50 shades of brown

I think it was Geoff Lawton who said something along the lines of "the only way for truly sustainable farming is to build soil, so that you have more soil when you're done than when you started". This is a stark opposite to the common slash-and-burn practices and the Western favourite "soak depleted soil in pesticide and fertilizer" approach. To those who aren't sure what's wrong with using fertilizer - the health of the plants is based on the health of the system the plants are living in, and first and foremost - the health of the soil. This encompasses the mineral and humus content of the soil, AND, just as important - the multitude of organisms that are the soil life. These include fungi, bacteria, worms, insects, and whatever else. This network of living things is what makes it soil, rather than dirt.

Keeping all this in mind, I was itching to get started making our soil a thing of beauty. As soon as we got a truck, we have started compiling our sources of organics. Main concerns were price (free, please), compatibility (you need both nitrogen-rich and carbon-rich materials), and versatility. One thing that people often miss is that currently soils are more often than not deficient in some things (due to long-term growing/grazing and selling elsewhere that removes the nutrients). Different soils will have, of course, different deficiencies. However, if you compost all of your home-grown leftovers and apply them to your own garden, thinking that you're solving your soil's issues right there, you're completely off-target. Each garden will have a different mineral content. Since you're applying a mineral-deficient compost to the same-mineral-deficient soil, you're still left with deficiency. To do fine-scale, targeted adjustments of mineral contents, it's super important to have soil tested. The broader approach is to get inputs from as many different sources as you possibly can, and hope that they will cover the spectrum of specific needs of your soil.

Piles of free wood chips, courtesy of a tree service company not too far away 

Which brings us to the name of the post - the more different manures, the better! Currently, we have a pile of alpaca manure, horse manure, and we should be able to pick up some chicken manure in a couple of weeks. These will be our nitrogen sources. Since different animals uptake different vitamins and minerals, the manures should have a fairly variable composition. Carbon sources will include cardboard from recycling bins, free wood chips from a tree service company, and fallen leaves from anywhere we can get them.

Mmmm, manure... Horse in the front, alpaca in the back. Josh on the truck ;-)

Our approach will be build raised beds using sheet composting (aka lasagna beds) this fall and next spring. Currently, we're waiting for the house construction to be over and all the heavy equipment to be gone. Once the house is built, we will put together a few raised beds. In them, we'll layer cardboard on the bottom, a layer of mixed manures, a thick layer of leaves, a bit of top soil from our own site (scraped off during driveway and house construction), and wood chips on top. All pathways in between will be mulched using cardboard and wood chips. All this good stuff will be left to overwinter and decompose, so that it's ready for planting in the spring. One of the beds will be made using compost from the stuff Josh's relatives are supplying us. I really hope it does well, so that they see what you can achieve with the power of garbage :-)

Random thoughts following Arthur's 7-day power outage

The tropical storm that caused 1-2 week power outages (depending on location) throughout New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (well over 200,000 affected customers in total) felt a little like a preview of a catastrophic event. Josh is writing a full-length blog post about his thoughts and feelings during and following the storm. This is my post, and it's short and sweet, and just includes a few of the main thoughts that came to my mind...

Saint John, NB, the morning after the storm

1) Out of the 7-9 days of outage in Fredericton, NB, at least 6 were perfectly sunny. So, if more people had solar power capacity, they wouldn't be up s**t creek. Our neighbours, who are off-grid, said "we wouldn't even know anything was different"; apparently, were also offering hot showers and such to friends and neighbours in need.

2) When power was out, rural homes, which depend on wells (and hence pumps) were out of water. Which means that you need to truck bottled water for drinking, face washing, tooth brushing, and the occasional toilet flushing. Josh's parents had a pond in their back yard, so bucketing for toilet purposes was relatively easy. However, if people had to bucket water to flush their toilets every day, how long would the flush toilets system last? Why are we supporting such a fragile (and wasteful) system?

3) From conversations we overheard: "people were actually socializing, neighbours were meeting for supper and helping each other. But only until power came on..." Seriously? That's what it takes to revert back to a normal, social life? All of our conveniences need to be gone, apparently...

