Home the Land Built: Week 14

In 15 minutes—poking in and out of the riot of a hedgerow below the shed, Architect Paul’s dog Luna panting at my side---I picked enough wild raspberries for dinner, supper and breakfast tomorrow morning.  Then. as I look up the hill toward Home the Land Built, I ponder our newly planted Meteor Cherry, browsed nearly to the ground by deer.  The sad Como Park Rose, one red bud daring to bloom after all the others were hungrily chewed.  And then there’s the salvia in the entry pot, one withered leaf clings to its wind-shredded stem.  Such an irony!   We purchase, dig, plant and water, only to yield naked stems.  I do nothing, except follow a dog out onto the Land, and an abundance is returned.   

I know, I could increase my level of control.  I could fence out the deer (9 feet high is what Lonny and Sandy Dietz, my vegetable farming neighbors, are considering).   And if the fence were made of slatted wood, it might slow the wind as well.   This is what I’ve done my whole life:  solve problems by turning levers and pushing buttons.  I came to the Land in hopes of learning another way.

And the Land whispers another idea, a wild idea:  belong to the community, engage the Connection.  Seems the wild raspberries belong to their hedgerow community.  The overarching trees shade out the encroaching grass, giving the raspberry roots room to run.   The tree-nesting birds gorge on the berries and spread the seeds up and down the hedgerow in their droppings.   The bramble of arching raspberry canes, well-armed with stabbing thorns,  say “you shall not pass” to the deer, allowing tree saplings---even a cherry---to rise safely in their midst, creating ever more hedgerow.    So to engage the Connection, what if I just encouraged raspberries---and their spiny cousin the gooseberry---to grow where we wish to plant trees?  Then, while we wait for the cherries and plums and pears, we eat raspberries.  Seems too simple.  And I’m sure it is.  Fortunately, if I try it, the Land will quickly teach me what’s wrong with the idea and suggest improvements.  And Home the Land Built---designed by Architect Paul to enable the Connection---agrees with the Land.

Consider, as I often do, our composting toilet.   While many are surprised at its polished-cherry beauty, no few are loathe to actually use it.  “I don’t want Mike to have to haul out my stuff,” proclaimed one such first-time visitor.   Indeed, hauling two buckets of pooh each week (plus one bucket for the cat) can be a chore.  Yet, the composting toilet belongs to the community of Home the Land Built.

Suppose I ignore Home the Land Built and replace the composting toilet with a good old flush toilet.  We actually plumbed for a flush toilet, so we need not rip up the floor to install one.  But then we’d need a lot more water, thousands of gallons more, possibly exceeding the capacity of our 5400 gallon rainwater harvest cistern.  So, at considerable expense, we add another cistern.  To pump the additional water into our house requires more electricity, possibly exceeding our off-grid capacity.  So we burn gas to run the noisy generator or buy more solar panels and batteries.  Worse yet, what if we can’t collect enough rainwater to fill two cisterns?   Then we install a well.  After spending $30,000 to drill 700 feet, we tap two huge problems:  the considerable electricity required to pump water that high and the possibility of offering you a chemical-laden cup of water.  The karst geology of southeast Minnesota allows some surface contaminants to cascade between rocks and drip unfiltered into the aquifer.    So, in the end,  a good old flush toilet could cost us $40,000 and ruin the quality of our water in the process.    A regular toilet does not belong to the community of Home the Land Built.

So when I tire of hauling buckets of pooh, I remember how our butt-simple composting toilet belongs to Home the Land Built:  low cost, clean water, off-grid compatible.  And one day, perhaps in two years or so, I’ll feed the compost to the raspberries. 

I don’t why I did it---perhaps to nudge its odor away from the house---but I built the compost bin in the hedgerow below the shed.     I’ve often wondered if it was out of place.  No more!  By feeding the raspberries, the compost begins to belong to community of the hedgerow.  So what about me?  I haul the buckets.  And, like the birds, I gorge on the berries and spread the seeds.  Do I belong to the community of the hedgerow?  I don’t know, but this afternoon I’m donning my double-thick pants, covering my head with a gnat-proof kitchen towel and venturing in.    I can’t resist the whisper of the raspberry. 

Home the Land Built: Week 13

A-burstin’ and a-gushin’!

