CSA

So it Begins! CSA Newsletter #1

June 7, 2016 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

There is an unreasonable but implacable anxiety, a fear even, as the first CSA boxes and first farmers’ markets draw nearer.

Spring is giving way to Summer, and the nature of our lives and work changes with it – suddenly, it will matter what day of the week it is, what day tomorrow is, and we’re back into the grid of weeks and cyclical responsibilities, after months of only paying attention to what the weather will be and what needs to be taken care of.

The transition this year was marked with oh-so-apt weather – yesterday, two air masses danced to and fro overhead, bringing alternating sunny heat and drenching rain and hail, over and over throughout the entire day.

Deluge, then bright sun that brought curtains of steam up from the field … then minutes later, the cycle ran again. It was actually lovely to work in, stimulating and beautiful – and the plants couldn’t have been happier with it.

(The timing was perfect; we’d just finished trellising up our hundreds of sensitive, vulnerable tomato plants – so the stormy winds, soaking rain, and scattered hailstones couldn’t drive them down into the dirt. They stood proud and happy after the storms passed among the steaming puddles.)

The past week has been gentle on us – lots of work, but good help – B & Nora are still with us, several good friends from the Cities came out repeatedly to help, and Shareholder Tara brought her organized mind and willingness to work to bear on projects ranging from weeding to tons of tomato trellising – as well as with today’s harvest!

Speaking of bears, there’s been plenty of them afoot in the ‘hood. I chased off two or three big ones with skyward shotgun blasts, and those two haven’t returned. Young Master Bear, the fridge raider, hasn’t been spotted on our land, but he’s repeatedly raided Neighbor Marcia’s bird feeders, coming at odd daylight hours to get them before she can put them away for the night. There are frogs and birds everywhere, but hardly a mosquito to be found – I think I can dare to hope now that it’s really going to be a mild year for biting bugs (although now that I typed it, we’ll see what happens).

The freeze-damaged plants survived, but they’re small – and most of the broccoli and cauliflower has already started forming teeny tiny heads, as a result of the stress of being frozen, they go into full on survival mode, and work to ensure they can produce some seed no matter what – and they don’t dare spend time getting big before they do it. Alas! But the collards, kale, and cabbage are making good comebacks, and we’ll be planting late-season crops of the broccoli and cauliflowers shortly, so barring another surprise from nature, we should all have some to enjoy this season regardless!

The field is all filled up now – it’s amazing how quickly it went from a vast blank canvas to an increasingly lush composition, glowing in hundreds of subtle shades of green. Now it’s time to start emptying it back out again, and delivering it to ya’ll, one box at a time.

the view I had for days, manually laying out the plastic mulch for the tomatoes

CSA BOX #1

Some general storage info – twist/fold plastic bags to keep things from desiccating. Use the crisper drawer in your fridge – it maintains humidity better than the rest of the fridge. Actually, let’s save me some typing- here’s a link to some good info on storage.

Spring Salad Mix – Red Ruby lettuce, Waltman’s green lettuce, pea tips, arugula, baby kale, green & red mizuna (red is a bit spicy). If you’re like me, dig in as it comes – if you prefer smaller and neater bites, chop it up just before eating.
Orange Marmalade – When we were down south this winter WWOOFing on other farms, we spotted an ad on Craiglist for free oranges – a guy had a tree in his yard that produced super abundantly, but he was unable to harvest them – so we went over armed with several empty boxes, climbed up, and got to work transforming his burden into dozens of jars of preserves to bring North to share. (Please return the jar when it’s all gone!)

Radishes – Tasty zingballs in your salad, whole or sliced. If you’re not a fan of that radish zing, you can roast them to create a mild side dish, with a flavor similar to roasted rutabaga or turnips – perhaps you’ll find that roasted radishes are the vegetable that’s missing from your life!
Radish Greens – Don’t try to eat them raw: that’s gross (unless you blend them into pesto). Don’t be intimidated by the size of the bag – you’re going to cook these down, like veggie shrinky-dinks. Being a good CSA member means learning to cook greens and love it: fact. We didn’t eat many cooked greens before we started the farm, but they’re now a large part of our diet and it’s awesome. They hold sauces and flavors really well, taste great, and are as nutritious than the roots they’re plucked from. Ways we’ve enjoyed them: chopped up with beans, in soup, sauteed in butter or bacon fat, with soy sauce, garlic … or green onions! We usually sautee them only lightly to maintain more of the green nature, especially since they’re not that tough. (We washed and spun them for you, but you might want to rinse them one more time because these leaves tend to hold onto grit better than most.) Here are some idears to consider.

