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2022

Growing a meadow on the roof

12/1/2022

 
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​When it rains, a hat keeps us comfortable and dry, and when the sun is glaring down, a hat keeps our head cool.  Our straw bale house was going to get a green meadow hat.  It would absorb the rain, keep the house cool, and look awesome.  We were inspired by the ancient sod roofs of Scandinavia.  In 2015 my daughter and I took my mom to the northern tip of Norway to see the midnight sun (a bucket list item).  We did see the midnight sun shining bright and nearly white on the quiet fjord.  We also saw sod roofs on the little summer cottages, and I loved the untidy riot of wildflowers and the bird family nesting up there.  That image is my hope and dream for our sod roof. 


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A Sheep situation or - Sudden onset of sheep sex

11/25/2022

 
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​When I arranged for Babydoll sheep breeding services with another farmer, I asked her how I would know that the sheep had gone through estrous and breeding.  “Oh, you will know!” she said.  And one does.
 
As with most things sheep related, I was not prepared.  

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Putting in an earthen floor from scratch

11/3/2022

 
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The dream plan for our all-natural building also included an earthen floor.  Earthen floors are dramatically beautiful—and solid, warm, and welcoming to the feet.  Of course, we had no idea how to make one, so another round of research, YouTube and otherwise, ensued.  The best visual we found was a little diagram from lowimpact.org, but the most valuable resource overall was an 11-minute YouTube video by Sukita Raey: “Earth Floor Sealed with Oil.”   Over the course of building the floor, I went back time and again to this amazingly informative and clear presentation.  We purchased Sukita’s book Earthen Floors: A Modern Approach to an Ancient Practice (with James Thompson) and found it to be very useful as well.  ​

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Why shovel rocks?  And thoughts on how to do it better.

10/23/2022

 
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​Last week, we had seven cubic yards of 1-2” little stones delivered.   Since then, I have been shoveling them by hand – with the help of three amazing folks here on Workaway - into trenches for our French drains.  Shoveling stones is probably the lowliest of the lowest labors in the panoply of humble human tasks.   Prison labor comes to mind.  Why not rent a little tractor with a bucket to shove the rocks in? 
 
Why would a person actively choose to shovel stones?   


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More trouble with sheep and fences

9/27/2022

 
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​“Babette, the sheep are out again!  Can you check if the ram is out?!” an urgent call from Mark, who has ensconced himself inside the straw bale studio.  It was not the first or the last time the sheep were out (although it was the only time someone hid in the straw bale studio).  We have had more sheep escapes than we can count.  What is going on?  We use electric fence netting to keep our sheep in the pasture. Electric fence netting is the enclosure of choice for literally thousands (tens of thousands?) of shepherds who are practicing rotational grazing like we do.  Why can’t we get the sheep to stay put like everyone else?

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Plastering walls of the straw bale studio - a learning process

9/18/2022

 
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​One of the really fun parts of straw bale building is throwing the mud on the walls.  That’s right, you mix up some good, sticky mud with clay, sand, and water, adding some straw for extra authenticity, and then you slap it on the walls.  Cool, huh?
 
We found out that yes, it is cool and fun, but it is not quite that simple.  And also, we were pretty unprepared: recall that plastering was the part of the project that we had not planned.   Unfortunately for our un-planned selves, Natural plastering is a whole Big Topic of its own, and there are even entire books dedicated to the topic.  Different climates will require different plasters, for example plaster made with clay and sand is fine in dry regions but will wash off after a few hard rainstorms in New England. Even for New England, there are different ways to achieve similar results; how is a novice to choose?   It also takes a lot of time. This is an account of what we did, including our mistakes and how we tried to fix them.

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Putting up Straw Bale Walls

9/17/2022

 
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Some things just go so fast.  The straw bale walls of the little studio went up in four and a half days, thanks to the hard work of an enthusiastic group of folks who came to our workshop, and the able leadership of Michael.   After having spent months organizing the workshop so that I could attend one without traveling to the other side of the country, I was ironically unable to participate because I was still recovering from COVID.  Luckily, it all happened in our backyard.  Every day, once or twice, I would go out, sit in a chair for a half hour or so, and take in all the activity before needing to go back to rest.  In this way, along with conversations and lots of photos, I got the gist of what happened.


