Vince Goes Feral

Here in LA basically everyone has coronavirus, so we’re hunkering down, staying indoors, and taking long trips up to our 10-acre property.

In our previous episode, we talked about the in-floor heating system we built in our greenhouse. But we accomplished a lot more than just in-floor heating while we were up there over New Year’s. I only went up for 4 days, but Vince stayed up there for 10 full days. He went feral!

We talk about digging (always more digging) and finishing the post holes for our future yurt, how Vince changed up our humanure system, and more.

Hey out there. It’s been another weird and dark week, but at least nothing too catastrophic has happened since we recorded this episode a week ago. Although here in LA basically everyone has coronavirus, and there have been threats of armed insurrections in all 50 states, so we’re hunkering down, staying indoors, and taking long trips up to our 10-acre property.

In our previous episode, we talked about the in-floor heating system we built in our greenhouse. (Vince also wishes to issue a correction: he stated we were using 1/2-inch vinyl tubing, but it’s actually 1/4-inch. He would recommend 3/8 or 1/2-inch though, if you want to try building an in-floor heating system yourself.) But we accomplished a lot more than just in-floor heating while we were up there over New Year’s. I only went up for 4 days, but Vince stayed up there for 10 days. He says that by the end of the trip, he stopped feeling the grease in his hair and even stopped minding the cold mornings. He went feral!

So what all did Vince and his mom get up to while they were on the property for 10 full days? Well for one thing, they finished digging the post holes and setting the pier blocks for our future yurt. I started the holes when I was up there (and I know I’ve said it before, but holy crap digging is hard work!) and then Vince finished the holes after I left. A yurt requires a round platform, but lumber doesn’t naturally want to be round, so we’re going with a hexagonal structure: 1 support post in the center and 6 support posts around the outside. So now we’ve got our 7 post holes with gravel and concrete pier blocks (meticulously leveled, of course) in place. There’s also an extra-deep section dug out at the front for an under-yurt pantry. Next step is building the platform!

I emailed the yurt company we’re going with, Living Intent, to get a proper quote for the yurt we want. Their base price for a 16-foot yurt is $6000 but we want to add French doors and full insulation, which brings the price to about $9000. We technically have that much saved, but it won’t leave us a cushion for emergencies (like if anything goes wrong with our cars) or to buy the platform lumber... it feels like we’re so close yet still so far. But all we can do is keep moving forward.

Vince also took a new approach to humanure during this trip! Our compost toilet was one of the first things we built on the property, but you gotta do something with the waste each time the 5-gallon bucket fills up. We’ve been digging holes and burying it in corners of the property where we know we’ll never plant food crops, but we’ve only had the property for one year and those zones are already starting to fill up with shit-holes. So Vince did a bunch of reading on the subject (largely going off the peer-reviewed Humanure Handbook) and this month he implemented our new humanure solution. He built a 5’x3’x3’ Composting Station with several compartments layered with grass/hay; the material is a permeable plastic (leftovers that Vince snagged from work), but the hay keeps any sewage from seeping out the sides.

If you let the humanure compost for 1-2 years, you can supposedly use it on your garden… even on food crops! We don’t plan to do that—there are so many native plants and trees that we want, we’ll have plenty of non-food uses for it—but this guy who Wrote The Book apparently feeds his family with crops he’s grown in (properly composted) humanure. Crazy. In any case, I really appreciate Vince doing all this work and research on humanure so I don’t have to think about it or touch it myself.

On a related note, we officially have food planted on the property now! There are some brussels sprouts and beets coming up, and Vince plans to plant even more the next time he’s up north. It’s comforting to know that we finally have some edible plants growing on our property. We can’t survive there yet off the grid, but we’re on our way.

Vince is actually up on the property right now, so I’m looking forward to hearing all about what he and his mom accomplished this time around. We’ll record another episode when he gets home and let you know!