Houses of Straw

Leonard Leslie Brooke illustration

Sure, we all remember the children’s story about three pigs and a big, bad wolf, who could huff and puff and blow the house down (unless it was made of bricks). The stick house held up a little bit better, but the straw house didn’t provide much in the way of protection at all. But these days, houses made of straw and stucco are getting quite sophisticated. Even looking sturdy enough to stand up to a good, stiff breeze, whether it comes from a wolf or a hurricane.

Bales of straw (usually wheat straw) as building material isn’t exactly new, though perhaps not as old as the Three Little Pigs tale. late 19th century homesteaders out on the Nebraska plains are credited with building the first straw bale and mud-wattle houses, much as Oklahoma homesteaders pioneered stone and earth-sheltered homes with sod roofs. These early examples of hardy home-building with whatever’s handy largely escaped modern notice until the early 1970s, when the hippie “back to the land” movement took off. Most straw bale houses built over the following couple of decades were non-code off-the-grid shelters, but the benefits of bale construction have gained new fans.

Featured in this New York Times article is a rather spectacular example in the Catskills hand-crafted with loving care over a period of years by Clark Sanders. For the new revival in homesteading pioneers for the 21st century, there are a number of outfits and websites offering education in straw bale building techniques, helpful hints, and contacts for associated material like stuccos and plasters, wall lattice, etc. Some of the most interesting and useful are listed below. There are even some very nice straw bale house plans that can be built as offered or altered to your own site’s needs and combined with other green technologies such as earth sheltering, etc.

A relatively small straw bale shelter could be built fairly quickly and cheaply by new homesteaders on their land as a place to live while developing the various water and energy systems that will support something more permanent at a later date. If sited well and built sturdily, such a shelter built into a berm or hillside could later serve as a well-insulated root cellar for food storage, or a cool shelter barn for ruminant livestock. Just be sure your plastering job keeps up with the normal wear and tear of time, or the livestock just might eat their own barn!

Check out some of the listed sites and their offerings, see if straw bale construction might serve you well in some application. All told, the recurring benefit theme of this construction method is low cost. Which is always something modern homesteaders need to consider.

Links:

Straw Bale Construction
StrawBale dot Com
Bale Watch: 50 House Plans
A House of Straw
NYT: Bale by Bale, Stone by Stone

Extra $ on Your Outbuildings

I was reminiscing the other day to my gathered grandchildren about the annual childhood vacation journeys my family used to make from wherever we were living at the time to my paternal grandparents’ home in central Kentucky. Dad let us take turns as navigator in the shotgun seat, getting us from point A to B in a day’s drive, using nothing but those “little blue roads” through the rural countryside he loved so much. Occasionally one of us kids would get us good and lost, then the next in line would have to find a way out. He was never in a big hurry, we often spent more days than necessary getting to Grandma’s house.

One of the things I recall most fondly were the painted advertising barns we’d see along the way. “See Rock City” barns no matter where we were or how far it was from there to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ubiquitous tobacco barns in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky painted to advertise for Mail Pouch or Red Man or some other cigarette, chew or pipe tobacco. Some very unique painted barns advertising for local or national businesses. We used to keep a page of the trip log for listing those, along with each eagerly anticipated Burma Shave series of one-word jingles and the usual list of state license plates seen along the way.

Those old ad-barns are quickly falling into distantly remembered history, as tobacco bases become increasingly rare and as the barns themselves deteriorate. Some have been salvaged as ‘conversation piece’ paneling for fancy rural log McMansions, pulling in a pretty penny for those who dismantle rotting outbuildings in a newer generation. In an age of interstate highways lined by boring billboards, seeing a unique working barn with a real advertisement on it is becoming a rare occurrence.

Would it surprise you to find that barn painted advertising is making a comeback? It surprised me, but then again, I don’t go far from home very often, and then mostly via interstate. But barn painted advertising still has its uses, and can return money to a landowner equivalent (or better) than from simply renting space for a billboard to be erected. All it requires is that the farm/homestead have frontage on a well-traveled roadway, and a good sized barn that can be easily seen from that roadway. Thus ‘selling’ the side and/or roof of a barn or other large outbuilding to a company for advertising could possibly be a good source of ‘extra’ income for homesteaders to think about.

