Villa Sobrante

A photographic update

2011-07-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Here's some of the latest around here...

Marbled purple stripe garlic

Sanding the floor in the granny unit

Quinoa in bloom

Working on Massey's bamboo and lime roof

A local grain infrastructure?

2011-06-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

The flour in these bags comes from wheat that was grown 65 miles from the Bay Area in the Capay Valley. It was milled and packaged in San Francisco by Giustos, a family run milling company that is amenable to processing and storing the currently rather small amounts of this local wheat, and came to our house by way of a woman named Monica Spiller who has been working to connect local farmers with appropriate grain seed for our area, and the wheat itself to bakers and eaters.

We are so accustomed in the Bay to hearing about local food and growing our own greens and tomatoes and knowing where our eggs and cheese comes from. However grains, a large proportion of our diet, are mostly still part of a large system these days, and even in this mecca of local foodism one can't necessarily find local grains without a bit of a search.

Our current grain system, from the growing of wheat, to the processing, shipping and eating of it, compromise and degrades soil health, uses many fossil fuels in growing and transportation, and lacks the nutritional benefits in the final product becoming a food that no longer is full of the health giving properties it once had, but now makes us sick.

I recently learned that the protein content of wheat is directly proportional to the health of the soil it was grown on, and thus the 12-13% protein of this Sonora wheat, compared to 7% of conventional white flour these days, is an interesting figure to consider.

It's quite exciting to have this pile of flour bags sitting in our living room, ready to be distributed to a number of friends, neighbors, and a restaurant, because it's the sign of an infrastructure of an appropriate size being rebuilt.

And of course, the thought of delicious bread to come...

If you are interested in becoming part of a regular buying club of local organic flour and pasta, or want to start your own, email me at trilibite (at) hotmail.com

The Whole Grain Connection is a wealth of information including recipes, history,

and lots of information about various wheat varieties: www.sustainablegrains.org

Permaculture Design in Lake County

2011-02-14T17:39:00.001-08:00

Villa Sobrante resident Massey Burke has been working in Lake County for the last several years, bringing natural building to the community through public projects.

This spring, Villa Sobrante resident Lindsay Dailey will be working in Lake County as well, teaching a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course. Permaculture offers the framework, tools and methodologies to work with and within natural systems to create beneficial change. Those who learn these skills have the potential to transform a garden, a farm or even a community. Many have found this course to be one of the most beneficial courses they have ever taken and the skills are invaluable.

Transition Lake County, Dancing TreePeople Farm, LakeFuture, and Edge Ecology will host the PDC in Upper Lake this spring over 5 weekends:

April 16 &17
April 30 & May 1
May 14 & 15
May 21 & 22
June 4 & 5

For more information, email Lindsay@EdgeEcology.com or visit http://www.lakefuture.blogspot.com/.

The newest pod

2010-09-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

Somehow 2 months have gone by since I've written a thing. I'll start with the newest structure that has popped up in the backyard village. It all started with a lot of these:

I believe around 700 to be exact.

These adobes- just soil, sand, straw and cow manure- were made to go into a structure called a Nubian Vault, which is a style of earthen vault building revived by the Eygptian architect Hassan Fathy that does not use any formwork, and therefore can be done without any wood. Our friend Stevan who studied the technique with masons in Burkino Faso was looking for places to build some of these vaults where they could be observed over time, and we gladly gave a portion of our yard for the purpose of vault research, and to make a stylish new home for our expanding flock of poultry.

Here we are looking through the front door to the back kick wall. These two kick walls were built prior to the workshop and are the walls that the adobes will lean against to make up the vault. The little box is the future chicken door.

Here the plumb bob is being used to transfer the dimensions of a catenary arch onto the kick walls. It is the shape the vault will follow, and is the inverted shape of a chain hanging between two points. Guide strings will be strung along the length of the building between the traced out form on both kick walls.

Stevan demonstrates the angle at which to lay the first adobes that will make up the vault during the workshop.

You can see the walls growing as the process gets further along. It was an extremely graceful structure to watch emerge.

And more still... you can see the angle of the rows of adobes clearly here.

Here you can start to see what happens in the middle when the different angles from the two ends come together in the middle.

Meanwhile the girls are checking it out from their old coop next door. They've started laying eggs, we're getting 6-7 a day from 10 chickens, ranging from tiny "practice eggs" to larger double yolkers. Unfortunately they've also started eating the duck eggs...

More pictures and updates coming soon!

Visitors from India

2010-07-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

Last week we had the opportunity to host two men from the western state of Gujarat, in India, at our house. It was their first time to the states, and we were honored that they chose to spend time at our house in El Sobrante of all places. It is a long story how they ended up here, but the short of it is that Massey and I met Himansu briefly in India this winter, and told him to stop by when he came to the states. Himansu was traveling with Ramu, an artisan from a tiny rural village who makes quilts, to an international craft fair in Santa Fe.

Himansu runs a textile business that employs Ramu and other quilters and embroiders from Gujarat, but does lots of other things too, like record tribal folk music in earthen buildings in Gujarat and Rajastan. Ramu is also skilled at many things. He declared our site soil to be a wonderful clay and proceded to show us how to do Lipon- the traditional Gujarati way of doing decorative earthen work on walls. He dosnt' speak English (save for a few words) and we learned limited Gujarati in the past week so communicating was a delightful challenge, and mostly done through Himansu, who translated.

Below is Ramu, in our clay soaking pit, processing our site soil, and horse manure, to make Lipon with.

This became a great opportunity to work on the wall-- that has been sitting rather unfinished out front for a very long time-- so an early morning plastering session turned it red, from some clay soil somebody brought back from up north.

