Why I Like to Play with Mud

While we’ve been spending our time plastering walls these last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about why we like to play with mud.  It certainly isn’t glamorous and it’s downright uncomfortable sometimes – our hands are chapped and dried out from the clay, we constantly plunge our hands into cold buckets of water or plaster, little pieces of straw get wedged under our fingernails, our backs ache, our muscles are sore, it’s dusty, etc., etc.

So, why go through all the trouble?  For me, I get the sense I am creating something out of nothing.  We are using dirt from the site, some sand, chopped up straw from a few bales, and water to create the exterior surface of the house.  Imagine siding your house in $100 worth of raw materials.  What a novelty to create your own building materials basically for free.  I imagine that eating vegetables from your own garden has a similar amount of satisfaction.  It’s like every time I smear a handful of plaster on the wall, it’s a little step closer to being self-sufficient.  Like I’m a toddler again telling my parents “No! I want to do it myself!” 

It’s also a very forgiving medium to work with.  It’s easy to fix mistakes and it’s low tech.  We really just eyeball the wall surface to make sure it’s plumb – this will leave some variations in the finish, but who cares?  It’s supposed to look hand-made (not shitty hand-made like my junior high pottery class) but more artsy.  There’s just so much texture in every handful of plaster – squishy, gritty, slippery, cool, moist, fibrous – unlike anything I’ve touched before and it just feels good in my hands.

Does that make any sense or do you still think we’re nuts?

--Jessie

We are still alive… promise…

I know, I know. All of you were probably getting worried that we were captured by a radical right wing northern California militia or something, but have no fear. We are safe, sound and although a bit tired very happy. We have been working pretty furiously doing final finish earthen plaster on a straw bale house in the Capay Valley in California.  The project has been awesome and Meg has let Jessie and I kind of take over the exterior finish part of the house so we have been in full project management, work day mode.  We have 75% of the house plastered and are planning to get the last set of walls done this week.

I’ll be pulling together a couple of posts about some of the progress and a lessons learned post so we can remember later the good and bad of this project. In the mean time here is a small video of time lapse pictures we took while finishing the 3rd wall.

For those of you reading via email the video is available at this link.

--Tom

Will Build for Food

Finally -- we found a natural building project to work on!  Last spring, I posted on a straw bale listserv that we’d be willing to help on any natural building projects in exchange for a spot to set up our camper and food.  It’s been almost 6 months since we’ve really gotten our hands dirty and we’ve been completely absorbed in building rather than, say, blogging.

Welcome to Meg & Steve’s straw bale hybrid home.  What the heck does that mean?  The middle section of the house with the redwood siding is built using conventional construction methods that you might find in any average house.  The two wings of the house have a timber frame for the structure and straw bale walls that are in the process of being plastered by yours truly.

Here’s me doing some interior patching of the base coat of plaster.  In straw bale walls, the actual bales are coated with a fairly rough coat of earth plaster (clay, sand, straw, water) about 2” thick.

The bedroom already has the finish plaster applied.  Finish plaster uses the same ingredients, but the clay, sand, and straw have been sieved or chopped to be much smaller particles.  Pigments can be added to achieve a wide variety of finish colors.

This is the basic view of the main living space (the bed is just in there temporarily).  They have technically moved in, but they haven’t received their occupancy permit yet and will have to move all their stuff out before the final inspection.  The whole house is about 1200 square feet with 2 bed/2 bath, but with this open room, it feels bigger to me.

Steve really did a beautiful job on the Japanese inspired wood work.  This is just one of many pleasing details.

Here, Tom is patching some exterior base coat plaster that cracked at the window.  I think he’s actually filling some of the void with some long straw that is dipped in slip, twisted up, and packed real tight into the wall.  Slip is water with a little bit of clay mixed in.  When it dries, it helps give those wads of straw a little bit of strength and they’ll maintain their shape.

The solar array on their shop is more than enough to supply all of their power.  Their home is in the Capay Valley in northern California, about 90 minutes from Sacramento.  We’re really loving being here right now as Meg & Steve are great people and they’re letting us just cut loose with any part of the construction that we’re willing to learn.  We’ve experimented with some lime plaster, learned how to tile a shower, and tomorrow we’re going to start the finish plaster on the exterior.  

We get to learn some new stuff – they give us a place to camp and feed us yummy food with lots of fresh fruits and veggies from the nearby organic farms.  This is exactly what we need right now, so we’ll be staying for a few more weeks to help them finish up before their permit expires.

-Jessie

Fresh pumpkin pie and great people…

We spent the weekend in Sacramento with Jessie’s cousin Wally and his family. It was a great weekend to come in since they were doing a Friends Thanksgiving on Saturday night. This is such a great concept where all of the friends get together and have a very low key potluck style Thanksgiving dinner before all of the family Thanksgiving festivities takes over.

We had a great time and got to meet some fun people. They had a blow up bounce house which all of the parents chipped in on to entertain the kids and it was a huge hit.

This is not our pie… images stolen from here

I decided to take on making a pumpkin pie since the couple that we have been working with the last week gave us a pie pumpkin when we left for the weekend.  It turned out awesome. We got two pies out of the one 6-8” pumpkin and it was a big hit for desert. I have to say if I do this again I would make a fresh crust rather than a store bought once since I think it would finish the homemade taste up. We were having too good a time and didn’t grab the camera at all last night so no pictures. The one above is pretty close to how the pie came out.  Overall the first shot at a homemade none canned pie was a success.

--Tom

World’s Finest

So, here we are in Redding, California, home to not just one, not two, but THREE claims to the World’s finest things. 