That’s the prairie, right now.  And some would say that’s me at times.  Unfortunately it was also, and quite literally, Home the Land Built.

Returning home from a wonderful Minneapolis overnight, we opened the door and r-r-r-r-ow-oh-oh-oh! Kirby cat is howling.  Then, above his screams of terror, we hear another noise.  Ph-sh-sh-sh-sh.  “Its coming from the cellar,” Linda yells.  Down we go.  And in the 5 seconds it takes me to descend, my overly active mind races to imagine every conceivable horror.  Our cellar, after all, is like main engineering on Starship Enterprise.  Except I’m no Geordi La Forge.    I reach the cellar and what do I see?

A-burstin’ and a-gushin’!  Water spewing like a geyser from the foot of the hot water tank.    In a split second I deduce that the spewing water is not dangerously hot (the solar heated water in the tank is often a scalding 150F this time of year); no steam.  A hose had burst.  I reach my hand through the geyser and turn off the valve.   Thank my lucky stars, it stopped.   I fume.  “It’s that damned work-around.”  We’d installed a tankless water heater as backup to the solar and it’s been the bane of the project.  It refuses to heat any water that’s been pre-heated by the solar.  So the plumber installed a hose, bypassing the hot water tank which we use whenever the hot water tank is too cool (100F or less).   And that hose had now burst.

There’s water all over the cellar floor, soaking into the wood framing, the sheet rock.  I hate leaks.  Always have.  Yet before even I react to this thunderbolt, a second---and far more terrifying sequence of realizations---sears my mind.  How long has this been going on?  How long has the pump been running?  How much electricity has it consumed?  Have our batteries been depleted so low (less than 50%) that they’re permanently damaged?  How much water remains in our cistern?  I start channeling Geordi La Forge. 

I rush to the invertor, to its Mate3 display unit, the next best thing to a holo-deck.  “We’re all right!”, I yell to Linda.  The battery is still at 91% charge.   Then a few button presses and voila: a graph of power consumption over the last day.  “The hose burst at 2:00,  4 hours ago.”  This I surmised since the power jumped to 1000 watts, the combined draw of the cistern pump and septic pump. 

But what about the cistern?  How much water do we have left?  I run upstairs and outside to the rainwater harvest cistern.  Last weekend’s torrent had filled it to its 5400 gallon capacity.  But what now?  The concrete manhole cover screeches as I strain to slide it up and off.   Dark as it is down that hole, I can see the shining surface of water.   I sigh in relief.  “We lost about a third, 1500 gallons.  We’ve still got maybe 4000 gallons.”    We’re alright, a little mopping, a drying fan, a glass of wine on the porch, perhaps a second.   

Wow!  Architect Paul, you’ve certainly succeeded.  We asked you to design us a house that enables the Connection---to the Land, to our friends and family, to the Divine---and you did it.  For a brief minute we experienced the terror of finite resources.  Finite electricity.  Finite water.  Not that electricity and water aren’t always finite, but Home the Land Built makes it very obvious.   Transparent.  And tonight---for that one brief and amazingly Connecting minute---it felt painfully transparent.  Lightning out of a clear blue sky.

“I’ll call Electrician John.  Maybe he can rig us a failsafe that shuts off the pump if it runs too long.  20 minutes maybe?”  I needed to get practical, bring the problem down to something bitesize.  The magnitude of what we’d done here---this whole new Land-Connecting system---overwhelmed me.  There was only one thing to do:  wine walk. 

We strolled up to the high spot and out into the prairie, where the first of the pale purple coneflowers had just begun twirling their pink skirts.  Here they were, these most gorgeous of earthly creations---born of the finiteness of water and sun---and yet they dance, seemingly.    I listened for their advice.  How should I move forward?

A-burstin’ and a-gushin’!

Home the Land Built: Week 12

We planted our first little landscape tree.  A Meteor Cherry.  A memory lane impulse.  We’d planted one at 4140, right outside our window in the narrow space between our old house and Chris and Alby’s kitchen window.  So beautiful, all those red, round cherries, and so very tasty.  Here at the Land, we figured this tree would be safe, from the ever-browsing deer that is.  After all, we’re surrounded by thousands of cherries and I’d never seen a single browsed stem.  Silly me. 