Green Onions – The green tops are milder, good to use fresh or add at the very end of cooking. Good in salad dressing, on eggs, or as garnish on a baked potato. The white part has a stronger onion flavor, and can be used anywhere you’d use regular onion.
Oregano – We threw a couple of sprigs in – use it to flavor a salad dressing or on eggs …
Free range eggs (large shares only) – Our flock spends most of every day foraging in the woods, begging for scraps, jostling with Widget for dominance in the animal pecking order, and learning to jump up and eat from our hands. They’ve got it pretty good, and we love their antics – we don’t have a TV, but we have plenty of entertainment watching the Chicken Show go down all around us.

Oh, and that pre-season dread I mentioned at the beginning? It’s gone, replaced by a mix of excitement, pride, satisfaction, and even awe – it’s ON, we’re doing it, and it’s beautiful.

Hell. Yeah.

It’s gonna be a great year.

Widget knew I was harvesting from the pea plants, and begged for me to find and provide the baby peasWidget knew I was harvesting from the pea plants, and begged for me to find and provide the baby peas — Widget knew I was harvesting from the pea plants, and begged for me to find and provide the baby peas. She loves them.

CSA

Bear Necessities – another pre-season CSA Newsletter

May 25, 2016 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

Overall, things are going great on the farm. We’ve had WWOOFers (B, Nora, and now Megg) helping since early on, which has really helped us keep on top of the weeding and mulching and planting and fencing and such.

The field looks great, the high tunnel hasn’t blown away, and your farmers are feeling much less stress than we were last year at this time.

Up until yesterday, it had not rained here for weeks – but we’ve been running the drip irrigation daily, and being glad that the weeds and mosquitoes have been dry too. But yesterday, enough was enough and the heavens finally opened up and gave us a much-needed inch of glorious rain. Without coordination, all 5 of us ran outside to bask in the deluge … as good as it felt for us, I have to imagine the crops were just about in heaven.

The Big Freeze:

May 15th is officially the Last Frost Date for our zone – in theory, we can expect that it’s safe for plants to be outdoors overnight past then. It’s just a rule of thumb (we had frosts past that date last year), but the weather took it seriously this year – the lows ever since then have approached a balmy 60 degrees … but on the night of the 14th, we were thrown a wicked curveball. Not a frost – a full-on freeze – and one that was not predicted by the weather forecasts we relied upon. It got below 25 that night – and stayed there, for hours.

The budding oaks were ravaged, the neighbors greening vineyard and Christmas tree farm were rendered brown-tipped and sad, our asparagus drooped over limply, plants inside greenhouses were nipped even under cover, our grapes and raspberry plants lost their leaves … but the worst of it, for us, was the impact on our cool weather plants we’d lovingly nurtured all spring from seeds. After weeks of shuttling them into our home at night when they were young, keeping them toasty on the new rocket mass heater, carefully hardening them to sunlight and wind, we had transplanted them out into the field, and tucked them all in with a blanket of hay mulch. Hundreds of feet of plants that would have been fine with a little frost – but which were not able to withstand a true freeze.

The devastation was depressing to behold: row after row of colorless limp leaves, their very cells exploded by the freezing water within. The dead included kohlrabi, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and even the hardy arugula and kale plants.

Not all was lost – for some reason, the peas and lettuce (which I thought would be less hardy than the kale and arugula) were mostly just fine – and even among the worst of it, life and hope spring eternal – a good number of the plants that initially looked to be utterly lost unfurled brave, tiny green leaves from their centers that over the following days, the robust root systems working to keep the system alive and receiving the power of sunshine.

We won’t have the abundance of spring crops we’d hoped for, but it’s gonna be alright. Que sera, sera!

After the freeze, Spring set in for real – swimming in the Saint Croix, laundry on the line, frog choruses and darting dragonflies, and the end of wood smoke scents.

Under Siege!

Up here, the coming of Spring also means the coming of bears – and this year has been just beartastic. The Neighbors reported a lot of sightings and raids on their birdfeeders, but we only caught a few glimpses … until this week. A young male, just kicked out by his mom, has been bumbling around trying to figure out how to survive in our neighborhood. He finally got the nerve up to start raiding us at night, and my sympathy for him is wearing thin …

The first raid didn’t work out very well for young Mr. Bear – he tried to get into the composting outhouse, got into a big gross barrel that was on its way to the humanure pile, dined on used fryer oil from a 55 gallon drum he knocked over, and chewed open a brand new big jug of unscented laundry detergent. After this trifecta, I know that the answer was that yes, indeed, bears do shit in the woods. I suspect he was doing plenty of that the next day …

We didn’t see any sign of him during the immediate aftermath of his first foray into our turf, but we still had our bear encounter quota met the next day – Kristin and WWOOFer Megg were out doing dishes when all ten pounds of Widget came hurtling past them barking ferociously – drawing their attention to the big momma bear and her cub that had just strolled into the driveway. The gals screamed “BEARS!” and then screamed at Widget to come back, I ran out the door and bellowed like the hugest most badass beast I could feign, mama bear took off into the woods – but the baby climbed a tree on the edge of the driveway. Fortunately, Widget came back to us, and mama bear ordered the baby down the tree and out of our property.

