Willits, Middle Fork eel river Yolla Bolly time, and living off grid...

For the 4th of July, i decided to head up  where a good friend of mine Jeremy Byrd, resides comfortably up on a mountain just out side of Willits CA. Jeremy and i took our first year of RDNA together, and his family is about to start practicing permaculture in Ecuador.

The mountain he lives on is a part of a herbal medicine school on a property called Motherland run by a really great woman named Donna. she has a beautiful mixed veggie, flower, herbs, and perennials, and is just mostly boarded by BLM land on the other side of the mountain, and the southern most start of the Yolla Bolly wilderness is right at her back door. the valley preceding with the mountain road we drove up seemed to have a solid little community very well connected and all aiming to be very much off grid.

Jeremy's 12x12 with attached deck, sunken bath tub, outdoor shower, and outhouse.

the tiny lofted house Jeremy was staying at had a sunken-in-the-deck tub, an outdoor shower, and an enclosed outhouse. the place was pretty roomy, had a built in passive cold storage box, a pretty sweet mini fridge, a gas heater, on demand hot water, an electric cook top and big passive solar windows to keep the well built, and very well insulated little 12ftx12ftx12ft house.

 

his electric is entirely off of a larger off grid system, with large solar panels up on the side of the hill where the veggie garden is, feeding down to a workshop that stores the batteries and runs power down to Jermey's little 12x12. the system in the winter only has to be juiced up for a couple of hours throughout the whole winter just to restore the water based battery system that is replicated throughout the property, including the system over by the little house we stayed the night in. 

The one and only Jeremy living the days.

Running the generator is maybe a few gallons of gas, and in my opinion is a good back up and one could store a pretty sweet stash of gas for the extra kick. There is a guy down the road, Jeremy says, that runs a Takahashi shop with some pretty serious equipment entirely off his solar array system, and the rest of his homestead. the neibors dream apparently is to be able to eventually create a mini grid and run lines down the valley road and help hook into the rest of the mountain on maybe 5-10 privately owned homesteads. pretty cool. as you can see in the picture of the outside of his house, he runs in at peak winter once a month or so to town to fill the two small propane tanks you see in the background. very impressive and promising to see a simple design working so well. all of the water also comes from a well that was drilled at the TOP of the mountain.

else where on the trip we took a hot drive up through round valley and up into the eel river forks that come from the Yolla Bolly wilderness. we finally found the perfect part of the river not muddied from the freak storms we had the night before, and swam amongst salmon fingerlings very much alone, peaceful, and happy to have finally got in the water. here are some photos from that journey. 

also are the photos of the small trailer converted into tiny home with its own solar rig and the same set up as Jeremy.

Old Rail line on the eel. 

our final swim spot

our small trailer quite exposed to the wilderness and sunrise.

the attached deck and further back a covered outdoor shower, and out house.

Field Trip to the western Seirra foot hills

 Road Trip to pottery land-

Mr. Danny Vitali and i recently took a trip to a part of california i fell in love with- the western Seirra Foot hills, near Angels Camp/Jackson/San Andreas. we went to visit a friend Maya who i took RDNA with last year,  and her sculptures she has been working on. Maya has been staying with an awesome guy, Kern. these photos are of his pottery studio, homestead and property. it is beautiful country there, really cool community, beautiful sugar pine, ponderosa, manzenita and rolling golden foot hills out near gold country. his gardens are beautiful, and danny and i work traded and did a little other work for Kern while hanging with his awesome community he is building. some what of a renaissance man, he has built his mother a rad rammed earth house, a sauna, a beautiful pottery studio with solar hot water heat, a house, and a really rad seed bank that he shares with his community. land is available and cheap. Maya has been looking around and tempting me with prospects. 

My ideal scene would be to find some land up there, spend my time here at RDI on the coast for a few years while i visit and slowly improve the land over time turning it into a permie heaven. it was a area of California i had not even imagined to exist, and cant wait to go back and visit. Kern is wanting to install a food forest/orchard this coming winter so if i am not doing that here at RDI and have a moment, i will try and visit again. i was hooked. 

Pottery studio

Maya and her nail sculpture

Kerns Kiln

the gardens

More Gardens

A small shed/greenhouse space off Kerns awesome Terrace garden.