First, we have the World’s largest sundial.  It’s actually a suspended pedestrian bridge over the Sacramento River and a mighty neat feature, if I do say so myself.

The deck of the bridge is made with translucent glass panels so as to not disturb the spawning salmon below by casting a huge shadow.  That seems kind of fishy to me.  Yes, I agree with you, I need some more coffee before I experiment with lame puns.

Here is Tom on the bridge ogling some fisherman.  He just thinks that waders are so HOT – he really can’t help himself.

 
Which brings me to our next subject – the World’s largest fly shop.  We briefly stopped at Mecca, but Tom restrained himself and didn’t buy too much.  And, just in case some wise ass writes in and tells me about an even larger fly shop in Lower Slobobia, the guy at the counter said they’re the largest in the U.S and probably in the world.

 
Then, we’re driving down the highway one day, and I spot a billboard that says – “Greenest Hotel in the World.”  What?  How the heck do they measure that?  First of all, it’s beige, not green.  This claim seems a bit dubious to me, but they have all the green essentials – recycled materials, low flow fixtures, PV, and they don’t allow anyone to shave their armpits.

Back near the Sundial Bridge, there is an arboretum with a children’s play area.  We liked these whimsical little huts simply made by weaving branches together.

Also in the children’s playground were these little tunnel things into a stand of bamboo.  It seems Tom thinks he’s a bit smaller than he actually his, because he got a little bit stuck in here.

There is a tile mosaic fountain in the arboretum with all sorts of plants and animals embedded in it.  Neat-o.

After two awesomely rainy days trying to explore Shasta-Trinity National Forest (which would be pretty sweet when dry), we gave up and headed west to Whiskeytown National Recreation Area for a hike up to Boulder Creek falls.  Sadly, the falls were not made of whiskey.

A tight rope walker I am not meant to be.  I am still excruciatingly slow at stream crossings.  But, I have a pretty good track record of staying dry, so bite me.

Cool, pointy tree we saw at the arboretum.  Can anyone identify this?

-Jessie

Green Eugene

Jessie and I were both pretty impressed with Eugene when we passed through there. The area is scenic, the University gives the city a lot of energy, there is a strong focus on biking and alternatives to driving around, and it seems from the couple of days there that sustainability and alternative energy are a big focus of the city.

A shot of campus. There is a lot of green space around campus.

There were solar panels and solar hot water heating on a lot of the buildings. This in an area that is actually somewhat overcast a lot of the year. Below are a few shots of some of the alternative energy downtown.

This office building is covered with 269 solar panels. Assuming 100 watts each (and they are likely 200 watt panels) they are generating a peak of 2.7 kWatts of power.

This was kind of a dive looking apartment that had been burned out, but even it was covered with solar panels.

This is a combined residential and commercial space downtown. They have PV solar, hot water solar (the roof in this shot) and water cisterns for rain water recapture.

This is the PV array on the residential and commercial space.

Eugene is definitely in the running as a new place for us to live. The one major problem that we have is jobs. Unemployment is around 10% in the city and doing some cursory searches there were not a lot of jobs that jumped out as being up our alley’s. We’re not ready to stop travelling yet at any rate so we will be keeping an eye on the Eugene area through the rest of our trip.

The University of Oregon campus was pleasant to spend time at. It has a lot of small green spaces spread around and the layout of the campus is walkable, but not cramped. We did a walking tour while we were there and realized its an easy campus to get around on without a car. In fact they discourage students living on campus from having a car. Here are some shots from around campus.

This is the new business college building. It has a beautiful atrium inside and those are solar panels for shade screen on the front.

This waterfall / sculpture was designed by a student who was losing her sight.

I think this was where the Computer Science department is located.

One of the smaller bike storage places on campus. I missed a shot of the one outside the largest lecture hall that can seat 550 students.

There are a few more pictures from our Eugene visit in the album here. 

--Tom

Shasta

Mt. Shasta is quite beautiful, but when I hear the word Shasta, I think of those stupid Fanta soda commercials.  “Shasta, Shasta, don’t you wanta?”

However, this was our lovely little FREE campsite in Shasta-Trinity National Forest last night.  You can just barely see the camper through the trees.

We were camped, perhaps illegally, in a pull out along a stream.  We would have loved to sleep with the windows open to listen to the gurgling stream, but alas, it was way too cold.  We both laid in bed this morning, under the comfort of down, waiting for the other person to get up first and start coffee.

Here I am cooking by headlamp to conserve battery charge.  When we get to Arizona for Christmas, we are probably going to get a new battery that holds charge longer and hook ourselves up with solar panels.  Now that the sun sets by 6, it’s a rather long period of time to entertain ourselves in the dark.

We have taken you up on your night time entertainment suggestions and went on a Wal-Mart scavenger hunt the other night (we also went to a U of O volleyball game in Eugene).  When we were hunting up our items, I saw Tom and jumped around a corner to take a picture of him.  This picture is not so funny, but Tom said there was a family behind me who was very confused by my actions and started looking at Tom like he was stealing stuff.

And here’s our baskets of goodies (Tom’s on top, mine on bottom).  I dominated this challenge.  We decided to give up when I was working on my last item to put away (ash tray filter) and Tom still had SIX of ten items to return to the shelves.  All too easy (said in menacing Darth Vader voice).

-Jessie

Roller Derby

I was flipping through a Eugene newspaper and found out that they have a roller derby team, the Emerald City Roller Girls. I think when we settle down, I want to be on a roller derby team. I just have to learn to skate, learn the rules, and increase my bad-ass factor. I also need a sweet name. In case you're not familiar with roller derby, the girls have names like Susan B. Agony, Agent Orange (for a chick with red hair), or Demi Gore.