“And don’t come back!”

The next night, Mr. Bear Junior came sneaking back while were were all celebrating at the Neighbors’ … and this time, he did much better for himself. We had friends from the Cities visiting, and they’d brought a bunch of bacon and cheese to share – and left it in our “fridge” – the buried chest freezer we use to keep our food cool. Unfortunately, the bacon was wrapped loosely in paper – and the fridge is ventilated, allowing delicious smells to waft to the nostrils of munchies-stricken bears.

Mr. Bear could not refuse the invite … and he destroyed our fridge, ransacked the contents, leveled our rocket stove grill to get to the meat drippings within, tore down and chomped our birdfeeder, and dragged a cooler into the woods and mauled it.

We heard him tear off into the woods when we returned home to the remnants of his party – and later, he came back and was spotted leaning against a tree about 15 feet from the trailer in the middle of the night, trying to look innocent and nonchalant.

No. We chased him off … but we know he’ll be back.

And I’ll be waiting for Mr. Bear with Mr. Shotgun – not to shoot him, but to scare the holy hell out of him with the loudest sound we have the capability to make …. hopefully that will be enough to send him foraging for less frightening food sources.

(The destruction of the rocket grill and the fridge has a silver lining, really – both had issues that begged for redesign upgrades, but since they functioned well enough, these rebuilds never attained priority, and they just kept getting used as they were … now, we’ll rebuild them better! Future Us will thank Young Master Bear, even though Current Us would rather kick him in the butt.)

Mr. Bear's scat in the woods near the cooler — Young Master Bear’s scat in the woods near the ransacked cooler

Today is our friend Megg’s last day on the farm – we actually met her while we were all WWOOFing down in Mississippi two winters ago, and told her to visit us sometime during her Full-time Traveling – and so she did!

In addition to all kinds of help with the usual farm work, she tapped into her past as a signmaker for Trader Joe’s, and helped us make some sweet signs for the farmer’s market with her freakishly good lettering.

the boards are sawed up chunks of a huge blackboard that we scored for free off of Craigslist) — the boards are sawed up chunks of a huge blackboard that we scored for free off of Craigslist

… as for everything else we’ve been up to, I’ll let the pictures do their thousand words thing:

look closely - the Swiss chard has colorful roots, too! — look closely – the Swiss chard has colorful roots, too!

the front line on the War on Quack Grass - this edge of the field is where it's the thickest - we tilled it when it was dry, then mulched over the border with cardboard and woodchips. You don't understand how satisfying this is to me .... — the front line on the War on Quack Grass – this edge of the field is where it’s the thickest – we tilled it when it was dry, then mulched over the border with cardboard and woodchips. You don’t understand how satisfying this is to us ….

the propane flame weeder also serves as a wonderful hole-maker for the plastic mulch

surprise shiitakes - they wre discovered just in time to make for a great breakfast, the morning of the bacon bear — surprise shiitakes – these and a few others were discovered just in time to make for a great breakfast, the morning of the bacon bear

Deb & Nora transplanting cauliflower & broccoli — Deb & Nora planting beans

putting plants out to freeze to death later :P

CSA, farming, homestead

the Way to May – CSA Pre-Season Newsletter

May 9, 2016 QueSehraFarm 3 Comments

Holy wow, it’s already well into May! Signs of the season surround us, reminding us just how lively this landscape is … greenery is bursting forth from every tree, every patch of earth.

Our apple and pear trees are blooming, as are the trillium, violets, and wild plum trees. The perennials are coming up – chives, rhubarb, raspberry, mint, lemon balm … and we ate our first fresh asparagus of the season last week.

after a full day working in the 90 degree sunshine, a dip in the Saint Croix was refreshingly perfectly chilly

Throughout the nights, mystery critters crunch through the undergrowth or scramble across our trailer, coyotes caterwaul in chorus, barred owls demand to know “who cooks for you?“, and once in a while a fox or civet makes a freaky womanlike scream. My favorite night sound is the abundant whip-poor-wills – nocturnal bug-eating birds that I only hear here.