4) Why do people have so much frozen meat???

5) Line-ups for gas and propane - the only reason things went mostly "as normal". Grocery stores were running on generators, and still some had spoiled produce and meat. People ran their home fridges on generators and cooked on propane stoves. What would happen if these fossil fuels would be either unavailable or super expensive?

It was pretty neat and a little scary to see the changes that occur in our society under what can be considered a fairly small-scale disaster. Small scale, because we could still get around and had cheap gas to run our lives mostly as normal. But it did provide a little glimpse into the future, and when you add into the equation climate change and future oil shortages, I sure didn't like what I saw...

Final house plans - they exist!

The last week or so has been pretty exciting for us. The house plans got finalized (true story!), printed, and handed off to the builder. Here's what it will look like. Eventually.

                                 South side                                                                                                              West side

Main energy-efficient and green features, thanks to our Passive-house-certified designer (Garth Hood, from Thoughtful Dwellings, Fredericton, NB):
1) Lots of (but not too many) windows on the south side, for good lighting throughout the day, and passive solar heating (sun heating the interior through the windows) in the winter
2) Minimal glazing on the north (single, 2'x3' window in the bathroom) and west (single window in the kitchen), to reduce heat escape from the north side and avoid the hot afternoon sun from the west.
3) Crazy efficient windows (see below)
4) Crazy efficient heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system (see below)
5) A hydronic wood gasification stove (see below)
6) Solar panels + batteries
7) Composting toilet
8) Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) construction - makes for a very air-tight house

The windows we're getting are super fancy - not only are they triple-glazed (and we get to choose the solar heat gain coefficients, which differ for south and north sides), but they also have insulated frames. The overall effect is that the inside surface is warm to the touch even in the winter, they have a huge effect on total house insulation, and make fantastic window seats. Since they're extra-fancy, they also open in two different directions:

Fancy windows (left) and the outcome of having insulated windows and tight thermal envelope (right)

The HRV is a Zehnder ComfoAir 200, which will be installed with an earth tube. The earth tube is as it sounds - a pipe buried underground. This pipe provides the intake air for the HRV system. Since it's underground, the incoming air is at a much more stable temperature (being heated up by the Earth's mass). Below is a graph of outside air temp (blue) and intake air temp (red). This should allow us to save a fair bit on energy to heat the incoming air to house-temperature.

              

<-- Earth tube during installation      ^ Comparison of outside air temperature with                                                                        after-tube temperature

Ahhh, the wood gasification stove. The world's least sexy name for one of the coolest things I've ever seen. In short - it has two chambers; the top one burns wood, like any normal wood stove. The lower chamber burns the exhaust from the upper chamber, which allows for higher efficiency and cleaner exhaust. In addition to heating the house directly, the stove also connects to a huge (1000 L) tank and heats the water inside it. The tank acts as storage, which can be used either for in-floor heating or heating up domestic water when the batteries are running low. Made by a German company, with distributors in Canada and US. Here's the video, skip to 2:10 past the overly-perfect German family to see the magic...

Ze majestik vood stove

Solar panels + batteries are pretty self-explanatory. Plus, we don't have the plans for those yet, so can't include any cool pictures. The work will be done locally, by Treefrog Ventures. The battery bank was calculated to give us about 5 days of regular-use power under overcast conditions. Between this and the wood stove, we're hoping to not need much of a generator use throughout the year. We'll see how it pans out. Part of the process is learning the systems and probably changing some bad habits.

Composting toilet - while I've already written about it, I thought I'd reiterate. Flushing toilets make no sense. There is a Russian expression that goes "if you add a teaspoon of jam to a barrel of crap, you get a barrel of crap. If you add a teaspoon of crap to a barrel of jam, you still get a barrel of crap". Flushing toilets do exactly that - 13 L per flush until the 1990s and almost 5 L per flush since. That makes for a very, very large barrel of crap, where there is absolutely no need for it in the first place.