I was trying to think of a name for me that incorporates Jessie/Jessica, red hair, or white skin. I'm not coming up with much yet. So far, I have Jessica Gimpson or Jesse Maims. Please send in some ideas so I can check this off my bucket list.

Vanna Fight?
White Lightning?

I don't know. I don't think my name ideas will strike fear into the hearts of many.

-Jessie

Go DUCKS…!

Well this weekend we got to see what a college town in full football fever looks like. Combine that with the fact that it was Halloween and there was a lot of energy around campus and in downtown.

We couldn’t get tickets to the game since it was completely sold out, but we did walk over to the stadium and cruise through the parking lot to see what all was going on in the way of tailgating.

This is the team coming in on the busses. Everybody on the street kind of went wild cheering as they drove by.

It was pretty amazing watching the number of people who were walking, biking and driving into the stadium. At 2:30 PM there was a constant flow of people coming in wearing their green and gold.

The tailgating was going on furiously when we walked around. I am always amazed at what gets brought in for tailgating. Tables, grills, whole smorgasbords' of food… that level of dedication is impressive. I tried Kinnear-ing some pictures during our walk through, but I suck at it miserably so most of them didn’t come out.

I did get a decent shot of the whole parking lot. Ducks fan’s like their football. 

Shortly after this the big nasty rain cloud you can see opened up and dumped on everyone. It was a soggy walk back to campus.  Apparently the game was very good and the Ducks took home another win so I can only imagine what the party scene was like last night around campus.

--Tom

Eugene Oregon

We’re spending a few days exploring the city of Eugene, Oregon.  It’s a potential new final resting place :) for us so we figured we would give it a look.  The city has about 200,000 people in the area and has the University of Oregon with around 25,000 students enrolled. It also is very bike friendly and has good fishing in the area, so its got a lot of what we are looking for in a new home.

We went to a lecture on campus last night for something to do so we could get out of the trailer. It was by a professor of physics, music and international relations.  An unlikely combination you’re thinking… you might be right.  The lecture included a very high level discussion of astral physics, Bach’s fugues and the social impacts of molecular biology.  We both found the experience a bit disjointed and also had a difficult time with the strong Hungarian accent. His overall point was that we have advanced our knowledge of science and technology at a radically faster rate than we have our ethics. This combined with the accessibility of things like molecular biology to everyday citizens can have negative impact on society. 

As I said the lecture wasn’t all that cohesive, but it was kind of fun, was free and is the kind of thing that we like about a college town. Always stuff like that going on.

The one complaint we have about the Northwest in general right now is the wetness. Its hard for things to dry out in a trailer when its like 95% humidity all of the time. It also makes for some very scary morning hair on Jessie’s part.

See what I have to wake up to every morning… 

We are going to be taking a campus tour today so we might have some pictures for tomorrow… assuming the rain holds off still.

 

--Tom

Seattle and the Northwest…

We just finished a nice weekend in Seattle hanging out with a friend of ours (Omri).  We found a nice RV park close to downtown that had a pool, hot tub and a sauna which was pretty nice to take advantage of.

We went out to some cool bars, ate at some nice restaurants, ate too much sushi and did an enjoyable hike on Cougar Mountain (insert your own joke here).

We’re in Portland now for a few days and then we are headed south into Northern California and perhaps back into Utah for a bit. Its amazing how fast time flies… it seems like we just left AZ last spring and now we are 6 weeks from heading back that direction for Christmas.

Its good to be back on the road again and hopefully our adventure will get more entertaining again shortly. Sorry that we don’t have any pictures from Seattle… we were slacking on the camera carrying.

--Tom

Don’t Come a Knockin’….

When we’re not camping at a campground, we have limited battery life to run lights for a long time.  We can generally watch a movie or a few TV shows on the laptop, but that gets boring.  There’s the obvious answer, but in the interest of preserving the suspension on our trailer, what else can we do now that it’s dark at night? 

So, we’re soliciting ideas from the peanut gallery.  In any random, generic town in the US, where can we go after dinner to entertain ourselves?  Bonus points to people who come up with ideas that are free or cheap (say, less than $15).  Let the creative juices start flowing!

-Jessie

Wrestlemania

When I was a kid, I routinely kicked my brothers ass in parent-sanctioned wrestling matches.

My Dad was our unofficial wrestling coach.  He taught us how to dig our chin into our opponents back, how to inflict maximum rug burn damage, full nelson’s, headlocks, etc. etc.

When puberty hit though – I was SCREWED.  Josh had to make up for years of torture where I’d pin him down and perform Chinese torture on him.  Sooooo, it’s possible, that I deserved this.

And this.

Here is Baby T playing with a balloon that just refuses to pop in Uncle Tom’s boots.  Of course, “Uncle Tom” actually sounds like “Uhn Om” and he pretty much refused to say anything resembling “Jessie” until yesterday.  We were trying to get him to say Aunt Jessie one night and something came out more like "Auntie Em” so my parents taught him to call me Toto instead which he can say perfectly.  So, fantastic – I’m Aunt Toto.  I’d love to hear any more stories on how bad nick names are born.

Ahhh, yeah, rockin’ out on the Wii.  The toddler decided to show us up by working the guitar and mic.  He just needs some sweet sunglasses to be totally bad ass.

Making some brownies with Grammy.

Babies have mad skills when it comes to eating messy foods.  He actually looks a little drunk on chocolate.

Josh found this lame-o t-shirt in his closet.  We made him impersonate Spiderman by pretending to swing from webs any time he moved around the house.

