Chickens and Goats

With the garden planted I am ready to move on to chickens and goats. My landlady told me I could put the goats in the empty brush filled lot next door to the house!!!! Everything is unfolding perfectly.

I am thinking I could build a little earthbag building in the lot next door. It would be in the shape of a dome, but I could texturize it with ledges and such to make it a goat mountain!!! Then I could fence in the lot and it could function as the goat yard/habitat.

Top Bar Beekeeping

Here are my bees:

Solar Food Dehydrator

Here is a link to a DIY solar food dryer : http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/offthegrid/solarfooddryer.shtml

Be Your Own Herbal Expert

This is a free 8 part course by Susun Weed on learning herbal medicine.

Here is her online magazine.

Cool Links

A cool site with info about tipis, yurts, and domes
Tons of info on yurts.
A guy in his yurt.
This site has useful stuff like a prefab kitchen/bath house. Perfect for use with yurt or tipi setup.
Great off the grid seller with awesome costumer support.

Solar Thermal Water Heater For Less Than Five Dollars

CLICK HERE

Essentials Oils to Repel Bugs

Essential Education:

Essentials Oils to Repel Bugs

For plants infested with insects, use one of the following essential oils. Fill a mist spray bottle with 4 oz. of water, add the essential oils and mist the infested plant. Use as little as possible. Several applications, a few days apart, may be necessary.

ANTS Peppermint Spearmint

APHIDS Cedarwood Hyssop Peppermint Spearmint

BEETLES Peppermint Thyme

CATERPILLARS Spearmint Peppermint

CHIGGERS Lavender Lemongrass Sage Thyme

CUTWORM Thyme Sage

FLEAS Peppermint Lemongrass Spearmint Lavender

FLIES Lavender Peppermint Rosemary Sage

GNATS Patchouli Spearmint

LICE Cedarwood Peppermint Spearmint

MOSQUITOES Lavender Lemongrass

MOTHS Cedarwood Hyssop Lavender Peppermint Spearmint

PLANT LICE Peppermint Spearmint

SLUGS Cedarwood Hyssop Pine

SNAILS Cedarwood Pine Patchouli

SPIDERS Peppermint Spearmint

TICKS Lavender Lemongrass Sage Thyme

WEEVILS Cedarwood Patchouli Sandalwood

The Pickens Plan

Earthquakes on Wednesday

There were four earthquakes yesterday all a magnitude 6.0 or higher in Chile, Iran, Japan, and Indonesia.

Here is a link to a map of earthquakes that happened in the last 7 days.

Josh was inspired by Dana's drawings, so he made a 3-d version!
*****CLICK THE PICTURE TO SEE A BIGGER VERSION*****

Overall Community View

Above the village will be a dam and a pavilion. The Pavilion is colored gold and will be equipped with a rain catchment system. We may also have a well with a pump to fill the water tank as well. The water in the tank will be used to provide a gravity fed water system to the community house and may also be used to fight fires. It will not be potable. All potable water will be produced on an as needed basis via solar still. The dam water will be used to water the garden. The pond below the house will be a greywater oasis. If we are low on water we can build a second dam (the one on the right), which would be filled naturally and via solar pump from the greywater pond. This would only be used to water appropriate vegetation.

Permaculture Zones

Here is the house with all the permaculture zones. The purple is zone 1. The orange is zone 2. Zone 3 is yellow and 4 is green. The brown building in the smaller tan yard is the chicken house and the one in the larger tan yard is the goat house. The blue shape is the greywater pond.

Community House

In this drawing the bedrooms are green, shower and washroom is light blue, toilet room is purple, kitchen and dining area are pink, front entrance/mudroom is yellow, library/computer room darker blue room, Music/arts room is orange, nursery/playroom.

After further thought the bathroom will not be attached to the showers since the junction of the three buildings junction may pose a drainage issue.

Main House Kitchen, Bath, and Entrance

Above is the Main Entrance/Mud Room (Yellow). It will have some storage, gardening calendars, and the electrical systems (breaker box). The light blue room will hold the showers and laundry area. This room will have door to access the green house. Extremely dirty people can go directly to the shower from outside. They will be able to shed their dirty clothes there and there will be a closet where we can keep clean clothes, towels, and linens. The purple room will contain a composting toilet. The pink room is the kitchen. There may also be an outside shower hanging off the bathroom located in the trellised garden outside.

Bedrooms

The top graphic above is one half of a bedroom. It contains a closet, bed with storage cubbies underneath and a chair. A piece of wood on the bed will transform it into a desk. A curtain can be added to the middle of the room for privacy. There will be a door leading to individual patios/decks off of each room. The bottom graphic is the overview of a bedroom suite.

Arkansas Bound

I will be in Arkansas in 1 week. Today I got an email from a lady named Dana. She lived in the Ozarks for years. She still lives in the Fayetteville area, I think. I hope she can shed some light on good locations for us to put down our roots.

Small Cabin Website

http://www.small-cabin.com/small-cabin-off-grid-water-supply.html

Soapwart Shampoo Recipe

Here is a link to a Soapwart Shampoo Recipe: http://www.pioneerthinking.com/
shampoo2.html

The Massey Clan is going to NWA

We are going to visit Northwest Arkansas in a couple of weeks. August 22-25. I can't wait to report back to you guys!

-Dana

Projects of Friends

Today has been very interesting and exciting. I talked to a high school friend that I haven't spoken to in years; his name is Cosmos. I wanted to tell him about the community. He and his family are living in North Carolina. They are moving back to Louisiana to start an organic farm and are going to build themselves an earthbag house! We talked about the possibility of helping each other during construction. He plans to start planting this Spring!

I also spoke to my Mom who has been talking to about having a community garden in her backyard for a while. Today she had a meeting with two ladies and they decided to start planting in the spring! My Mom is also starting a business soon. There is a small building on her property that has be used as a beauty shop since my grandmother built it. She used to do hair. It is empty now and my Mom is going to use is for her healing business. She also has one other lady who does healing that will work out of it. Cosmos is building his farm in Duson (which is right next door to Scott where my Mom lives) and he is a massage therapist. He may also see clients out of my Mom's shop too!

It amazes me how many other people are doing similar things.