Off-Grid Culture

As I took yet another soul-reviving off-grid step, I realized that not only is off-grid more journey than destination, but there are a lot of grids to get off.   “Too many,” said  a colleague as he shook his head in his apparent despair.   In addition to the quintessential electric grid, we’re weaning ourselves off the waste grid, the home-heating gas grid, and the water grid.   

But it was Michael Pollan-inspired Linda who led us away from our first grid:  food.  It was she who walked away from the grid-tied organic produce at Kowalski’s and Whole Food  Market.  It was she who bravely founded a neighborhood CSA with our grower neighbor’s the Dietz’s.  It was she who creaked open the bulk-room door, slipped inside and tapped our first---dare I say it---raw milk, oh no!. 

But this week I’m Sandor Katz-inspired and I took the food lead.  I couldn’t help myself.  He made me feel so invited to take the next natural off-grid step.  But you know what the very hardest thing is about all this (and every previous off-grid step)?    I don’t know how to explain why I’m doing this.  

In fact, if you want to get my blood boiling---and that’s not always easy---do what the 2012 Minnesota Solar Tour enrollment form did:  Ask me how long it will take before our off-grid electric pays off.  So I typed into the little box, “How long until your children pay for themselves?”  OK I didn’t.  But I wanted to.  I really really wanted to.  Do they think I’d leave my wonderful neighbors and co-workers and church community just to move down here and save a few pennies on electricity?  So I typed in their little box, “We didn't buy the system to save money.  We bought the system to enable us to live a life that is connected to the Land.  Since no standard grid-provided electricity can't do this, payback was immediate.”  And that didn’t begin to say why. 

Perhaps I’m stepping off-grid to restore my grid-depleted mind, body and spirit.    

But maybe there are too many too grids to get off.  The food grid.  The power grid. The money-enmeshed trade grid.  Education.  Transportation.  Communication.  My whole life was on a impossibly complex, corporate run, government regulated, quantity over quality, soul-sucking grid.  Well not quite actually.  The absolute best things in life were not:  Linda, my friends, neighbors and church community.  And the Land.  Who knows where my heart and soul would be without them, without my off-grid island of connection, love and support?  Now all I’m doing is adding to that off-grid community.  And the most recent addition came from the inviting work of Sandor Katz.

I started my first-ever batch of mead.  Just raw honey, rainwater and wild black raspberries.  That’s all.  I let nature add the yeast and whatever else makes those blue bubbles on top of the raspberry mass.  And in a few days, promises off-grid-minded Sandor Katz, I’ll take my first sip of slightly sweet, slightly alcoholic, raspberry brightened mead.  What engaging magic!  What an off-grid culture!  The grid exercises control to gain consistent availability for me, me, me.  Off-grid relies on wild collaboration (bees and flowers, honey yeast and me) and ruthless competition (yeast and me over mold and vinegar-producing bacteria) to gain…hmmm…what is it I’m gaining?

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on those Solar Tour folks since even I struggle to well-answer their question.  At least an answer delivered in words.  Right now it’s more an energizing feeling, an uplifting song, blue bubbles rising in the mead.   I think I’m going to start another batch.

3 Invitations to Home the Land Built

Sept 22                 Open House Celebration

Oct 6                      2012 MN SolarTour

Sept 9                   Dinner on the Farm

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Open House Celebratory Bash  Saturday, Sept 22    Noon to 5 pm

You’re Invited to Home the Land Built!!!