-Jessie

Decorating on a Budget

My brother & his wife challenged us to decorate the outside of their house for Halloween on a $20 budget.  Easy-peasy – check out what we accomplished over the last few days:

I admit – Tom is the creative genius behind the entire concept.  Everyone else contributed but Tom was the mastermind.

The scarecrow head, witch head, and large spider were all made with 2 coats of paper mache over balloons.

Yeah, Tom, ummm, working the paper mache on the witch nose.  He had a really good technique.

The finished witch is AWESOME  and we made it practically for free.  We made the broom from some sticks & straw, the old graduation robe was in their “tag sale” box, and the hat was from a garage sale for a quarter.

Amanda painted the face of the witch and it is just so cool.

I painted the face of the scarecrow and it’s just a *tad* more simplistic.

But I stuffed the scarecrow in all the right places, if you know what I’m saying.

Here, we’re adding some finishing touches to the spiders.  Tom glued pieces from a metal pie tin to give the spider some bling. 

Bad ass spidey comin’ to get’cha.

Little baby spiders surround the momma spider.  These spiders are made from an egg crate pieces and strips from a cardboard paper towel roll.  The web is a metal pie tin with pieces cut out of it.

Ahhh!  Our creation revolts and we’re treated to a fang-tastic death.

This piece is all Tom.  He free-handed the skeleton bones to make a stencil.

And a few ghosts to round out our display.  The heads are held up with plastic milk jugs and the hands are golf balls.

They now have the most awesomely decorated house in the neighborhood.  We ended spending closer to $40 -- $14 on straw bales, $2.50 at a garage sale for a BUNCH of stuff, $15 on spray paint & urethane, $4 at Goodwill, and $5 on some miscellaneous things.  But who cares, right?  The decorations should be reusable next year and they ROCK.  Plus, we had a lot of fun building all this stuff.  Christmas ideas are already brewing…

We could probably have our own TV show on TLC or something.

-Jessie

Sustainability… what does it mean to you?

As most of you know part of Jessie’s and my reason for embarking on this trip was to expand our knowledge of how to live with less impact and more in harmony with the planet.   When we have conversations about this or when we are talking about it with other people the word sustainability gets thrown around a lot.  We often talk about wanting to live more sustainably, or how something is or isn’t very sustainable.

That got me thinking about what that word really means. Its a pretty good buzzword for the “green” movement, but I have a hard time really defining what the word means. Does it relate to being carbon neutral, energy efficient, locally sourced…etc? So I’ll put this out to all you blog readers out there, how would you define sustainability?

I’d like to solicit your thoughts in comments. If you read this through mail delivery please click on the posting and give us your thoughts.

One a somewhat related note there is an article about how straw bale housing fits into the UN’s 8 Millennium Development Goals as set out in 2000 at the following link. One of the main people referenced in the article, Laura Bartels, is a friend of ours who does amazing work with native American tribes around replacing FEMA trailers with straw bale homes. That pesky sustainable word shows up in the articles too as part of the “Achieving environmental sustainability” goal. Laura is an amazing person and her company Green Weavers Inc. does some very impactful work.

--Tom

We Can AlCan

This blog title came from my Dad who is still giggling with himself about all the blog titles he can come up with.  Tom is next to me rolling his eyes and saying, “seriously?  You’re going to use that?”  We are currently in Omaha, visiting my brother and my parents flew in from Connecticut for a little family reunion.

The fall colors through the mountains were spectacular.

But first, we had to drive down the AlCan and get ourselves into some warmer weather.  We drove 2100 miles in 5 days – that’s not a ton of mileage everyday, but our transportation is a little slow on the uptake.  They were still 10-12 hour days.

Wow.  Tom just pulled “Racing River” out of his butt.  I’m pretty sure he’s right though.  Color me impressed.

Oh geez.  Now my Dad is conniving on how he can get my 2 year old nephew into trouble so he can watch him have a time out.  He thinks it is very cute & funny to see a little kid standing in a corner and crying.  I’m gonna get in trouble for putting that in writing.  That sounds worse than it is – my Dad loves his grandson more than anything and plays with him more than anyone else.  But, it is funny to see a 2 year old get “disciplined.”

We have a series of pictures taken while driving over this mountain pass.  There are some blurry branches in the foreground.

Anywho, we drove and drove and drove and finally reached our destination – Salmon Arm, British Columbia where we stayed at a friend’s cabin for a few days.  It was an extraordinarily nice respite after all that time sitting on our asses, listening to audio books.

This is an old homestead (circa 1890’s) at 108 Mile House in British Columbia where we spent a night.

The homestead is still open to the public as a park and museum with a bunch of old farm equipment & tools.  Who could pass up a shot of this giant chainsaw?

Our plan after the cabin was to drive for 2 more days to get to Portland, Oregon where we had a flight scheduled to get to Omaha.  BUT, we were thwarted by – you guessed it – our truck.  Im-pa-see-blay!!!  We were getting everything ready to go the day before we were supposed to leave, and the engine started whining like a little bitch.  And the brakes were acting up too.  We absolutely did not want to drive 600 miles with unreliable brakes.

This rest stop is across the street from the homestead and was a very pleasant spot to spend the night.  We watched the sun set eating our dinner of black beans & rice at a picnic table.

SooOOOO, we got on the phone with United and rearranged our tickets to fly out of Kamloops, BC and dropped our truck off at Toyota.  We fly back to BC on Oct. 19 and then will have to drive into the U.S. – hopefully not on snowy roads.

We shall see……

-Jessie

Brrrrr

Before we left good ole Squarebanks, we visited the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC) to check out their state-of-the-art facility that opened in 2006.  Built as a living laboratory, over 1000 sensors throughout the building monitor temperature, humidity, indoor air quality, foundation movement, and other important data-type stuff. 