Last, but not least, is ICF construction. The idea is that the insulation (rigid foam) is a part of the wall right off the bat, instead of an add-on during the construction process. Once the ICF blocks are installed, the concrete is poured, and - voilà - you have reinforced, well-insulated concrete walls. Since the insulation is already there during the wall formation, the insulating envelope is tight, and the thermal performance of the house ends up being higher than with many other forms of insulation.

ICF construction, pre-concrete pour.  

Now that these things are in place, we're just waiting for the well digger to dig our well, and the house construction can begin!

Starting from scratch

It's a very odd feeling to come to a piece of land, and realize that it's an empty canvas and you're in charge of making it look the way you dreamed. It's almost impossible to run a full list of things to do, since that would make my brain explode. Let me see: build a house. Create a beautiful, yet functional and reliable food system. Not kill each other. Hmm, shorter-term goals are probably the way to go here :-)

So instead we're trying short to-do lists for when we spend 2-3 days at the property. In our first week, the things to do included: mow down the clearing, till garden patch, limb driveway trees and stake the driveway and house. Done, done, and done...

We planted this year's garden with soldier beans and potatoes. We're treating this garden plot as a "year zero" experiment (as Josh calls it), or "throwaway year" as I call it. As in - if anything grows, great. If not, we're not going to be too sad about it. The soil in the clearing is mostly clay, since the clearing has been cut for (likely) many years now - the organic matter has been repeatedly stripped from it, leaving not that great a soil behind. In comparison, the soil in the forest not 20 feet away is much richer in organic, darker, and crumblier.

In that first week we also planted black currants - we brought 2 currant plants with us from BC. I bought them from a Russian lady in Castlegar, who was swearing to me that they were special, "from Siberia". There are 3 berries on one of them, and they are darkening up fast. We'll see how special it is in just a little bit! In addition, we planted 3 rhubarb plants and a bit of mint.

<-- rhubarb, happily growing in its new spot


Black currants working on getting ripe        -->











Since that first week, the list of small, yet important accomplishments got longer: moved a wild rose plant from the river, where they grow by the dozen, to our property, moved three baby trees (one goosefoot maple and two beeches) from the driveway, where they would get trampled by heavy equipment, to the edge of the clearing, made vertical potato boxes and planted them with late potatoes, built a compost bin, and filled it with a whole pile of fallen leaves left behind by Arthur, and planted pole beans, peas, arugula, and kale. Most of this work was done by Josh while I was trying hard to maintain my full-time work schedule.

<-- vertical potato planter. Yes, they did get covered (and mulched) one the picture was taken.


First-year compost bin. Will get more elaborate with time, but good enough for now    -->






In the meantime, the builders just about completed the driveway to our place, which means that now we can actually drive up the driveway all the way to the house site, instead of hiking out with all of our gear. What a concept!

<-- driveway in the making



Local wildlife coming out after the rain. Unrelated to this post as such, but very cute :-)                          -->

Walking our land and some pretty pictures

We have now successfully moved back to NB. In the past few days, we have been staying with Josh's parents, who have been most kind and helpful. We've gone to our little piece of heaven (and hard work) twice now. In the first time, we aimed to see how things were progressing, with it being summer and all, and to place temporary stakes for the locations of the well and the corners of the house + garage.

The area is all in bloom and beautiful, such a difference from the gloomy days of fall when we first saw the property! Now, remove those pesky blood-sucking insects, and I'm officially in love :-)

                         

<-- Location of future garage corner. ^ view toward future house

Here are some pictures of plants we took on that first walk while running around trying to escape the multitude of mosquitoes, black flies, and deer flies that thought we were supper...

Highbush cranberry in bloom

On the second visit to the property, we met with our builder, went over the general locations of things on the property, staked out the world's longest driveway, and cleared some low-hanging tree limbs from the existing driveway, in preparation for putting gravel on it next week.

American beech, identified via FB friends...

  

Gorgeous flowering pitcher plants by the lake... 

So beautiful, that I was OK with getting bitten while snapping some pictures :-)

 The elusive butthole tree... And now you, too, cannot unsee it. 