Scrumptious food featuring farm to table, seasonal ingredients

(Including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free options)

Catered by Winona’s Blue Heron Coffeehouse

Schell’s beer, wine and nonalcoholic beverages

Music, off-grid home and prairie tours, fun

Ritual of blessing at 3 pm

You bring walking shoes, binoculars and good wishes

Experience our “off-grid, rainwater harvesting, masonry heated, composting toilet” home

Walk the mowed paths of our 62 acre prairie and pasture

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Solar Home Tour              Saturday Oct 6   10AM to 4PM

“Sponsored by the Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (MRES), the self-guided, public Minnesota Solar Tour features 50+ exemplary homes, businesses, and institutions that have incorporated renewable energy into the design and operation of their buildings. From geothermal heat pumps using the earth as a huge thermal buffer to wind turbines elegantly spinning in the breeze and the many incarnations of solar energy between earth and sky, this event offers local residents an opportunity to find out how their neighbors are trimming their energy bills, increasing their energy independence, and taking steps to address global warming. This is an excellent opportunity for those interested in solar and other renewable energies to view installations and talk with building owners, builders, architects, and planners about their experiences.”

We’re proud to be on this free tour.  See SE07 Home the Land Built on the Solar Tour Site Map. If Home the Land Built is too far away, visit a few others.

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Dinner on the Farm        Sunday Sept 9      2PM   Farm of Lonnie and Sandy Dietz

OK, so this isn’t exactly at Home the Land Built.  But it is a gathering at our wonderful veggie-providing neighbors, the Dietz’s.  Informal tours starting at noon, dinner to be served at 2pm. Food prepared by the Blue Heron Coffee House, Winona MN, sourced from Whitewater Gardens and other farms located within 50 miles. Music by the Dorothy Daydreamers. Proceeds this year going to Farm to School programs. Tickets only $50.

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How to RSVP

To attend the solar tour, follow site instructions.  If you’re interested in attending the Open House or Dinner on the Farm, and have not already RSVP’d, please comment below.  Thanks and hope to see you soon!

Community of Fire

“Last year you’d point somewhere and ask me if I see the tuft of Indian Grass,” said my friend Doug as we walked the prairie last week.  “But this year?  Just look at it.”  And borrowing his breathless awe, I did look.  Feathery plumes, raised head high on their slender stems, waving in the prairie breeze.   Not just one or two, but acre upon rolling acre.  And to think that four years ago this November, each plume was but a seed, embraced by the earth, an earth we hoped still remembered what it meant to be a prairie.  And by prairie, I don’t mean just grass or even wildflowers.  The Land had that already. 

By prairie I mean the community of fire.    Or more specifically---since all landscapes are defined by how often they burn---the community of frequent fire.  150 years ago our prairie vanished, along with all the others, not only under the screeching plow but under the silence of misunderstanding.  With fires extinguished, the trees, brush and fire-averse European grasses rolled across the landscape.  The prairie grasses, the fire’s fuel, suffocated.  And with the grass so went the community of fire.  The wildflowers, unashamed to show their colors.  The writhing horde of soil creatures (outweighing everything aboveground they say).  The hoofed migration, rumbling herds of elk and bison matching the loudest of the African savanna.  Some say that 2% of the prairie remains.  I’m afraid they’re referring to a mere collection of plants.  No, the community of fire is gone.  And I’ll never be able to convey my grief at its loss.

But I do hope to convey my gratitude for emerging Indian Grass.  How brave!  Yes, we planted some seeds of hope.  We returned the community’s spark of life:  fire.    And though the plow could return or the fires extinguished, still the Indian Grass dares rise to the sun and dance in the wind.  “You inspire me Indian Grass!”  And why not? 

We have so much in common.  Within our solar-powered Home the Land Built, I’m beginning to glimpse what the sun---the source of power for nearly everything---really is.  We too harvest the rain.  We too return our humanure to the soil.   Less obvious but even deeper, I wonder if our spirits share a similar past.  Like Indian Grass, mine too had withered somewhat under the screeching plow of monetary pursuit and the silence of life-postponed.  “I’ll start really living one of these days.”    Then grace planted within me a single seed.  A spark was lit.  And when the flames roared skyward, scorching the dry remains of my stagnant and withered ways, a new and courageous spirit rose from the ashes.  Perhaps I too am a member of the community of fire. 

