accomplishments for January and February... not much, but something

A good batch of green madrone hauled, bucked, chopped and stacked

A shed for the diesel generator, finally.  

That has doors on both sides for access. I still need to rebuild the veg oil piece, and add more exhaust pipe so that the muffler underground is implemented again. 

and I found a hollow tree with an old honey beehive in it. Bees were gone, but I enjoyed grabbing the comb.  Tried to melt it into wax... that didn't work so well.  too old? wrong stuff? who knows.

The Front Bumper

Ripped off the front bumper by backing too close to a stump; mostly the driver's side:

All the little plastic bolt connectors broke off, which is actually a good system - the bumper itself didn't crack.

Reading in the subaru forum, zip ties were suggested.  actually worked pretty well!  I was nervous about taking off the other bits, but it wasn't too hard.

Everything back together in under an hour, including managing my assistant. not too bad!

view from the side after my work:

Still a little gap by the wheel well, but you'd only notice if you knew about it:

The beast

I'm still trying to get this diesel gen to run the way I want it to... it really is the one big project out there that *should* get done. everything else is just maintenance or fun. 

Rebuild on the Earth Oven - part 2

My first adaptation on the earth oven was to add a metal chimney with an air vent on the bottom.

Well, I finally felt the old thing was getting to a point that it needed some serious repair, and quite possibly to be torn down and rebuilt.  As I started digging in, I decided that I'd just re-do the doorway. Here it is with all the bad stuff removed:

Shots of first round of extra cob for a new archway door and official chimney hole.

Lucky for me I had help!

Add a few tiles, a bit of earthen plaster, and fire it up!  

Readying for Winter

Already got 15,000 gallons off the roof!

Got to cut this off the road during the last big storm!

People always ask about how the mud house would stand up in the rain. Here's the only bit that got wet during this last 3 day huge storm.  The tip of the SW buttress.  We keep saying we're going to put tiles on that slope. maybe next summer. 

First pie crust!

for a venison pot pie!

I don't think I ever posted about my carport water collection system.  The gutters are on, and the double flush system is in place.  

I have some additional filter material within the pipe itself, but I still need to work on how best to keep the water cleaner.  Still, full tank!

Redesigning, rebuilding the cob oven, part 1

Finally felt I needed to deal with the crumbling around the door of the earth oven.  At first, I was thinking I'd start from scratch, then realized I'd probably need to go to the quarry for more sand if I did that, so went for a retro-fit.   First, scraped away the loose stuff:

and wet it down with slip so I'd be ready to attach the new stuff

Got a lot of painting help down low.  Here you can see that not that much was removed:

Later in the day, I'd mixed up a batch of cob and sculpted in the new door idea, with a chimney coming out the top:

The plan is to have the metal chimney easily slip down into the hole, extending the draw:

We have more cob to add before we're through:

new end table

So, we knew there were bugs in the madrone end table. It finally drove me crazy and I yanked it out of there.  Here's a cross-cut of the wood, where you can see the many holes dug by the grub, before it comes out as a beetle.

  I had a good helper to deal with the dust and dirt of ripping a cobbed-in table off the wall:

it's kind of cool to see the old cob underneath all the plaster:

I got the new redwood piece in place, and plastered it in:

 Then there was a lot of white wash to redo. Again, supervised:

Doesn't look too bad... in this light:

I could do more polishing and painting... and probably will.

Carport roof is done!

now just gutters and plumbing to the tanks

and we KNOW the trap works

a Post on Posts

Here you can see the various stages and tools of hardwood (madrone) pegs, from right to left, from firewood to finished peg.  I haven't timed it, but it probably takes about 20 minutes per peg.   The car port only needed 20 of these. 

This is a notch in the (lower/northern) beam that will be the seat of the rafter-joist.

Another view of the rafter seat, with rafter perspective:

Doing the last hole for the last peg for the rafter. I was concerned that the pegging wouldn't hold much, but they seem to have really worked well.  Notice this is from up on the high side, on the ladder:

Brackets, Firewood and Apricots

Very happy to report I got help from a new neighbor who had access to a 'hammer drill' thing that helped me put bolts into the concrete footings for the brackets for the car port. We're getting more stable!

 Just a little firewood brag photo of all the wood I split and stacked while my niece and nephew were to stack the stuff on the left.   They're beginning to learn about some hard work, but they have plenty to go.

49 small apricots plus sugar heat and time make 8 jars of jam.  Love it!