Winter Projects and Foods

Winter is probably the least interesting season for me.  Sure I like being able to slow down, read some books, and plan and think about the coming season.  But I think I'd rather everything be green and growing and be able to be out in it.  Of course, thanks to climate change, we have had a record warm winter, so there have been many days in the 50s and 60s in January and February so far. 

This winter I've been working on various finishing touches on the inside of the house.  I was racking my brains to find some good finish for the window sills of the deep wells on the strawbale walls.   I wanted something like tile, that would hold up better than earthen plaster to the wear and tear the sills would be subject to.  The commercial tile I was finding at the store seemed really boring, and the interesting Mexican tile was really expensive and not available at the local stores.  Then I stumbled across some more natural looking slate tiling.  Every piece was unique in its color and surface pattern, but they were all the same earthen hues.  I had the idea to cut them into shapes that would make them more interesting than just one foot squares.  The one foot square fit perfectly in the window sill with enough room to spare.  I cut the slate with a circular masonry blade. 

Progress on the House This Season

I made a fair bit of progress this year on the house.  The first part of the season was taken up by gardening and tending the grapes, so I wasn't able to start working on the house until about June, when I started by finishing the last section of earthen floor.  Last year I wasn't able to finish the section of floor under the batteries below the stairs, so I moved the batteries and finally finished that section.  Finishing this section was key to being able to continue the interior construction of the bathroom, which was to be tucked under the stairs.

Another project I worked on fairly early in the season was doing the fascia and soffit and the shingling on the gable ends.  The scaffold had been set up all winter and I was anxious to get it out of the way so I could see the house.  It was a while before I could move it though.  But I'm really pleased with how everything turned out.  I did this fishscale design with the wooden shakes.  It wasn't that hard to shape each piece of wood and nail it in place, and it added a lot of character to the house.

Hoop House!

It's finally getting to the end of the working season. We had our first snow yesterday and many days it's too cold to do much outside. I've finished most of what I wanted to finish outside, though I still have a few important tasks to complete, like building a wood shed and putting gutters on the house. For a while there I was worried I wasn't going to be able to finish the hoop house in time to plant in the spring. I've had a number of problems with the kit. There was no information in the instructions about how to build the end walls, so it's been interesting trying to figure out how to do that and how the plastic on the end walls is attached. There seem to be major parts of the instructions that are left up to the person putting it up to figure out for themselves even though parts provided are sometimes not compatible. It's been much more of a struggle than I would have expected from something prefab, but I have now finished it. The plastic is up and it's pretty tight for the winter.

Insulation in the attic

As the weather gets colder it seems I'm moving faster to try to get things done in time to move into the new house by winter. I'm shooting for Oct 31st to have it ready to live in and it's still possible I could make it. I just have to finish the earthen floor, get the wood floor laid on the second floor and enclose the east gable end. Once that is done it will be sealed from the cold at least. I may not finish the interior plaster, but I'm not sure I want to since I would like to add some detail to it and I'd like to take the time to make it really aesthetically interesting.

I found this little critter on the trim above the front door of the new house when I was about to lime plaster the wall. I've never seen a frog just sitting relaxing like this. It's a tree frog and probably like a cool spot to rest in. They have suction cup toes. I moved it before plastering.

Monarch Butterflies Take Over

I've continued this busy building season working on the house. I'm making progress on the earthen floor. The light clay straw has taken way too long to dry and is setting back the entire project, unfortunately. At least now I know it needs at least a month to dry. I've even resorted to pushing boards underneath the layer of light clay straw to prop it up and allow air flow underneath. This worked but it did loosen the straw somewhat. I couldn't wait any longer for it to dry though.

The monarch butterflies flooded our fields this year to feed on nectar from the white snakeroot. I don't know what was going on with the migration or why they are suddenly in such great numbers this year. I've never seen so many in one place before. All the white flowers in the picture below are white snakeroot and each plant has 5-7 monarchs on it. There have got to be thousands in our fields.

Quick Update

So I'm going to try to make this update brief since I feel like blogging takes a lot of time and I don't have extra right now, but I really want to get up some pictures of the changes happening with my projects this season. We'll start with the successes.

The vineyard

All this rain has been great for the vines. They need plenty of water when they are getting established and this season has provided it steadily up until the last couple weeks.

