Ready to Move

As the end of the year quickly approaches I am growing in anticipation of moving to Virginia. Now part of the excitement comes from being done with school, having a real job and all of that. However I am probably most excited about having a garden that is much easier to manage.

I think that our garden has done so poorly because the weather has just been too hot. Now that it is cooling off, some of the plants that I was about ready to rip out of the ground are starting to come back to life. We have also planted a few more things and are excited to see what takes.

This summer out garden was so nice. We could hardly keep up with how much the garden was producing. I absolutely cannot wait to finally have a place of my own and plant a large garden that as long as there are not freak snow storms will do great.

Cheaper Living in a Hole

In response to my Hobbit Hole post Ruth brought up the fact that building underground can be more expensive than building above ground. While this is true for the upfront costs I would like to show why it makes sense in the long run. First why is it expensive to build underground? In order to have a basement (or anything underground) you must first dig a hole. Then you have to make sure that it is moisture proof. All of this costs more than just building on top of the ground. Checking around a couple of places online most people said that it cost them about $10,000 to build their basements. For this argument lets say that since the entire house is going to cost $20,000 or even $30,000 more than a typical house.

Now lets look at why you want to spend that much more initially. First it would eliminate your heating and cooling bills. According to the Energy Star website that is about $1,000 dollars a year. So over the period of 20-30 years the house has already made back every penny to originally spent. And that is assuming that you live in an average place. In places where summers are really hot (Arizona) or the winters are really cold (Michigan) the energy bills could be even higher which means the house would pay for itself even faster.

Second if we were to build below ground then we could be building on smaller lots with the same size of house. Now land prices vary greatly by location so this is a variable that may or may not save a lot of money. Looking at a few places here in my area I found that even on the cheap end a lot of land is about $50,000. Now when we are building underground en masse we could easily build two houses on a quarter of an acre or even a eight of an acre. So now the cost of land has dropped in half. That savings alone basically covers the cost of building underground.

Third is the fact that if this was done en masse it would be easy to reduce the cost of building. For example if a builder decided to build his new subdivision all underground he could easily excavate the entire area, build the houses knowing that they would be buried (which would definitely take a different set of construction techniques). Then as the houses were finished each one could be covered back over with soil and the project would be done. I do not know how much this could save but it should definitely reduce the costs.

Those I guess are just a couple more thoughts about why we should be building underground. I am sure that my argument is not perfect or the numbers completely accurate. That was not the point of this post. The point was to just look a little past the initial costs so that we all can realize how worth it some of these initial investments can be.

Yurts!

This is something that I just ran across today. Modern day yurts are build in the design of yurts from Mongolia and Turkey. It is basically a round house with a peaked roof. The walls are a wooden lattice, the roof is support by wooden beams. The walls are now often a high quality plastic. They are simple and easy to construct, even the larger yurts can be put up in a weekend if there are a few helping hands working together.

One can be used as a starter home. As a family grows it is simple to add another yurt next to the original and basically double the living space. Or if you do not need to double the space you can get a smaller yurt for an addition. Yurts can be used as a guest house, a room for a hot tub, a office, or even a rather epic tree house.

I guess there are a few things that have me interested in yurts. The first is that they are simple. It is something that I could do for myself (with help of course). It would not have to be built by someone else. I could intimately know and understand every last detail. That way when something goes wrong, A) I am more aware of what needs to be done to fix it, and B) I can only curse myself. Second it is a unique and simple building that could easily go onto any empty plot of land without too much fuss.

The only thing that I think would take some time would be building the interior walls, kitchen and bathroom. However the Yurt could go up in a couple of days and then slowly build up the rest as I go. I am pretty sure that it would take a lot of thinking outside the box to make it work but that definitely sounds like an adventure.

Hobbit Holes

Why is it that hobbits are so much smarter than we are when it comes to building homes? They are the one race that has figured out that it is so much more efficient to build underground. Between the insulation that comes from having tons of earth all around you and actually having the ground keep your house at the same temperature as itself it just makes so much more sense to build underground.

Most places have a ground temperature somewhere between 50-80 degrees Fahrenheit. This is so much better than the air temperature range of 0-120 that we have. For the most part we could almost completely get rid of all our energy costs related to heating and cooling.

