Persimmon Glen - Journal

Thursday

18Dec2008

First Things First

Thursday, December 18, 2008

I had my land and the house was sold, so the next thing to do is to actually move. I had two sheds in my back yard which weren't part of the house sale. I had plans for them. Getting someone to move them 27 miles away was a trick, but I finally managed to get that done too.

One shed is 12 ft by 24 ft (288 sq ft). That's the one I planned on living in. The other is 10 x 16, my storage shed.

Since I had a pretty good size house that I had lived in for 10 years I had accumulated quite a bit of stuff. I confess, I am quite an accumulator of 'stuff'. I love yard sales, flea markets and dollar stores.

The first thing to do is get rid of most of it, so a huge yard sale was in order. The hardest part was sorting through absolutely everything I owned and deciding what to keep. My new home was gonna be a little under 300 sq ft, so that doesn't leave room for much.

The best part is that it felt really freeing. When you're totally set on simplifying, it's amazing what you can do without. My burden was getting lighter by the moment!

It amazed me that it still took one 24 ft truck and three strong sons fifteen hours to get me moved. I still had an amazing amount of 'stuff' that I couldn't live without!

After everything was moved and everyone had gone, I was left with a room full of furniture and boxes piled up so high I could hardly move. No problem, it was gonna rain for two solid days, and I figured that would give me plenty of time to get my house in order and start my new life.

So here I am, no running water, no flush toilet, no electricity. I'm a tough gal, I can do it, I was thinking. After all, I love to camp, and my whole life my mother was a huge proponent of getting back to basics, so I learned plenty about surviving the old-timey way. I had a natural affinity for cooking outdoors, baking my own bread, using herbs for medicine and making do with what you had...

By myself, out in the woods alone, with no electricity makes for a quietness that is astounding. There are so many noises in a home that you really don't notice until they're gone.

The hum of the refrigerator, clocks ticking, computers running, the washing machine, the dishwasher. Outside there are always cars going by, people talking, dogs barking. I always had either the television or some music playing and those were gone.

The silence was deafening.

My cell phone didn't even work out here. Too close to the mountains, too far out in the woods. I was completely cut off. No computer to connect with anyone, no television to find out what was going on in the world.

No lights either. Boy, is it ever dark in the woods at night, and there are an amazing number of noises going on at night in the country.

Hmm, am I really as tough as I thought I was?

[Roxy ] |

1 Comment |

Saturday

20Dec2008

Nuts and Bolts

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Sometimes, what one person thinks of as simplicity can be a nightmare for others.

I learned that when talking to friends and family about how I was going to deal with having no running water, no flush toilet and no electricity.

To me, it was simple. To others, it was a "no-way could I do that" situation.

I guess it comes down to how much you want something.

You see, I had done a lot of research on living in tiny houses, human waste composting, rainwater collection, reusing grey water and living 'off the grid' and I knew that these were things I wanted to do.

I don't have the tremendous amount of money that some people put in to their sustainable lifestyles, but I've spent my life learning to make do with what I had. I've always believed that neccesity is the mother of invention, and boy howdy, can I invent when necessary!

One of the best inventions I've seen is a toilet seat that fits on a bucket called a Luggable Loo. Yep, I could make a wooden toilet, and will in the future, but why bother when I could pick a seat up for ten bucks? I especially like the portability because I still don't have a designated bathroom in my house. It's wherever I decide its gonna be until further notice.

If you don't know anything about composting human waste I suggest you check out Joe Jenkins book called Humanure. Also Carol Steinfelds book on Liquid Gold, The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. Both make a lot of sense, and this type of thing is done all over the world and has a growing number of fans in the US. You can read my opinion about it here.

You can build a simple compost bin out of chicken wire, so that was one of the first things I had to get done.

For water, I had three five gallon water containers and three 35 gallon rainbarrels. I filled the five gallon containers up whenever I went to town for drinking water and filled the rain barrels from a nearby creek.

It's amazing how conservative you can be with water when it's not running from a tap in your home. It takes me 2 weeks to use 15 gallons, and thats bathing, washing dishes, mopping floors, making coffee, everything. Find out how I manage that tomorrow.

Now, I will admit, not having electricity was a problem. I missed my computer, a television and lights more than anything. But it would be 2 months before electric lines would get run to my place. There were lots of trees that had to be cut, permits and deposits to pay and a temporary pole to buy.

So I learned to make the best of it. I used a coleman stove to cook on and oil lamps for light to read by. I had bought a tiny refrigerator second hand and used it like an old timey icebox. It was the first of April when I moved here and the weather was pretty nice, so most days I had the doors and windows open.

It's amazing how much more connected you are to the rhythms of nature when you don't have all the distractions of modern civilization. I spent most of my time outside working on projects or sitting around my campfire.

The mornings are wonderful when you can hear the birds waking up and getting busy for the day. I saw the turkeys fly out of the trees in the mornings and couldn't wait for the sun to come up so I could sit with a good book while I had my coffee. I'm an early riser and the mornings are my favorite time of day. I watched the fog rise through the trees and the owls settling in for a good sleep after a night of prowling. Neighborhood dogs make their rounds and the chipmunks and squirrels start their day early scratching through the leaves for goodies.