I'm really looking forward to having some plant-knowing people over to our new place and learning more about what species are growing readily around. Assuming that the driveway will be made more accessible next week, we might have a bio-ID-blitz in a couple of weeks. Rumour is there will be a bottle of (excellent) homemade red wine for the winner! 

Our quest for the awesome homemade sourdough bread recipe

I've been making my own sourdough bread for about four years now. My sister and her husband got me hooked - they were making theirs for a while, and when I tried a slice, there was just no coming back. I was always a bread lover. Real bread though, the heavy, tasty kind, not the white fluff you usually get at the store.

<-- white fluff....        ^ happy-Sima bread


In the first two years, bread making was a struggle - the dough had to be kneaded, and left to rise twice at somewhat specific intervals, which made it harder to make during the workweek. The center did not always bake through, while the outside sometimes got too crusty. Then, two years ago, everything changed. I went back to my sister, and noticed that she did no kneading. So this time I listened carefully when she explained the process. I also combined her recipe with this one, from a blog written by a friend. The resulting recipe is what we've been following for the past two years, happy and content. Work time: 10 mins. Price: pennies. Results: awesome bread.

Not only that, but I've spread the goodness - I shared my sourdough starter with at least four people in the past year or so. One of them, a friend from work, has done no baking before. Within a few weeks, he was raving about the awesome bread he was getting. Another share, which happened on our travel from BC to NB, was at a bed and breakfast in Ontario. The hosts let me feed my starter in their kitchen and asked for a bit for themselves. A few days later, I got this email:

" I just wanted to tell you how much we’re enjoying the gift of your starter.  I just put together the 3rd loaf and as yet have not started adding anything as we’re enjoying it so much just as it is!"

Anyway, enough talk, here's the recipe. It requires a starter. Which you can get from someone you know has one (like myself) or make your own (takes flour, water, and about 5 mins of work / day for a week or so, here's a recipe for a rye starter).

Things you'll need: whole wheat flour, white flour, starter, salt, water, large container with a lid (plastic bowl, large pot, whatever, as long as the lid fits well), spoon.

1) Combine 1.5 cups of whole wheat, 1.5 cups of white unbleached wheat, and a sprinkle of salt in a large bowl.

2) Mix the starter and pour in most of it into the bowl; leave about 1 inch of starter in the jar

3) Start mixing the dough, add water as needed to get a thick, but droopy dough. You don't need to knead at all, I only use a regular spoon to mix it; so if it's too difficult, add a little water. Cover and set on the counter to rise. You’re basically done. At this stage I also add sunflower seeds, walnuts, crushed chili peppers, olives, oregano, and all kinds of stuff, depending on the mood.

4) Add 1 cup of whole wheat to the starter, and add enough water to make it liquidy again. Stir well, cover with a cloth and leave on the counter for a few hours (I leave it out while the dough in the bowl is rising). That's when the starter is eating and getting bigger for next time. After the eating period (= when you put the bread into the oven), put it in the fridge (covered with a cloth, because the starter still needs to breathe). The starter stays in the fridge between breads; you just use it as is, cold and all. If it starts smelling weird, gunks up on the top or whatever, just scrape and discard the gunk, stir the starter, pour most out, feed, and let sit for a few hours to get bubbly again.

                                                                                      

Left - just-mixed starter. Right - starter after a night of eating on the counter. Most of the flour is on top, trapped between gas bubbles from the starter's breathing.

5) Once the dough in the bowl is quite bubbly (2-3 h in the sun in the summer, or ~ 12 h in the cold of the winter), it’s time to bake.

6) Preheat the oven to 425 F (220 C, different ovens might be different; slightly change heat / time as needed through experimentation). Oil and flour a bread pan (or a cookie sheet, or a muffin tray). Gently pour the dough in, try to not squish the bubbles too much. Bake for 40 mins or until the crust is golden to your liking.

                              

As muffins or ciabatta-like, this bread seriously rocks.