With the proper use of skylights and solar wells the houses could still receive as much light as we currently do with windows. Then when you left your house you would not see row after row of housing but instead it would be like walking into a park. You would still have roads and cars scattered about but in between would be trees and grass.

It would also be a lot easier to fully utilize your lot. Even a 50 x 50 foot lot would give huge houses and then you could have the entire surface to play games or grow flowers or gardens.

At least in my opinion it would turn subdivisions into gorgeous parks. It would turn cities into forests. It would bring us closer back to nature.

Learning Through Failure

As I have been working in the garden this fall I have really enjoyed it. However if you were to take a look at it right now you would think that I am an awful gardner. If it was being done for a grade I would deserve an F. Both the pumpkin and squash died and have been pulled out. The corn has never made it past being two feet tall. The serrano plant has at most two to three leaves on it at any one point in time. The tomatoes look like they are 90% dead. Only the green onions, basil and rosemary look decent.

Nonetheless I am learning like crazy. I have learned that the tomatoes probably got too much sun and burned. At first I thought I had drowned them with overwatering so I cut back to twice a week. I think that is what did in the squash and pumpkins. My garden needs a little more water than twice a week since it is elevated off the ground and drains out quickly. I am learning how delicate seedlings are since more than my fair share have died even before making it to be a full plant.

I would be wracked with stress if I was doing this poorly in school. Our schooling system is so unforgiving that kids can give themselves ulcers. The stress can be so much so often that students never learn to love learning. My garden is forgiving. When I make a mistake I get to learn from it and hopefully not repeat it. It does not go permanently on a record that I have killed probably half of the things that I have planted and that the other half is not really productive. What will be seen in a year or two is hopefully a garden where only a few plants have died and that most things are producing wonderful food.

Learning should be fun, not stressful. It should encourage you to learn more about a subject, not fear it to the point where in college we will never take a class about it in fear of not doing well. I hope that everyone who reads this can stop and think about learning and then try to learn something new about anything that suits you.

Common Sense Incarnate

The other day I saw an article in time about a book written by a sustainable farmer. That evening I found the first chapter available for download in iBooks. I started reading it and I cannot stop. The book is called Folks, This Ain't Normal. It is all about practices that have become common place that even 50 years ago would be considered completely absurd. From the way that we get food at the store to the way that we prepare food at home. From the way children are allowed to basically run free to the way that half the things that kids have done for hundreds of years are now considered unsafe.

He discusses many different topics but he does not just point fingers saying that everything is wrong. He also proposes solutions that could easily be adopted, that would also have a great impact. His overall goal is for people to adopt a more sustainable and responsible way of eating. Less corporate agriculture, more gardens at home. Less waste, more proper use of the waste that is unavoidable. The best thing that I think I like about his book is that his suggestions are not only for people that have a large amount of land that they can farm and raise their own livestock. He gives ideas for urbanites that are in a high rise. He gives ideas that could be applied in most families if we were willing to spend a little less time with the TV and a little more doing something more productive.

If you took the time to read all of this you have to check out the book. Go to http://www.amazon.com/Folks-This-Aint-Normal-Healthier/dp/0892968192 and read the first chapter that is posted for free. I am not even saying that you have to buy the book. You could pick it up at the library instead (which would also satisfy my need for people to relearn to love the library). Just check it out.

Top Bar Hive

As I continue to learn about beekeeping I am drawn to the Kenyan Top Bar Hive. It was designed as a cheap, simple and more natural alternative to the classic Langstroth Hive. Like most choices there are both pros and cons to each side. I see two main advantages to the TBH. The first is that they are really easy to construct and also cheap to make. The second advantage is that it allows the bees to draw out their own comb in the manner that bees prefer. The more natural method of comb creation allows for the bees to choose what size of comb they need.

However there are some disadvantages also to the TBH. The largest disadvantage is that in order to harvest the honey, you have to cut the comb off the top bars. This means that each time you harvest the honey the bees have to invest the energy to create new comb. So at the end of the year you end up with less honey, but you do get more wax. The second problem with TBH is that they are not as standardized as Langstroth Hives so it be more difficult to work with other beekeepers if you need to exchange equipment. However you either build all of your own hives or get all of your hives from the same source you will not have any problems within your own apiary.

It will be a while before I have to make a final decision (maybe). I will try talking Tami into letting me keep bees as soon as we get a house. I may even try sooner if I find someone who does not mind sharing a corner of their property.