Along the driveway is a large solar array with several different types of solar panels.  Although solar panels operate more efficiently at cold temperatures, there is hardly any sunlight in the winter to produce power.  They produce quite well during the long summer days, but with a reduced demand for power, much of their output is wasted. 

Large battery bank for the solar array.

If Alaska had a net-metering law, solar would make more sense, but you have to be really dedicated to the cause to spring for solar panels (most states have some form of a net-metering law – it basically requires electric utilities to roll back your electric meter while you’re producing excess solar power, effectively using the power grid as a battery bank).

Much of their research has gone into finding a cost-effective, energy efficient way to build houses for the cold climate.  Most Alaskan houses have just been built the way they are in warmer climates and they simply don’t work well.  This detail is what they are recommending for this climate – most of the insulation is rigid insulation on the exterior of the house and is outside the vapor barrier. 

I realize this photo doesn’t look like much, but this is a small sewage treatment plant for the building.  This building has about 25 staff and is not hooked up to the city sewer system and does not have a septic tank & leach field.  The tank, from Lifewater Engineering, can be plopped on a concrete pad outside and works all winter long in HARSH climates (up to –60 F).  A system for a small household (1-3 people) costs $14,000.

The building has 2 separate living roofs.  This one, oddly on the north side of the building, has a ton of vegetables and flowers growing around the perimeter.  The staff has lunches & harvest parties up here.  Seems like a cool place to work -- “hey Bob, I’m gonna take a break and go thin the carrots.”

Just because it’s a research center, doesn’t mean there can’t be some artistic flourishes.  This is just one of many decorative stair railings in the building.

There were many, many other innovative features to the building, but I didn’t take very good pictures that day.  They are going for platinum LEED certification (which is the highest level) and the facility is just top-notch.  If you live in Fairbanks, they give tours every Thursday at 2 pm for free and it was well worth the time.  Their website also has a ton of information on the building and the research they’re doing.

Jessie

A Walk In The Park…

So we are still doing some catch up on what we did while we were visiting in Anchorage. We took off one afternoon and went and walked around in the Bicentennial Park around Anchorage. The park is pretty big and has a ton of hiking trails in it. There was a section of trails that were closed due to bear activity in the park, but we didn’t see anything that didn’t go on two legs. The trail we walked was pretty amazing with the fall colors.

There were a ton of mushrooms out since it has been pretty rainy and I got some good detail pictures that I think came out pretty cool.

Terry and I had a good time playing with the GPS functions on his iPhone and google maps. It was amazing how accurate the locations were. We could literally watch ourselves walk along the trail as the GPS updated our position. Very geeky, but very cool.

--Tom

Spring Creek Farm…

While we were in Anchorage we took a side trip to Palmer since we had heard there was a pretty active sustainability focused community there. We didn’t really know where we were going and didn’t really have any place specific to visit. Jessie, through the power of the inter-web, found Spring Creek Farm which is an organic farm outside Palmer that has a CSA, farm school, and works in coordination with the Alaska Pacific University doing masters program work. The farm was a pretty cool setup and we talked for a while with Steve Rubinstein who runs the farm with Anne-Corrine Kell.

The farm has a really cool farm school where they teach half-days of school for home-schooled kids that are focused on agriculture and outdoor lessons. The school has about 15 kids from kindergarten through 3rd grade ages. Its a really cool program and is used by a lot of the home schooling families in the area.

This is the farm school class room. Very cheerful

Jes and our guide Jenn talking about the farm school

The farm has three current greenhouses, one of which was creatively made out of recycled doors.

This greenhouse has a twin. The white tank allows the water to pre-heat before being put on the plants.

I love this greenhouse made from old doors… its speaks to me.

There is a huge new greenhouse being built on the property which they are hoping to get 3 season growing out of. The greenhouse is being set up to have a lot of alternative technologies in use. The front of the greenhouse is almost all clear story and there are some plans to use water stored in the greenhouse and hot air generated from solar gain to heat the beds that the plants are on.

This is the big new greenhouse being built.

Another shot of the greenhouse – all of the angle space will be glass to absorb the sun.

The main function of the farm is a CSA that feeds 40 families shares of organic vegetables. The CSA plot was beautiful even fairly late in the season.

The crops in the CSA

More CSA crops.

I have no idea what kind of flower this is, but I thought it was nice looking.

The whole operation was very cool and we had a great time looking around. Our tour guide Jenn was incredibly generous with her time and took us around for several hours with no notice. We can’t say thank you enough.

--Tom

The Port of Anchorage and Coca Cola

I know your thinking, what do these two things have in common. Well, honestly… nothing. We are playing a little catch up on what has been going on in Alaska for us over the last few weeks and I wanted to talk about a couple of small adventures we had in Anchorage.

Jessie and I have been challenging ourselves to find free or cheap fun stuff to do wherever we are since we don’t have an income. While we were in Anchorage one morning Jessie started googling around for stuff to do and discovered that the Port of Anchorage has a free tour that they run once and hour on Saturdays during the summer to raise public awareness of what goes on at the port. Best of all they give you lunch while you are there… free lunch… oh, yeah!

The Port is undergoing a huge expansion where they are filling in some massive amount of the tidal and non-tidal areas and putting in new piers, docks…etc. The following is a picture of the construction stolen from their website not taken by us.

The tour was pretty cool. They bus you into the port and talk about how much goes through there. Something like 90% of goods sold in Alaska come through the port, so if the port shut down, all of the stores in Alaska would pretty much be out of inventory in like 4 days. Obviously, port security is pretty big here.