The black bears are out and about, scavenging for treats – a young male has been knocking over Neighbor Marcia’s birdfeeders, and the momma bear and her three cubs from last year were spotted in the woods behind us – the cubs are huge now, in their second year, and about ready to set out on their own.

As always, Spring has been an incredibly busy time, as we get everything ready for the season. My hands are stained black with soil, and feature a wound on each palm, from ignoring Kristin’s sage advice and pounding in a row of t-posts without gloves … which led to blisters that didn’t hold up well to the continued post-pounding I subjected them to.

Starting seeds, nurturing baby plants, preparing the field, keeping ourselves and the tender plants alive and warm through the chilly nights … it’s an intense time of the year, filled with all the opportunities for hope and fear that you could want!

The biggest change this year is the High Tunnel greenhouse we completed at the end of last autumn, thanks to a USDA grant.

It’s a powerful and complex 72×30′ tool that we’re learning to use. After the winter, we returned to find the ground inside it totally green with grass and weeds – a beautiful lively space to hang out in, while everything outside was barren and brown! But soon enough we had to till the green under to prepare the soil for planting.

We then laid out irrigation throughout – since no rain falls inside, all the plants’ water needs must be delivered by us. There are soaker hoses that are gravity-fed by our rainwater collection tanks up on the hill, and drip irrigation lines in each row, fed by the well. We’re also adding an experimental rainwater collection system on one edge … which should be able to collect over 600 gallons of water from a 1″ rainfall.

We primarily plan to grow hot weather crops inside, but to get things started while nights were still going below freezing we planted some salad mix and peas. They survived the cold nights just fine – but now the challenge is to keep them from overheating during the sunny days, when temperatures in the high tunnel can easily reach triple digits if we aren’t careful. To ventilate the high tunnel, we roll up the 70-foot long side panels, permitting a cross-breeze to move through. This works pretty well, however, if it’s not merely breezy but windy (basically anything over 10mph), then we have to close at least one side up to prevent damage to the structure. It’s been a learning experience trying to balance wind minimization with heat regulation – and it will get even more interesting when the hot, sunny days of summer are upon us. (We plan to add additional ventilation in the peaks on both sides to help move hot air out even when there is no breeze.)

Nora & B help build a second chicken coop to house the 14 free craigslist hens we added to the flock in April

We’ve been very fortunate to have plenty of help this Spring. It would be a ridiculously long blog post if I tried to list it all, but I’ll try to hit some highlights …

Ace helping with some shovel work .. actually he just wants us to throw that "stick" for him — Ace helping with some shovel work .. actually he just wants us to throw that “stick” for him

Kristin’s dad Patriarch Jim Sehr has been helping us out a ton with various construction and repair projects – he added a service door to the high tunnel for far easier access, engineered the rainwater collection on there, got the riding mower working, and plumbed in our new and improved well pressure tank. And Matriarch Deb Sehr came out to cut and plant potatoes – and even do some dishes so we can stay on top of the field and construction projects.

Neighbors Dave & Marcia kept our flock of hens happy throughout the winter, provided us with additional firewood to fuel both the greenhouse heater and the new WWOOFer cabin (more on that a bit), lent us gopher traps, tools, and best of all, their tractor!

turning the pile of old horse manure with Neighbor Dave's tractor — turning the pile of old horse manure with Neighbor Dave’s tractor

Plus, when I was despondent thinking I’d killed our well pump (it turned out to just be a flipped breaker in the generator), Marcia brought over rhubarb custard dessert and ice cream; I literally cannot imagine better neighbors to have.

Our friends from the Cities have come out to work with us (thanks Tyler, Amy, Steffan, & Eugene!) , and we’ve had lots of help from B & Nora – the WWOOFer/musician couple that worked here throughout the end of last season, and then returned early this spring. We got a free ice fishing shack off of Craigslist – insulated and complete with a little wood stove.

This turned out to be a perfect solution for them to sleep in throughout April – they helped us build it, and then made it their home – although they’d been prepared to just rough it under huge piles of blankets, the heated, insulated Fish House worked out much more pleasantly. Oh, and their Maine Coon cat, “Bucket,” is working with us too – keeping the vole population down.

The field still looks pretty empty, but the first wave of food is taking root out there – potatoes, peas, onions, radishes, turnips, and various salad greens have begun to stir, stretch, yawn, and emerge into the sunshine. And of course, there are many hundreds of plants growing in the greenhouse, awaiting suitable weather to be transplanted out.

The eternal battle with the evil quackgrass is back in full swing – we till or broadfork the soil of each row before planting, and then pull out as much of the tenacious, ropey, unkillable rhizomes as possible.

tilling in wood ash from the woodstove, in advance of planting beets (which appreciate the lowered ph)

We’ll be using thick layers of mulch to slow down what doesn’t get pulled (it regrows from every tiny piece of root left behind) … it’s not a war that we ever really win, but we hold it at bay enough to get our crops for the year.