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​The elusive shiitake.  Travels with mushrooms four.

9/16/2022

 
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One classic introduction to growing mushrooms at home is a workshop on inoculating logs with shiitake spawn.  Shiitake are, of course, eminently desirable, and after all what could be simpler than leaving a log in some shady spot in your back yard for a year or two before you go out and pick off a nice little basketful of beautiful round and speckled mushrooms?
 


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I will grow mushrooms on trash!  Travels with mushrooms three

9/1/2022

 
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In 2013 I wrote: I would like to take a course at the Agriculture extension school so I can become certified to grow and sell them.  Not as a huge business, but say on the side with Kate’s business.  Kate was a farmer at our local farmer's market who at that time grew her vegetables in people’s yards, one of which was ours.   This statement is then followed by a story about how I tried to grow said mushrooms – the basis of my budding business – on waste materials with little effort.  I was encouraged by the expansive writings of Paul Stamets, the undisputed Guru of modern American mushroom growing. 


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I’ll write the book on how to grow mushrooms! My travels with mushrooms Two

8/23/2022

 
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At the time when I started to try to grow mushrooms in the 2000’s, the only books easily available were by the mushroom guru and genius Paul Stamets.  Of these, I read “Mycelium Running” and “Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms”. Both of them are hundreds of pages long, pretty dense textbooks, in which the how-to chapters were somewhat vague on the details (although there is no lack of grand vision for the role of mushrooms in saving the planet). .The only other written source of information was when you actually ordered mushroom spawn.  In the 2000’s you could order mushroom spawn from two places in the United States, Paul Stamets’ shop Fungi Perfecti, and Field and Forest in Wisconsin.   Luckily, Field and Forest products came with pretty good practical instructions.  That’s how we knew how to inoculate those shiitake logs from the earlier letter.  But there was really not a good, practical book.


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Seven years later, they are fruiting!  Our travels with mushrooms 1

8/23/2022

 
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“Hi Mason!
Seven years later they are starting to come in!  So exciting.  Thanks once again for those logs!! :)
Babette”

This was the email I sent to my father-in-law on October 24, 2016, seven years after he had brought us a pile of 3 foot logs from a freshly cut ash all the way from his woods in Utica, New York (we lived in the Boston area). ​


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The Project that got Too Big

7/24/2022

 
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​It is said that a little bit of knowledge is worse than ignorance, presumably because you think you can make decisions and do things that you don’t quite have the insight for.  Something similar can be said for having a little bit of skill.  Some people, once they have a smidge of skill, start to feel confident.   They start to think about what you could do with those new skills, dreaming up awesome projects.  Then they start on one of them … and it just turns out to be way more complicated and take much longer than they had thought it was going to.   That is how I feel about our lovely straw bale studio - as lovely as it is. 


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Our wonderful, much-needed straw bale workshop :)

7/17/2022

 
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​Recently, June 5-11, 2022, we hosted a week-long workshop at our farm for 11 people that focused on building a straw bale house.  People had a good time and learned a lot – it was a success!  This letter is not so much about what we did and learned at the workshop, but about what was so useful about this workshop (and workshops in general).  We’ll follow up with some more building letters on some of the things we learned during this week. 
 
Have you ever thought about building a little (or a big) straw bale building?  Attracted by the beauty of the lightly undulating wall surface, or the use of completely natural materials?   Maybe you have looked at books or photo-filled websites to learn how to do it – I sure did! 

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Raising the timber frame!  A step by step account of how we raised ours.

6/21/2022

 
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​It was the morning of May 21 and Mark and I were out at 7 AM.  It was going to be hot, so we wanted to start early!  With us were Mark’s friend Jeff Goldenson and his 8-year old daughter, Joya; Auyon Mukharji from the band Darlingside, with us for two weeks on workaway; Ari Okun; Kelly Vaillancourt and Dan Taylor from Templeton MA; Chris Monahan all the way from Rochester NY (go Chris!); Willie Crosby, Moo Butler and Emma Golden, all from Montague. Ezra Ward, from Woodsmith Forestry just down the road (also a workshop attendee) had agreed to lead the day.   A fun group!
 