Kerns Pottery studio with solar hot water panels

the amazing farm next door to Kerns place

the house, moving the drum set to prepare for a party

in other news, just a few weeks ago Olivia and i took a walk up the wish creek watershed here on the land and took a magical mystery tour through the two head waters. it was fern covered, oaked and bay tree heaven. here are some photos of the upper water shed here at RDI, as well as the top ridge that we made it up to looking west towards the ocean. Enjoy!

up in the thick of it

beautiful bay

fern gully

looking down the west ridge towards the beach

looking down the valley, this is commonweal- the trees are hiding the property! way off on the horizon is just south of SF city.

Design in Time

 It can be frustrating having all the tools for design, application and execution of permaculture, along with experience of growing food and getting it to where it needs to go, and seeing the waste of our food system and our culture of consumption. It is especially frustrating when you are a dreamer and ideas man as i am... mostly unpaid, living with no car, and dreaming of a piece of land/institute/artist hermitage to cultivate and create a space that will forever teach, sustain and provide to the possible and mostly distant next of kin, friends, family, and most of all strangers.

                      DON'T STOP, LIVE GENUINELY.

Through the RDNA year, a lot moved as an artist/gardener with very little drawing/drafting experience and a whole lot of dreams and ideas. the best way i found to cull the somewhat haunting dreams and ideas that flood my mind on a constant and hourly level, was in drawing out what i saw in my mind for designs. of course this is a good idea- any designer will tell you that. but i reached a second terrible space in looking at these finished drawings- damn i like that, and i want it to happen more then ever... 

I am 28 years old. I have no medical insurance. i have not much in savings. no college degree. I am unmarried, and mostly volunteering and unemployed, socially against most of the cultural norm in this country, and don't often relate to my own generation let alone the lower or above.
 I am a statistic that, in my mind, the US and most of western civilization sees as a drain on its resources (even though in reality i use very little), especially since i am technically not contributing to the GDP- the very heart of our destructive culture that puts value on the exploitation of people, resources, and creates all living things (and often non) into statistical commodities.

thus disconnecting everything from its natural relationship to everything else. we then devalue, and then revalue into false markets and ledger sheets. this locks our self and other into the new human drama- the seperation from what Humans are inextricably a part of- Nature and its natural order.
   
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are."- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, opening from The Social Contract.


 i am a lackluster citizen NOT contributing to the consortium of american consumer culture. i am a Bum, lost soul, and all at once free... sort of.

                                       AND I AM ABSOLUTELY AT PEACE WITH IT.

These two drawings reflect some of those ideals that a growing number (thankfully) of like minded people are moving towards in terms of a self reliance against a hyper-consumer based culture of individualist. we are so driven, and blinded, that we are literally  killing our selves and working even harder to try and counter the very thing that is killing us...  (albeit slowly ill admit and mostly of the usual top 10 diseases related to the very problem i am referring to). 

Between house designs under 1000 square feet, gray water systems, ponds, food forests, passive solar design to heat the buildings, animal husbandry,  medicinal botany, native plant nursery, i have come to realize i have nothing but time on my side...

although most of my plans include succession plantings of some fine plants and animals, many of these reach maturity in 20 years... meaning all the hard labor and work i must accomplish with my own two hands is ticking down a little more every day. 

BUT as i have had in twisting conversations with fellow peers about time- time is a creation of our own existence and consciousness based on our own short life spans and past history (which on the great timeline of time is very very short compared to the rest of the species on this little blue dot).

                                                                           Time. 

Time used to be based on when the sun came up, the seasons changed, the ground could be worked, and the moon was in cycle; not a 9-5 day doing something you most likely don't even love.

 i see time a little differently, finally, in terms of the emphasis we put on how much has been accomplished by a certain age or time, and the expectations that come with it.

we have a life time to do, and not a whole lot of time to spend on thinking about how. application is the best way to spend this said "time". and don't forget to put some time  aside to learn, be in wonder, and share in the curiosity that flows with us in our NATURAL lives.

Where does this leave all of this in the rambling words of this post?