We give it the good fight and it reminds us that our farming here is not about efficiency … or even being reasonable.

Like all of life, it’s absurd and irrational – and we love it.

nothing beats sharing a 110 degree soak after a long work day — nothing beats a 110 degree soak after a long work day

Thanks for joining us in the adventure!

I walked away from the ladder to get hardware to hang the birdfeeder - within a minute these vultures had swooped in — I walked away from the ladder to get hardware to hang the birdfeeder – within a minute these vultures had swooped in

a frustrated Widget tries to chew into the tree where the red squirrel holes up

Gabe tending the rocket mass heater fire in the greenhouse by lantern light

older hends lay less often - but they lay off-the-scale huge eggs! — older hens lay less often – but they lay off-the-scale huge eggs!

CSA, farming

Quest for Fire: A Rocket Mass Heater for the Greenhouse

April 20, 2016 QueSehraFarm 22 Comments

Being off grid (without utility hookups to water, gas, and electricity) is challenging even just for a dwelling – but even more so for a farm, especially in this climate. In the spring, we have to start our plants indoors, so they will be developed enough to produce before it gets too hot for the cool weather plants in summer, and before the killing frosts of fall take out the heat lovers. They all need to be kept warm day and night, especially when germinating from seeds – but they also need to be under good bright sunlight. The sunlight is great in the greenhouse, which also gets plenty warm most days if it’s not totally cloudy – but greenhouses lose heat quickly after sundown. We solved for this in previous years by nightly driving all the baby plants up to the trailer, where they slept toastily on floor-to-ceiling shelving next to the wood stove.

plus trays on the front passenger seat and foot well.

Then every morning just after dawn, we drove them all back down to the greenhouse for their daily sunshine. We worked out a good two-person method to get it done as efficiently as possible, but it was a time-consuming process – and we couldn’t have the lights on near the plants when they were inside (or they’d get leggy trying to get fed by the artificial lighting). Yeah, it worked … but we needed to come up with something better.

Heating the greenhouse at night was the obvious solution, but it seemed impossible – the plastic covering lost heat so quickly that it would cost us a fortune in propane … and we’d always be fearful that the tank was going to run out in the night, leaving all our crops to freeze to death. And of course our little solar power system was not capable of generating enough electric heat (which is inherently inefficient) to do the job. A wood stove like the one we use in the trailer would require repeated fueling throughout the night, and again, the heat would mostly be going to the roof and then out through the plastic film.

Research led us toward a possible solution – “rocket mass heaters,” which use small amounts of wood burned efficiently at high temperatures to heat up a thermal mass, which then slowly radiates the heat outward for many hours after the fire has gone out.

It would still be a challenge to heat the whole greenhouse with this method unless we built a prohibitively large heater, however. Hmmm.

Well, we’d already been experimenting with a technique that Elliot Coleman promotes, using row cover fabric to create a greenhouse-within-a-greenhouse – just putting the plants on the ground and covering them inside a low tunnel of fabric kept them warmer than the surrounding air, thanks to the day’s heat in the soil. That only got us a few degrees, but it was a crucial difference when temps might be just barely dipping below freezing.

What if we did the same thing atop a thermal mass? It seemed like a winning idea – so we decided to build a heated bench sized for seed trays, and put a cover over them at night to hold heat in.

For a year, we researched and gathered materials for the build – scavenged from garbage and the Free section of Craigslist; two trailer loads of clay from a retired sculptor, stove pipe of various diameters, a 55 gallon drum, river rocks from the neighbor’s pile they’d unearthed when building their house, cement board, and bricks – the best score of all was a huge free load of white “insulative firebricks,” which withstand high heat without heating up much themselves – ideal for our purposes.

Last fall, after the killing frost had come and the 2015 CSA was over, we got to work, starting to test combustion chamber designs the day after our CSA potluck.

