosing carefully each piece of grass anthropomorphizes the bird.
All in all, it chose a pretty horrible spot for a nest: a very small pine well within reach of predators and close to humans and bees. But it’s very very accessible for us to observe 🙂 we try not to intrude too much. And we’ll definitely keep the predators away.
Funny thing is that inside are the cereals.
It’s hard to tell what happened last night, let’s just say we felt like the roof was going to be ripped from the house. We felt every gust of wind move the house, I have never experienced anything like it. We slept downstairs with the windows covered that’s how bad it was. Everything was a mess outside the following morning including things I never thought could be brought down by the wind.
No bees in it yet thankfully.
Fuck you wind! Not the outside shower!
I ended up outside in the middle of it to weight down a couple of things, it was surreal. Today at town meeting, I’ve talked with other people from our hill who experienced the same crazy night.
I absolutely cannot wait to get some snow.
has come to universally mean “neutered”.
That’s it, we moved into our little 16’x16′ 2 story gambrel. It’s far from finished inside but it’s dry and cozy. For now it’s a little bit like camping which is quite ok in the Summer.
We love the outside shower
It’s a very interesting process to start from scratch and one that we wanted to go through. The smallest improvements we make have a drastic impact on our lives and are cause for celebration. The shower above started as just a solar heating water bag, we added a platform, then something to hold the bag, then a couple of walls. It will soon have a water tank perched above. We are currently going through everything in our lives and carefully deliberating what we really need. And it turns out, we don’t need a whole lot.
We’ve been without plumbing or electricity for the past 3 weeks and it barely registers as an encumbrance. Sure we have extra chores related to this (emptying buckets, charging batteries, doing dishes) but the simplicity gains largely offset them so it’s pretty much a wash. I’ve been messing around with a couple of solar panels and it opened my eyes to the world of 12V DC power which boating or RVing are familiar with. I’m starting to see that 110V AC is for a specific type of use (centralized power generation, distance distribution, high use) and that it doesn’t fit well the new world of high efficiency devices with batteries. It makes no sense to burn coal and loose 84% of its energy through conversions (coal->motion->electricity->transmission->charger) so you can charge a low powered DC device.
Picture bellow, charging a tablet, a cell phone, a USB shower pump/head, cellular internet access, and lighting with 1 solar panel.
Everything we need has its own battery, this is why running straight from a solar panel with no charge controller is fine. The battery bank and charge control is delegated to the devices. Truth be told, I will probably have a battery in the final solar design for the convenience of being able to charge things at all times of the day, especially in the winter. I’m still figuring things out, but one big discovery is that power inversion to 110V AC and the loss that comes with it is far from necessary. It does mean no big appliances like a dishwasher or clothes dryer. For refrigeration there exist pretty neat 12v DC fridges but it’s not the type with 2 doors and an ice dispenser.
We still have major projects to complete before the Winter, because when the cold and the short daylight hit, everything we’ve learned is off the table.
I recently spent a good chunk of time on the roof finishing the rakes, making a few last cuts and flashing it to get it ready for the roofers… Yes, we’re buying our way out of this one. Hours spent doing high altitude acrobatics and a few good storms will do that. We need a real roof fast and I’m sick of being up there. This means we’re also getting a standing seam metal roof with no punctures into the underlying sheathing. I’ve learned how much harder gambrels are over conventional roof designs.
However it’s hard to resist that New England barn charm
Now we are hypocrites in some regards; there are things that our household doesn’t support right now. We get potable water from outside. We do laundry outside. Lastly, we use gas to power equipment (generator, chainsaw, ATV). We’ll be addressing the first 2 soon but our reliance on gas is unlikely to go away unless we start rearing horses. Which, I really don’t see happening anytime soon.
5 years after giving up motorcycles, I get to ride again in the good name of Utility 🙂
Overall this is an awesome experiment to go through. There’s a lot of self discovery, learning, eye opening, liberating & fun going on. I can’t believe we’ve been in there 3 weeks already.