Next, Ramu showed us how to do Lipon, by rolling snakes out of a careful mixture of clay soil, screened dried horse manure, wood glue and water, and pinching them tightly to the wall.

Over the course of about 3 or 4 days, we had lots of helpers, and lots of gawkers, and met more of the neighborhood than we'd previously met, because pretty much every body who passed by was compelled to stop and comment or ask questions.

The pattern was drawn by Massey and inspired from a bed sheet with an old Mogul pattern she'd originally picked up from Himansu in Gujarat. Himansu calls it "nervous elegance" referring to the drooping flowers that are scattered throughout Mogul designs. I liked his description.

We removed some of the bamboo and used base plaster to sculpt designs in the openings, a method also inspired by Gujarat. Mirrors are often embedded in the design, though for our wall we decided against mirrors and instead used mica, which was traditionally used before mirrors. It looks beautiful.

More pictures to come. The roadside is now complete as well, and the roof is next to protect all this fine work...

Thanks to everybody who helped with this intricate work and a big thank you to Ramu and Himansu as well.

Oh and one last picture for your amusement... the bamboo trailer wasn't quite up to the bicycle rickshaw standards of India, but we thought we'd give it a go for airport transportation :)

Exciting Harvests

2010-06-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

Summer... The days have been chilly and windswept as the fog rolls in and out. Ah the Bay Area. Today was hot and sunnny, and it was a lovely reminder of what summer means some places. Here are some pictures of exciting harvests we've had lately that I just have to share:

There are so many dried favas. Plenty to have for planting this winter, and some to eat too. I've never cooked dried favas before.

Potatoes are sooo much fun to harvest. These were pink inside too, large and delicious and there are more out there.

Also, three kinds of citrus. Only a few fruit per tree at the moment, but they are young trees, and guess what? They are delicious! We sampled this navel orange, and a mandarin that were sweet and juicy and sun-warmed scrumptiousness.

The bittersweet harvest was the beehive. After all that crazy swarming this spring, looks like our hive didn't make it. So lots of beeswax to clean, honey to drain, mead to ferment, pollen to pick out of the comb. Glad we caught one of the swarms. Now to figure out what happened.

And there is loads of garlic. About 5 different kinds, currently, hanging in the unfinished closet in my house in the back yard drying as it's a relatively shady/cool/out of the way spot.

Interns at the Villa

2010-06-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

Back in May we were lucky to have 2 amazing highschoolers working with us. They'd come initially on a field trip and decided they wanted to do their senior project here, so they came back for the month of May and contributed loads of hard work and enthusiasm doing everything from processing tons of material for plasters and earthen mixes, building compost, putting irrigation in the garden, pouring a floor (along with their moms who came for a day too!), shelling fava beans... a lot was done for sure. Thanks Cora and Hailey! Here is a sampling of pages out of the book they put together for their presentation at school:

And the really awesome thing is they liked us enough to come back! So we get to have them around helping out some this summer too.

Why I Garden

2010-06-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a seed saving talk with Bill McDorman, the man most famous for traveling to Siberia in 1989 in search of plant diversity. Behind the Iron Curtain he found a world cut off from the influences of industrial agriculture, growing more varieties of tomatoes than anywhere else in the world out of true necessity to feed themselves.

It was a passionate and facinating talk and a good reminder of why I garden. Sure, there are many reasons. I like planting seeds, watering them, watching them grow and then getting to eat fresh food out of my own garden. It's fun. I like being outside. But Bill reminded me of the importance the work of a gardener holds for the future, and the startling numbers which I've heard before, and often forget because my mind dosn't seem to hold onto numbers like that. That we relied on 1500 plants for food in the 1900s. That in the 80s, 30 plants contributed to 90% of our food, and just 4 of those plants, to 75 % of our diet. And now? Half of our calories in all of America come from soda. Yep, soda. And what's in that? Corn syrup. Corn. Where are we going from here? Where can we go from here?

Though the facts are depressing-- that we are making a rapid transition from a history of 10,000 years of genetically diverse agriculture to a agricultural system that relies on only a few species grown with chemicals and genetic modification and things such as terminator genes which mean the farmer can't possibly save seed but has to buy them again from the seed company-- the reminder was important. As a gardener, the way to protect our food source and survival for the future is to continue to grow as many varieties as possible, and to save that seed. I don't want to just eat corn. And besides the fact I don't want to, what's going to happen when diseases wipe out this one major crop- more susceptible as a single species than diversity.

Today, newly inspired and still in the spring rush to plant plant plant, I dug through our seed box and came up with a little jar of about a dozen varieties of dried beans that my aunt had given me for Christmas years ago (thanks Irene!), and I hadn't really gotten around to planting huge numbers of yet for various reasons even though I thought it was the coolest gift ever. They are absolutely beautiful and have names like Yin and Yang and Vermont Appalousa and are all different colors and sizes. I planted up half or more of each type. Yeah our garden is filling up, but there is always more space. An overwhelming amount of space at times to take care of, plant, water, harvest from... but I can't think of many more important things to do with this little piece of land than build topsoil and plant and save seeds.

We are lucky to have BASIL, a seed saving library based out of the Ecology Center down in Berkeley, that I haven't made full use of but am glad to know exists, and last night I was just alerted to maybe the first ever seed library that is in an actual library, out this way in Richmond- the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library. Check it out! Or if you don't live here... save some seeds, plant them again, give some to your neighbor... start your own seed library?

Quick snapshot of the front-back yard...

2010-05-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

Oh its looking so good in the backyard... snapped some pictures on my way to get kale in the drizzly rain tonight. Over the tops of the kale and the lush bed of ripening strawberries is Sasha's cob house with its new plaster from the work party back in April(a belated thank you to everyone who helped!) My favorite is the little nicho in the buttress behind the door...