There was a long period of trying out different brick layouts – the proportions of the combustion chamber are crucial to get right – for the rest of the fall, “CSA” ceased to mean “Community Supported Agriculture,” and became ‘Cross Sectional Area” – the entire system had to maintain the same CSA throughout the system, from fuel feed to exhaust, from rectangular tunnels to round pipes. I won’t bore you with all of the proportional rules that had to be followed, but know there was a lot of subtle and annoying math at this stage.

an early mockup, seeing how tall the system would be - and how close we could put it to the curving north all of the greenhouse. (The original plan was for a 8" pipe system, although we switch to a 6" design before building) — an early mockup, seeing how tall the system would be – and how close we could put it to the curving north all of the greenhouse. (The original plan was for a 8″ pipe system, although we switched to a 6″ design before building)

creating a lid for a "pocket rocket" - a way to create intense fire that would burn the paint off the 55-gallon drum — creating a lid for a “pocket rocket” – a way to create intense fire that would burn the paint off the 55-gallon drum

burning the paint off of the 55 gallon drum - so it wouldn't create toxic fumes in the greenhouse later — burning the paint off of the 55 gallon drum – so it wouldn’t create toxic fumes in the greenhouse later

early layout with the larger pipes - determining how many rocks we'd want, how wide it should be for the seed trays, and how deep we'd want to make it, — early layout with the larger pipes – determining how many rocks we’d want, how wide it should be for the seed trays, and how deep we’d want to make it,

The WWOOFers joked about me playing with my blocks - I had bricks in the trailer that I'd use to try out different configurations for the heat riser ... on edge? flat? how much space inside? It was a lot more complex than I'd thought it would be ... — The WWOOFers joked about me playing with my blocks – I had bricks in the trailer that I’d use to try out different configurations for the heat riser … on edge? flat? how much space inside? It was a lot more complex than I’d thought it would be …

even in bed it was rocket heater worktime

Many variations were tried out and discarded in the design process. The red bricks are used in the fuel feed for their durability, while the softer insulative bricks were used throughout the rest of the combustion system.

determining bench dimensions. (for awhile we thought we'd use foam insulation but wound up not doing so) — determining bench dimensions. (for awhile we thought we’d use foam insulation but wound up not doing so)

creating the subsurface foundation for the combustion chamber - the air spaces in the bricks add insulation to keep heat where it's wanted - not absorbing into the ground — creating the subsurface foundation for the combustion chamber – the air spaces in the bricks add insulation to keep heat where it’s wanted – not absorbing into the ground

laying the base layer, with pits for ash cleanouts. White bricks insulate against heat loss, keeping temperatures high for the heat riser, where even the smoke will burn up

constant vigilance was required to ensure that proper dimensions were maintained in all directions

had to learn how to score and split bricks with a chisel to make some of the puzzle fit together

exhaust manifold - where falling gases inside the barrel are channeled into the bench exhaust pipe run — exhaust manifold – where falling gases inside the barrel are channeled into the bench pipe run

although the heat riser was made of insulative fire brick, I realized it would be even better with more insulation - so I cut apart an old water heater and added it - later filling the space between it and the riser with perlite insulation mixed with clay slip. — although the heat riser was made of insulative fire brick, I realized it would be even better with more insulation – so I cut apart an old water heater and added it – later filling the space between it and the riser with perlite insulation mixed with clay slip.

heat riser insulation finished and capped off with clay

trench for thermal mass foundation/insulation layer

insulative firebricks and perlite to separate the thermal mass from the infinite heat sink of the earth

Forms for the thermal mass (they wound up bowing outward some between the internal supports, but not too badly and I like the organic wavy lines that resulted)

And then winter came, and we hit the road, leaving the wet clay of the combustion chamber to slowly dry out over the wintertime.

When we returned in March, we got to work on the thermal mass bench … which turned out to be a lot more work than we’d bargained for.

laying out the exhaust ducting, and taping all the joints.

Kristin did all the mixing. ALL of it. We mixed 2 parts sand for every 1 part of clay. We went through at least a full yard of sand (two trailer loads) and almost all of the free clay we'd scored. It took us several solid days to get it all mixed and added to the bench ... Kristin's feet and my hands looked like they'd been to war by the end. — Kristin did all the mixing. ALL of it. We mixed 2 parts sand for every 1 part of clay. We went through at least a full yard of sand (two trailer loads) and almost all of the free clay we’d scored. It took us several solid days to get it all mixed and added to the bench … Kristin’s feet and my hands looked like they’d been to war by the end.

Exhaust duct was coated in clay slip for maximum heat transference. We tried to use as much river rock as we could to save on clay and sand, but it still took an incredible amount to fill the bench (23' long, 14" high, and 24" wide - wider where the forms bowed out) — Exhaust duct was coated in clay slip for maximum heat transference. We tried to use as much river rock as we could to save on clay and sand, but it still took an incredible amount to fill the bench (23′ long, 14″ high, and 24″ wide – wider where the forms bowed out)

first test fire! It went .. OK. We decided to wait until we had more completed before really testing her out.

feeling the heat at the top of the riser

slowly filling the forms with clay/sand mix and rocks. Kristin down at her mixing station.

ha ... so it got too hot for pants in the sunny greenhouse — ha … so it got too hot for pants in the sunny greenhouse

Music was a required tool to help maintain spirits during the tedious mixing process.