Let it sit for a few minutes before you cut it. If you can wait, that is :-)

Fresh from this morning

One couple, 2 gardens

Garden 1 - BC
We knew we'd be moving from BC months ago. Therefore, we knew we wouldn't have much of a garden at our current place. Still, I wanted to eat some fresh, home-grown things, so I planned for early-crop vegetables. On the plus side, the garden was all set up, I had seed-starting equipment, and I was eager to get going. On the downside, I really had to stop myself from planting things like tomatoes and such, since they would never make it in time for our move...
We planted early, when most BC dwellers were only ordering seeds or starting to think about wrapping up their skiing season. We used plastic to protect the little guys overnight, and it worked quite well. The peas were flowering as early as May, and we even got a bunch of pods before we left! I was hoping for more, but we didn't continue with the plastic-overnight protection, so plant growth was on the slow side. That said, we've been enjoying fresh arugula, mustard greens, radishes, sorrel, chives, and thyme from the garden for several weeks now, and it's been wonderful. Before we left, another crop of arugula, kale, mustard greens, and radishes were ready, so we were able to them with us on our travels.

Picked about 5 minutes before leaving Castlegar, BC

Garden 2 - NB
On the other side of the continent, the summer is so delayed in comparison to BC, that we actually will be able to pull off an almost-full growing season once we get there in late June. The planting list is fairly short, since 1) we don't know what we're doing, 2) will be busy with the whole building a house thing, 3) won't have 100% of the growing season. What made it on the list are potatoes (late), soldier beans as homage to Josh's grandfather, who grew them on the Kingston peninsula, beats, turnips, greens (arugula, kale, and such), and peas.

Soldier beans

On the cons list, the garden is completely unprepared (= hay field), we won't be able to set up much of an irrigation, the site will be busy with building crews, and we won't have time to start our own seeds. On the pros side, Josh's parents (thank you, thank you, thank you) are buying and starting seed potatoes and beans for us, and will be able to help us to till the garden prior to planting. Side note - yes, we're planning on tilling. Once. After that, we will be using the no-dig approach.

Yay, gardening for everyone!

Moving - what makes it and what doesn't

Josh usually calls me a gypsy, referring to the fact that I've moved a lot throughout my life. By the time I was 10, we have lived in 3 different places (in 2 different countries). I stopped counting how many apartments I have lived in by the time I finished by Master's degree. Every time I moved, whether as a child or as an adult, I had to make a decision of what gets left behind and what comes with me.

It used to be easy, I'm not too attached to most of my things. But house plants have been my downfall. I have collected a fair number in every place I've lived in Canada. Every time I moved town, a few had to be given away, while the "chosen ones" would stay with me. We hauled 2 boxes of plants from NB with us. They were hardy enough to make it through being locked up in a dark trailer for a week in July. Currently, the count at our place is 33 green pets (holy crap, when did that happen??).

My problem is that I also want to take a bunch of tree cuttings with me. What kind? I have access to different apple, plum, walnut, and cherry trees, and a bunch of other goodies. I've been reading about tree propagation, and most trees can be grown from cuttings (yay, cloning made easy!). Since the trailer is a finite space, I will need to make some hard choices (see? I'm already better at this than most of the world's leading economists). Each house plant I keep means one less fruit tree or shrub I can plant (and another $20-30 per cutting we'd have to pay at a nursery). So over the past few (and next few) weeks, there will be a box of plants by the door, waiting to be dropped off at another nice person's home. Hope they treat 'em well...

We're social animals - sense of community

Last weekend, we visited a couple of friends, Thom and Torie Foote at Footehill Farm, near Spokane, Washington. Well, people we only recently met in person and we'd be honored to call them friends. We became Facebook friends a few months ago, over our shared interest in permaculture (and smartassery), but have not met until now. Summary of said weekend: this was one of the best weekends I've ever had. The feeling of meeting welcoming, similar-minded, intelligent people (try not to get too smug, Thom!) was just therapeutic.

Thom secretly enjoying my inability to operate a non-power-steering machine

People's needs for social interaction vary from pure hermit-ism to 100% party animals. We're somewhere in the lower third or maybe up to halfway on the scale. That means that while we appreciate our alone and quiet time, we also cherish positive social interactions, appreciate constructive feedback, and enjoy feeling that we're not alone in this world. At Thom's and Torie's, we learned a pile of new things, talked and argued about garden and orchard design, experienced driving a tractor (weeeee!), had dog therapy provided by Chena, and joined a permaculture group site visit to learn about revitalizing soil.