We did not find much online about the practicalities of raising a timber frame with a group of people.  Yes, YouTube has some videos, mostly in fast motion, of people raising frames by themselves or with a group.  We found these of mediocre use: the motion was too fast to follow, and key moments tended to be missing – like how do you get  the extremely heavy plates (long posts that go lengthwise along the building) up on the bents (arches that go cross-wise); or how do you keep a bent from falling over once you have raised it but not secured the braces yet?   So, we were happy to have Ezra with us!  I am going to try to fill in some of those practical gaps in this letter.


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Building the foundation of the straw bale studio.

6/9/2022

 
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As we said in the letter about building the timber frame a house needs a foundation before you can build up.  This is the story of how we built the foundation of our straw bale studio.  We did some unconventional things to reduce our use of concrete and because we have a water table that goes up to 2 feet, but hopefully what we did will provide a solid base for the house.

​Building the foundation was a project we did start to finish with two amazing workaway folks, Paul and Hermine, and some additional help from Emma who lives in Turners Falls and is attending the straw bale workshop.  Paul and Hermine were here for the Boston Marathon.   Paul is a super-marathoner, having done I believe scores of them including 500 K ones over multiple days.  Hermine is a refugee from the corporate world and now works with rescued animals.  They have a piece of land and a house in a village in Spain – with beautiful views – that they are slowly turning into a permaculture garden.  What different conditions they have: they said they have to dig holes in their dirt with a pickaxe, it is that dry!  They also have mature almond trees that give them lots of nuts, and I believe a few olive trees.  They have workaways come to their place, and every now and again, they like to go out and workaway themselves.  They want to build a straw bale house on their land and were excited to build the foundation as a learning experience for their own house.  They just wanted to work every day (I made them stop on the weekends), so we got a lot done!  Besides the working together, we thoroughly enjoyed their company – wonderful people!

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What to do with our weird - or rare and unique - wool mix?

6/5/2022

 
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We have an unusual mix of sheep - Santa Cruz/Shetland - and that means, we have an odd, weird, or rare and desirable, but in any case unknown, type of wool. Could be a great product.  Maybe.  I don't know; in starting out with wool and sheep, while I was not completely unprepared; I was completely naive.  In 2019 and 2020 I made numerous spreadsheets about the costs of having sheep, processing wool, and the supposed income from selling yarn.  All using real numbers: from a recent book on raising sheep with the costs of hay and grain; real costs of wool processing; and market-based estimates of sale prices. These miss costs of course, like the hundreds of dollars to buy materials for an electric fence set up. But more critically, none of them figured out the problem: how do you get your product to market and get that return??


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A lamb gallery

5/4/2022

 
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Who is the cutest lamb in the land?  Check out some candidates here!

Our lambs are a Santa Cruz-Shetland mix.  Santa Cruz is an extremely rare American breed from Santa Cruz island (only a few 100 remain).  Their desirable traits are: extreme hardiness, high survival rates, and fine, super-elastic wool prized by hand spinners.  Our 3/4 Santa Cruz ram descends from the so-called Stanley flock and was purchased from Paula Garner who is helping to save the rare breed.   Shetland sheep are a recovering breed in the United States prized for their soft, fine wool.  By combining the two we bring the Santa Cruz hardiness and elastic wool qualities to the Shetlands.  The lambs are beautiful and we have had a 100% survival rate this Spring despite cold weather.   We will be offering some of these for sale in August.  Email bigfootfoodforest@gmail.com to inquire.
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Big Foot Season Three as New Farmers

5/4/2022

 
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​What does building a farm up from scratch look like?  As newbie farmers, we’ve been living that question daily for three years.  While our story is unique to us, it can still provide some insight to folks who are thinking about jumping into farming as well.  The start of Season Three, is a good time to look back for a review and a look ahead for the coming months.

​Four and a half years ago, there was an idea.  Mark and I were walking the Camino in Spain, and one of my meditations was what to call this permaculture farm idea.  Somewhere among the olive trees or the oak groves, the name Big Foot Food Forest was found.  We had no farm experience and no land, but now we did have a cool name. ...


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The Straw Bale Studio - timber frame gets built

4/13/2022

 
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Timber-frame Raising Day!    May 21 (rain date May 22)!