Now, as I gaze out the bank of south-facing windows---swallows zigzagging between sunset-lit Indian Grass---I can feel it: the pulsing life in the floor of the sky.    This is the life I’ve dreamed of.  This is the life here for me now; all I need do is reach skyward.  This is the life of the community of fire. 

Rainwater Harvest

Home the Land Built harvests the abundance of the Land:  boxelder for warmth, sunlight for electricity and hot water, and now, finally, the rain for our water.   

A year ago, had you asked which alternative system would be the most challenging, I would not have answered rainwater harvest.  It’s just water off the roof for goodness sake.  Then again, had I really thought about it, there are more components in the rainwater harvest system than any other. 

There’s the steel roof for harvesting (collecting an amazing 1000 gallons per inch of rain).  The gutter, buried  pipes and cistern pump for transport.  The cistern and water crock for storage.   Three filters and the first flush diverter for cleaning.  Still, most of the components are fairly simple.  Except, as I found out, for one.

The Clean Rain first flush diverter---attached to the bottom of each of the three downspouts--- is sometimes called a roof washer.  By diverting the first 50 gallons of rainwater away from the cistern, we avoid harvesting everything that’s collected on the roof and gutter since the last rain:  bird pooh, stagnant gutter water, dust and pollen.  I saw a couple systems where they accomplished this manually, simply by turning a valve a few minutes after the rain begins.  But the Clean Rain does this automatically, and very cleverly I might add.  Spongy washers swell, pressing a ball over the diverter pipe thereby directing water down the cistern pipe.  At least that’s the theory.  Our reality, since installing the rainwater harvest system in May, is that the Clean Rain never worked.  It diverted all the rainwater away from the cistern and out into our yard. 

I’d problem-solved with the friendly folks at the Rainharvest Store, but to no avail.  During my last call, both sides felt like maybe it’s time to give up, take out the Clean Rain and install a manual system.  Quite depressed, neither of us had any more good ideas.  Fortunately fate did. 

When Mike the Mason came to lay the limestone over our concrete porch walls, he said the east porch diverter was in his way.  As I removed the diverter, I saw my big ah-hah!  There was another filter---a filter I didn’t know about it---and it was plugged.  “Water could never get through that and into the cistern”, I thought.  Now I was excited.  I removed the next diverter.  “Same problem!” I told Linda.  One to go.  And when I tore that one off and found it’s filter clogged I jumped onto the website.  Mosquito filters!  Sure a mosquito might survive in a backyard rain barrel, but not in our cistern.  I ditched the filters and reassembled the diverters.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited. 

Then, on Saturday morning, it rained.  And rained.  And as it rained some more I rushed out onto the east porch.  Water was gushing out of the downspout and into the diverter and only a little seemed to trickle out of the downspout.  “I think we’re harvesting,” I shouted to Linda.  “But there’s only one way to know for sure.” 

With herculean strength I could have slipped the manhole cover off the cistern and peered down but instead I ran to the bottom of the hill.  And there, where Excavator Steve terminated his overflow pipe---designed to carry water away from the cistern when its full and overflowing---gushed water.  Rainwater!  Glorious harvested rainwater bubbling like a spring.  Since we'd just paid Milk Truck Dustin to deliver 5000 gallons of city water, the newly harvested rainwater represented an overflowing abundance.

An hour later, umbrella in hand, I went to look again.  “What are you doing?”  Linda asked as I sloshed back inside.  I was in denial.  After all this time I just couldn’t believe it was working.  And that now, the whole house was working.   I felt so grateful for Home the Land Built, harvester of wood, sunlight and now, finally now, the rain. 

Shade Cloth: The Agony and the Ecstasy

Yup.  It’s pretty much ugly.  First its ugly in comparison to the surprisingly beautiful Humanure Hacienda.  And far uglier than our recently finished porches, now graced with limestone walls and cedar wrapped posts.