It leaves the fact of the matter that time is always on our side, that accomplishment and success is based on ones own happiness and not that of the status-quo of our toxic culture. its about what YOU want to accomplish, what your dreams are, and designs for a life you are hopefully wanting to be better, and leave behind something others can forever appreciate and wonder at. expectations should be and are only rooted with the self. and DON'T PANIC. living with as little as you need can put into perspective what some of the dreams are that you may want to ultimately leave behind after the short time we all spend on this little blue planet. If you dream and design for a better future, or a future in general, then you may have accomplished more then all the nay sayers of tradition. Permaculture is, after all, about healing what neglect and abuse has been done to both the human, the earth the human relies on indefinitely, and the community in which both (should) exist.  Happy dreaming.

Green house doings and the last crab dinner

Yesterday was an actual coastal foggy day here in bolinas. it broke nearly 4 weeks of hot sunny and dry weather. so we spent it in the green house planting seeds and getting the aquaponics planted with basil. hopefully they do well... the water PH is still a little high, and for the moment it is still pretty low on the Nitrite/nitrate levels that are so key for the nutrient cycle... those little craw fish just aren't producing enough waste and growing fast enough!

 the seed trays and starts were mostly perennial herbs and some culinary herbs for planting and possibly to sell as nursery stock. we also have these great seeds from Turkey that Penny had brought back- assorted cow/painted beans, 2 types of wheat, herbs, sun flowers and a 1000 year old ancient heirloom wheat.  we started onions and wheat grass as well. if all goes accordingly, we can get 4-6 seed trays started a week and plant out every couple of weeks straight up to the fall and get some sort of production out of the late start... so i hope. 

 

garden pirates Meghan, Liam, and Michelle. notice those nice new seed tables to the left Liam and i built...

Crab boil

 on another note, Todd a very talented fisherman and wood worker who built the front gate,  brought the last of the Dungeness crab harvest from his crab pots. it was a feast! we barely finished them, and James took the prize for most crab comsumed (Todd warned he has seen no other man consume crab as james does) it was a glorious feast, and even for someone as my self who is not a big crab fan, i loved every bit of them. after all as Todd and i agreed on, the ocean is sacred, and we gave thanks for their offering and the respect around the closing of the crab season. I spoke to Todd about the salmon run coming up in July and august, and he said i might be able to come along as deck hand in exchange for salmon catch... that would be amazing...

Todd showing off a crab

the crab pile.

the crab process begin

it was a crab funeral apparently....every one was in mourning.

bee swarm # 5?!

swarming bees

cutting branches out. im watching with curiosity about stings... 

the orchard looking west along the west ridge

final cut to the branch that held the swarm

box-o-bees (queen included) Liam and I moving the bees on up!

well another planned day at RDI was 

interrupted by our 7th(?) swarm of the season.

all three of us (Liam, Meghan and i) were in the kitchen garden getting ready to plant some veggies and herbs, when the hum of a swarm filled the air. 

Brock's voice about following the party ringed in our ears and we watched as the air filled with bees, eventually landing in a pear tree near the food forest just behind Penny and James house. 

(you can almost see the house roof in the picture at right.)

we proceeded to have the next top bar hive ready (these hives are one long hive with honey comb bars at the full length) and suited up for our adventure of cutting out all the bees amassed around the queen on the branches of the pear tree. 

its the pirate hives....

Liam dumping bees... in shorts... crazy man

the hive- that's a lot of bees

adding boards... in shorts...

after cutting out some branches we made the final cut (at left) and dropped all the bees and their hive mates into a box.

we moved amongst the swarming bees and their newly claimed branch in-a-box, very calmly mind you, up hill to the hives at the top of the food forest with no stings or anger from the bees at all.

Finally arrived up at their new home amongst our other hives- we are now up to 8 for the season, only starting with 3 out of 5 from last year... its been 4 weeks of constant new swarms. this means our current hives are busy at work expanding, or we are not doing enough to control the amount of queens that are being born. many bee keepers open and manage their hives choosing not to allow the the birth or creation of queen cells- the queen cells look a little bit like peanut shells worked into the side walls of the normal hive cells that birth drones and workers.





















if we find one without melting it down for bees wax i will post it... its been too exciting to save the cells and document.

Meghan took all the photos of Liam and i in our funny suits, and it was a job well done... and it was our first bee capture on our own for all of us- it being the first bee interaction for Meghan ever.

almost finished- some excited bees about their new home.

swarming a pear tree

we did have one closing thought- after checking on a previous swarm that happened a week ago, we noticed one of our newly swarmed boxes abandoned... the hive had comb and chambers, along with some unhatched bees, propolis, and filled honey comb... 

why was it empty? what happened to the unhatched bees? 

a few were still moving.

 we were curious and left with many more questions about exactly what we had seen today....

did this hive come from one of our previous swarms who didnt like their new home?

or was it a hive that out grew its space??

questions upon questions.

the universe is not personal.

