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! 

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!

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!

The things we'll eat in the next 5-50 years

Permaculture gardens try to include as much variety as possible. One of the outcomes is that if one crop fails, there are still dozens of others that make it. My combined Russian-Jewish paranoia craves food security (WWII genetic memories, anyone?). The first time Josh saw my (very) long list of plants I wanted to have at our home, he was pretty worried - was this crazy Russian going to waste all of our money on thousands of trees? No, she was not. That said, the back-of-the-napkin calculation of the cost of this preliminary list is ~ $1,600. Considering that I was aiming for $1,500, we're not doing too bad, tree shopping spree or not :-)

The plan is to buy the minimum number of plants from each variety for now, and propagate (by cuttings or seed) the most successful ones. I'm also planning on propagating wild local plants like maples and chokecherries, low-bush blueberries, lingonberries, bunchberries, wild ramps, any amount of wild flowers, and whatever else I can get my little hands on.

The list is long, but the purchase and planting will happen over the course of likely three installments, starting in fall 2014, continuing in spring 2014 and (hopefully) ending in fall 2015. This way we'll have more time to get to know our land and its microclimates and properly prepare planting sites.

So here is the list. If you're curious enough, you can even see where the different trees were planned to go on the preliminary orchard design in my previous post!

Fruit trees -

• Apples (several varieties - yellow transparent, wealthy, Dudley, aurora gold gala, gold russet, and 2 mystery apple trees already present). Most of these (apart from the gala) are heritage varieties. Some are good fresh, some for cooking, some for storing over the winter.
• Crabapples - dolgo and scugog varieties; great for pollination, nectar for bees, and jams and jellies.
• Pears - Ritson and either Northbrite or Clapp or Patten variety.
• Plums - Toka and Superior varieties
• Quince - Cook's jumbo (gotta love the naming!) and Kaunching varieties. Quince are like super-hard apples; they really shine in jams, pies, and stews.
• Chums (a cross of cherry and plum) - Sapalta and Convoy varieties.
• Apricots - EZ pick variety
• Cherries - sour (Montmonercy) and sweet (Stella or some other variety)
• Paw Paw - the best kept secret in North America. It's called a poor-man's banana, is native to North America, and has that distinctive tropical taste to it - a mix of banana, custard, and baked apple, based on what I read.
• American persimmon - the other best kept secret in North America.

Nut trees -

• Butternut - a North American native tree, similar to walnut.
• Black walnut - another North American walnut-like nut.
• Heartnut - a Japanese walnut-like nut.
• Buartnut - a cross of butternut and heartnut; made for resilience and heavier crops.
• Chestnut - both Chinese and either American or American-Chinese cross.
• Hazel
• Pecan - there are cold-hardy varieties, and I can enjoy one of my Mediterranean favourites :)
• Hickory - a North American native.
• Pine - either Siberian or Korean, the best kinds of pine nuts.
• Almonds - there are cold-hardy varieties!
• American beech - a North American native, produces tasty nuts.
• Yellowhorn - a cold-hardy tree that produces nuts similar in taste to Macadamia nuts. Considering that I have actually looked into growing Macadamias in Canada (and no, you can't), this is a huge win for me and Josh. You do NOT want to know how much money I have spent on Macadamia nuts in Bulk Barn...

Small fruit and berries -

• Arctic and hardy kiwi - vines that produce kiwis that are as tasty as the regular fuzzy ones, but without the fuzz. Less work peeling and I can grow them in my yard. Sounds like a win-win to me!
• Currants - red, black, and white. A big favourite in Europe and Russia. Fantastic for fresh eating, smoothies, jams, pies, and just about everything else.
• Elderberries - great for jams and wine, and loved by bees and birds.
• Haskap - I know these from Russia, but they're fairly new in North America. Fantastic berries all around.
• Gooseberries - same
• Raspberries
• Highbush blueberries
• Saskatoon berries
• Highbush cranberries
• Mulberries 
• Sea buckthorn - very popular in Russia for both eating and the medicinal properties of the oil made from the berries.
• Cherry olives - a native North American small tree that fixes nitrogen in addition to making delicious berries full of antioxidants.
• Goji berries - considered a super-food for a while. To me, all berries are super food...
• Aronia berry - also called chokeberry (not to be confused with chokecherry!) - very nutritious berry producer.
• Strawberries
• Hip rose
• And a few native and introduced, small-fruit trees: nannyberry, Cornelian cherry, Cherry silverberry, Sand cherry, Nanking cherry
• Huckleberries
• Cloudberries
• Lowbush blueberries
• Bilberries
• Lingonberries

To seal off this epic list, a few indoor-grown trees:

• Meyer lemon - juicier and sweeter than the regular lemons you buy in the store
• Loquat - a huge favourite of mine from Israel, didn't even know you could grow them indoors!
• And maybe a kumquat, if I distract Josh long enough to make my online order without him stopping me ;-)

Our vision of (NB) paradise

As we were trying to narrow down the list of potential things to do with our land, we were doing a LOT of googling. Orchards, crops, chickens, ducks, bees, herbs, mushrooms, everything sounded like great ideas and was ours to discover. In one of my Google searches about organic techniques and approaches, I happened upon the permies.com forum. Within that evening, three more searches led me to the same site. Reading through the incredible amount of information on that forum, I was soon convinced that permaculture was the best bet for us. A few weeks of excited stories about all the new things I have learned, and Josh joined the permaculture front as well.

What is permaculture? It is a 'science of design', meant to create a truly sustainable living. It is a way to design and implement productive, self-sustaining systems, which do not require drudgery. For a good but short overview, take a look here. If in conventional farming the owners must work very hard every single day of their lives, permaculture farms aim to decrease this modern slavery over time by mimicking nature. With every passing year, a permaculture farm will be more productive and resilient and require less maintenance. The best go-to example is what is called a food forest - a forest made of fruit and nut trees, with a mix of interplanted berries and vegetables. The trees and most of the understory is perennial, and annual vegetables and flowers are allowed to reseed themselves freely, thereby minimizing maintenance. Compare that to a field of wheat that needs ploughing, seeding, and several applications of pesticides to make it through the growing season.

How is this low-work-high-awesomeness accomplished? By a mix of approaches -

• Managing rainwater to provide for future irrigation needs and eliminate soil erosion 
• Not turning the soil (i.e., no digging, tilling, ploughing) and not using pesticides ensures that all soil organisms, whether earth worms, bacteria, or fungi, are alive and well. Successful agriculture requires happy and living soil.
• Mulch, mulch, mulch - both protects the soil from erosion and retains moisture and nutrients.
• High plant diversity (big no-no to monoculture) to ensure ecosystem stability, as different plants provide different services - attracting pollinators, deterring pests, pulling nutrients into the top soil via deep roots, breaking up tough soil using root vegetables, etc.
• And the biggie - observe your own piece of nature and conform to it. Work with nature, not against it her. Arid areas should have mostly drought resistant plants; cold areas should rely on hardy varieties. Growing things that can't make it themselves will mean endless, futile, work for the farmer. 

The principles really appealed to us - planning things well, healing the soil and creating an ecosystem while growing our own food, and ensuring increased yields through decreased work sounded fantastic. I spent a few of the following months reading all I could get my hands on and dreaming about our own Garden of Eden (see below for a preliminary design).