Personally, over the past few years, I have shifted from the "I don't really need anyone" to my current state of mind. I feel that as we change our focus from consumerism to sustainability, our attitude also changes from "the cult of individualism"  to an interconnected community. I feel that it's important to have people close by that you feel connected with, share interests with, can teach and learn from them, and can help them or rely on them in a case of need. This feeling of community, which was fairly common in smaller villages and towns (think Anne of Green Gables), has weathered out as (I think) cities grew, consumerism thrived, and each millenial bought into the "I'm the best" set of mind.

Our move to NB is going to bring lots of changes. One of those, I hope, will be a creation of a tight(ish) group of friends, neighbours, and over-the-internet-supporters. I would like to believe that there will be potlucks, "barn raising days", evening chats over tea or wine, and a general sense of being part of a positive group of people. I'm really looking forward to reconnecting with the friends I left in NB, and getting to know other people with values similar to ours.

Gardening, version 2.0, part 1 of ?

This will be my second gardening year. I'm still the first to admit I know nothing about it, and this will be the case for many, many more years, I'm sure. However, last year I knew even less, and it still worked better than anyone could have expected (left to right: tomatoes, peppers, mustard greens)...

Gardening seems like a never ending learning curve. You never "know everything", and that's great. From my first year of gardening, I learnt that you can plant a lot of the things you buy in a grocery store (like pepper seeds and dill, cilantro, and mustard seeds from the spice aisle). A lot Most of the things I learnt were from making mistakes - the tomato cages were too short, plants needed more water than I realized, carrots take a long time to mature (so don't pull them out when the radishes are ready, Sima), the spaces between rows were too narrow (some of us, cough, Josh, cough, have size 13 shoes), and so on, and so forth...

This second year of my gardening experience has already seen its first errors. I used the rolls from toilet paper rolls as seed starting containers. The idea is actually really good - it lets you replant the starter into the garden without disturbing its roots. In my case, two things happened - 1) I overcrowded the rolls and they got very fungus-y, and 2) I made no bottoms to the rolls I was using (as opposed to this), and the roots simply went on a little tour of their immediate environment. So while the pea starter was about 2 inches tall and the toilet paper roll was about 3 inches tall, the trailing roots hanging outside of the roll were about 8'' long. That's why the peas got kicked outside and are now in the garden, in a makeshift greenhouse...

What did I learn from this? That if you use paper-based starting containers, you don't overcrowd them, and that starting containers need bottoms. Will I use rolls again next year? You bet. I like that it's reusing basically garbage, I much prefer cardboard to the plastic (or peat) seed pots, and I do like the idea of not disturbing the roots.

Another thing that I learnt this year (already, and it's only April!) is that given 10 mins of Internet research, some imagination, and a bit of luck, we're actually pretty good and making stuff ourselves and for free. It may not be a thing of beauty, but there's a chance that it'll actually work... Here's our makeshift tepee for things like peas and cucumbers. Made with sticks (picked up for free) and leftovers of crocheting twine I bought 3 years ago for a macrame project.

And it already has its first inhabitants (cue the extra-rooty peas from 2 paragraphs ago). Look at the cute little things!

Food security - what does it even mean?

I was born in a Jewish-Russian family in the USSR, early '80s. We were lucky that my parents decided to leave the USSR and managed to do so in the very early '90s, just before the collapse of the USSR. People that stayed had to live through a very tough period of time, when they were not paid for months (despite performing their work as usual), and even if they were paid, there was hardly anything to buy. Many had to grow vegetables at their cottages, if they had those, or in random forest or abandoned city lots just as a means to survive.