I was so much more aware of the weather, too. A bright sunny warm day meant I would be outside getting things done, and an overcast rainy day meant I was going to be inside listening to the rain on my metal roof. The wind swaying through the trees meant a change of weather.

I managed to get a small battery powered radio that got three television stations and emergency weather broadcasts, so in the evenings I would still get to listen to my favorite programs.

It's funny, when I first moved here I had envisioned Thoreau's On Waldens Pond and just knew I would spend my time working on finishing the book that I had started some 3 years before. I never once looked at it though.

I stayed so busy, between going to work five days a week and then coming home and working on the place that I never seemed to find the time.

Besides, Thoreau had said, "How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up and lived."

I knew I still had some living to do...

[Roxy ] |

1 Comment |

Saturday

20Dec2008

Johnny on the Spot...

Saturday, December 20, 2008

I know this is a controversial subject and that is because most humans have a difficult time getting past the 'ick' factor.

This stems from the Victorian days when people were wrapped up tighter than a drum, from the wire corsets to the stiff collars tight around the neck and no one ever talked about about sex, let alone any kind of bodily functions.

This is when the first automated 'toilet' was invented.

Before then and for the thousands of years that humans have walked the earth, human waste disposal is something that everyone had to deal with. It was an everyday part of life.

If you're old enough, you may fondly remember the trips you made to the outhouse. I say 'old' and 'fondly' because memory usually dims how smelly it was and how you could sit and watch the spiders catch a fly in their web while you were doing your duty.

How about the late night trips with a flashlight or lantern when you had a bad case of the back door trots?

I bet you could remember every inch of the well worn path to the little house out back.

Don't forget the worry of being inside when the neighbor kids decided to pull a prank and push the building over.

Before that, in cities, people emptied their chamber pots out the windows. Ever hear the saying 'heads up?' Now you know where that came from.

In medieval times, most castles had a garderobe. That was just a wooden seat with a hole and all waste, including kitchen waste, just went straight out and down the side of the hill. Sometimes into a cesspit or the moat (and you thought a moat was romantic). Imagine the poor sot that had to clean that up! He had to fight the pigs and the dogs that eagerly snuffled through all that waste.

In the early nineteenth century the first 'Earth Closet" was invented. This contraption was a wooden box inside the house and when you finished you pulled a chain that would deposit granulated clay, ashes, or earth on top of the leavings to help dessicate waste and prevent odor, and when it was full, the box would be removed to empty outside somewhere. Just a small step above the outhouse.

Then along came the 'Water Closet'. Well, let me tell you, this little invention won hands down in the Victorian age for popularity, because one could do their business and have it flushed away and you never had to think about it again. Most didn't realize that waste was directed straight to the rivers and streams where their water supply came from.

In the world of toilets, mankind has made very little advancement since then when it comes to waste disposal. We like flushing and not giving a thought to what happens to it after that.

Cities are being overrun with waste and the cost is staggering. The flush toilet is the single largest consumer of water. The average family uses approximately 35,200 gallons of water per year. The cost for utlities infrastructure is around $500-$600 per person. The sewage treatment facilties for a large city can consume as much as 900,00 kilowatts of energy , 500 tons of chemicals and 45,000 gallons of fuel oil daily. Even if we had an abundance of water, the other resources flush toilets use have their limits. (Trivia Library, History of Toilets)

Why, even a pit latrine is more ecologically sound and safe then a flush toilet.

Around the world there is a serious shortage of drinking water, and we are using it to flush waste down the drain, mainly because no one wants to think about it.

At the very least, why don't we use greywater to flush our toilets with?

Sweden is one of the most ecologically advanced nations in the world. See the Clivus Multrum toilet system.

We need to wake up to the cost to our precious resources from our Victorian way of thinking about human waste.

For more information, check out The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, Third Edition

For further reading Carol Steinfelds' book called Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants is an excellent read.

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive aritcle on the subject of composting toilets

[Roxy ] |

1 Comment |

Composting Toilet

Sunday

21Dec2008

Springtime in the Smokies

Sunday, December 21, 2008

My land is covered with trees. I mean a lot. Very large trees that reach heights of 75 ft and more, all hardwoods with the exception of a few hemlocks and some rhododendrens and mountain laurel.

When I first laid eyes on it I fell in love. I would own my very own piece of the woods. My own private woodland to wander as I would, sit in a copse and contemplate life. I could make trails to follow even if they went in circles. I only have about an acre.

When I bought it, there wasn't a single leaf on any of them. They were all on the ground. Now, I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to knowing what they are just by the bark. I could pick out a few. Poplars and dogwoods, of course the rhododendren, mountain laurel and the hemlocks, ( they had leaves ) but the rest remained a mystery. Yet it was still so beautiful it took my breath away.

I could not wait till summer to see what this place looked like when the leaves were fully grown. I waited impatiently to see what kind of plants grew under the canopy of trees. The soil under the layers and layers of leaves was a deep rich loam and smelled primordial.