The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

We planted a lawn.  We spread grass and oats and covered the steepest hills with erosion mats.  All we really wanted was something green, something besides bare dirt around our house.  We prayed for rain.  And got it.  Whoosh!  The seed is now stacked in nice piles at the bottom of the hills.  Cowbird food.    

The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

Dawn called to me this morning.  “Come on out.  There’s something special I’ve brought for you to see.”  I stepped out onto the west porch.  It was beautiful indeed.  First light.  And all the bird song.  Yup, another amazing morning on the Land.  Then, just as I was heading back inside, swoosh!  A huge creature falls out of a hedgerow tree.  As I gasped, he spread his wings and arched skyward.  As he disappeared up and over the high spot, I thought, “How could I have missed an eagle perched so near, hungrily eyeing Kirby cat crouched at me feet?” 

The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

I have two full buckets (black Fleet Farm logo buckets) to empty from the composting toilet, but the compost heap looks full.  Dang!  I’ve been meaning to finish our much larger two-bin Humanure Hacienda.  Hmmm.  

The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

I’ve been carefully tending a tree we planted last year, an American Elm seedling Linda had nurtured from our Minneapolis home.     “You sure that’s an American Elm?” a visiting arborist asked.   I stared and stared, and then slapped my forehead.  Thousands of these aggressive invasives plant themselves all over the Land.  I didn’t need to look it up in Trees and Shrubs of Minnesota.  But I did anyway.  Anyone want a Siberian Elm? 

The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

I wrote an article for CERT, Minnesota’s Clean Energy Resource Team, about our off-grid journey, which they published on their website.  Cool!  Then the director published it on Renewal Energy World.com.  More cool!  Then I started reading the insightful comments.  Way, way cool!  Then I started to comprehend the passion and knowledge and wisdom of these readers and I thought, “I’m way out of my league here.  What am I doing, posting on a site like this?” 

Off the grid article

The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

This week, when I saw Dayna Cruz, my dear former work colleague, she asked the best question ever.  “Don’t you just spend your entire day adjusting to the new system, solving problems, figuring out how to live this entirely new way?”    That’s exactly it!    I keep trying to explain what I do all day, but it’s frustratingly hard.  It all belongs to this whole new world we’ve created.  The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

Oh, boxelder bear, my trusted guardian, show me the way.  At least show me the door to Kindergarten.  May I just curl up at your feet and sleep well.  The School of the Land has so much to teach me.

Home the Land Built: Week 11

The alarm clock displays a big red 5:06AM.  I’m lifted from bed by expectancy’s gentle yet compelling hands.  Fog is so thick I can’t see out the big bank of windows.  I rush out onto the porch.  There, boldly silhouetted against the white curtain rising from the Whitewater River Valley, two deer.  No, three.   Wait no, there’s six actually grazing on the Land’s distant prairie ridge.   Suddenly, a spotlight ignites the hilltop behind me, stealing the show away from the deer.  I stride up the gravel road to the high spot just as one white wild indigo bursts into flame.  Then another and another.  Soon hundreds upon hundreds leap into a prairie celebration of dawn’s first light.  All this is enough, perhaps, to help my body forgets its pain.  Actually, it doesn’t forget.  But it does feel rewarded.  This---this achingly beautiful connection---is what it’s all about after all.

Speaking of rewards, I got mine.  It rained.  The cistern is now full.   On Thursday, Linda, her mother and I witnessed the historic first harvest of rainwater.   We watched excitedly as the first flush diverter did its job, allowing the first downspout collected water, rooftop dirty, to pass out onto yard, then after throwing away 50 gallons or so, allowing the rest to pass on down the buried pipes and into the cistern. 

But watch out what you ask for, you just might get it.  And on Saturday, we did.  With our dear friends Pam and Brad here for their first overnight, we were visited by the rains from hell.    A thousand hammers beating the roof at once could not have matched its fury.  And the terrible east winds were pelting the rain straight sideways against our windows.  Water oozed under the window seat onto the concrete floor.  “It’s pouring into the root cellar,” Linda yelled up from the basement.  Either the buried pipe backed up or the first flush diverter just said  “to hell with it, I can’t keep up” as it allowed a fire hydrant of water to gush out the downspout onto the yard.  Our little drainage swale became a swollen, muddy Amazon.  We still don’t know how much grass seed it carried to the bottom of the hill, but flocks of cowbirds have been feasting for days on the flotsam and jetsam.    We pretty much lost any hope of ever walking on anything but a mud moat around our house. 