Even growing up, before the actual collapse, there were continuous shortages of food. To be fair, a lot of those shortages began in the '80s, when I was born. Nothing we thought of as abnormal, since that was all we knew. Mandarins were available only around Christmas time and were considered a delicacy and one of the "must have" presents for the kids. I remember loving bananas, probably mainly since they were not freely available. Come fall, we would make huge batches of sauerkraut, buy and put away in the root cellar a whole whackload of potatoes for the winter, pickle tomatoes and cucumbers, pick berries and make jams, pick mushrooms and pickle and dry them. Even living in a large, industrial city (Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk, formerly Yekaterinburg), having that root cellar full of vegetables and preserved food likely meant a less stressful winter.

In Canada, people have been lulled by the constant presence of huge amounts of food. Here people don't think about how they're going to go through the winter, because there's a constant supply of produce from around the world. While that gives one peace of mind, it also means that we eat out of season, amply support the oil industry, and can get swept away by the effect of globalization on supply and pricing, which also drives the smaller farmers out of work globally. One example is the sharp increase in food price in general, and rice price in particular in 2007-2008. As an affluent country, Canada probable didn't really notice, but others certainly did. How long will this buffer of affluence protect Canadians from fluctuating and rising food prices?

One of the things that reminded me of this recently was the price of almonds. I used to buy them in large bags, ~ $11/1 kg, which is outrageously cheap. Overnight, those bags became $22. It took me a while to figure it out, but then I remembered that California provides a staggering 82% of the world's almonds, and California is having a VERY rough time. And almonds are just a very small example.

So what does food security mean to me, personally? Food security to me means that we know where our next year's worth of food comes from. It means that the availability of our food will not be based on whether grain-exporting countries are supporting biofuel instead of feeding their people or the price of oil. Specifically, Josh and I feel that we have to eat much more locally (otherwise, we fall into the globalization rabbit hole), and that requires some imagination and will power during the cold Canadian winters. I will be buying as much as I can locally (farmers' markets and potentially CSA) and try to grow and put away as much food as I can for the winter. This winter, we had 30 liters of home-made plum jam, 10-20 liters of different salsas, and 20 liters of pickled tomatoes and cucumbers to keep us happy. I hope that as we get better at things, our pantry will look closer to this:

It's not waste, it's an opportunity!

Let's talk about toilets. We sit on the throne, do our business, wipe, pull on a lever, and feel all clean and sparkly, never having to deal with our own waste. This process requires copious amounts of water, crazy piping systems, and large-scale effluent treatment (can you say wasteful, expensive, and complicated?). It leads to a whole variety of problems, ranging from clogged pipes, pest infestation, the occasional overflowing during floods, etc... (I omitted links to pictures and sites, I'm sure you'll understand). In the rural areas, where urban sewage is not an option, septic tanks are usually required, coming with the added bonus of occasional tank pumping, tank backup, and septic failure ("Most septic systems will fail sometime" - what?? I didn't actually know that).

In the meantime, the process does not need to be gross or complicated. Poop is basically future earth, it just needs to be reminded of it :-) By composting the waste (also lovingly called humanure), you can avoid creating a smelly health hazard and instead create compost, the stuff happy food grows in. If you think about it, animal manure has been used for soil amendment for as long as humans farmed. We're just as good at producing the stuff, why not use it properly?

Is it gross? No, it shouldn't be. Here's a good and humorous list of the reasons why a flush toilet is actually way, way grosser. We just don't think about it, because flush toilets are the current mainstream paradigm (= because that's how we currently do things).

So there we had it, hippie-mode Sima meets urban, kinda squeamish Josh (wasn't there a TV show about that?). There were several mildly heated discussions, one moment where Josh asked hopefully "well, can put one regular toilet in the house, just in case?", but I stood my ground, and we have a winner! Looks like we'll be getting one of these slick things:

Considering that you can use things like dry grass clippings and cedar wood shavings to "flush" your goods, that bathroom is going to smell awesome. At least, we sure do hope so!

Cleaning our house, cleaning ourselves

I have not used deodorant since... I'm not actually sure. Sometime in summer 2013? In fact, I forgot where it was the one time I did want to use it this year. I have not used shower soap since December 2013. No, I do not stink, at all. Josh keeps forgetting that I don't use soap, and has that surprised look on his face every time it comes up.

