Winter will be kept outside this year

Our earthbag house is closed in just in time for winter. Roof is finished, windows are all in and the rocket mass heater is mostly constructed as well.  This winter we'll be able to get some interior work done.

Insulated heat riser

The cats enjoying the warmth of the first burn

I really do love rocket stoves. I burned this one for about three hours and ended up with about a cup full of ashes. For the burn I used the slats from about one and a half pallets. These things are just amazing. The exhaust coming out the exit was mostly steam and only warm, not hot. There was a faint smell of wood in the exhaust but not like smoke from any other fire. And the large amount of mass holds this heat for a very long time, releasing it slowly.

Now we are onto to some of many, many other projects. Mrs. Mud has started on building a bat house to be put up near the end of winter. This is going be be a huge help around the homestead. Summer here brings a lot of mosquitoes. I've described my problems with mosquitoes in a previous post.

We've also recently acquired a 7 week old golden retriever pup. So that meant putting a doggy door in to the porch for him, putting up a fence for a dog run and building a dog house. The dog house was actually pretty easy. We re-purposed one of the door forms from the earthbag structure. All the wood in this was originally salvaged from the dump. I'm not sure what purposes it served before I got hold of it, but this will the second thing it has done for me. It may even be part of another project before it ends up heating my butt in the rocket mass heater.

We just make shit up as we go

For everyone that has read and commented on my blog thank you. I appreciate that you have taken the time to do so. I've just been to damn busy or exhausted to respond. It's been a while since I blogged or even had time to read any of those that I enjoy. For a couple months I was working two full time jobs and trying to get work done on the domestead as well. I'm down to one job now and I get to work from home.  Can't beat that with a stick.

One of the cats has been very busy too. While nursing some kittens, she went and had six more. My plan was to wait until a couple of them were about size 11, then hollow them out to make some slippers. But overnight 5 of them disappeared. Could be coyotes, owls or foxes. There's more life than you might expect on the bald-assed prairie.

exit form for rocket mass heater

Plans have changed on the house once again. A few months ago we realized we would never have time to finish doming in the three we needed most (or even work at all on the other two) so we decided to roof them go for more of a castle shape. I'm glad I built a complete dome from dirt on the property a couple years ago or I would have to consider changing my internet name.

Standing bags between beams

roof will be embedded in bags

After the OSB plywood, I laid down a sticky roofing membrane then screwed tin on top of that. Then the final row of bags (laid flat) will lock everything together. And finally a few more bags to give that knobby-castle-thing look.

The rocket mass heater has finally been worked on as well. The temporary mock-up I built gave awesome results. So now the burn tunnel is mortared in place and ready to put the riser back on and get to the next steps. I was lucky to find a riser with a 7 inch inside diameter and 1/2 inch wall thickness.

And finally, to those dipshit Canadian delegates that walked out on some guys speech at the UN: You should be publicly ridiculed and humiliated, then fired for deriliction of duties and stripped of your citizenship. Assholes.

My mosquito costume

OK, so it may be the best 15 bucks I've ever spent. A mosquito net jacket with full hood and face coverage. The arms and waistline have drawstrings to make sure nothing can get in. With this and a set of gloves, I'm invincible outside. I can't stand bug spray so this item is a welcome addition to my wardrobe. On the fashion side of the equation, it is a complete fail. It makes me look like some sort of Taliban Tranny ready to hit the stroll. But I don't care. There's no one for miles around to make fun of me anyway. And besides, the mosquitoes around here come in swarms and get get quite huge. Last summer two of them threw me to the ground while a third tried to fuck me.

Back to Building

This year I'm paying more attention to tamping. Before I sure tamped the tops hard enough until the bags were like rock. I also whacked the sides with a piece of 2x4, but didn't do that part as good as I could have. It makes a big difference when it comes time to do the plastering. A smooth, even wall is a much faster-plaster-blaster experience. Takes a lot less, which means fewer mixes need to made up just to make things even.

This years bags will have a much flatter vertical edge

By the way, tamping can be exhausting after a lot of lifting earthen mix. I can only leave it so long too, or the mix in the bags starts to dry out and then it would be too late to get good compaction. I usually tamp after laying about four bags. If you can trick some poor sucker into doing the tamping for you, it would be well worth whatever blemish you end up with on your conscience.