Many of the vines have been growing so fast I was forced to get going on putting up the trellises. They went up just in time and now many of the vines have reached the trellis wire and some have even fully filled out their allotted space on it. I'm hoping that by the end of the season nearly all the vines will have filled in their space so next season they can produce a full crop.

These are locust posts harvested from nearby Sandhill farm. They are an organic rot-resistant alternative to treated posts, and they look a lot more organic too.

Finish plaster and floors

It has been a whirlwind of home improvement the last few days as Mary Beth and I moved all our stuff out of Wisteria Lodge to do the finish plaster and refinish the floors.


With winter coming soon, we knew we had to get going on doing the finish plaster on the walls to seal up any drafts. Last year I put on the scratch coat of plaster, but because I hadn't done the trim there were large areas around the windows and door that were not completely sealed. The finish coat of plaster is supposed to leave a smooth, beautiful wall that will totally seal up the walls. We started by organizing a plastering workparty, at which others from DR would help us get a lot done in a short time so that the plaster coat would be as smooth as possible. If you don't do the finish plaster all at once there will be transitional lines visible that mark where you left off one day and started the next. Unfortunately, even with our workparty, it took us two days to finish. But we did get a lot done with others helping. These kinds of "barnraising" parties happen often here at DR with everyone helping someone do with many hands what could not be done with just a couple. Like the other day when we all helped Ziggy lift a 35'x35', 400 pound sheet of pond liner up onto the roof of his new house. Check out Ziggy's blog to see what I'm talking about.


We had to do a lot of prep for the workparty, because I wanted to have as much plaster ingredients ready to go so we could get people plastering as quickly as possible.

We had to collect manure from the nearby pasture, gather cattail heads from the pond, sift clay and sand through hardware cloth, and make up wheat paste. All these were the ingredients in the plaster mixture. The cattail heads are broken up to yield cattail fluff, which in finish plaster done the same thing as straw in the scratch coat--it adds structure and stability to the plaster by stretching in between the grains of sand and the clay.


The sand and clay are screened to remove the larger stones so that the finish coat will spread on smooth. The manure stinks at first when the plaster is wet but not once the plaster dries.

Unfortunately, though we tried to prevent it, cracking did happen on some of the walls. This could have been from having a plaster that was too wet, or not quite the right recipe, or because of the composition of the scratch plaster. I think our recipe was fine, but I think sometimes we added too much water to the mix before applying it. Mary Beth and I used the same plaster to do the entire upstairs and there was very little cracking. But it is hard to say for sure what the cause of the cracking was.

After finishing the plaster last Thursday, we were considering the idea of renting a sander and doing the floors as long as we had everything moved out. We quickly made arrangements to have someone pick up the sander for us in Kirksville, and to get us some low-VOC polyurethane, a less toxic and harmful water-based version of the typical polyurethane most people use on their floor to protect it. The weather forecast showed that we could expect sunny days on both Saturday and Sunday, and we would have to have sun to be able to use so much power at once. Using a machine like a sander on our of-the-grid systems would quickly drain power from the batteries on a cloudy day. We usually wait for sunny days to use power tools and big appliances. Saturday morning was not as sunny as predicted, but by the afternoon we were able to test the sander. We plugged in to the common house power with extension cords, but the sander didn't seem to be getting enough power. We tried more heavy duty extension cords and switched to the Milkweeds power system, which was closer, so there would not be as much power loss over the length of cord. The sander was working better, but would shut off after about 5 seconds every time. There was a lot of work being done on the Milkweeds mercantile as they tried to get the building plastered in one day, and we thought maybe there was too much drain on the power. We also thought that maybe the sander was too much of a power drain and we were too far away from the power source. We thought that if we couldn't use the Milkweeds power, it probably wouldn't work on any power system here. We gave up upon finding out from the rental company that using the machine with an undersized system could blow the motor and cost about $400. We thought maybe we'd have to return the sander without even having sanded the floors.


That evening we asked around and came up with some ideas for things to try the next day. First we tried plugging the sander directly into Skyhouse's large power system. It worked fine and wasn't shutting off, so we knew the power system or the extension cords were the problem and not the sander. We hooked up the heavy duty extension cords to the common house system and though the cords were much longer than those going to the Milkweeds the previous day, the sander worked fine. It must have been that the Milkweeds system was not able to handle the sander's power drain. So we finally were able to sand the floors.