Yet desperation drives inspiration.   Problems become solutions.  Lemons become lemonade.

Just off the east porch---the very corner where the downspout once gushed onto grass seed---is now a raised bed kitchen garden.  Or will be once Linda plants her herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.  All that downspout water is now captured in a freshly dug hole---15 feet long, 3 feet wide, 6 inches deep---lined with split logs and topped with woodchips to serve as a garden path.

My body still hurts from the two day effort.   And maybe that’s a good thing.  As I type, my stiff fingers remind me of their labor, their creative energies.  So that even now, though I sit in the yoga loft, I’m also out there in the kitchen garden.  The feel of wet dirt.  The smell of rotting wood.  The sound of water, drumming and gushing.  And, perhaps best of all, the feel of the smile on Linda’s face.  All the Connection, the achingly beautiful Connection.

Home the Land Built: Week 10

I’m waiting for rain.  Is that a good thing?

Yes, our Sahara-like lawn needs it.  Excavator Steve finally shoveled, bulldozed and dragged the final water-shedding grade around House the Land Built.  After Linda and I spread grass, oats and fertilizer, we rolled straw-weaved mats to hold the precious seed and prevent (hopefully) the deep gullies from reappearing.     We hurried to beat the rain.  Finally the green and yellow on my phone’s radar became a blanket beneath the stars, yet all it gave was a low growl.  Heavy clouds but no rain.

Lawn aside, it’s our steadily depleting cistern that’s really got me gazing west all the time.  I’m excited to announce that the rainwater harvest system is finally in place!!!  What would we do without Excavator Steve?  He not only trenched in the PVC pipe that will carry the roof-harvested rainwater to the cistern’s underground inlet, but he designed and built an overflow outlet as well.  His 70 foot buried PVC pipe runs gently downhill from the top of the cistern toward our future garden, allowing excess rainwater to escape without digging another gully in our lawn.  According to my calculations, our 5400 gallon concrete cistern should overflow during nearly every summer rain. 

Each inch of rain equals a thousand gallons for us.    So that one inch should last us 33 days at our average household consumption of 30 gallons per day.  Thank you composting toilet for saving us so much water!    An average summer provides 4 inches of rain each month, of which 3 inches (3000 gallons) will need to be diverted down to our garden.    We needed to store 5400 gallons (180 days worth) to get us through the long winter, our desert season here in Minnesota.  Worst case scenario, drought of the century, I pay the milk truck guy $200 to haul us 5000 gallons of water from City of Plainview. 

And thank you in advance to our three newly-installed Clean Rain Downspout Diverters.  Their job is to say  “you shall not pass”  to the dirtiest of water.  They catch the rainwater falling out of the gutter, discard the first 50 gallons (dust, pigeon-poop, whatever collects on the roof) then screens the remaining water before falling into the cistern’s PVC pipe inlet.  While the cistern water would be fine as-is for bathing and dishwashing (certainly far cleaner than any lake we’ve ever swam in), we’ve installed two additional filters to assure perfectly safe drinking water.  The final filter, our Big Berkey, not only eliminates every possible gut-bomb of a creature, but Atrazine as well (heard about frogs changing genders?)  and a host of other nasty chemicals. 

But this is all theory.  I’m still waiting for our cistern’s first raindrops.  Is that a good thing? 

I’m reminded of my dream last night:  an owl tearing the breast feathers out of a small hawk while hawk beat owl’s hungry face with his wings.  Is that a good thing?

I’m not sure.  Yet, like waiting for rain, I am sure its engaging.  And that is exactly what we asked Locus Architect Paul to do for us: design us a house that enables the Connection.  Engage us with the Land.  Our neighbors.  You.  What could be more engaging, more connecting, than watching the sky, the one big sky which embraces us all?    