We have both made big strides toward decreasing the amount of chemicals we use at home both for cleaning and personal hygiene products. What drives me is my hippiness and the fact that maintaining a healthy greywater system will require us to not use heavy any chemicals. What drives Josh is a mystery, but simplicity, $$ saved, and a desire to please me probably all play a role.

The key to all of our house cleaning supplies? Realizing that we don't actually need a lot of the cleaning products we buy. Eliminating the unnecessaries, a bit of edibles (vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice), Dr Bronner's castile soap, and some elbow grease work for the rest. Examples -

• We do not have air fresheners; since we've reduced our meat consumption, smelly bathrooms have not been an issue. 
• I only use water and a brush to clean the toilet (and no, it doesn't smell or try to take over the world), eliminating any nasty toilet-cleaning chemicals. 
• We use Dr Bronner's for most things like hand soap, bathtub and sink cleaning. 
• Josh uses a mix of vinegar and soap in a spray bottle as his "doomsday weapon" against clothing stains, windows, and such other things. 
• When running the dryer, we use wool laundry balls (hehe, balls) with a couple of safety pins in them to 1) reduce drying time, and 2) remove static, and have not needed formalin-infused dryer sheets. 
• This weekend I finally mixed up our own laundry detergent. 

Personal care -

• Twice now, we've tried the no-shampoo approach, for approximately a month or two. The second time it worked better, but I still have to figure out the perfect concoction. 
• For my "beauty products" I use oils and food items - castor and jojoba for oil cleansing, same + nutmeg for an amazing scrub, argan oil for moisturizing, coconut oil for the occasional hand moisturizing. 
• No shower soap for me, just water and a cotton shower cloth do marvelously well.
• No deodorant at all for me, and Josh only uses his during the workweek.

Overall, this means that we have far fewer chemicals around the house. Less money paid to the big companies, less worries about anyone ingesting anything horrible, and much happier lungs and noses. Honestly? Cleaning yourself or your house should not be leading to "occupational asthma and other respiratory illnesses" (see in full). Our grandmas kept sparkly-clean houses and laundry without an army of bottles under their sink or in their bathroom. I'm sure we can do just as well...

Greywater system

I have put a fair bit of thought into incorporating a full greywater system in our (future) house. Greywater encompasses any wastewater that does not contain human poop. Once Josh was on board with a composting toilet (yay!), utilizing the rest of our water properly just made sense. In a time when water resources are getting very scarce (US example, UN facts, China) and water pollution is increasing (no support links needed, I hope), we both feel that it's important to reuse and clean up whatever water waste we produce...

There are fantastic (and free!) resources for planning one, e.g., this and this. NB being NB, government regulations aren't super helpful for doing things using common sense and physics, rather than by-the-book and grid-based. The current regulations stipulate that a "non-conventional" sewage system must be designed by an engineer and installed by a licensed person (I have still not been able to find one of the latter). Since our kinda-neighbours on the Kingston peninsula are building a legitimate off-grid Earth Ship, complete with all the permits, we could basically follow in their footsteps (= creep up on their FB page and find & hire all the people that did the work for them).

Once I talked to the environmental engineer that designed their greywater system, I got discouraged. He suggested we use a septic tank and a pump, both things that I was trying to avoid - greywater that sits for > 24 h will become fetid, and relying on pumps may be a big mistake. Apart from pushing us to use system components I didn't want to use, the exercise would be quite expensive (and that's before the installation costs!).

Josh provided the voice of reason, as usual. Current plan? Install a composting toilet and go ahead with a septic tank/field "conventional" installation. However, plumbing design will also have to include stub outs - allowing us to incorporate a greywater system down the road, once regulation is more flexible and we have a better feel for what would work for us.

Of all our water will end up being used for irrigation. The initial treatments will likely include things like mycelium filtering and reed bed treatment. The outflow water will have to be lab-tested a few times under different scenarios to ensure proper filtration is taking place.

In the meantime, here's a picture of the system I thought up. I wonder, once we have our system up and running, how naive and silly will this look to me? Can only guess at how many details and important bits I didn't even think of at this point :-)