Our straw bale workshop is sold out, wow!  We have a very cool group of people coming – the straw bale brought out folks with creative, innovative, independent lifestyles and interests.  We are really looking forward to meeting everyone, including of course, our intrepid instructor, Michael McDonough (and his family!).    I am very excited about this build – it is alive.  It started just because I really wanted to try out straw but has turned into more.  It is a testing ground for Mark to practice timber framing and will influence our next, larger build (to add a workshop barn to our house).  And it has become an important part of our landing in this community and saying something to the community about who we are.    It is also keeping us busy.

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To be like an old tree: slow and achieving many tasks at once

4/5/2022

 
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An old tree in a forest plays many parts.  It provides shade, oxygen, multiple habitats, food for fungi, browse and nectar for animals.  Not to mention that a forest of trees together manages the local water and climate system by storing rainwater, evaporating water that falls as local rain, and moderating the temperature.   At other end of the size spectrum, a tiny wasp also has multiple parts: she is a pollinator, a pest controller, and food for birds.   Such is the way of nature – each part is multi-functional.  In permaculture, we try to mimic that – each part of our garden or farm has multiple functions.  Our chickens lay eggs, make compost, eat ticks when they are out in the pasture, and provide chicken companionship. 

​But what about tasks, our work?  Can one task fulfill multiple functions?  I never thought about it!  But the other day, we stumbled upon a task that accomplished 
six things in one go.  Wow, talk about efficiency!​


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The Story of the Rainbow Eggs

3/8/2022

 
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Once upon a time, there was a jolly old couple whose grown children lived nearby and visited them quite frequently for tea and cookies, that is, at least, until a great sickness came over all the land. Many elderly people were falling ill and passing away, so the children stopped visiting their parents. They didn’t want to spread the harmful, contagious sickness to them. They wanted them to stay safe and healthy.
 
The couple was grateful that they had such caring, considerate children, but they also became lonely in their isolation. Without any company, the house became eerily quiet. Without any family or friends, the music of the woman’s fiddle rang hollow, unable to fill the house with merriment like it used to. 
 

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Getting on the blueberries

3/5/2022

 
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​ A lot of this farming business has been pretty humbling – as a newbie farmer, we have seen lots of disappointments.  Tree-lings we put in the ground that fail to thrive or die.   Mushrooms that don’t grow or get moldy.  Sheep wool that can’t be sold.   Blueberries that get a disease and shrivel up.  Oh dear.
 
But every now and again, there are small signs of improvement.   As with those blueberries I just mentioned. 


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Starting chicks from chicks

2/16/2022

 
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Exciting update: 
​This month, we collected eggs from our very own chickens, and got them set up in our incubator to hatch in early March!


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The Straw Bale Building Workshop

2/3/2022

 

Kick off the summer with our weeklong Straw Bale Building Workshop! ​

7 days from June 5-11, 2022 in Montague, Massachusetts 

Join us to learn how to: build walls out of straw bales and locally sourced earthen plaster; construct a natural grass sod roof; and (if time allows) create an earth floor. Our aim is to empower you to go and build your own natural house or building!

​
This workshop is for you if any of the following apply: 

  • Wish that your house could look like it came out of a fairytale.
  • Like the idea of building with beautiful, natural, locally sourced and/or recycled materials.
  • Would like to gain the skills to put up your own four walls and a roof.
  • Want to leave behind a healing footprint on the earth and you are interested in learning more about sustainability and permaculture.
  • Would like to join a group of very cool folks for an engaging and fun week.

Check out this blog post if you’d like to better understand what this workshop is all about.  In the post, we explain how and why we’re going to build a small house from natural materials.
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Photo Credit: Rising Earth Building

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The Widow & the Straw Bale House

2/3/2022

 
Once upon a time, there was a poor and grumpy widow who lived in an old, dark, wooden house with only one small window. She was very crabby because she was so lonely. Her husband had died many years earlier and her kids were all grown and moved away. Because of her sour attitude and gloomy house, no one ever visited her.

One afternoon in March, the woman was woken from a nap by a deep rumbling. She stumbled out of bed and realized that the ground was shaking. Earthquake! She quickly hid beneath her sturdy kitchen table and waited it out. She trembled with fright as she watched the walls crumble all around her. Finally, everything stilled. It was over. She had survived. 
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Image Credit: Kt Shepherd Permaculture

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