I gaze out the yoga loft windows.   Today’s grey veil prevents the sun’s rays from heating our solar hot water collector, yet leaks just enough to energize the photovoltaic solar panels, topping off the batteries with electricity.  All so engaging.  Yet now, the rainwater harvest system draws my gaze over the solar panels, over the Ireland-green prairie, over Lonny and Sandy’s fields to the horizon.  There, on that far western rim, live my hopes, my imagination:  a rolling darkness, a sudden violent flash then that blissful sound.  A single splat.  Then the drumming.  The running.  The gushing.  Water!  Water!  Water!  Soon, very soon I hope.

Rainwater harvest:  the last alternative system to be installed.  Yes, it can be annoying and inconvenient.  So too off-grid electric, solar hot water, composting toilet, masonry heater.  Yet I’m beginning to wonder if “convenient” isn’t the opposite of “connecting”.    Seems that the grid---be it electricity, water or waste---has been quietly, conveniently, disconnecting me from so much that really matters.

No more!  I’m waiting for rain.  That’s a good thing.

Home the Land Built: Week 8

I kill.  I plant.  I tend.  I harvest.  Am I now farming?

Killing.  I yanked out a few 5 foot tall buckthorns behind the shed.     With the Puller Bear’s steel jaws biting the buckthorn’s neck, I press down on the white handle.   Pop! The lever action pulls the root out of the rain-softened soil.  Sometimes.   I needed a better weapon to take on the 8 foot tall honeysuckles.  Little Blue, our 45hp 4WD New Holland tractor.  One end of towing strap tied around the axle, the other strangling the honeysuckles many necks, I inch forward in low gear.  Snap!  Snap!  Snap!  Out come the roots.  Sometimes.  I needed a better weapon to take on the 12 foot tall boxelders lining the brush pile, the many that survived the burn.  Targeted  burn.  I stacked dry brush and old barnboard under one boxelder and lit it.   Whoosh!  Crackle!  Then finally sizzle, or is a shriek, the sound of steaming wood, followed by the stench of green leaves shriveling in the flame.  Before the flames settle I stoke one end, gradually moving the flame around a semi-circle of the brush pile, igniting one boxelder at a time.    Then maybe, when the thrill of it all settles, I weep.

Planting.  We’ve planted very little.  25 white spruce seedlings.  50 hazelnut seedlings.  One 4 inch long stick of an elderberry.  The rhododendron my mom gave me for house-warming still sits on the porch.   Someday, if the bare ground dries and Excavator Steve shakes himself loose from his other spring rush projects,  we’ll final grade, connect the downspouts to the rainwater harvest cistern (yeah!!!!) and then, finally then, we can garden around our house.  Ah to feel green grass underfoot rather than mud on my boots.

Tending.  Two week ago we performed the only tending our 40 acre prairie needs:  fire.  I call it tending because the flame actually kills very little: a few small trees, a couple million ticks I suppose.  The burn tips the balance away from the European-sourced pasture grass and toward the frequent-fire loving natives.  We tended our spruces and hazelnut, hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of woodchip mulch we’d asked the local powerline trimmers to dump.  The enemy of trees is grass.  We hope the mulch shields them.  In another “crazy” experiment, I’m attempting to train a wild grapevine to smother a trellis rather than a black cherry tree.  Speaking of cherries, I’ve torn off dozens of silky tents, writhing with leaf-stripping caterpillars.  OK that’s killing I guess. 

Harvesting.  Nettles!  The perfect cooked green:  fresh, easy, abundant.  Oh yeah, I’ve heard they’re nutritious (look it up, you’ll wonder why we bother with garden greens) as well, though ‘nutritious’ has pretty much fallen out of my vocabulary.  To what extent does a list of percentages describe the intricately vital relationship between nettles and myself?  I’m just beginning that relationship with cattails.  Like harvesting nettles, the first thing I’ve learned is what it’s like to hang out in their home, which for cattail is the outer circle of either pond.  What amazes (and delights) me is how accepted I feel by the nesting red-winged blackbirds.  Normally frantic, even dive-bombing, they just go about their business as I go about mine:  sloshing slowly along the muddy shore, seeking a fat stalk,  yanking, stripping the leaves, stuffing the soft white pith in my netted bag.   Feels great to be part of team pond!  Easy to prepare, just eight minutes of steam and a little butter (or a lot, what the heck!).  I’m still learning how much to peel off.  Too much and I’ve wasted good cattail.  Too little and my teeth need to do the stripping, like eating an artichoke.  Like any farmer, my harvest is also lacking.  I have yet to chance upon a single Morel.

