More off-grid (ish) farmlike stuff for us in Cape Town, as well as an update on our composting toilet

Electricity
As summer gets closer, our electricity situation improves, but we probably could still be more comfortable with a wind turbine at some point (perhaps in winter, if that turns out to be possible for us). At night, the only appliance running in our house is one light, for the kids, because our battery life lasts only about 2 hours past sunset (mainly because we need to keep the batteries charged to 50%-- even that is probably not great for battery life). The main challenge with this is our deep freezer. Our deep freezer is super useful because we don't have a refrigerator, and we're not growing much on the farm just yet. So the freezer has milk, cheese, some meals where we doubled our ingredients and made two batches, butter, and sometimes meat. I'm sure we would be able to adapt if we needed to. But the tradeoff-- not having things that need to be cooled-- may be untenable (and unsustainable) in its own way, as we live a little bit away from the nearest source of dairy, in particular. So for now, we have the freezer going full blast during the day (the solar panels can handle this no problem during the day) then at night, we switch the freezer off and the freezer stays frozen until the morning. We also charge our computers during the day, and have the internet router going.

We don't currently have to wash clothes that much, but when we do we have to connect to the municipal power box outside our house, as the wattage on our washing machine trips the inverter. It's sad, but it also makes sense to use a washing machine for a couple more years. I guess we're trying to figure out how to tweak our lives without taking on so much we burn out: washing diapers by hand seems like a recipe for burnout.

During the building process, we also installed an instant hot water heater, to help us in the winter when we anticipate our solar heater will not give us very hot water. We thought hot showers in winter would be nice. But now we realise there is no way we have enough wattage, even in summer, to power the instant water heater. May others learn from our expensive mistake-- I'm guessing we'll either sell the water heater, or keep it in case we decide to set up a wind turbine sometime in the future.

Deep thought on electricity: typical appliances take up A LOT of energy, and solar is very expensive in comparison to the grid. But the relative efficiency of the municipal power seems to lead to crazy overuse and appliances that are really inefficient. Looking at our fridge and freezer, it may make more sense in the long term to get more efficient appliances or get used to not having cold stuff, rather than getting more batteries or more panels. But after spending so much on the house, we're trying to take a break from buying stuff.

First attempt at greywater recycling
For water, Eug and I set up one greywater (technically blackwater, but hey) system this past week. We still need to set up our rainwater tank to serve another part of our property. Theoretically, as different water sources benefit different sections of the plot, we'll start to effectively cover the whole plot. Also theoretically, our water needs will decline quite rapidly after three years.

The greywater system we worked on this past week: I forgot to take photos as we worked, but it is a windy, gradually sloping river that takes our kitchen sink and washing machine water. The ditch is lined with plastic that had been left on the plot, followed by gravel and planted with reeds. Spaces between reeds are covered in thick mulch, to prevent standing water and risk of mosquitoes. After going through the reed bed, the water heads into a hugelkultur bed-- essentially large pieces of wood, covered by topsoil, and planted manure. That is, the water that leaves the system is meant to be absorbed into the branches of wood. We're not yet sure how long it will work for, and if we'll have to wash the rocks after a while, which will be a pain. We figure this is version 1.0, and that we'll re-evaluate after two years, or sooner if necessary. I think it's infinitely better than sending water directly underground, which is what we were doing previously.

Composting toilet
Our composting toilet is great. It doesn't smell, it's flexible, saves a huge amount of water, the kids are actually better at adding hay than they were at flushing the toilet. If you're here in Cape Town and this is something that you'd be interested in doing, or applying in NGO settings, I invite you to visit and check it out. Seriously. I know this is not the answer to all the world's problems, but I think it is a really great option for lots of people in lots of places.

We started to use our oat hay, which we have to cut to make the stalks easy to use as cover, but the good news is that even the oat hay is very effective at preventing odor. We're not using a huge amount, either. Buying hay- particularly at this time of year- greatly increases the cost of the toilet (though it's still cheaper than water/sewage costs), but the hay is absolutely a luxury. We knew it would be a learning curve for us, so we bought hay, but there is plenty of carbonaceous material around us that would be fine to use if we had the time to harvest it. When the autumn and winter comes, collecting a year's worth of cover material in the form of leaves will be doable. Leaves are bagged by the municipality and left on the pavement, so we're hoping this will be the only time we buy in cover material.

compost pile. Doesn't look too gross, right?