And here, inside, is the second layer of earthen floor that was done last week with the high school interns and their mothers, complete with tubes laid throughout it to carry solar heated (and maybe occasionally fire heated) water and make the floor cozy and warm.

Peeps!

2010-04-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

We have chicks! The little fluffballs you see here are a mixture of Rhode Island Reds, Araucanas and Barred Rocks. They'll stay under the heat lamp (in the living room...) for a month then they get moved to somewhere more spatious and probably out of the house.

More of the Bee Saga

2010-04-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

To wrap up the bee saga (and then I promise I'll write about other things) we had another swarm the day after the last time I wrote, but this one actually took off and disappeared after landing high up in the same oak tree again. (They tend to go back to the same spots because the bees are attracted to the swarming chemical called Nasnoff they let off). I've since learned that 70% of swarms die.

I went in the hive that night to find out what on earth was going on in there, and to gather questions for a class I had just signed up for (quite timely) the day all this swarming business started. I made about a million embarassing mistakes, one being that the pit zips of the rain jacket I use as part of my bee suit were wide open. I had just started opening up the hive, and it sounded riled up and angry (I should have taken this sign to back away and not attempt an inspection right then, but no, with another another beginner's mistake, I blundered on). Sure enough, right after I realized there were gaping, unzipped holes underneath my arms, I felt the familiar vibration of bee stuck in fabric. I managed, after walking away, to get everything off without squashing any bees or getting stung.

There didn't appear to be a queen present because of a lack of eggs, but there were tons of queen cells (larger peanut looking things hanging onto the side and edges of the comb) which means the hive was raising a new queen and the old one probably took off in the first swarm. Ironically the night ended with a sting in the armpit after running around the courtyard in the dark shedding jacket, veil and finally my shirt too.

The hive was very full of comb and surplus honey so I ended up harvesting 2 bars of capped honey comb, which after being pressed and drained through a sieve, was about 2 quarts of honey. I was ready after this rather difficult hive visit to spend some time learning from an experienced beekeeper, and I greatly enjoyed the class this weekend with Alan Hawkins, where I did indeed learn tons.

Spring Swarming...

2010-04-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while I was contemplating chicken coop designs in the backyard, the air was suddenly filled with bees, everywhere, making A LOT of noise. The had been acting somewhat suspicious (some clumped outside the hive, and just lots more than usual of them around) and apparently they had decided it was time to swarm.

Luckily, they chose a fairly accessible site at the top of our plum tree. Well, accessible with our ten foot ladder.

So... Sasha and I climbed ladders, held a wooden wine box under the clump, shook the branch, and fairly gracefully managed to get most of the bees in the box, which we then left atop the ladder, so the few bees not in the box would find their way back in.

Not the best of ideas, one might guess. Luckily, when it fell, which it did, it landed intact, in a chair below the ladder, and the inhabitants inside seemed fairly unfazed, at least, they were still there.

We left them overnight, and in the morning transported the box of bees a few miles to our friend's orchard, where we emptied the box that was starting to split at the seams, into a Langstroth bee hive.

Today, from the front yard, we heard a sound that was very much like the sound I heard yesterday in the backyard, and rushed back to find that our hive had decided to swarm again. After some time, they settled at the very top (way higher than that 10 foot ladder) of the oak tree in our yard, and we called around to various bee keepers to find someone who wanted this swarm. Just about when one of them showed up (without a ladder) the entire mass took off again, straight back to the original starting place, our hive.

It is the time of the year when swarming is common. The hive has raised a new queen, and either the old or new queen(I'm not sure which) and some proportion of the other bees take off in a very organized fashion to find a new home, with scouts going off searching in all directions, and the workers gathered around the queen in a tight ball to protect her. There is some management of hives to minimize this happening (which we haven't been on top off lately) but it dosn't seem to me like an inherently bad thing, after all, it creates another colony of bees, and increases their population? More thoughts on this later, along with a hive visit to see what's actually going on in there...

Plants, ducks, and bees gone wild

2010-04-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Home. There's nothing quite like it. The housemates have been split across several continents for about the amount of time you might have noticed a lapse in blog posting, while Sasha and adopted housemate Natalie held down the fort. Actually Lindsay is still gone, and can be found now and then here(if you havent checked it out already): www.healersbydesign.blogspot.com.

There is a brief window of priceless prospective upon returning home, that I have been enjoying the past few days, and could write plenty about.

But for now I'll just say that I've enjoyed seeing all the changes here on this little piece of land, and seeing which plants have quadrupled in size while I've been away.

The favas are especially thriving...

Sasha has been experimenting with letting the ducks loose on our sow bug infestation, and now they are happily enjoying free range of the entire backyard, which is fairly duck safe at the moment since we are focusing on getting

perennials in and there aren't tasty new annual starts for them to nab. Apparently ducks are able to forage a much greater percentage of their diet than chickens, and while we haven't quite put that theory to the test because we do buy them food, they do seem to be enjoying the free rein, and we are getting eggs again (though that is probably due more to light).

And then there are our bees, who apparently have decided their old home was too small. I think I'll save the story for the next post, but the short of it is that our bees swarmed yesterday, and then they swarmed again today...

High School Students Plaster the Oven

2010-02-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

We had a great group of high school student from Marin Academy spend a day at Villa Sobrante last Sunday. After showing them around, we made pizza in the wood fired cob oven, then plastered the oven with an earthen plaster. I have never had a such an enthusiastic group of teenagers. It was fantastic. It was day one for them of five days of hands on permaculture, after here they headed out to RDI. How wonderful it would be if every teenager had the opportunity to do that, and if even a small percentage wanted to.

