The Green Beetle

The gentleman builder is not only adept at building houses; he has also turned his hand to boat-making. 

For Christmas, the gentleman builder made a boat, the Green Beetle, for padawan.  The boat is a wacky lassie design  obtained online, here.  It's made from left-over ply with fibreglass and epoxy for waterproofing with an oil based paint to protect the wood.  It took longer than the originally anticipated day but the kids get such joy from it and it was a well-deserved break from the monotony that is shouse building.

The gentleman builder's brother made a timber canoe (of much higher quality than the Green Beetle), and the race was on.  No prizes for guessing the winner but the boys had a great time!

Power to the people

At the block we plan to be self-sufficient in terms of power.  We have a Lister Petter generator that provides power to our tools and cement mixer at the moment and will provide back-up to our solar system once the mains power is connected.  We don't plan on using the generator as a standard but will start it up if we need to run the dryer, which is one of our most power-hungry appliances.  

While we are hoping that the wind and the wood fire at the block will allow us to  dry the majority of our washing outdoors or on a clothes airer, I am no stranger to the mud Gippsland can provide and the magnetic forces children seem to possess in attracting it to their clothing.

As the batteries and power connections provide a risk to small hands and the generator is loud when running, the gentleman builder designed a 3 by 3 by 3 metre shed that will house the generator on an independent slab, the batteries and power controls with some space to the south for storage.

Due to the fall of the land, we used prefabricated cement  footings with standard metal ant capping to address any potential termite issues.  We used some of the beams we rejected for the house (because they were not long enough) as bearers. The joists are F17 hardwood and the frame was constructed with structural grade pine (to minimise costs) and this was reinforced with metal strapping for cross bracing.  The winds we get at the block can be pretty severe so the gentleman builder tends to brace everything that can be braced, just to be sure.

The generator will sit on a reinforces concrete slab that sits upon separate concrete footings and is not connected to the rest of the shed.  This should eliminate shake as the generator tends to wobble.

The shed was insulated with air-cell glareshield and clad in colourbond in a shade darker than the shouse roof.  This is one of the cheapest wall cladding you can get that is non-toxic and does not require maintenance.

We picked up some pre-fabricated treated pine stairs from Bunnings for two reasons.  Firstly, they were a quick solution to the fact that two of the doors are about 500mm from ground level.  Secondly, they were incorrectly marked at $15.95 rather than $159.50. 

The batteries we decided on are 600 amp hour deep cycle Hoppecke from Germany.  We have a bank of 12 batteries that are 2 volts each.

The control system is an Outback Mate charger, controller and inverter.

We put on standard external doors (painted with Dulux weathershield) and locks so that we can secure our $19,000 battery investment.

Water storage

We agonised for a long time about a tank for the shouse.  What we really wanted was something that would not ruin the beautiful rainwater that we would catch; for what is the point of collecting pure water if it just sits in plastics that leach chemicals that mimic the hormone oestrogen.   Although we have PVC downpipes, we figure the water flows through them pretty quickly and hope that they don't have a huge effect on the quality of our water.  Eventually we hope to replace them with something less toxic (stainless downpipes and, perhaps, ceramic underground).

We eventually sourced a stainless tank from Designer Tanks that did not have a plastic liner and we are very happy with it.

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants (Michael Pollan) is one of my favourite quotes.  I love Michael Pollan.  He advocates for eating organic food and supports self-sufficient mixed farms.  Pollan is a regular columnist with the New York Times, was a consultant on the popular food expose, Food Inc. and has written a number of brilliant books.  Pollan intends to provide a framework for simple, healthy, sustainable eating and advises people to consider the food choices they make, opting for ethical eating. 

Lately, I have come across a number of articles backing up my way of thinking about food.  AlterNet recently posting on why we need to radically change the way we eat.  It frightens me that corporations essentially own our food security.  Companies like Monsanto 'own' the genetic makeup of many of the staple foods we eat.  Moreover they create crops that are essentially sterile, thereby forcing people to purchase seeds on an annual basis.

This is the reason I love companies like the Diggers Club that sell open-pollinated heirloom vegetables and are passionate about preserving traditions.  Diggers don't use genetically engineered seeds and oppose the use of chemicals.  