After less than a month in our house, our compost pile is already steaming. Following the Humanure Handbook, there's a thick layer of straw surrounding the newly added compost, and compost is always added to the center of the pile then covered well with hay/straw. Even so, flies are a potential nuisance, because we also add fruit scraps to the pile. This past week my dad gave me two bags of grass cuttings which we used to add extra cover to the pile. It's much more dense than the straw, and seemed to completely take care of the fly problem.

Free resources!
I'm so excited to have found some sources of free horse manure. There are permaculture people who don't think it's a good idea to bring in manure, and others who think it's a bad idea to bring in ANYTHING, because of the risk of fungicides and pesticides and dewormers, etc.

They may be proved right, but in a South African context getting free ANYTHING is pretty fantastic. Even woodchips (which we need for our sandy driveway) are super expensive (and not guaranteed to be pesticide free, either). So for the stage we're in, horse manure represents this amazing source of free fertility. Unlike organic and inorganic fertilizer, it's free and adds a lot of biomass, which is what we need on this sandy, hot and dry plot. I'm hoping that this will help our fruit trees get established and strong, so that they're gradually able to manage with fewer and fewer inputs of things like manure.

The other free resource that we're gradually making the most of is kelp from our nearby beaches. Full of trace minerals, we get a large bagful every time we head to the beach. They key to responsible foraging seems to be to take the seaweed that has washed up to shore (and so is no longer rooted), but is still wet (and thus hasn't lost too many nutrients).

Small houses

Our house is not tiny, but it's smallish. (5mX9m, + a 2mX2m sunroom). So far, it's felt huge. As best as I can tell, this is because we're using our shipping container to store all the stuff we don't necessarily need to use daily-- our garden supplies, extra clothes, bulk food items. There isn't any wasted space, but we don't have lots of space to entertain guests or eat. We're hoping to get a folding dining table when we're in Korea, as this is what we always used in the U.S. The kids' bunk bed is a great space saver, though right now all the built-in storage is being used for hoarded rocks and stuff. oh well.

August-September update

A fragmented post on our kids' education, so I don't forget:

Deep thought on schooling the last couple of months was: environment matters a lot. It's so much easier to invest time and energy into the kids' learning when they've spent time outdoors and run around a lot (and where that didn't feel like an tiring investment on our part, as taking the kids to the park so often did). That is to say, our new home is a wonderful, almost surreal, place to raise Noah and Eli, and it's been more clear to us that they really do learn no matter what.

After a long break, Eug and I recently looked back on our goals for the kids for 2015:

• Learning to swim

The idea was that this would guide how we spent time over the course of our days, weeks and months. Swimming was great in summer, but we reached our limit when winter came, and Noah and Eli were both fairly hesitant to put their heads under water with us. Recognizing that it was going to be a couple of months before it will be warm enough to swim in the ocean or outdoor pools, we decided to try swimming lessons down the road from us, in an indoor heated pool in a family home. Lessons are wonderful! It feels wonderful to see other adults investing in our kids, and interacting separately from us.

• Learning to ride a bike

They're still using training wheels, but I think Noah and Eli might be able to go without the training wheels in a couple of weeks.

• Praying/connecting with God

This is so hard to think about in a non-contrived way, but we're trying out talking about stories in the Bible. Right now, a lot of helping our kids connect with God seems to be related to admitting when I'm wrong, and apologizing. But I'm hoping we can practice praying together more in the next couple of months.

• Reading

Our realization somewhere in the middle of the year has been that our kids may not be ready for structured reading lessons, but that we can focus on reading them really great books. So that's what we've been doing. It's not that we weren't doing that before, but I had a sense that I should try for more explicit and goal-oriented literacy for Noah, which I'm less concerned about for now. Anyway, here are some pictures that show our days a little more:

following toads around

catch and release

Our neighbour's dog lives with us, apparently... Here, he's trying to lick our baking bowl..

Noah's perspective on our farm. He goes around with the camera finding interesting things.

It's getting warm enough for the beach, but the wind is a bit crazy.

Eli spends a lot of time posing.

Our neighbour's dog managed to kill this giant Cape Dune Mole Rat. We kept it in our house for about 24 hours, which I think counts as some kind of science project. Then we buried him underneath an apple tree...

Noah's perspective on mole ratty.

Physical exam.

A moving burial...

Eli can actually move the wheelbarrow, if it's not too full. Hooray, another apple tree!

 We've started baking and cooking more together, now that our kitchen is settled and I'm less stressed. The kids love stuff where there's a real output, and real danger. So chocolate covered raisins and strawberries won their time on this occasion:

Cardboard airplane.