Yet the question remains, am I farming?   In our off-grid, rainwater harvest, composting toilet, rainwater harvest, masonry heated home, perhaps our greatest experiment is how we do or do not Claim the Land. 

I wonder if humanity’s big agricultural innovation was NOT sowing and reaping and all the technology to do it.  After all lots of creatures sow and reap:  squirrels, blue jays, mice even.  What’s unique to humanity is the degree to which we Claim the land.  “It’s all mine and I’ll do what I damn well please with it.”  First kill whatever grows on the land (or depends upon what grows on it, or eats what I grow) then plant and tend only what I will harvest.   We’ve now extended the Claim to all of planet earth.  What does the Claim get us?  Could life be better with a different view of the Claim.  Its hard to know when all earth is included. 

So my novel, a thought experiment where a group dares to discover the benefits and challenges of a different Claim.  Stay tuned.

So the Land.   A living experiment where Linda and I dare to discover the benefits and challenges of a different Claim.  Yes our killing, planting, tending will generate some food and firewood for us.  Maybe some income.  But mostly we see ourselves as Members of the community of the Land.  And to that end we are stewards.  Healers.  Facilitators listening to the Land.  Asking questions.  Engaging.  A friend once asked, “why not let the land go wild?”  I responded, “why not let your teenage son go wild?”  The analogy is about right.  If we did nothing the results would be predictable:  buckthorn, honeysuckle, boxelder, deer, turkeys.  The familiar (and very limited) cast of characters.  Not at all the diverse community which once thrived here:  the ever-changing rainbow of prairie flowers, the drone of a million flower-sipping bees, the grunt of grass-grazing bison.    

So yes we farm but under the guidance of new Claim experiment.  AND.  We Claim the Land AND we don’t Claim the Land.   The Land belongs to us AND the Land belongs to the creatures of the Land: our connecting community, the bees and bison yet to be.  We’ve learned that his experiment requires an underappreciated resource.  Time.  It took a thousand wild years for the former prairie to bloom into its glory.  Our experiment may very well take as long.  Still change happens every day here on the Land.  And you, my dear blog reader, are welcome to come and farm.  Kill.  Plant.  Tend.  Harvest.  Or just watch.  And listen.   There’s a buzz out there.

Home the Land Built: Week 7

Walking the Land is like being inside a story, the best of stories:  rich and quirky characters, riveting twisting plot, all the great themes.  Love.  Community.  Hardship, Humor.  Yet the story is sometimes hard to follow, so tangled, like a crushing mass of grapevine twining atop the bramble.  Not yesterday.  Not one week after the burn.

40 acres of ash-black backdrop crunching beneath my booted foot.  Suddenly an image grabs my attention, a single frame of story preserved like a Pompeii juggler at the very instant the ash descended, complete in all its wonder and horror.  Now a good story contains nothing more than a series of baiting questions (implied if not directly posed) embedded within an anecdote.  Who did what to whom and why?  And yesterday each ash-framed scene did indeed pose a question, a question normally muffled beneath waves of grass now granted voice by the miracle of the burn.

What force granted wood betony---so strange in her parasitic beauty---the unique power to spare her flowers from the flames?

So, you little sperm shaped sprouts, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Little bird:  was your nest, one of hundreds upon hundreds I’ve seen today, built last year or did I destroy this spring's labor?

Who---like some wild-armed oil painter---flung shreds of red elm bark so far out onto the canvas of the prairie?

Momma turkey: did you abandon your egg to the choking smoke or did some other creature find it before the flames?

Deer hunter:  did your knife slip your pocket or did you accidentally leave it after gutting your deer?

Oh Savanna the Wonder Dog, I’m walking your namesake trail after a burn again , are you?

The rule of storytelling, what keeps me turning the page, is that each question will eventually be dealt with, if not directly answered.  But yesterday, as I walked away from each ash-framed scene, the question lingered.  Unanswered.  Should I go back out there today, seek the answer?  I think not.  As I gaze out the bank of windows onto the glory of what remains,  the Land says “not yet.” Perhaps this story is like so much great art.  Perhaps the question is the answer.