Introduction to Natural Plasters and Paints Workshop

2009-12-19T09:26:00.001-08:00

Where: Here at the Villa, El Sobrante, CA (10 minutes north of Berkeley)

When: Feb. 6^th & 7^th

Cost: $150 per person

$250 for two people signing up together

Includes all materials and lunch both days

Instructors: Massey Burke and Sasha Rabin

For more information contact Sasha at sasha@sgnb.com, or www.sgnb.com

This two day workshop offers a hands-on introduction to working with clay, sand, and fibers to make beautiful, non-toxic plasters and finishes. These methods and materials can be used over conventional sheetrock as well as earthen and straw bale walls. We will process both unrefined and store-bought materials into plaster and paint, and we will apply these finishes over both earthen walls and sheetrock.

Participants will leave the workshop with enough understanding of the materials and process to mix and apply their own paints and plasters on a variety of substrates.

Pods at night... and pictures!

2009-11-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

Shortening fall days aren't stopping us yet... Took my camera around as I was picking up tools. Here is Lindsay mixing up one of the final batches of light straw clay in the granny unit (no, she's not performing a ritual to raise the dead here)

Sasha's rafters. This is actually pre-roof, so now it looks a little diffferent.... And Massey's woven creation... before it all gets covered up with mud.

It was dark by the time I got all the way to the backyard to my pod, but here are more pictures from the fall, mostly of the buildings.

Slideshow

Acorn gathering and trailer testing

2009-11-08T21:43:00.000-08:00

Midday today, I hauled out the bamboo bike trailer from where it had been sitting under the redwood tree, molding and forgotten. This post is both a review of its official maiden voyage (finally!), and a rambling account of foraging for and preparing acorns: the amazing nut which was once a food staple for native americans that that falls on the ground this time of year to sprout and create new oak trees, or to be carried off by hyperactive squirrels.

I built the trailer months ago using this online pattern as a guide- which I highly recommend for its straightforward and clear directions and illustrations. I bungied a few wooden wine boxes onto it to hold the bounty, and headed off. Well actually, first my bike chain broke, and then the front derailer snapped off in my hand, but the chain was easily fixable and who needs those extra gears anyhow? Oh bike neglect. So with a few less gears I pedaled down the road, the empty trailer loosely bouncing along behind me. I mostly got used to the extra space I took up on the road with it, but I did accidently run over an abandoned rubber rain boot on the shoulder, which flipped the trailer (and luckily caused no harm and spilled no acorns).

Because of the nature of foraging, the trailer filled up gradually, which was an excellent way to test the effect of weight on it. Bicycle speed suits acorn gathering- fast enough to get from tree to tree, slow enough to see nuts on the ground and pull over for them. It didn't take long until going up hills was noticably harder and there was quite a bit of pull from behind. I think all in all I gathered 30-40 lbs (?) from here to Moraga and back which necessitated walking up the steepest hills closest to home, but posed no problem on smallish hills.

So far from my limited experience- Massey and I gathered acorns last year as well, and were given some year-old acorns from friends- it sure seems as if letting them age for a year concentrates flavor and sweetness, though they also do get much harder, so it sounds like you are grinding up rocks when you throw them in the food processor to turn them into meal.

The jars below contain acorns that have been ground into meal in the vitamix (amazing blender) and covered with cold water to start the leaching process. In the past I have only done the leaching part with boiling water, which can be done in 30 minutes or so, but this time I am trying it with cold water (which apparently preserves more taste and nutrition, though takes days), draining off the liquid and refilling with fresh water twice a day. the difference of the two jars here, is that the one on the left is this year's valley oak acorns, and the one on the right is valley oak acorns from last year.

The new acorns (on the left) have a very faint fresh smell, and the year old (on the right) smell like a cross between a good stout and molasses. I don't know for sure, but I also suspect fermentation with the older acorns, because there is a consistent skim of bubbles on the top. Anybody know more about this? When the meal no longer tastes bitter it can either be used immediately or dried in the oven and stored in the fridge or freezer.

Time is running out to gather acorns for the year in the bay area- if anyone is interested in a foraging trip in the next week or two, let me know, I'll be going out again.

2009-10-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

The tree collards are expansionist! They already got Trilby and Sasha....

Rain!

2009-10-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

I woke up in the early morning hours last night to the sound of rain and lay in bed for a moment before I realized I was also hearing the gurgling of the first flush diverter filling (part of the rainwater catchment system). It just so happens that it is right on the other side of the thin, stick frame/stucco wall, from my bed, and I had spent the earlier part of the day frantically doing finishing touches that would allow the water to actually flow from the gutters into the first flush, so once I realized that I was hearing the sounds of the system filling, I was wide awake. I even jumped out of bed and ran outside into the dark and rain to see what I could see. With my hand on the large vertical pipe, I could feel the vibrations of water inside.

The first flush, for those of you who don't know, is a larger diameter pipe that is attached to the side of the house vertically, is closed at the bottom, with a valve that can be opened, and has a holding capacity of about 5 gallons. There is also a small ball in there which floats on top of the water, and plugs access once its completely full, diverting water to the diagonal pipe which flows to the tanks, for the rest of the storm. The purpose of this is to allow the roof rinse water- that first 5 gallons that flows over roof that's long been dry and has potentially collected dead animals and poop on it- to be diverted, and not stored in the tanks along with all the "cleaner" water.

Thanks so much to everybody who was here helping install the tanks earlier this year. Last I checked, this morning, it appears that the first flush is full and the water is going to the tanks now. Bring on the rain!

October Work Parties

2009-10-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Pod Plaster Party
October 11th

Earthen plastering is just about one of the most satisfying pieces of natural building. There's nothing like the feel of smooth clay sliding onto a wall! We'll be plastering Trilby's earthbag spiral creation and Massey's woven bamboo building.