No one had ever lived on this piece of dirt before. Whatever I did here would be my permanent legacy to these mountains.

I am a third of a mile from the boundary line of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, about a third of the way up Mt Cammerer, deep in the heart of the Smokies.As the crow flies, about 2 miles from the North Carolina state line and the Appalachian Trail where the road turns to dirt and you can wander through thousands of acres of wilderness.

This is Cosby Tennessee, most famous for moonshiners and feuding. I was living in a mountain community. The only thing that could make it any better was if I had a creek or a spring, but hey, you can't have it all. Not on my budget.

As winter turned to spring the greenery started sprouting everywhere. Leaves on the trees were too tiny and too far up for me to recognize, but on the ground, oh my, life was a-stirring!

Fiddleheads were poking through the soil, vines were showing signs of life, tiny trees were bursting from the acorns buried under mounds of leaves. The air smelled so fresh and clean and.. alive!

Yes, Spring does bring new life to these mountains. New birds were showing up in the canopy of the trees, the nearby creeks were flowing higher and the bears were coming out of hibernation, stretching mightily after their long nap and hungry for grub.

As Spring slowly stretched out, the dogwoods were the first to show their faces. I had dozens of them, all bursting with large fragrant blooms. I was so proud, you would have thought I created them myself.

Fiddleheads opened into beautiful ferns under the trees, Solomans seal broke through with their graceful drooping branches, Galax abounded. Grapevines were recognizable, along with Greenbriar and Virginia Creeper. Morel mushrooms poked through the soil under oaks, and before I knew it, it was Ramps season.

Sound Stage, Ramps Festival

Time to head off for the annual Ramps Festival in Cosby. Bluegrass music abounds in these hills and you can eat your fill of ramps. Ramps and Eggs, called green eggs, ramps and taters, ramps and beans with cornbread, raw ramps, lord, no one gets too close to another this time of year!

These mountain folk sure know how to have fun. Bring the whole family, including the dog, grab a frisbee and a blanket and a folding chair, sit back, eat your fill and enjoy the music and the glorious view of the mountains. This is living!

This is the life for me....

[Roxy ] |

When a Tree Falls in a Forest...

Monday, December 22, 2008

Did I mention I have a lot of trees?

Trees are a wonderful thing, but there can be problems associated with them. The first thing you must own is a chainsaw when you have trees. Sometimes they fall down, once in a while the wind whips through these mountains and breaks a tree in half, or large branches fall. So that was one of my very first purchases.

You have to decide whether they are a bane or a boon to your existence.

When I moved here, I had planned on living in my tiny house temporarily and I would build another small house higher up on the hill. My small house would be about 700 sq ft.

So the tiny house was placed on a spot farther down the hill in the easiest place to put it, considering all the trees.

I was violently opposed to cutting down a single one.

However, I really did want to have some electricity. "Power lines and trees don't mix too well," so the electric company inspector told me.

He informed me that not only would I have to cut trees on my property, but trees would have to come down on the right- a-way of others peoples property.

I had some thinking to do.

I would have loved to had solar power or wind power here, but there were some obstacles.

First, with all these trees, I wouldn't have access to much sunlight, and second , the cost made my eyes cross.

Third, in East Tennessee we don't have much wind, and fourth, the cost made my eyes cross.

So I had to reconcile myself with cutting down some trees. That meant hiring someone to do it. Theres no way I'm gonna tackle knocking down 100 ft trees, or cutting limbs off that are 75 feet in the air. My little 16 inch chainsaw wasn't meant for that kind of work anyway.

It took a while, but I finally found someone to do it that wouldn't charge an arm and a leg. I showed him all the trees the inspector said would have to come down and he got busy.

CRASH, BOOM, BAM!!

Down came the trees, and every time one fell, the pollen flew. It really was an awesome sight watching those monsters fall.

He cut those babies up into firewood lengths for me and left maybe a dozen in 12-16 ft lengths so that I could have someone saw them into lumber. He didn't tell me it was all but impossible to get someone to come and do that. I also didn't imagine the mess that would be left to clean up.

While he was here, he said there were several that needed to be cut down close to where I was going to build my house. They were either dead or damaged and it would be much easier to do it now rather than after I had a house standing there, so I agreed. A good garden spot was also an incentive.

CRASH! BOOM! BAM! Down they came.

Did I mention that I was violently opposed to cutting any of my beautiful trees down?

I couldn't help but be reminded of that old philosophical riddle "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

I believe it does.

Eventually I got power to the site where I was going to build, however I was living 200 ft away. For lack of finances the only solution was to run extension cords from the temporary pole to my little cabin.

Viola! I now have a computer, lamps, a coffeepot and various other assorted electrical appliances.

I'm living in high style now baby!

Because there are so many trees I also found out I can't have sattelite tv. There's no way I'm cutting more trees in order to get more tv stations just so I can say there's never anything good on!

So I have an outside antenna with a digital converter box and it's wonderful! I now get 14 channels. There's still nothing much on the tube, but at least I'm not paying for it....

[Roxy ] |

3 Comments |