It took us most of Sunday to sand both floors and by evening we'd put on the first coat of polyurethane. Now we've got newly plastered walls and a finished floor and we are moving our stuff back in.

Back at DR

I took a two week break from DR to travel for the holidays and left behind my work on the house. Upon my return I found that the plaster had mostly dried. I was a little worried that not heating the house for two weeks would prevent the plaster from drying, but even though there were a few days of below zero weather, the drying continued.

The last few days I continued the plastering and finished plastering yesterday. It's a relief to have it done finally and have all the drafts sealed up. But the last few days have been in the 70s, so I can't really test it.


Now I'm working on cleaning up the mess left behind from plastering. I 'm moving in some more of my stuff and putting up decorations.


The house is not technically done, but this is far as I'm going this season. The finish plaster, which will make the walls smooth, and the trim will have to wait for next summer. I also plan on putting in a different ladder in place of the fiberglass work ladder you see in the above picture for getting upstairs. The house will also need wood siding and trim on the outside, and wood flooring on both the first and second floors.

Winter comes to DR

I've been continuing with the house despite the onset of cold weather. Some of the things I've been working on have been: installing the chimney and stovepipe; finishing the ceiling in the second floor; finishing the light straw insulation; plastering; and putting on a new door. The house is now almost winter proof as far as insulation, heating, and sealing up drafts.

This is the full wall of the lower level insulated with light clay straw.


Thor puppy demonstrates the value of straw as an insulator. Being an outdoor dog, Thor has to endure the cold weather and though he doesn't know the science behind why straw is a good insulator, he is drawn to straw beds in the gardens around DR because he knows they are warmer places to sleep. The kids helped him out by piling more straw on him.

I chose fiberglass insulation for the roof between the rafters simply because it is easier than the light clay straw since the roof is not vertical, and it insulates better, which is important for the roof, where more of the heat is likely to escape. It is not the most ecologically sensitive material to use because it has a lot of "embodied energy" (meaning its manufacture requires a lot of energy), but since I had to get the house ready for winter in a short time I decided to make this concession.


After finishing the insulation. My goal was to get the stove in so I could begin lighting fires to dry out the insulation and new plaster. I finally got the chimney and stove pipe, but then we had an icestorm, which made climbing up a ladder and walking on the roof difficult as both were slick with ice. I began framing the inside rafters to hold the heavy weight of the double walled stainless steel chimney. When the weather cleared up I made the venture up to the roof and began cutting the hole and installing the chimney. After some minor snags I got everything installed.


I finished up the ceiling in the second floor by putting a vapor barrier over the fiberglass and covering it with 1/4" plywood that came with the house when I bought it. I will probably take out the plywood in the future and replace it with something more substantial later.



Before actually lighting the stove I wanted to plaster the area closest to the stove and stovepipe so it would be protected from the heat. I nailed a few blocks up on the studs to stick out from the plaster so I would have something to attach a sheet of roofing to as a heat shield (picture below).


I continued plaster the upper level and after finishing moved my bed in. The wooden boards are nailing strips nailed to the studs to allow the hanging of pictures. I really like the way the plaster looks against the woodwork.



To mix the plaster in the cold I've had to bring the ingredients inside the house and warm them with the heat of the stove before bringing them outside to mix. People don't typically mix and apply plaster this late in the season. There could be some potential problems with mold forming because it's so cold and drying could take longer. I 'm hoping that because in a wood heated house winter is such a dry season, there won't be a problem with drying out the walls at this time of year.
I put up the tin heat shield behind the stove to reflect heat back into the room and away from the straw insulated wall. When I touched the tin during a very hot fire in the stove it was cool.


The last thing I did before going away for the holidays was to put on a new door. The old one opened out and was hung crooked. I had to cut down a scavenged door to fit the small opening available. I also had to cut and shape the threshold from a 2 by 6. I plan to put a more interesting veneer on the front of the door and add another pane so that the window insulates better. For now, as long as it keeps out the cold, I'll be happy. It does not allow the draft that the other door did.

When I get back to DR I will plaster the last section of wall on the first floor and hopefully the house will be warm enough to live in. I am looking into power systems since right now there is no power in the house. I would like to cooperate with others in the area to get power, but right now there is no excess power. I may get a wind turbine and cooperate with the grain bin next door that now has only solar panels for power.