You can do this yourself, though it wouldn’t be as quick a turnover to income as going through a company that contracts ads for billboards and such, that might consider your barn. For local companies, check with advertising directors to pitch your location and visibility of your outbuilding(s). This can work for regional companies as well, but national companies generally go through those advertising firms. You could try both, take the deal that offers you the most for your offered advertising space. Lucky homesteaders may in this way earn extra income just for having outbuildings visible to the public, and in return get a showpiece of a barn that can someday be worth even more as salvage!

And don’t forget to consider that you can always advertise on your visible barn/outbuilding your own farm logo if you belong to a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] cooperative, offer Agri-tourism attractions and/or B&B accommodations, or deal directly with the public for U-pick or fresh harvest produce, eggs, honey and/or meat. In such ventures advertising pays, and being visible to the public can only help.

Links:

Barn Painting & Advertising
Merced Sun-Star article
Rock City: Barn History

Do It Yourself – Discouraging Words

I was somewhat surprised on one of my web surfing jaunts to see a blog dedicated to ways of saving money weigh in against the notion of doing odd jobs and building projects yourself. Because for my homestead – and very likely yours as well – if we didn’t do our own odd jobs and building projects, then no needful jobs or building projects would ever get done. So I’ll take the opportunity presented to offer a rebuttal to some of the objections logged in the Money Bucket blog.

The article is Saving Money – Or Not – With DIY Projects, and it’s worth a read if you’re genuinely unsure of whether or not you’ve got the ability to tackle a project on your own. Of course for big projects it’s very important to understand going in exactly what will be necessary – time, tools, materials and a certain degree of skill. Homesteaders already know about budgeting their time toward the “work in progress” that describes our way of life, as there are always a dozen or more projects and repairs that need doing. Most of us, if we’ve been living this way for some years, have amassed more tools than many city-folk even know exist. In fact, for most projects the primary concern is coming up with the money to purchase the materials, and making sure we’ve got every little nut, bolt, pipe, sealant and extraneous parts before we start.

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Water, Water Everywhere but Not a Drop to Drink

As my family begins work to re-engineer our water system by tapping a new spring and installing a ram pump to a new cistern on the ridge, I am once again thankful for our semi-abundant supply of clean, fresh water on our mountain homestead via two clear-running creeks draining the National Forest uphill to the continental divide. I realize that we have something real and valuable here to work with that way too many people who aren’t lucky enough to live here do not have – a nearly endless supply of water pure enough to drink without filtering, fresh and cold enough to host ample populations of native trout, and fast enough to escape the winter freezes on its way to the piedmont’s rivers and lakes.

Serious shortages of fresh potable water across entire regions of the Middle East, Africa, central and south Asia have long been in the news as conditions grow worse with the advent of global warming. Extended droughts have caused increasingly destructive wildfires in Australia, Russia and here in the United States, where fires so far this year in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have charred millions of acres of land.

To get a picture of how bad the situation is getting – and how agricultural policies, municipal waste and unsustainable consumption levels affect the clean water we Americans tend to take for granted, consider the fact that the mighty Colorado River no longer flows to the sea because every drop is diverted along the way. Running 1,450 miles through seven U.S. states and two Mexican states, the river and its tributaries have been impounded by 20 dams along its length to provide water to cities in the parched southwest and water for irrigation, golf courses, desert green-spaces and such. Some researchers are saying that Lake Mead, the source of water for 22 million people, may be dry by 2012.

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Teeny, Tiny Houses

A friend left a little 16-foot travel trailer in our back yard a couple of years ago when he had to sell his land and move east to tend his aging parents. The plumbing got wrecked because he forgot to unhook it before pulling it out, but the electricity’s still fine, and I’m presuming the stove, fridge and heat would work if we cared to replace the propane bottles. We’ve been using it as a combination storage shed and guest bedroom, but had to drape a tarp over the roof to stop leaks in the corners that led to a nasty accumulation of mildew.

What I’d most like to do is convert it into an actual camp-cabin style “Tiny House” that would blend in with the forest scenery better than white with turquoise trim on your basic aluminum trailer siding. Maybe build a Tiny House shed while we’re at it as well. Tiny houses are often built on wheels to get around local building codes, and of course this trailer is already on wheels. But that’s not really necessary here because there are no building codes out in the wilderness – unless you wish to obtain insurance, that is.