Permitted Natural Building - Light Straw Clay!

Saturday Oct. 24th, 1pm-5pm
Sunday October 25th, 10am - 5pm

Join us as we fill the walls of the back house with light straw clay, a traditional natural building technique and wall system that provides insulation as well as a plaster substrate. The mighty local materials of clay and straw, tamped into the wall cavity, replace industrially manufactured insulation, drywall, plywood, and siding, and hugely reduce a building's ecological footprint.

We'll prep most of the mix Saturday afternoon, and build the walls on Sunday. All are welcome to build, but there is plenty of celebrating to be done for those who just want to come hang out and be part of it (rumor has it there will be lots of food and music perhaps).

City Homestead Tour- Saturday!

2009-10-05T21:21:00.002-07:00

Go to http://cityhomesteads.eventbrite.com/ if you are interested in going on a tour this coming Saturday to various homesteads in western Contra Costa County. You have to sign up ahead of time and to see the map and descriptions of the 18 different places, but its absolutely free and there looks to be an assortment of interesting gardens on the tour, many with small livestock and various composting and water systems as well. Yes we are on the tour, and if you don't make it out Saturday, you can always come Sunday for the workparty!

Progress in the Building Department

2009-09-29T21:23:00.001-07:00

The pace has been quick around here, and the end of summer busy, both on the home front and in all our various travels away from here. So I suppose it's not surprising that a common comment from neighbors is that we look like ants- or bees- always moving about outside, busy and doing something, what, I don't think they are always entirely sure.

Some very exciting information came in today. Massey and Lindsay have been working hard to put together an extensive proposal on the natural building system of light straw clay, in the hopes of being able to get it permitted for use as an insulation system in the granny unit, the building out back we are currently retrofitting. Today, the news came in from our new friend at the building department. They are going to give us the permit, and they are interested in watching the building's performance over the next few years, with the idea of creating an ordinance if all goes well. YEAH!

Otherwise new here? We finished the earth bag portion of the walls of my pod today, Sasha has rafters on her pod, and a ceiling on part of it, we have a new earthen oven that is about to be fired up for some pizza, and the sound of the dehydrator lulls us all to sleep as we try our best to can, dry and preserve the mountains of food that piling up on the kitchen counters and floor from our garden(tomatoes and more tomatoes) and other places (big apple and pear harvest recently).

Honey Harvest and Bearding Bees

2009-09-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

This week we harvested our first honey from the bees. They have nearly filled the hive completely with comb, and we wanted to go in and check on their progress, and see if anymore queen cells had been built. These are larger cells that hang down from the side of the comb where they raise new queens, and it means they are thinking about swarming. Generally we want to reduce the amount they swarm. We also wanted to make sure all the comb was growing straight down. A few queen cells were found and removed, and some comb near the end of the hive was curving into a neighboring comb, making the frames difficult to remove.

We ended up removing an entire frame that was full of capped honey at the top, and nectar on the bottom (not completely dried by the bees yet, or capped) to create some more room, and we cut out the sections that were growing crookedly. This provided us with about a pint and a half of honey and it is delicious! Someone had the excellent idea of saving a small amount of it to compare to future harvests and see what different seasons taste like around here.

Later in the day we were startled to see the bees congregating on their "front porch" (picture above) and were concerned that they might be swarming. We have since found out that perhaps they were "bearding" which means basically going outside to hang out when the weather is hot and they want more space and ventillation.

Summertime bounty

2009-08-07T13:20:00.001-07:00

How's this for a garden update?

(challenge... count how many duck eggs are hiding among the lemon cucumbers)

Pictures of Pod Progress

2009-08-01T15:07:00.001-07:00

Some more long-awaited pictures- the backyard is transforming rapidly this summer.

Click here for a slideshow on the 4 (!) buildings we have been working on. And check back soon for updates and pictures on the garden and the bees.

Natural Building Workshop at the Villa

2009-07-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Another successful workshop here at the Villa has just come to a close. We had twelve amazingly wonderful people here for the last week taking part in a hands on natural building workshop, taught by Massey and myself (Sasha). We made great progress on three different small mostly earthen structures in our back yard. This workshop group was very dedicated and got the award for the the most on-time group ever. The group was diverse in origin with people originally from Venezuela, Greece, Czech Republic, Canada, and all throughout the US. Other than occasional smiling and nodding, we all (mostly) managed to communicate.
The workshop focused on earthen building, and we managed to cover an amazingly large array of techniques. In Sasha's pod we came close to finishing the cob, did the first layer of earthen plaster on the walls, and poured the first layer of earthen floor. In Massey's pod we started with some heavy straw clay, some simple bamboo, clay wattle, and a small strawbale wall topped with light straw clay. An earth bag foundation was done on Trilbys pod.

NATURAL BUILDING WORKSHOP AT VILLA SOBRANTE

2009-07-04T10:40:00.001-07:00

July 20-25: Natural Building Intensive. Massey and Sasha are teaming up to teach a week long workshop that will be full of hands-on experience and information on different natural wall systems such as cob, strawbale, slip straw and wattle and daub, and will cover the process of building starting from design and site analysis, to alternative foundations and finishing touches. Great for folks in building trades and those simply interested who want to gain more experience and knowledge. This course is being offered through the Solar Living Institute. Contact Sasha (at) sgnb.com with questions and to sign up, or visit the SLI website: www.solarliving.org/workshops. Tuition: $350. Spread the word if you know of folks who might be interested!