But its ugly even in its own right.  What chance did it have, there in front of our land-connecting bank of south-facing windows.  Today I feel like I’m looking out of a heavily lidded eye, as if I’m sleepy.  But the time---the time I’d imagined ever since I looked at my first passive solar home picture---had arrived:  shade cloth time.

Its shade cloth time when the sun is low enough to slip beneath the overhang and through our south bank of windows, yet high enough to overheat the house.  And that time is August.  From late May until mid-July the sun painted only the thinnest stripe beneath the inside of the windows.  Then it began creeping and now suddenly leaping as it madly brushes its hot rays upon our window seat.  By the weekend it will spill onto the concrete slab floor.   A passive solar heated house in August:  yikes!

I purchased the shade cloth online two weeks ago.  And yesterday it joined the ranks of our passive cooling package under Principle 1: keep outside heat out (via reflection).   Comparing today’s 11:45 picture with yesterday’s,  I was happy to see it working.  The window seat is still painted, but not nearly such a hot swath of yellow, more the dappled light under a lone oak. 

As is so often the case here at Home the Land Built, I had no idea how to actually hang the shade cloth.  Einstein is often credited with saying, “the best design is the simplest design that works”.  Even if he didn’t say it, I still like it.  I hate overdesign.  I prefer to start simple and add as needed. 

So I started out securing the (apparently strong) cloth to the gutter supports with wire.  Nothing else.  That seemed to work until the breeze picked up this morning, flinging the cloth up and onto the roof.  “Weights,” I thought.  It needs weight.  Addicted to resourcefulness as I am, I hung giant steel washers along the bottom of the cloth with fish line.  They actually looked kind of cool dangling there.  But then a sudden southerly flung the cloth, washers and all, up onto the roof.  Cool would have to wait.  “Work” comes first.

I stapled the fishing line to the outside window trim and so far so good.  I’m afraid to see what the big prairie breeze will do to it.  For now, its keeping outside heat outside.

But as I sit in the living room---looking out through my heavily lidded eye at the ocean of sky---I long for a little more beauty.  Perhaps some origami hummingbirds hovering just outside the windows.  I don’t know.  If you have any ideas, send them my way.  Or better yet, stop down, and together we’ll put some striking makeup on this naked eyelid.

Humanure Hacienda

And then there were three: structures, that is, at Home the Land Built.  

August 2010:  the shed.

March 2012:  the house.

July 2012: the hacienda.

I suppose, in the end, it’s just a compost bin.  But to me, today--- the day I finally finished the hacienda---it feels like so much more.  

Perhaps it’s the anticipation.  We’ve known we had to have one (I mean who doesn’t) long before we built the shed.  It is, after all, essential to our closed-loop composting toilet system; the vital, seemingly magic link between buckets of sawdust-covered pooh and buckets of garden strawberries. 

Perhaps it’s the sense of relief.   I might be able to dump two more buckets onto the current compost heap.   Then again, the rickety old bin just might fall over.   But I promised Linda I’d wait until she returned from Minneapolis before dumping the first ceremonial bucket into the hacienda.  So wish me well as I dump the last buckets into the old bin tomorrow.

Perhaps it’s the hacienda’s expected utility:  three bins, two for composting separated by the roofed cover material bin.   We’ll start the left compost bin this weekend, then switch to the right bin next summer.  Finally, in the summer of 2014, before switching back, we’ll open the left bin gate and discover what the miracle of composting has done, for us and for the Land.  As much I like hauling buckets, I’m quite content to let time do all the work, rather than turning that pile-of-me with a pitchfork.  Hmmm.

But actually, most of my thrill (if you would believe it) arises from the hacienda’s unexpected beauty.  I pretty much just followed the instructions in Joe Jenkins gospel.    Yet it seemed in the spirit of composting to construct the hacienda out of what I already had.  Who’d have thought you could combine barnboard verticals, old pallet rafters and red elm panel shingles---all reused!---into one design and have it look so…so elegant.   I deviated from Jenkin’s gable roof design, preferring to mirror our shed’s lean to (not to mention how bad a gable could look in my gorilla-like hands).  I also eliminated his rain barrel for bucket rinsing.  I’m already collecting rain water off the shed roof, just fifty feet away. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole composting toilet system---the cherry toilet and sawdust bin, the elegant hacienda, the utter elimination of the dreaded plunger---became all the rage, not because they make so much sense, but because they’re so architecturally stunning. 