Of course, we could probably do better by selling it cheap just to get it hauled out of here, and then building a little camp cabin instead. By building from scratch we could get more width and height out of the space, which goes a long way in the ‘tiny house’ realm toward making the space usable and comfortable at the same time. Wish some help from our grandsons we could probably supply all the logs necessary from right here on the land, though I’d still need that mule I’ve been meaning to get in order to get them transported from where we cut to where we want to build.

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Human Pedal-Powered Power

As part of our plan to revamp our water supply system to get rid of the energy-sucking 220 pump and replace it with a ram jet, and concurrently installing geothermal collectors to supply a steady supply of cool air in summer and warmer air in winter, I’ve been checking into other ways of cutting our grid energy use. It will be years before we’re in a position to purchase solar panels or a wind generator to get the homestead off the grid entirely, so every little bit of electricity we don’t use from Duke Energy helps our bottom line.

A friend in Arizona long known for his bicycling prowess sent me a link to David Butcher’s Pedal Powered Generator website, which is chock full of information about getting a little exercise while charging up some batteries used to operate things like LED lights, computers, televisions, electric motors on your assisted transportation (Moped), even a washing machine. Though that last takes some real muscles for the spin cycle. I’ve often thought that as I’m sitting here at my desk surfing around on the internet I should be pedaling a stationary bike to power the machinery that lets me do that.

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Savvy Family Savings: Tips to Lower Your Expenses

The old adage is true – money certainly doesn’t grow on trees. In fact, when you have a family, money can seem to be scarce fairly frequently. As the number of people in your household goes up, unfortunately, so do expenses.

However, there are many ways you can help your family save some much needed cash.  These can be small savings like cutting down your dining out expenses to large savings like adding bundled services like satellitestarinternet to help you cut down costs.  Using the savvy saving tips listed below will help you keep an eye on that penny jar and watch it grow into some significant savings!

Extend Your Family Phone Plan

Most of the time, phone companies are quite happy to offer you savings depending on the number of people you have included in your phone plan. Why not take advantage of this by including external family members as well as your nearest and dearest?

Grandparents, aunts, uncles and even cousins can all be included to help you save money. So you don’t talk to them every week – so what? When you do, at least you can be sure that you are making some substantial savings by having them on your phone plan!

Make Coffee Yourself

Starbucks seems to come under a lot of heat these days. Whether people are blaming the company for deforestation or simply just complaining that it is taking over Main Street, someone always has something bad to say about it. Well, you can do your part by avoiding take-out coffee altogether!

The average cup of coffee from Starbucks costs around $3 – if you add up all the mocha lattes you’ve had over the years, that comes to quite a large amount. Make your own coffee at home if you simply can’t do without your caffeine fix.

Use Hostels Abroad

Every family needs a break once in a while, and it can be good for you to get out of your comfort zone and visit a new city or country. However, who says that it needs to cost you an arm and a leg? Although hotels are often relaxing and it can be pleasant to be waited on hand and foot, they can also be very expensive.

Hostels, on the other hand, cost a pittance compared to the price of an upscale hotel. Sure, you may have to share your room with a group of drunken backpacking German students, but at least your family will have an abundance of stories to tell in years to come!

Cut Your Own Hair

Every family needs to spend money regularly on necessities such as food and bills. Despite this, there are many everyday activities that cost money that can be eliminated altogether, such as going to the barber. Nobody is suggesting that you let your family become a gang of long-haired ‘flower children,’ but you can save a few dollars here and there by cutting your own hair.

This is particularly good if you have small boys, as they hate going to the barbers at the best of times. Of course, probably the cheapest and quickest way of doing this is to shave your head – but it would take a brave family to do this all at the same time!

Share Parties Between Two

Children’s birthdays can often be expensive occasions – what with the presents and the party favors, the costs can soon mount up. However, if you have two children, you can slim costs down by throwing two birthday parties on the same day.

This will ensure that you are only spending money on cake and ice-cream for one big event during the year, rather than two. If you are particularly skilled with a calendar, you could even try to conceive your children so that they are born around Christmas time – that way you can roll Christmas and birthday into one, as well!

Watch What You Eat

The weekly grocery-store shopping trip is one of the largest expenses a family can have. If you want to cut down on this large bill, you can make sure your family eats simple food like soup.