I am convinced that organic food is the only way to eat and, though organic produce deserves a premium, we are not in the position to buy organic.  That, combined with the fact that peak oil is here and we all need to think about food files, is why we intend to grow all our own food.  We have a small vegetable patch at present (see below) which we intend to increase significantly once we are living at the block.

Padawan and Little Miss are very proud of their pumpkin plants

I think that chefs like Stetphanie Alexander and her kitchen garden program, Jamie Oliver's  Ministry of Food, gardeners like Peter Cundall and companies like Little Veggie Patch Co. are doing a great job in trying to open people's eyes to the lies they are being fed, literally, with regard to the food that they eat.

Organic food tastes better than cold-storage mass produced food and has more nutrients.   Home grown organic food is even better.  Not only does home grown organic food have zero food miles; the fact that it is fresh means that it can be picked when ripe rather than picked in time for it to be ripe once it is in the shop and ready for sale.   Ripe food tastes totally different to the second-rate producet that is bought in shops.

I thoroughly endorse farm gate sales of fresh local, seasonal produce.  Admittedly, eating seasonal food takes a little getting used to.  At the moment, zucchinis and tomatoes are in season.  This is brilliant as a side of ratatouille is delicious.  So is zucchini slice.  However, once you have had both of these for four weeks straight, zucchini and tomatoes are not looking so great.  The up side, though, is that when you start to get truly sick of zucchini and tomatoes, pears and pumpkins are ripe and you can then feast on pear tea cake and pumpkin soup just as the days start to get shorter and the nights start to get colder.  My point is, that seasonal produce is just that - seasonal.  It comes and goes.  

Unless of course you preserve the harvest.  By preserving, you can enjoy seasonal produce all year round.  For example, blackberries are generally only in season for 2-6 weeks, depending on the year, they make the most delicious jam, can be frozen or bottled.  Likewise, while apples store pretty well in the right conditions they also stew and bottle well.  

If you are keen on preserving, I can thoroughly recommend Vacola jars.  They come in a variety of sizes and, with new seals, can be used many times over.  If you decide to go down this path, select the stainless steel lids.  They are a little more expensive but won't spoil acidic foods like tomatoes.

If you are time poor or lacking in space and think that you cannot grow your own produce, I urge you to at least plant some herbs in a pot.  Potted gardens can be incredibly productive and fresh herbs add a depth of flavour to food that is hard to beat.  Lettuce is another crop that is easy to grow in a small space.  Container gardening can be very productive and rewarding.  Just remember that if you are growing plants in a container you will be their sole source of nutrients so you will need to routinely add organic fertiliser to ensure optimal growth.  I thoroughly recommend seasol if you are looking for something to fertilise your plants with.

Growing food is such a rewarding pursuit and kids can get involved too.  Perhaps you could get the kids to help out with making icypole stick labels for your plants or let them make a pinwheel to decorate the garden.  Kids love to water plants and watch them grow and small watering cans are inexpensive.  You won't be able to stop them when it's harvest time, either.  My kids refuse to eat spinach unless of course they are picking it from the garden to eat fresh for lunch as a part of a salad they grew themselves!

Moving cows

Padawan and Little Miss love to help their grandparents, particularly when it comes to moving stock.  Each year the gentleman builder's parents move dry cows (those that are not being milked just before they are due to give birth) from the home farm about 10km to another property they own.  This serves two purposes, it rests the soil at the home farm and reduces the likelihood of pest and disease loads building up and it gives the cows a chance to feed up on fresh grass before giving birth.

Each year the kids help out in moving the cows and get a real thrill out of it.

 Padawan and Little Miss always find something fun to do, wherever we are.  On this particular occasion, they each had a stick and  played with them for hours while we moved the cows.

I look forward to the day when it is our cows the kids are helping to move.