Cheese part II

 So we made cheese yesterday. went for cheve, a simple goats cheese. 

let it drain. 

never really made cheese before....

most of what we got was a really a mild and great mozzarella goat cheese.

we have a lot of great cheese making equipment here, a cheese press, molds, everything but a bunch of starters- got to get some of them enzymes! we are all about the good bacteria! after all, its mostly because of those millions of little guys that give us all our favorite foods... wine, beer, yogurt, cheese, kimche, sauerkraut... even the plants like good holistic bacteria to help fight all the nasty blights and bad fungus... more on the compost and lactose loving teas for plants later...

i decided to press the curds into wheels, and then salted them and added tarragon and thyme (dried).

added some more salt, and now flipping the wheels on the cheese tray to dry out and see what we get... adding salt as i need to dry them out.

the pink on the larger thin wheel is some Hawaiian red sea salt from dear friend Cat. 

oh yeah-what am i going for here?

 hopefully a kind of aged dried, herbed, goat mozzarella, cottage cheddar?? 

or something like that..

stay tuned....

Cheese?!

Last night, for the first time we made cheese. 3 gallons of goats milk.... and we still had maybe 3 gallons to use for yogurt and to have in the morning... without any enzyme starter, i just used Rennet, to separate the fats and whey. on the left is the cheese hanging to drain and cure, and the right is the whey and cheese- the cheese having formed into a semi solid. below is the cheese in the cloth ready to be wrapped up and hung. to follow will be salting, pressing to cure, and adding dried herbs to make a herb goat cheese cheve... thank you GOATS.

also started today was some kimche, and Komboocha, (or booch as we like to call it)  by the wonderful and recently arrived new farm pirate (that's our new slang for intern) Meghan. also will attempt some whey soda with all our strawberries, and dehydrate them as well. lots going on. lots to do. lots to post... 

patients... 
and a quote that has been floating around here

"the universe is not personal"

chickens

happy old hens! speculation is they are around 8 years old.

the "bunkers" as the converted worm bins are named.

 This is the chicken coop. the whole fenced in area is very luxurious, complete with several (in my opinion) of the best apples at RDI. they have a good run, an old truck top, and even two giant worm bins that are built out of old cast iron tubs... although they cant get into the said tubs... the worm bins are cumbersome but are a great design none the less. we have the old grey water sludge that had millions of worms sitting in the worm bins as we speak- but penny and i both agree that they are almost too heavy to lift the tops and use, and we may retire them... im thinking of converting them to raised beds for carrots and beets... hmmm

our hens are down in numbers though, a bunch have been culled, mostly due to their old age, and they are laying at around 5 eggs a week if we are lucky. there is 6 hens left. hopefully we shall be getting some young guns soon!

Honey Harvest and FOXIE CUBS!

Honey! its good...

This week durring the PDC we captured a swarm as well as harvested some honey! in the late day when we culled the hive, we were processing the honey and we were silly drunk from all the honey we were eating, and covered in.. almost 3 pounds, and one of our first serious harvests from one of our 7 hives!

 this particular hive was not even a month old, and the Honey was several colours.  it also had some uncovered combs, meaning that the bees had not finished filling them and capped them off. this "uncapped" honey wont last as long, but is raw and fresh!!! the darker and lighter honey that we had was most likely the eucalyptus and the smorgasbord of flowers and plants on the farm respectively.  

PDC student Claire ready for the bees.

 The Hive that swarmed brought out some great fashion statements, as well as it being the second swarm of the year from our "kitchen hive." the kitchen hive has volunteered in a hole on the outside wall coverings of the kitchen. they are one of the strongest hives we have, and are constantly coming home with their little saddle bags filled with pollen.

Brock clad in bee protection

 and last but not least the adorable grey fox cubs for 2012.  these two buggers were causing a ruckus knocking over a bucket, and just being a bunch of misfits. they have been spotted under James' and Penny's houses. the mom has been seen more often then these two... we hope they are alright! 

grey fox cubs