There are two major shipping companies that work through the port, one that drives their containers on via trucks and one that loads them in big stacks via cranes. Apparently the trucks are faster to load and unload, but the crane operation can hold somewhat larger container counts. Here are a couple of shots of the container ships.

The crane on and off ship setup.

The roll on and off operation in the background. You can just make out a white tractor trailer container coming off the ship.

After we had done the port thing we somehow started talking about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing, and Jessie and I were amazed that the kids had not been exposed to this. So of course a trip to the store for some Diet Coke and Mentos was in order. We started with small 20oz bottles and then worked our way up to 2 liters. We also tried to do a rocket from one of the 2 liters, but it was a total dud so no good pictures from that.

Terry and Muskrat getting ready to set off a fountain

Dueling fountains and the ensuing slurpage

The two liter was a big hit!

The boys thought it was great fun to try and drink from the Diet Coke as it was fountaining up from the bottles… who are we to stop creativity. :) We did this previously with our nephews in DC and it was as much fun as I remembered, albeit still as sticky as I remember also.

--Tom

These are the people in my neighborhood…

So, we were effectively stranded for over 11 weeks which drastically changed our plans for visiting Alaska. We are SOOOOO thankful that this happened in a place where I grew up, Tom went to school and we know a bunch of people who were willing to help us out6

John & Vanessa who let us park the trailer in their driveway, use their bathroom & laundry room, and opened their house to us for almost 3 months. My brother and their son were best friends for much of their childhood. They’ve been on multiple vacations with my parents.

Jeff Yauney (Tom’s old boss), towed our trailer for us once we arrived in Fairbanks and hooked Tom up with a 2 week contracting gig.

Tom’s sister Tiffany, Kyle, Chelsea, & Cameron who had us stay at their house for 3 1/2 weeks. Cameron gave up his room for us and slept on an air bed.

Rolf & Heather gave me something to do by working on their home design. Rolf also towed our trailer for us once and we had many great meals at their house. This was our first time meeting Heather and she was so easy to be friends with. Their 2 year old daughter has a crazy infectious laugh – I dare you not to smile when she’s laughing.

Sally & Michael who let us stay at their house our first week in town (with 2 small kids, another visitor, and a dog).

Sally’s parents, Fred & Claudia. We spent a day at their house helping frame up a new barn. I spent MANY weekends there from 6th-9th grade. They’re like my runner-up parents.

James Schropp is an old co-workers of Tom’s from UAF. James & his girlfriend treated us to an awesome dinner at a Cuban restaurant with Russian wait staff that do not speak English. Our orders were terribly screwed up, but we still had a great time.

Gloria, Anna, & Chuck provided us with much entertainment while in Juneau.

Arlayne Knox (Tom’s sisters husbands step mother –what?) who loaned us her car while she was out of town.

Jim Loftus, my old boss, let me set up shop in the office for a day and use some books from his library.

Cori Arnold, who was in town visiting a friend, and got together with us for lunch.

Holly & Terry who were available for last minute visits & let us stay in their house for quite some time.

Michelle Curtis (friend from high school) who hooked us up with her parents in Tok after we broke down.

Peggy (referred to as Aunt Peggy) who was Tom’s mom’s roommate at UAF. She provided open doors, yummy meals with way too much food, and a comfy couch for movie watching.

Anyone who is reading (especially commenting) on our blog. It’s quite fun to get blog comments and often makes us laugh.

If you’ve read this far, I understand this isn’t the most interesting post we’ve written. But since we’ve intentionally stripped ourselves of so many things – jobs, house, and all the stuff that goes with them, our community of friends fills in any gaps that they left behind. During our travels, we’ve stayed with over a dozen different people (some complete strangers) and are just so thankful for everyone who has participated in our journey.

Jessie

On the Road Again

Okay, we ACTUALLY, FINALLY, UNEQUIVOCALLY, have our truck back and are heading south this morning.  Ginormous thanks to everyone who helped entertain and house us while we were in Alaska.

Nice sunset illuminating the UAF Museum. 

Jessie

The S word…

Yup, its official. We have now overstayed our time in Alaska. First snows of the season started last night. Admittedly its a light snow and shouldn’t stick, but still… snow and travelling in a trailer are not highly compatible.

Yup, that is snow. It would be pretty if it wasn’t so inconvenient

Luckily I winterized the trailer last night so our plumbing should be fine. It does however make it a serious pain in the butt living in the trailer right now since we have to use water containers and capture all of our waste water so the flush tanks don’t freeze. We wound up moving into John and Vanessa’s basement last night. Once again I can’t imagine how this would have gone without friends and family around. Here’s hoping the truck gets back to us soon.

There was a visit by two young moose yesterday afternoon, which was pretty cool. I got what I think are a couple of good shots of them.

Moose got hops… moose can jump like 6 foot fences, so this was nothing

Moose hanging out at Vanessa’s outdoor buffet.

--Tom

Missing Our Friends

Before we left Anchorage, we went to a magical place called Bouncing Bears.  It is a large warehouse space filled with various bouncy things you see at carnivals, BUT……

Adults are allowed!!  Awwww, yeah.  When all four adults got on this bouncing pillow, it was moving so much that none of the kids could actually stand up.  You can see them behind us impersonating dead fish.

The vertical punching bag things were awesome just to run and dive into.  I did this many, many times.  I would totally have a birthday party at a place like this.

However, this obstacle course one totally did me in.  Down a slide, not too hard (except for the extreme wedgies – yow-zah!).