Life is all about compromises

Unless you are a millionaire, and possibly even then, life is about compromises.  I had always wanted bay windows.  One of Mum and Dad's friends had glorious bay windows in their home which we used to hide in as kids and read in as teenagers.  I loved the feeling of being soaked in sunlight but being out of the wind and away from the flies.  Unfortunately, bay windows (as in the glassy component) are ludicrously expensive and well out of our league.  Thankfully, the strawbale walls are 500mm thick once they are rendered and provide an excellent opportunity for wide sills.

As we had milled our own timber for the beams, we had some offcuts and rejected pieces that we had deemed unsuitable for beams but would do just fine as sills.  The gentleman builder set about installing sills and reinforcing them to ensure they will hold enough weight to be used as window seats.  This meant that, again, we had to manoeuvre a very heavy piece of wood into an awkward spot.  The gentleman builder set up a couple of levers to lift the wood to the right height and I, as lacky, provided ballast on the ends of the levers while the gentleman builder put the central supporting pole under the window sill.

Brackets were used to attach the sill to the wooden posts at each end.  Strawbales were then trimmed to fit under the sill.

Once baled and rendered, the sills look pretty awesome.  The one in the bedroom faces north and is gloriously warm on a cold, stormy day.  I foresee that I will spend many spare hours reading in that spot!

Dining sill - facing east for beautiful morning sun

The shouse gets a doorstep (well, two)

With the wet weather, we were traipsing a lot of mud into the shouse.  We'd decided early on that we were going to have a stone stoop (well, we would love a stone stoop if we could afford such extravagances but had settled on tiles for the verandah and a stone step).  

While at Tony Williams to collect hydrated lime for the render, we had spied a pile of gorgeous pink granite (which is not pink but rather reddy-brown).   Each time we went there to top up on lime, we would scurry through the pile of pink granite to see if there was a suitable piece for the doorstep.  On one such day, we found not one but two pieces that we liked.  As the weather was wet and the quest had already taken over 6 months I declared that a two piece doorstep, while not ideal, would be fine.

The only problem was that each piece was about 350mm thick.  Firstly, that meant further excavation and I am still to recover from digging the footings.  Secondly, being granite, it meant that, once again, we'd be battling weighty beasts for a day in order to lay the doorstep.

While the guys at Tony Williams used the forklift to get the pieces into the trailer, we had to devise a method to get the rocks from the trailer, around the far side of the building and into their final resting place.

The gentleman builder and I had gained some muscle mass since the start of the build and together we managed to flip the  stones end on end and land them onto a loose straw bale to get them out of the trailer.  We then moved them, one at a time on rollers to the front door.

Then the digging began.   Again.  We wanted the doorstep hard up against the shouse wall and under the red gum board so it was mainly crowbar work to get the hole dug.  Thankfully, there was not a lot of space for two people to work so I generously let the gentleman builder do the majority of the digging.  We measured the hole to the nth degree to ensure that the rocks would fit as closely as possible on the first attempt.

Little Miss in the hole for the doorstep

We used the rollers again to get the first stone as close to the hole as possible and set up quite a precarious arrangement of strawbales, a left-over timber beam and the endless winch to be able to lower the stones into place.

Unfortunately, as we lowered the second stone into place the bolt that was holding the chain for the endless winch broke and flew off at great speed, clipping my thumb in the process.  Pain resulted, followed by swelling, throbbing and intense heat.  Out came the freezie block from the lunchbox Esky and, when, after ten minutes of ice the pain had not subsided (I had even agreed to taking Panadol);  the gentleman builder insisted on a quick trip to the Foster hospital emergency department.  Being a Sunday the radiologist was not on duty but, thankfully, the rostered GP had taken a few crash courses and was confident to take some films of my hand.  Thankfully the bone was not broken but was chipped and would need 4-6 weeks of rest to heal.  

We returned to the block about 2 hours later with my hand securely strapped and a supply of panadeine forte (which I had insisted I did not need but I actually succumbed to taking one to get to sleep that night).

Luckily, the gentleman builder is a talented and patient man as he managed to manoeuvre the final stone into place and backfill the hole without any assistance.  Admittedly, it took about 5 times as long as the first stone did but he got there in the end.

 

In the end we were very happy with the doorstep and the gentleman builder is convinced that in a thousand years all that will be left of the building will be two  pieces of pink granite submerged in the bedrock.