Day in My Life at Home the Land Built

“What do you do all day?”  my friend Doug asked.

I stumbled a bit.  “Um….chores…eat good food….”.    What the heck do I do, I wondered.  So on Monday Jul 16, I actually documented my doings. 

6:08	Arise.  Check  house air temp 74F.  Close porch windows.  Turn off fan in yoga loft window.
6:10	Breakfast:   Granola and blueberries while re-reading Guns, Germs & Steel.
6:25	Clean cat litter.  Check solar battery capacity:  79%.   Not bad since we’re running 3 fans, 2 freezers and 2 fridges all night.
6:30	Do dishes
6:40	Tea on west porch.  Identify birds:  Robin, Cedar Waxwing, Bluebird, Orchard Oriole, Song Sparrow, Red-Winged Blackbird, Tree Swallow, Downy Woodpecker, House Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, Goldfinch, Crow, Vulture, Goldfinch, Wren, Catbird, Barn Swallow
7:50	Call Dustin to deliver water.  (5400 gallon cistern dangerously low.  Rain harvest still not working!!!)
8:05	Put 1 gallon jug on east porch for sun tea
8:15	Sweep beetles off floor  (every day we get a few dozen more of these little brown jobs)
8:45	Dustin fills cistern from his milk truck with water from Plainview fire hydrant.
9:15	Empty two composting toilet buckets into compost heap.  Clean.  Dry and sterilize in sun.
9:30	2nd Breakfast:   bread and honey over Guns, Germs & Steel.
10:05	Fix string in yoga loft gong, a present from friends Doug and Monica.
10:30	Sun tea brown and warm.  Put tea bags into another jug to make more of sun tea.
10:45	Call RainHarvest company to try and solve rain harvest problem.  The Clean Rain Advance is supposed to divert the first 50 gallons away from the cistern (the dirtiest water).  Problem is all the water coming down the gutter is diverted away from the cistern.
11:00	Research Shade Cloth.  Right now the 2’ overhang keeps the sun from beaming through the south bank of windows.  In a month it will coming burning through.   Considering hanging shade cloth off the gutter.
12:30	Luncheon:  Fried egg, toast, tomato, garlic-aioli from Trout Caviar
12:50	Do dishes.  Check solar battery:  100%.   Wow!  Now the solar array is just loafing out there in the sun.
1:30	Ordered Shade Cloth.  70% sun block.  Enough to hang down 2’.
1:45	Scoop 3” of sawdust into composting toilet buckets.  Return to garage.  Check solar hot water tank.  150F.  Solar collector 283F.  House Air  80F.    Outside 95F.
2:00	Begin assignments for week two of Self Publishing Class through Loft Literary Center.  Wow!  Anybody can publish a book online or Print On Demand.  Discovered that volunteers, Linda and my friend Heather, are not my Proofreaders.  They are my Copyeditors.  Who knew?
3:00	Afternoon tea:  Bread.  Almond butter.  Honey.
3:30	Downloaded Gregg Reference Manual as “gift” for my Copyeditor.  Linda actually seemed excited.
4:45	Replaced full composting toilet bucket with empty bucket.
5:30	Began formatting my novel for Print On Demand using Amazon's CreateSpace.  Feeling like this thing might actually get done after 8 years.
6:30	Happy hour with Linda.  Mojito and chips on east porch.
8:30	Supper:  Linda made fennel slaw while I grilled corn on the cob and hot Italian sausage.
10:00	Kick back in recliner with good book:  Attracting Native Pollinators.
10:30	Open windows.  Start fan in yoga loft window.  Off to bed.