I got out over the weekend and scooted up to see fellow Kossack mataliandy in northern Vermont. She and her husband are both, well, they’re city kids, and they just picked up and moved to the wilds of Vermont to build a solar powered straw bale house.
They’ve got some cool plans, but they’re short on equipment and her shoulder joins the pantheon of farmerchuck’s Lyme disease and my poor discombobulated insides – health troubles that get in the way of getting stuff done. I had a quick look around and I think we’ve got a plan for next weekend or the weekend after that’ll get a portion of their troubles resolved ...
She was all concerned that I not list identifying information about where they live. Now I’m outdoors a bit, I’ve got a GPS, and I don’t often miss my target, but any set of directions that ends with "... and then you take the road without a sign through the pasture with one horse." is not for the faint of heart. I ended up sleeping in the car overnight after driving by this three times in the dark and I had to talk to four neighbors before I finally located them. I think their secret hideaway is safe ...
The existing cabin that they quickly threw up when they figured out the house wouldn’t be done in time for the snow is actually pretty cool – all torn up here, as it’s getting a bunch of work done inside, and bound to be mataliandy’s pottery studio when the real house is done, but I like it just fine and hope I’ll get to build something like this one day soon myself.
The local power company wanted $20,000 to light the place and they got a curt "no thank you" in reply; two eighty watt solar panels collect the sunlight ...
And they fill up four six volt batteries. I’m not so up on this whole "off the grid" business, but this looks pretty tiny to me. I’d always envisioned a roof full of panels and an old forklift battery for such things ... it’s nice to see that less than $1,500 will get the process started.
This is the one real headache in the cabin. This woodstove does the heating duties nicely ... so long as someone is there to tend it. Go away for the day and you come home to a chilly house. Go for a weekend in the depths of winter and you can return to frozen pipes. Farmerchuck is teaching me about heating stuff so I took some other photos (not posted) and we’re puzzling over what can be done to smooth out their heating.
Ceiling Cat has nothing on Oddball here, who changes into his superhero form, Loft Cat, with a leap and a quick scramble.
Besides the solar they’re really getting into the swing of things; used cooking oil for biodiesel and they're composting, too.
Oh, and the snow got deep in Vermont, just like it did for farmerchuck:
Here is the foundation for the straw bale house – much work left to be done here. It’ll be six hundred square feet, more than enough for a family of four. If I’m recalling correctly the count of solar panels might double or triple and there’ll need to be some wood burning in the depths of winter but mostly this place will stay warm on sunshine and the right construction materials being used.
This gadget is intended to hold the roof of the straw bale house in place during construction – it’s just a jig. Oh, and the cool part here? Mataliandy took a timber cutting and fitting class, then used wood harvested from their own property to build this.
This is the only shot of the woods that came anywhere near to looking decent and I’m glad it’s the one that turned out – that is a Nodding Trillium, an endangered wildflower, which we’ve got to work around as we take out sick trees, making sure we leave enough dappled shade for it to thrive. Sick trees? Oh, yes, the rain patterns have changed and many of the pines on site are literally splitting up the sides due to getting too much moisture. Mataliandy estimates eighty percent of their trees are going to need to go to get back to something that looks like a healthy forest around the home. That is a Herculean labor for the sixteen acres of ground they’ve got and it’s almost all softwood – not good for woodstoves or boilers, so it’s a disposal problem rather than a fuel or lumber source.
After the acre of land is cleared the very next thing is this mess – a stream that was blocked with downed trees for the sake of collecting lumber logs at the rear of the property. The people who did the work just left it blocked. This gets cleared, a good bit of stream herding gets done, and I think an earth bridge with a culvert is the right thing, but we’ll ask locals up on drainage and terrain before attempting such a thing.
So, this whole trip was quite interesting – my first exposure to Vermont, which I just love, and seeing what life is like for those not raised on a farm who are making the jump from an urban lifestyle to something the folks who built farmerchuck’s 1790 farmhouse would recognize. This is all back to the future for me; different critters, more trees and less dirt, but all quite familiar.
I think as the economic collapse we face coupled with peak oil really gets rolling a great many people with a background similar to mataliandy & company are going to develop an urgent need to know what farmerchuck does effortlessly. One of the plans at No Snivlin’ Farm is the installation of some shipping containers converted to cabins; room for interns who’ll show up for some schooling in farm operations. I guess I’m the first and I’m taking the refresher course, but as times get harder there are probably going to be more and more folks wanting this.
I’m writing this sitting in what amounts to a palace – a local bed and breakfast that needs only a new driveway poured before it goes into operation. I’ve been here a few weeks, I’ve met a few folks, stuck out my hand to help here or there, and now I’m qualified to feed (and occasionally separate) two domestic housecats with a perpetual domestic dispute. I have the beginnings of a reputation.
Author Bruce Sterling calls this sort of thing reputation economics. DailyKos has a reputation economics system; start out a plain user, act stupid and get autobanned, or be some combination of persistent, insightful, funny, and wise, and you rise to trusted user status. Those are the automatic or algorithmic methods. On the human networking side there are mailing lists for various special interests, there is a sort of right hand column cabal, and the front pagers, all intertwined, but all clearly discernable. I’ve got email addresses and/or phone numbers for half a dozen right hand column regulars and one front pager drops me a note here and there to inquire as to how things are going.
Things are going to change and change dramatically. Sure, that criminal record you may or may not have still counts, but I suspect that FICO score is just so much junk given the massive credit deflation we’re currently in the midst of, and our financial system may never come back. How will you make your way in the world? Perhaps by being able to pick up and go somewhere, then quickly gain access to housing, work, and other forms of assistance – think of it as instant community.
I’m getting this now thanks to the rescue rangers. First farmerchuck notices what I do, then mataliandy, and I’ve got invites now to stop in here or there around the country. I’m not sure if I can take all of them up on it but it’s nice to know. The next big question is ... just how far down is the economic mess going to take us, and are we really going to end up duplicating what Sterling calls "prole mobs" in his marvelous political thriller, Distraction? The folks in the story inhabit a dystopian, post collapse U.S. in which "papers" are useless, but a name with attendant "reputation" on a distributed server network puts one in a position of authority, if one’s actions have warranted such trust.
The whole concept of the corporation as was rendered in the 20th century is dying; an end to cheap energy means an end to global labor arbitrage and as we relocalize the relentlessly sociopathic corporations will not do well in their attempts to integrate with genuine human communities. Farmerchuck is a big fan of the cooperative model and I myself like this whole 501c8 fraternal nonprofit organization thing, but we’re just fitting new, as yet unnamed methods of organizing ourselves socially into the rules and regulations of a dying empire. Should we really see $200/bbl oil this winter I don’t know if the government will be able to answer the phone, let alone enforce laws enacted in happier times. Some of us have already begun preparing for this eventuality and I hope this trail I’m blazing and the stories of those I’m meeting along the way will provide some comfort and guidance to the newly dispossessed as things unwind.