Shown below are pictures of how we close our bags. I fold the top like and envelope, sides first, then ends. They are pinned shut with a nail.

Shown under the bag is the slider I use most often. It was once a door on the side of a grader. It's quite sturdy and I got it for free. The place I work at has a mountain of things torn off of heavy equipment. There's enough stuff there to rebuild civilization. Granted, everything would be yellow and black and with the Caterpillar logo all over the place.

It sure is good to back working on our domes. We have such a short building season and I've been itching to get back at it. We laid about fifty bags last weekend and are off to a good start this year.

Doorway between living room and bedroom. My shop in the background.

The Cost of Weasels

So I posted this on my facebook page:

The government tells us inflation was 3%. WTF? Do any these of these assholes buy sugar, flour, or fuel? Or is it that the only thing that went up 3% was the cost of sucking off some corporate weasel?

And my wife posted this reply:

Oh my God, are you kidding? Fuck. I totally would have sucked off more weasels had I known the price was going up. At least taking it up the ass is still free.


All I can say is my old lady is the smartest, funniest, hottest babe this side of anyfuckingwhere.

Not now honey, the game is on.

As much as politicians like to think they are so important, they are not and no one gives a shit. We have some pretty serious voter apathy in this country. Can't blame us, there is no one to vote for. The leaders of all our parties make me cringe. I feel like I'm being asked to choose between a cracked skull or a punch in the balls. On the national propaganda airwaves (CBC) this morning they said that all the leaders of the political parties agreed to change the time of one of the debates because of a conflict. What could be more important than hearing what the leaders have to say about what they would do if given the most powerful position in the country? Get this, it conflicts with a first round playoff hockey game. Well, give the people what they want I guess.  I feel much better knowing that if China-mart has a sale on the same day as the election, the election will probably just be rescheduled. People do love to get tons of poor quality junk they don't need. More people go to China-mart than watch hockey, so here is my free advice to the leader-losers we have in this country. Check with ALL the big private corporations before scheduling your meaningless, annoying, time and money wasting election if you want anybody to show up.

Actually, if we had no government at all, people wouldn't even realize it for quite some time. After a while you might start hearing things like "Hey, have you noticed things seem a lot less fucked up lately?"

I certainly don't buy into this argument that if I don't vote I have no right to complain. Bullshit, I've read our constitution and it doesn't mention that. Nor is there any law, statute or regulation that says so. I'm guaranteed freedom of conscience and expression. Now if all our asshole politicians started reading, understanding and obeying the Canadian Constitution and The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that would be one hell of a good start. It may even be enough to convince me to take 20 minutes out of my day every fours years to go down the street and vote.

But as it is now,  I certainly don't give a shit who votes or who wins. Spring is here and my focus is on gardening, earthbag building and increasing my self sufficiency skills.

Two Bucket Gardens

We get our buckets for free from bakeries. They come in different sizes, but most are 4 or 4-1/2 gallons and all have lids. Bakeries are a great source because you know that the buckets are food grade. Best of all, they are free. There are some things that it's important to have plenty of because of the myriad of uses. Duct tape is one of these. I now believe that free bakery buckets is another. We've used several already for storing preps like grains, beans and even candles and matches. They also hold a variety of other things we always need held around the domestead.

Well shucks, if there ain't just another way cool use for these darned things. A two bucket system for container gardening. Check out this site http://www.globalbuckets.org/

I won't go into too many details because the kids on this site lay it all out very well. That's right, I said kids. Shortish people that you usually find going blind in front a video game console or texting each other across the room. These young people actually put a lot of effort into showing the rest of us how to make a very effective but simple garden bucket. This weekend we made five of them in under 2 hours. Ours are slightly different because of materials on hand, but basically the same.

Water is always an issue here because we only get about 11 inches of rainfall per year. Our well water is too salty for using very much on gardens. So water conservation practices are an important issue for us. If you could get blood from a stone, these hot prairie winds would dry that sucker out in about half an hour. So we are looking forward to trying these buckets with a few different crops this year including pumpkins, peppers and goji berries.