Rain Water Catchment System

2009-06-28T18:46:00.001-07:00

Our rain water catchment tanks are now officially plumbed and ready for the rains (at least there is one thing that we are early with). Thanks to Ingrid, Nik Bertulis, and the wonderful workshop participants that attended yesterday's workshop, as well as Christina Bertea for her wonderful advice, the system is just about finished.

The five, five hundred and fifty gallon tanks are daisy chained together, the first flush diverter is in, the secondary filtration system is installed, and it looks beautiful! All together the storage capacity is 2750 gallons. We still have to figure out details on the overflow, and readjust the gutters so water flows in the right directions. The system is designed to collect water from the north side of our house, which on a very low rain year should fill the tanks with a small amount left over. The tanks are mainly designed for landscaping and irrigation use, so they will fill during the winter, and be used during the summer. The overflow water will be incorporated in to the courtyard design, and more rain water catchment tanks will be built to catch the rain from the south side of the house. Stay tuned for updates on the ferocement water tank that will double as retaining wall. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this happen.

Spring rains and micro-livestock

2009-05-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since anyone has written, and since I've been holding down the home front recently, I guess its my turn to catch up a bit. I'm still getting used to this blogging stuff. Out the window, it looks like our garden is enjoying this late spring rain as much as I am. Continuing to prep garden beds and trying to make/find places for all the seeds we want to plant and all the seedlings Lindsay brings from the nursery is a big job these days. I’ve also been trying to get soil building systems in place to help transform our heavy compacted clay soil into rich loamy garden beds. The good news is the army of gigantic earthworms that seem to reside just below the crust (the soil can't be that bad) the bad news is the layers of gravel, black plastic, broken glass and trash one has to dig through in our yard to find these guys. Our red wiggler compost worms have moved up in the world, out of their too-small wooden box into a bathtub, where we can collect the casting tea from the drain(pure gold to the plants) and we've been building and turning compost piles in the back, honing methods and observing transformations from duck poop, straw and kitchen scraps into steamy black compost.

No one has fully mentioned the honeybees yet, so maybe this is a good time to do that, especially since they are part of what I affectionately refer to as our micro-livestock collection. The earlier pictures I posted show the top bar hive that Sasha built. Spring is when bees swarm, which, for those of you who aren’t familiar with bees, is when part of the hive leaves with the queen bee in search of a new home. This is the natural ways for bee colonies to grow and create new bee colonies, and it also happens if they outgrow their current space. The bees are vulnerable because they have no home, and only have as much food as they’ve eaten before swarming. As a result they are fairly docile in this state as they conserve their energy.

I had a near miss catching a hive, which is a story in itself, but luckily Sasha had success, and helped a friend prune a rosebush to access the hive swarming inside of it. The short story is that the bees all ended up in a wooden box with holes punched in it, and early in the morning, still half in our pajamas, we emptied the box into the hive. It was amazing to watch the bees literally pour into their new home, and to see that they had already started building new comb overnight in their temporary abode.

We’ve opened up the hive once since then to see how they are doing. Apparently all is well, as far as I know, which isn’t all that much, because they are still there and are building arch shaped combs that hang down from the bars of wood that sit across the top. We were able to distinguish between workers and drones (workers are all females that can’t produce eggs but do practically everything else, and drones are males that mate with the queen and then die). The drones have big eyes (for spotting the queen when she flies high up in the sky to mate). Its been great fun to go sit by the hive every now and then and watch the buzz of activity. It seems like about 20 % of the bees flying in have gigantic yellow blobs of pollen on their back legs (which is where the saying “the bees knees” comes from because they have an interesting pollen storage system around their knees).

Ok, that’s it for now- time to go see if the ducks are behaving themselves- they are out free-ranging in the yard this morning!

Pictures

2009-04-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

Click here for the newest slideshow

Work parties and Visits with Inspectors

2009-04-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

Life here at the Villa has been busy, apparently too busy for us to make time to post to our blog. Last weekend we had out first official work party, and it was a huge success. It deserves its own story, but the short update is that we have amazing friends who came and worked hard, and (I think) had a lot of fun. We got several garden beds dug, countless loads of manure brought in, and our first earthen wall built. The hybrid cob/adobe wall is on the street, delineating our parking from our garden. The reactions from the neighbors have been great, including people driving by, slamming on their breaks, and backing up to stare and look closer.

The wall was built on Sunday, and on Tuesday we had our first building inspection for the foundation of the back unit. Our inspector turned out to be the supervisor named Tom. The first thing he said to us as he approached was "nice adobe wall". A good start. The foundation did not pass the inspection, and we were left with a list of things to do to fix it. The next day we got two inspectors, our regular guy named Joe, and another man. They were a bit more scrutinizing of the foundation and gave us yet another list of things to change.

A while after they walked away we realized that they were standing on out driveway staring at the wall. Still without an inspectors stamp on our plans, and with two building inspectors staring at our cob wall, our spirits were very low. Massey and I began the conversation of how easy it would be to disassemble the wall. As we were trying to decide whether to go talk to them or not, they started down the driveway towards us. With a bit of excitement in his voice Joe said, "How in the world did you get the idea of doing an Adobe wall?" Quickly realizing that they were not about to tell us it had to be removed, we talked for a bit about cob, adobe and earth bag building.

The next part of the story is titled "how to get Massey and Sasha out of their really bad moods." The next day Joe returned with yet another inspector. We thought perhaps we were so high maintenance with our never ending questions they needed two inspectors, but as it turns out they are just low on work they are taking the time to cross-train people from different departments. After retying and moving seemingly endless wire and re bar (mostly Massey

but with the help of all of us) in the most awkward positions under a house that you don't fit under in all places, we got the inspectors stamp of approval. As soon as the paper was signed, we started our bombardment of questions about out buildings, how to go about permitting experimental plaster, and wall height restrictions. Apparently the word had made it out about our wall, and despite the fact that it might not be totally legal, the supervisor from the first day had told them not to worry about it. So as Massey and I are talking about alternative methods with the building inspectors, one of them said to us, "this is very exciting, you guys are on the forefront of where everything is headed". We had to agree with that. We make our way to the front yard to again take a closer look at the wall, we show them a few books, and talk for about another half hour.