Kristin developed a technique of slicing off slabs of clay and spreading them out on the sand, then topping that with more sand, before starting to stomp and twist.

Finally getting to the top layer! The last foot or so seemed to take forever to fill in. (This is still sand/clay mix - but some of the clay was a white instead of red.) — Finally getting to the top layer! The last foot or so seemed to take forever to fill in. (This is still sand/clay mix – but some of the clay was a white instead of red.)

end of the bench before the exit to the chimney - was insulated with perlite/clay mix end cap — end of the bench before the exit to the chimney – was insulated with perlite/clay mix end cap

Bench completed!! Now to start drying out several tons of wet clay ... — Bench almost completed .. just had to let it set up before removing thos internal braces, and filling in the gaps they left behind. Then it was time to start drying out several tons of wet clay …

Chimney V1 - uninsulated and rather short. Initial burns couldnt even drive smoke up the pipe - it just pooped out onto the ground through the open cleanout hole at the bottom, because all the heat had ben leached out by the wet, cold clay bench. — Chimney V1 – uninsulated and rather short. Initial burns couldnt even drive smoke up the pipe – it just pooped out onto the ground through the open cleanout hole at the bottom, because all the heat had ben leached out by the wet, cold clay bench.

added some thermal mass to the barrel to limit amount of heat lost to radiation off the metal. Using the heat at the top for a wood drying rack. Artichokes enjoying the radiant heat.

Chimney V2 - taller. (I don.t — Chimney V2 – taller. (There doesn’t seem to be a photo of Chimney V3 aka “Paul Baxter” – with insulation and a wind cap courtesy of a nameless donor.)

Booster fire! This proved crucial during the bench-drying phase for a fast drafting system with hot, oxygen rich flame - the little fire would be pulled up the chimnet, creating suction on the rest of the system, pulling air through the fire in the combustion chamber. (Now that it is dried out, we only use this to start the system up, to avoid cold air plugging up the system) — Booster fire! This proved crucial during the bench-drying phase for a fast drafting system with hot, oxygen rich flame – the little fire would be pulled up the chimney, creating suction on the rest of the system, pulling air through the fire in the combustion chamber. (Now that it is dried out, we only use this to start the system up, avoiding a cold air plug)

the wickets that support the row cover fabric are visible here (yard sign posts we scavenged)

Before the chimney was upgraded further and before the thermal mass was fully dry – it was already working! Temperatures on the plant try bench stayed over 20 degrees warmer than outside, night after night – with no need to tend the fire after bedtime, and zero risk of the heat going out in the night – you can’t stop a warm giant rock from radiating! Plus it was warming the soil itself, and not just the air around the plants – great for happy, healthy root development.

toasting bread for an experiment in making kvass

reheating and crisping leftover pizza while firing the mass for the night

added a blast furnace window to the aluminum pot I use as a lid (saved from a now demolished Ford assembly plant)

It’s been a success. In recent nights just below 40 degrees, it kept the hot weather plants happily over 60 all night – maintaining the same 20+ degree heat increase seen at lower temps. It feels great to have it finally done, and really working wonderfully for our needs. It was a lot of work, but it was absolutely worth it. Plus, now we have experience in mass heater construction, so a mass heater in a future home is definitely a possibility …

WWOOFing

Winter WWOOFing 2016

March 4, 2016 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

In late November, we tucked the Farm in for the season, ready for its sleepy cover crop of snow, and headed southward toward our planned route of other organic farms, where we would live and work through the WWOOF-USA program.

It was a good plan, a great route – but as we all know, what will be will be – and it’s rarely just what we had in mind. As it turned out, we first had to endure some loss this Winter. First, sweet mighty Cleo lost the use of her legs, after 15 years of the finest companionship a dog has ever provided man.

We kept her comfortable and happy til the very end, let her sleep in the bed with us, rolled her to her favorite places in a padded wagon, gave her all the love and treats that she wanted, and said our goodbyes at my sister’s house in Illinois.

Immediately afterward, my Mom’s health began to slide, as the cancer she’d kept at bay for a decade came back to roost. We turned back North, cancelled our plans to return to Yokna Bottoms Farm in Mississippi, and spent the month of December in my Minnesotan childhood home helping prepare the house for sale and my mom for a move into an assisted living facility.

By January, things had stabilized enough that we packed up the trailer again and hit the road for Texas – now with my mom’s dog Ace joining our family entourage. It would be just another month before I had to come back North …

Habitable Spaces (Kingsbury, Texas)

We’d spent almost the entire winter last year at this unique artists’ residency, and it was wonderful to return to see our human and animal friends, all that’s changed and endured.