You can still put plenty of vegetables into the soup so that your family is getting the required amount of nutrients, but it is certainly better for your purse strings than buying steak once a week! So cut down the meat, and enjoy your vegetable soup.

Make Do And Mend

The sad fact is items like clothing wear out over time and begin to get holes in them. When this happens, the natural reaction is to throw out old garments and go on a shopping spree to replace them. However, this is a definite drain on your financial resources, so pick up a sewing needle and thread and darn, darn, darn!

If your clothes are really beyond saving, you can always use items like old shirts as rags for dusting or cleaning the house – anything other than simply throwing them out and having to buy new things!

Send Your Children Abroad(!)

It is a well known fact that school fees in the US cost a lot more than in other countries. Not only do most European students study for a shorter time than their US counterparts (which keeps their fees down), but the overall costs are usually much lower as well.

Of course, everybody wants the best education possible for their child, but if you find that you might be struggling to keep up with the tuition payments, it is worth considering colleges abroad where your child might get more brains for their bucks. Just make sure you keep the exchange rate in mind when signing up for a course!

CONCLUSION

Having a family is expensive in this day and age. However, by following the above tips you can help keep your essential expenses down and make it easier for everybody to make ends meet.

Images

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flickr.com/photos/nevercoolinschool/3040426247/in/photostream/
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flickr.com/photos/jimmyharris/2524588482/in/photostream/

Feeding The Summer Hoards: BBQ

Some of the people who live on my homestead are vegetarian, while some are meat eaters. Some love fish or shrimp, some get queasy just thinking about it. A few will eat chicken, while others seem to want everything (including dessert) wrapped in bacon. During the summer when crowds of people from cities north, south and west of us come to the mountains for a little R&R, feeding them can be a rather large challenge.

Having purchased a nice new gas/charcoal smoker grill last year when the kitchen was being remodeled, I’ve become quite good at grilling various different meats, veggie alternatives and even vegetables themselves. No matter what kind of meat or alternatives are slated for dinner, I’ve discovered that THE most important ingredients for any such operation are the sauces and marinades. These need to be prepared well ahead of time, and some of what is going on the grill – like chicken breasts, all half-dried fish, peeled shrimp, etc. – needs to soak in marinade in the fridge for hours prior to firing up the grill.

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When the Electricity Goes Out

Over the past two weeks a rather spectacular one-two punch of severe weather wreaked havoc across the eastern half of the nation from Texas to Virginia. Many of us were stunned by the huge, mile-wide F4 tornado that plowed a deadly path through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama. That monster and as many as a hundred other tornados killed more than 300 people in 5 states and injured thousands who literally had no place to hide as the winds flattened homes, apartment buildings and businesses completely, even to blasting out the concrete slabs and tearing up streets and sidewalks. It is the deadliest tornado outbreak since the Great Depression.

A friend who lives on a well-planned homestead in southern Tennessee posted on FaceBook about the damage from a tornado in his neck of the woods that downed trees and power lines wholesale, but spared him and his family and even his goats. He was feeling darned lucky even though the devastation across TVA’s service area – and the station blackout that shut down the three reactors at Browns Ferry – made it likely that his ‘stead would be without electricity for days, maybe a week or more. We who live on the land know from experience that we aren’t the first people in line to have our services restored after a nasty storm. First in line are the people in urban areas where shelters and hospitals and emergency services must be restored as quickly as possible to minimize the human cost of nature’s wrath.

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How To Unclog a Sink Drain Without Expensive & Nasty Chemicals

Unclogging a sink drain (probably clogged by the husband’s whiskers!) is really so simple, you’ll wonder why more people don’t know about it. It’s the old classic baking soda and vinegar volcano science experiment, only it actually does some useful work!

1. Take several spoonfuls of baking soda and shove it down your drain (if the sink has as permanent stopper, I use a Q-Tip to push the baking soda down)
2. Pour half a cup of vinegar down the drain.
3. Wait a few minutes, pour a little more vinegar until the bubbling stops
4. Boil some water and then pour it down the drain

This method works for me 90% of the time to unclog the drain. The other 10% I call the plumber.

And the beauty of it all is that you don’t have to use any nasty, expensive chemicals.