The conversation ended with Joe saying he is going to see if he can arrange for us to give one of their weekly 1 1/2 hour seminars that all the inspectors have to sit through every Wednesday morning. Apparently usually its someone from the industry, and fairly boring. We had to agree that our talk would be far more fun then listening to someone from Simpson talk about brackets. Joe proceeded to tell us how excited he is to watch the progression of the sheds in the back, and started his photo documentation by talking photos of the front wall and of the adobes drying in the back.

We didn't realize it at the time, but doing our first earthen project in the most prominent place was a really good idea. There is no possibility that we are trying to sneak something by anyone, and the conversations that have arisen from it have been fantastic.

Favorite quote of the day

2009-03-31T18:20:00.000-07:00

"Stephanie₁ has a duck egg, and I have a pod₂ design " --Trilby, about 6pm

1. Stephanie. nine-year-old soccer superstar next door

2. pod. adult version of a fort

Our newest arrival

2009-03-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

We have a new addition... today 5 indian runner ducks arrived, and stepped out of a pet carrier into their new home in the southeast corner of the backyard. Besides being facinating and humorous, they are good layers (a greenish-colored egg a day/ per hen), and love to eat snails and slugs, which we have in abundance. They will certainly be an entertaining addition here. There is one drake, (male duck) who is distinguished by his voice, a curled up tail, and a green bill, and 4 hens. Let me know if you have good duck names to suggest!

The ducks came to us rather quickly because I happened to be biking by the eco house in Berkeley just a couple of weeks ago and the duck keeper was moving, and looking for a new home for his ducks. So, finding plenty of material to harvest from our very yard, I built a pen, which is hopefully critter-proof. It is built from old chain link fence that was unnecessary (double layers of fence along several walls), old chicken wire I happened to find just hanging on that back fence, and the door is built from a dead tree on the property, and scrap wood (again, from those boarded up windows... all that wood sure is coming in handy). It continues to amaze me just how much material we are able to put to use that was already here. The beautiful guadua bamboo you see is part of a recent find- someone's old burning man project in the bay area that needed to go immediately, and we were the lucky recipients.

Other exciting non-duck happenings include: a productive greywater planning session with a greywater guerilla, Sasha breaking ground on her pod and getting ready for starting the earth bag foundation this week, bamboo bike trailer building, prep for foundation work on the granny unit that should begin this week, and a great party, thanks to all you amazing people that were here!

Radishes: instant gratification!

2009-03-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

I've grown radishes so many times, all the way back to when I was just a kid squatting in my mom's garden and plunking seeds into holes, yet they will never cease to amaze me. I gathered my first handful of radishes from our garden here today, and was filled with the same sense of excitement and awe I felt the very first time I ever harvested something. I had to run around with the bouquet of brilliantly colored roots, a wild grin on my face, showing everyone the bounty. They really are a gardener's instant gratification, easy and quick to grow, beautiful to harvest, and deliciously crunchy and simple to eat right away sprinkled with salt.

The soil here is heavy clay, great for our building projects, not so great for gardens,

so there are various ways we have been experimenting with building our soil and creating garden beds. Today with the help of some volunteers, including our first traveling visitors(all the way from England and Ireland!), and our 9-year old neighbor (probably our biggest fan), we dug a couple of swales and built up two new garden beds in the back yard, using a method from Toby Hemenway's book Gaia's Garden. After using picks and shovels to break up the clay, we built up the following layers, wetting them thoroughly in the process:

1) nitrogen, in the form of grass clippings a volunteer kindly clipped from the most lush place in our yard where the grass grows tall; 2) a layer of cardboard to suppress any grass seeds/weeds from growing through; 3) another layer of nitrogen, this time in the form of local horse manure; 4) flakes of straw laid out to be about 3-4 inches thick though double that would have been great had we had more straw; and lastly 5) a few inches of finished compost, that if deep

enough, makes it possible to go

right ahead with planting while all the layers underneath decompose slowly overtime as roots and microorganisms make their way through. We are wondering how root crops like beets and

carrots will like this method.

Full Moon Over Wildcat

2009-03-10T21:24:00.001-07:00

A little before sunset tonight, the four of us set out for the hills. One of the highest peaks in Wildcat Canyon is just about an hour away from our front door if you are going at a pretty fast clip.

Within the park we walked up the slope, sidestepping grazing cows, and glancing over our shoulders at town below us as we walked higher. Cresting the ridge you can see San Francisco across the water, and the big landmarks; Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Angel Island, and on this side of the bay you see scattered bits of Richmond, El Cerrito, and even Berkeley (well the Berkeley Pier). To the left the ridge grows higher, and rising and falling like a roller coaster, the Bay Area Ridge Trail creeps along towards Berkeley in the form of a brown ribbon on the vivid green late winter hills.

We walked to a bump on the ridge with a 360 degree view, and settled in to watch the evening show. Spring peepers sang down below us in the marshy areas (although apparently Californians don't call them so) and we could hear the eerie cat like calls of a peacock far off, though no coyotes, which puzzles me. Has anyone actually heard coyotes in urban areas? The sun sank in striations of color behind Mt Tam, and behind us, the golden orb of full moon changed from a glimmer on the ridge, to a misshapen blob, to a glowing orb that sat for a moment balanced on the crest of the hill before launching into the darkening sky as if pushed by little people standing on the next ridge over.