Scout modeling an imported Que Sehra pumpkin

adopted feral Egyptian Geese (which are technically not geese, or ducks - but "shelducks." in the space between the two — adopted feral Egyptian Geese (which are technically not geese, or ducks – but “shelducks.” in the space between the two

the simple rocket stove we built last year, keeping water boiling for feather plucking

chewing up, spitting, lumping , and drying out some dried, rehyrdrated, limed Que Sehra corn ... — chewing up, spitting, lumping , and drying out some dried, rehyrdrated, limed Que Sehra corn …

loved eating from the earth oven we built last winter

Biodiverse Food Forest HomeGreen Permaculture Center (Rockport, Texas)

Their goals here are as lofty as their name is long – to transform a sandy, neglected, abused little parcel of land into a lush symbiotic edible ecosystem. Meredith and her mom are just getting things cleaned up and starting to grow – we helped them out wherever we could, and enjoyed the proximity of the ocean, in between.

found a lot of fossilized wood in our down time

fossilized poop! for real. AKA a "coprolite" - I had to lick it to convince Kristin it wasn't just a sun-dried poop of recent vintage. Even then, she was skeptical ... — fossilized poop! for real. AKA a “coprolite” – I had to lick it to convince Kristin it wasn’t just a sun-dried poop of recent vintage. Even then, she was skeptical …

our MN friend Lizzy was visiting nearby Corpus Christi, and showed us a great beach

a rooster checking out the new roost / laying boxes we built

Loss Interlude

Immediately after leaving Rockport, I got a call from my sister – my Mom was fading fast. I got on a northbound plane immediately, while Kristin and the dogs drove West toward our final host farm in New Mexico.

After a powerful and surprisingly positive week helping my mother make the transition into the great unknown, I flew back to rejoin them with a refreshed appreciation for life.

Last Word Ranch (Los Cerrillos, NM)

If the native soil in coastal Texas had been poor or challenging, the soil here in the high-altitude desert was barren and blasted. Irradiated by the sun and scattered by the howling winds, very little plant life grew – outside of the carefully nurtured gardens and the high tunnel packed with the aquaponics symbiotic system they’d just started up – fish living in water filtered by edible plants that used the fish waste as nutrients, a Rube Goldberg system as interconnected and unlikely as all of Life.

Kristin gluing together scraps of tarp to line the new raised grow bed that Kristin and Dee built before I got there

otherWWOOFer Ali, Dee Word (89 years old & always working harder than anyone), and Gabe finishing up the filling of the new raised grow bed

Jedi, Dee's sidekick — Jedi, Dee’s sidekick

refurbishing solar thermal panels with Dee - these use copper piping and fins to heat fluid as it flows through — refurbishing solar thermal panels with Dee – these use copper piping and fins to heat fluid as it flows through

Kristin took the reigns of the farm Instagram account and started making wonderful collages like this ... — Kristin took the reigns of the farm Instagram account and started making wonderful collages like this …

the local Pinion Pines had been ravaged by boring beetles - which resulted in an abundance of fragrant resin globs all over the place, just waiting to be collected and turned into incense ... — the local Pinion Pines had been ravaged by boring beetles – which resulted in an abundance of fragrant resin globs all over the place, just waiting to be collected and turned into incense …

one of several loaves of sourdough that Kristin made

sun & wind blasted - and loving it — sun & wind blasted – and loving it

gunshot gravestone in the old Los Cerrillos cemetary

Dee drilling holes through the trailer bed. If I'm half as active at half his age, I'll be doing good I reckon ... — Dee drilling holes through the trailer bed. If I’m half as active at half his age, I’ll be doing good I reckon …

took an afternoon to see Santa Fe - wound up climbing a mountain in a snow storm. — took an afternoon to see Santa Fe – wound up climbing a mountain in a snow storm.

Farmer Gene tends the Barrelponics system

hard to tell from the pic, but this was the biggest piece of petrified wood I've ever found — hard to tell from the pic, but this was the biggest piece of petrified wood I’ve ever found

Looking Ahead

Although the loss of Cleo and my mom made this one of the emotionally coldest winters in the personal record books, it was not a bad winter. We shed so many tears, but death is an inevitable part of living – and life is a wonderful thing indeed. We met lovely people, reconnected with friends, bonded with family, learned, and laughed – and we are coming into Spring ready to keep on growing; forward, upward, and ahead.

Thank you all, again, for being part of this journey.

Love,

Gabe, Kristin, Widget, and Ace

Que Sehra Farm