You might recall this year’s garlic harvest, back before the move to the city, and how much we were able to grow. We are still sitting on a mound of bulbs and giving it away by the bag full. Before giving any away we were careful to sort out several pounds of seed garlic.

We actually started the basis for the garlic bed a few months ago, putting the full force of seven chickens to work and getting the grass nibbled down and depositing a nice layer of manure. Add to that a nice layer of leaves to keep the soil moist for digging, measure and mark the bed, and we are ready for the heavy lifting.

The bed prep was pretty standard – broadfork the row, put down a layer of leaves and compost, add a sprinkle of worm castings then dig out the pathways. The soil from the pathways gets thrown up on top of the leaf layer.

That soil is chopped up finely with the leaves and the compost and the worm castings. Rake that out flat, add another layer of leaves and you are ready to plant.

We are fortunate to have an abundance of leaves. When I saw people raking up their leaves in the neighborhood, I sent a message to the neighborhood asking for their leaves. I set up a corral by our driveway so folks could just bring over their bags and bins and such and just dump everything into a big pile.

But let me back up a second… When we moved here, there were three giant waste receptacles waiting for us. One blue for recycling, one green for trash and one brown for “yard waste”. We immediately knew that we would never set that last one out by the road just for the simple fact that our yard does not generate waste. We also knew that we would be out seeking other people’s yard waste bins and dumping the contents into our yard.

The concept is baffling – putting your leaves and sticks and grass clippings in this bin and having the city haul it away to who knows where. The only waste in this scenario is this bin and its associations. With all the front yard gardens in this neighborhood, surely we could keep at least some of our beautiful little nuggets of carbon snuggled within the same yards?

Well, we have this bin. May as well use it, right? It is a perfect little urban wheelbarrow (even though we already have a wheelbarrow). But this one is upright, has a lid, let’s you throw the leaves and grass together to get some nice heating up and breaking down going on before applying to garden beds as mulch.

And you can store this mulch and basically let it compost until you need it again.

I happen to be the happy owner of about twenty five quarts of rendered pork lard. I threw last year’s lot of hog fat in with Bobby at Okfuskee Farm in order to get to the minimum amount that the slaughterhouse would render. As a result, the package label has Okfuskee Farm on it. No matter – it is all good stuff.

Surprisingly, I haven’t made biscuits in the past. Most of the recipes I found called for shortening, margarine or vegetable oil. I wasn’t sure if lard would bake any differently.

1. Add one half cup of lard to two cups of flour, one tablespoon of sugar, one teaspoon of salt and three teaspoons of baking powder.

2. Mix the lard into the flour with a wire whisk until the dough gets crumbly.

3. Stir in 3/4 cup of milk and stir until the dough starts to stick together. But don’t stir too much!

4. Scoop the dough out onto a floured surface and knead lightly up to ten times.

5. Pat the dough down and roll out the a 1/2 inch thickness.

6. Cut the biscuit rounds with a floured metal measuring cup, an inverted glass or just make them with your hands.

7. Put the dough on an ungreased baking pan or cookie sheet.

8. Bake for ten minutes at 450 degrees.

9. Tell Kristin that they are ready!

A work party in late January helped us remove the roofing from the back addition, which included the old bathroom. After that it was primarily a Kristin and Trace demolition team. Two and half months in – with help from Julia, Kathryn, Joe, Matthew and Ben and Kathleen – we have almost finished with that demolition.

From here it is on to site work, engineering plans, strawbale selection, milling cypress, outlining workshops and lining up volunteers and apprentices all while figuring out how to pay for it all.

So as Danielle and Noel near the completion of their cob house, Kristin and I focus on bringing down the old house. The condition of the house and the relatively stable condition of our finances allow us to pursue some interesting routes.  We have decided to replace the house with straw bale construction, possibly in conjunction with timber framing.  Kristin is researching the timber option, sourcing some local sawmills and tobacco barn reclamation projects.

Our biggest funding obstacle is the financing above and beyond our current savings. Bank financing is NOT an option since we are building without central forced air (heating/cooling), and banks are ONLY concerned with re-sale values not the builder-owners’ values. We are currently reaching out to friends and family for micro-loans, so if you fall into that category please let us know if you are interested!

We had a work party a few weeks ago to begin the dismantling of the house. Our goal is to save as much as possible for reuse, but there is also a ton of crap – six layers of shingles, five layers of flooring, loose fill vermiculite insulation.

After the wrecking day we had our annual Capricorn versus Aquarius party. I’ll just leave this slide show here -

This is all a bit of good and a bit of bad, with it mostly being pretty exciting.  The bad is that our infrastructure is lacking in some key areas, mainly water access and possibly heated living space. For the most part, the people coming out are pretty resilient and not too terribly bothered by much. Which is good, because an upcoming house project will need resilient folks…

Last Winter was our first season in the room and our first time using wood heat.  We learned a lot in the process:

• We cut wood as we needed it instead of stockpiling.  This led to some shortages and some work in the dark as we scrambled for a night’s worth of wood.
• We didn’t have a damper in the stove pipe.  This led to most of the heat going up and out the chimney.  It also meant that we had to feed the fire every three hours.  I guess it was like having a newborn baby but with way more cussing and shivering.
• We didn’t have electricity run, so we didn’t have an overhead fan.  Heat went up and up and out.

So we fixed some things, and we are in a little different place this year.  First, we have a ceiling fan wired up.  It keeps the hot air down at our level and helps with heat distribution.

Second, I put a damper in the stove pipe.  This closes off the stove from the chimney, allowing the wood to burn longer  in the stove.  Since the stove is pretty old, it is not airtight.  Without the damper air is sucked through the openings in the stove, making the fire burn hotter and shorter.

Third, we started cutting and splitting wood when it warmer outside and not needed for burning.

Last night we fired up the stove for the first time this season.  We went through eight pieces of wood from six in the evening until morning, much less than our average last year and with no need to load it after we went to bed.  The fire kept the room very toasty all night long.  It was so warm that I slept on top of my sleeping bag.  Kristin felt is was uncomfortably hot under her covers.  This tells me that we might have figured out the formula to keep warm this year.

It took me an entire day just to replace two sides of chimney flashing and repair the shingles that I had ripped up around it.  All the old flashing was just a pile of rust.  It was held together by layers of decaying silicone caulk and fragments of termite digested wood.  There was also a nice helping of orange spray sealant foam that served no purpose except to develop holes and hold water in those holes.

I had to use extra roofing tar just to fill in some of the brick joints.  I will mortar the rest of the chimney when I get a chance but just wanted to get the thing to stop leaking.

The other side was a horror show of four layers of shingles and a half dozen previous repair attempts.

This repair is anything but pretty but it is sealed and tight.

In new house news, we marked out the lines with our builder Malcolm Duff.

Hopefully the construction will start in a few weeks.