Just another night in El Sobrante...

Gin and Rainwater

2009-03-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

On the north side of our parcel (see photo to the right) there is about a ten foot span between the property line and edge of the house, which is full of juniper bushes. (I should say was full of juniper, until Trilby courageously tore them out with a few cuts and scratches to show for it).

Next year we plan on wrapping the north side of the house in straw bales to insulate the house, but figured that we can also use the shaded and underutilized north side to store our rainwater catchment cisterns.

Next Tuesday four, 550 gallon cisterns will arrive at our doorstep, and we'll replace the juniper bushes with 2,200 gallons of roof-caught rainwater - enough to provide us with about a third of our food-growing water for the summer (assuming we get more rain...).

Check it out! Ain't she a beauty? The cisterns are only about 4 feet high so we’re going to build storage cabinets on top of them, interspersed with some work tables as well. Always looking for ways to stack functions and efficiently use the space for as many purposes as possible...cabinets, workbenches, a dancefloor perhaps...

P.S. Hope you’re coming to our equinox party; we’re making a batch of homemade gin with the juniper berries we pulled out.

Villa Sobrante: What's in a Name?

2009-03-02T15:04:00.000-08:00

We find ourselves making a home in El Sobrante, a fairly nondescript portion of unincorporated West Contra Costa County with a rich history - a mere 10 minutes from Berkeley (the big city!), a stone's throw from thousands of acres of open space in Wildcat Canyon, and just inches away from the wild turkeys and domesticated chickens that freely roam our street.

The name of the area, El Sobrante, comes from the Spanish verb sobrar. In common Spanish, sobrar translates as "to be left over." Local legend goes that El Sobrante was named “leftovers” because it’s the randomly outlined area nestled between Richmond, San Pablo and Pinole.

But the literal translation of sobrar means "to be more than enough." Thus, the literal translation of the noun el sobrante means “that which is more than enough” – or, simply said, abundance. Which is exactly what we intend to cultivate here. Quite fitting.

And our picturesque courtyard feels so very Mediterranean, protectively enclosing citrus trees and an endangered Guadalupe palm, that’s where the vision of the Mediterranean villa emerged. The word villa also connotes a retreat, or a family house surrounded by farmland. So that sort of works...

Hence, Villa Sobrante – the place of abundance!

pictures

2009-02-17T23:31:00.000-08:00

a short slideshow...

Welcome

2009-02-05T20:16:00.000-08:00

Welcome blog readers, friends, and family!

The villa is being transformed daily- from a boarded up squatter's paradise, filled with appropriate squatter trash, and missing certain details like plumbing, to a bright and bustling home. When we first pried boards off the windows (only about a month ago in early January now) sunlight filled the house and let us see just how many holes there were in the walls, and let us read the grafitti more easily.

A shed full of a palette of different colors of paint let us unleash our creative spirits with glorious nonattachment, and without the creativity numbing question- well am I really going to want to live with this for the next 5 years? - since we are planning on changing it all, and covering the walls with earthen plasters, rather than latex paints. But, it turns out we bought about 20 gallons of paint, stored in the shed, along with the property back in November, and for immediate liveability, it did wonders to lift spirits, and transform the dull, dirty walls into ones that felt clean and homey. The one rule we decided upon during the painting frenzy was- if you don't like the color I paint this wall, you have full rights to change it, but you have to do it yourself! Suffice to say, we have had so much to do, that no one has bothered to repaint any walls yet.

Our painting days are past now, and we are reaching a final stage of puttering to make the main house liveable for 6 months or so, while we remodel the granny unit behind it, and build a series of small (under 120 sq foot) earthen pods in the backyard, which will be bedrooms for Sasha, Massey, and me.

Our various living spaces in the 2 bedroom, 850 sq foot house are complete enough to be lived in for now. It is the kind of house where you can easily all be in separate corners and carry on a conversation at normal volume.

Knowing this, here's a quick description of our personal nooks in the house:

Massey transformed the odd closet-like mudroom on the front side into what appears to be a caravan that drove up and parked. She rounded out the ceiling, applied some earth plasters, raised her bed up high(which completely occupies the space) and keeps her belongings underneath. Old cabinet doors, taken from the kitchen, close off the space from the living room, an almost completed lamp, handsewn from silk and modeled from a Brugamancia flower, will light the space, and peas in the garden outside, will eventually grow up over the windows to be living curtains.

Sasha has built a curved wall from wooden wine boxes in half of the living room, and a beautiful curtain hanging from a bamboo pole at one end is the door. Think grown-up fort. Though I hate to call it a fort, much more elegant than that. The livingroom side has bamboo bracing the boxes, that doubles as coat hooks, and will one day perhaps be a wall for an in-house art exhibit. Plants grow near the ceiling portion of the wall. Inside, the boxes face towards her bed, and act as shelves, strapped with bamboo splits to keep things from falling out.

Lindsay and I each have bedrooms, so in some ways the spaces are a bit more normal. Lindsay is learning and honing carpentry skills by building her room- she has built her bedframe from massive chunks of bamboo, and various scrap lumber from the wood off our windows and fence, and is devising hanging shelves to creatively hold her large herb collection.

I have done the least to my space, maybe because it is already functioning in many ways, or maybe because I laugh a little every day when I open a drawer to get some clothes out, or stretch out fully in my sleeping bag on the floor and think about where I came from. It seems palatial, compared to the 26' sailboat that has been home for the past year. We are keeping a running tab of unusual places all of us have inhabited. That posting will come later on... Back to my bedroom- other than feeling huge, half of it is a communal sewing room, and it also functions as the only path to the bathroom, which deserves its own posting at this point, though you'll have to wait for that one.

This is just a glimpse, more to follow...