Another one of the goals we had for this year was for both kids to be able to ride without training wheels. We didn't get terribly far yet, and the kids' bikes were stolen from my parents' garage. So we recently bought them a bike to share, and they've been riding every day (with training wheels) up and down the street, and most recently, inside our (broken) reservoir. 

Lastly, the kids got a bed-- made by Eug. Lots of storage and generally awesome. The baby's bed rolls out at the bottom. But it turns out if you don't give your kids a bed for, like, their whole lives, and then suddenly you do, they're too excited to sleep. May it be short-lived...

A couple of weeks in our new house

Thanks for support from afar as we moved into our new house. It has been super momentous and blessed, though perhaps I was being overdramatic in weathering what felt like a particularly overwhelming few months.

The off grid stuff:

We learned our small fridge, which we brought over from our old house, is pretty low quality, in that it sucks massive amounts of energy every time the motor starts up, thereby tripping our inverter (the thing that converts DC to AC). We also returned the pump that was going to pump water from our Jojo rainwater tank into our solar geyser and bathroom, as it had the same problem. The amount of power we have from our 4 panels seems to be close to ok, but our main challenges are related to surges and starting motors. For now, we're using our deep freeze, which does not have the same problem as our fridge when it comes to surges, and then using our fridge as a glorified cooler box, where we move items from the freezer to the fridge as we need them. We generally have to be super careful about our batteries, and must choose when we have electricity (i.e. not in evenings/at night)-- which I think is going to get better as we get closer to summer, but is surprisingly not a huge deal.



Given the issue with our Jojo tank pump, we're currently using all municipal water inside the house. Which means we're not really off the grid. With a low-pressure gravity solar geyser, our hot water pressure is very low, and we use very little water when showering. We have to start filling the bath an hour before the kids are set to bath, to get them a few centimeters of bathwater. Yet what the geyser lacks in pressure it makes up for in heat. It's a very simple hot water heater, and it basically heats up the water directly, in glass tubes. So even though we're still coming out of winter and the sun is often hidden by clouds, the water is steaming hot. Given that we're not using water in our toilet, our water needs are quite modest and we're wondering if the most practical thing is just to continue to use municipal water in our home. The good news is that our 5000L Jojo got lots and lots of water with recent rain.

Our trees are surviving, and starting a food forest is a complicated, slow thing. The big challenges so far seem to be giant moles and wind. The wind can be fairly brutal on young trees, and our plot has about a trillion brazen moles. There's not a lot we're keen to do about the moles right now (it's low on the long list of projects-- I heard you can eat the moles but I'm really not sure how to start with that?), so I'm trying to think of ways to break the wind, and extend the food forest gradually from more sheltered areas of our farm, outwards. As summer comes, we'll need to start thinking of ways to conserve water while giving the trees the best start we can.

Eli with Cutie the tortoise. He is pretty hard to find, but we know he's always somewhere on the plot!

Eug made a sand table from scrap wood and leftover building sand. 

Wonderful fireplace. Heats up the house, and is hot enough that we're able to cook bread and use the stovetop as well. 

The fire is pretty tiny, but the heat gets spread along the flue.

Eug had the idea of drawing on tiles with acrylic pens.

Unstaged, the other side of our bathroom. Up to now we've just had buckets of dry grass next to the toilet. We've recently bought hay so that I don't have to keep gathering dried grass...

In the Humanure Handbook, the author suggests that you have four buckets with good lids, then you just have to take the buckets out to the compost pile once a week, at most. Our bathroom is too small to store buckets, and our compost pile is relatively close to the house, so once a week doesn't work for us. It makes the most sense to take a bucket out as soon as it gets full, which is currently every 2-3 days.

I'd love to talk more about the toilet as we get more experience with it: shared toilets in South African townships are dangerous for women and children, frequently dirty or fill or locked, and generally problematic. We're too new to this way of doing toilets, and to the complexity of issues in townships, to espouse specific views just yet. Nevertheless, it's super cool that you can get some old buckets, some old grass, and make a wooden box and a toilet seat and voila! a safe (from a public health perspective), non-smelling toilet.

We don't have any greywater system per se just yet. Our water comes out in two places into rocks, underground, a few meters from our house. It's pretty high on our list of projects to turn this water into a resource. Our bathroom water can be sent directly to our food forest, as it's fairly clean. Our kitchen water will need to be filtered through a reed bed, which makes it more work to set up, but it is also more urgent because we're going to be washing diapers again soon.