But then you have to crawl through tunnels and SQUEEZE through these ridiculous contraptions.  When you pay to use this facility, you get a 2 hour session for about $6.  After the first half hour, we were looking at the clock all bug-eyed going, “it’s only been 30 minutes!”  Oh yes, we were already getting tired.  Bouncing around constantly is a tough business.

It looks like Tom is pushing me over here, but it’s equally likely that I just fell.  I had slippery socks.

What a grand idea for a business.  Does something like this exist in the D.C. area?  If not, someone should start a franchise.  Although, there is a high concentration of lawyers there which may be a bad idea.  Get yourself some good insurance.

This photo was taken from our friends’ deck.  I’ve seen lots of moose, but I don’t think I’ve seen a moose with a magpie roosting on its rump.

And poor Holly – a teacher outnumbered by three engineers.  While putting away leftovers, she grossly underestimated the spaghetti so we mocked her and took pictures.  I am thankful she is a good sport and likes to laugh more than she likes to be right.  =)

We will miss them very much.  This is the longest we’ve seen them since college and it was very sad to drive away.

In other news – still stuck in Fairbanks with snow in the forecast over the next few days.  We are winterizing our water system today so pipes don’t freeze.  We’re hoping to have the truck back in a few days but I’ve said that many times and been wrong.  This sucks to be stuck here still.

Jessie

She’s a Steiger… yar!

AUTHORS NOTE – If you want the full effect you can see this post as a video blog here or if you’re reading on-line embedded below:

Ahoy, today is bloggin challenge round doncha know! You landlubbers may be too daft to know, but today is both Wench… err Wife Appreciation Day and also Talk Like a Pirate Day, yar.

So the old cannon ball and chain committed me to writ’n a post’n about how exceptional she be while keeping to the piratical vernacular! That which follers be said same…

So about the wench as which has afor to now commissioned this same said posting. She’s truly more lovely to me than a galleon sunk low the water with bullion and not but a handkerchief and a parasol to protect itself. She has a voice more enchanting than the crack of a cannon twerd the broadside of an ill protected merchant marine.

Avast, she brings me more joy than days of shore leave with a full purse and a port full of loose wenches… err… I mean flowing ales. She surely shivers me timbers like no other… if you know my meanin. For me fruit cures scurvy no better than her kiss. Truly I say, I would sail the river Styx with a host of the dead and pry treasure for Davie Jones locker itself it if would buy me one more hour in the presence of my best wench and first mate.

Now I’ll be shoving off and wish you strong winds and broadsides to the navy ships as I hoist a flaggen to wives everywhere. Your lot is hard, may your men be harder, YARRRR!

-Black Heart Tom

Oh the freaking humanity…

Just when it seemed that everything was coming together and we were going to be able to get out on the road again… the truck has some more problems.

The engine sounded a little bit rough when we got the truck back, but we figured it was just us being over sensitive since the engine self destruct of ‘09.  However, in the 1200 miles of break in that we drove, it did not get better. So when we went in Tuesday for the last oil change I asked them to try and figure out what the noise was. After a day of diagnostics they asked us to bring the truck back on Thursday so their major engine guy can take a look at it.  The suspicion (which lines up with what a friend of ours in town thought from listening to the engine) is that the valve clearances are off and need to be adjusted.

That doesn’t sound so bad… err… except that in order to change the valve clearances, the cam belt train (or something) has to be removed and then new shims have to be ordered. The words “shims need to be ordered” makes me shiver since that is one of the things that had to be done several times the original time, and every cycle takes around 3 days to get here.

Oh well, we will find out for sure what the story is tomorrow, but realistically we aren’t going to get headed south until middle to end of next week. The fall colors are here in force and time is not on our side to get out before it gets so cold that travelling in the trailer is very unpleasant. Jessie says she is feeling like Vizzini from Princess Bride… “Inconceivable!” -- “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”

From Hotel Alaska (you can check in, but you can never leave)…

The Steigers

Rent

So, where have we been parking our trailer all this time we’ve been stuck in Alaska?

In the driveway of family friends – since July 13.  They are good friends.  My brother and their son were in karate together around 2nd grade so I’ve known them most of my life.  My parents have vacationed with them even after my brother crashed their snow machine (ugh, snow mobile to anyone in the lower 48) into a tree.  We have been using a bathroom in their basement and using the laundry room on and off for the two months we’ve been here.  Since we’re not really in the business of free-loading, we took on a little landscaping project as a rent payment.

This “walkway” leads from the basement exterior door out into the garden.  An attempt was made several years ago to build a walkway out of repurposed field stones, but it quickly became a lively habitat for weeds.

We ripped out and excavated the old walkway, installed edging & filter cloth, shoveled a bunch of sand, and re-laid all of the stones.  Tetris-savant Tom was in charge of stone layout.

I channeled my inner archaeologist and spread a cementitious grout product between the stones.  Once the dry grout is in place and any excess is swept off the stones, the whole area is wetted several times to activate the cement.

Voila, the finished product.  I am standing on a stair that we also built (see previous photo).

We are fairly happy with the end product, but some of the smaller, thinner stones wiggle a little bit when you walk on them (you can see the small gaps between the stone & the mortar).  I don’t think there is a way to correct this unless we had actually set the stones in concrete.  The grout product we used is firm when you touch it (that’s what she said) but is springy and doesn’t really lock the stones together.  The larger, heavier stones seem to be doing fine.

Anyways, we’ve been in their driveway for quite some time and this was our way of saying thank you.  It has been an enormous relief to have a safe, quiet, and FREE place to live while we were stranded. Its difficult to properly express how much we appreciate this. Thanks John and Van.

Jessie

Fall Has Fallen

Last Sunday, we drove up to the Glen Alps area of Chugach State Park (only about 20 minutes from the house) and went on a little hike.

This area is high enough that I believe the terrain is considered sub-alpine. The foliage is noticeably different on the drive up the hill.

Yeah, you know you want tickets to this gun show. The kids were very excited about the prospects of a real gun show, but then I explained it was only a saying about their muscles – much disappointment ensued.

Here’s a fairly clear view looking north at the Alaska range. The tallest peak in the center is Mt. Denali and I believe the 2nd tallest is Mt. Foraker. FYI – these mountains are about 150 miles away. Must – buy – zoom lens. (If you zoom in on Picasa, you should get a better view).

Three year old entering a cool “cave” formed by some seriously wind blown hemlocks.

The weather was absolutely perfect – clear, sunny, maybe low 60’s. The parking lot was full, but I remember trying to go to Great Falls in the DC area on a nice day and turning around because there were too many damn people. This isn’t really a problem in Alaska.

I am trying to think of something funny or at least anecdotal about the day, but I’m not coming up with anything. We had a good time just enjoying the scenery and the company – not too much to write home about I guess. So I’ll sign off with a quote of the week:

“I have to poop but my butt is jammed.”

-- Uhh, anonymous 7 year old Alaskan boy

Our Poor Neglected Dust Covered Blog

Or so says Tim Belcher via a Facebook comment.

Yes, yes, we’ve been neglecting our blog duties.  It’s hard to live vicariously through us if we’re not sharing the details, eh?  It’s just that we came up to Alaska primarily to visit our best friends in Anchorage, and due to our truck troubles, we have a very brief visitation window.  It’s been hard to make ourselves sit at the laptop with our fingers on home row when we could be doing fun stuff with our friends.  You understand, yes?

Last weekend, we went to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer.   The weather was AWESOME and it was crazy crowded by the time we left.

I was going to try & buy this sweet bedazzled swimsuit, but it wasn’t my size.

Star fish, anemones, and sea creatures, oh my.  The Sea Life Rescue Center had a little touch tank.

Dad – Check out the cool antique tractors!  You know you want one.

This alpaca had just spit at a little kid who got too close.  It was gross, but oh so funny.

This 17 month old, 950 pound pig had just given birth the previous night.  There were 11 piglets all jostling around for her ginormous teats.  The piglets were kinda cute with their little curly wagging tales and waddling around.

The Matanuska Valley grows some huge vegetables thanks to all the sunlight.  This pumpkin clocks in at 594 pounds and is slowly being crushed by its own weight.

I’m not even sure how one would use 83 pounds of rutabaga -- “Hey kids, would you like some more rutabaga pancakes?”  “Drink the rest of your rutabaga juice.” “Rutabaga ice cream, anyone?”

And the new World Record Holder in cabbage – 127 pounds.  That’s a lot of borscht.

If you split Alaska in half, then Texas would be the third largest state.  In the long, cold, dark winters, it’s fun to think of ways to torment Texas.

Jessie

Hope

Welcome to Hope, Alaska.

Pretty, no?  We met up with Holly’s parents there to celebrate the 7 year old’s birthday – he likes to be called Maverick (yes, after Top Gun) so we’ll just go with that to protect the identities of the innocent. 

The day was most excellently lovely, as you can see in the pictures, but if I could just make the blog scratch-n-sniff, then you could truly appreciate the experience.

The smell of rotten fish permeated into the very depths of our nasal passages.  I wish we would have had a video camera with us to capture a fish so teeming with maggots that you could HEAR the maggots jostling around for the best flesh.  NAS-TEE.  We quickly moved on to another area nearby that wasn’t a fish graveyard.

This is Resurrection Creek in Chugach National Forest.  No dead fish = good in my opinion.

Everyone tried their hand at fishing and everyone was unsuccessful.  No injuries by errant hooks reported.

Three generations of Alaskans fishing the same creek.  Happy Birthday Maverick!

And this is why I love my eagle scout husband.  I expressed a desire to have a grilled turkey & cheese sandwich for lunch and Tom fashioned a home made panini maker out of willow branches for me.  You know you’re jealous of his mad skills.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to announce the grand opening of ZINK’s Panini Makers.  On sale now for only $20.  Act now and we’ll include a hand made marshmallow roaster AND hot dog cooker absolutely free!  Money back guarantee!  Shipping and handling is $29.95.

Jessie

South Central Alaska

We are now happy hanging out in south central Alaska. The truck has seen around 600 miles of highway travel and its been running well.  We drove down to Anchorage where our friends Terry and Holly have graciously opened their home to us. They have two boys (3 and 7) and its a blast hanging out with them. Not to mention I am learning more about airplanes and transformers than I ever thought you could.

A classic game of bone crusher

We went down to the inlet and did some hiking with the kids. As part of some strange Zen ritual Holly made me carry rocks back to the car… not sure why everyone else didn’t have to but I just hummed “Ohhhmmmm” and moved out.

Have rocks, will travel

There were some really cool clay deposits on the beach. Maisy (the pooch) spent hours chasing a tennis ball into the water and back, she could not have been happier.

We are heading out to Palmer today which is a bit north of Anchorage. Its supposed to be a cool community that has a fair number of those sustainable and green nut jobs hanging around, so we are going to look for them. The other plus side is that the Alaska State Fair is there so we expect to have some good people watching at least part of the time.

For all you knitters out there Holly has an awesome knitting blog here and chronicles the going on of Bubba and Muskrat also.

Its nice to have our own wheels again and we’ll probably be posting more frequently now since we are back out doing stuff again.

--Tom