! Orin's Boot Camp Pictorials

1st Day  Arrived after breakfast today....decided to post my pics per day as a storyboard of how things were created/built.

Also using my posts per day to show how the basics of life are taken care of a Wheaton Labs.

Deer and Turkey Fence (aka junk pole fence)
Vertical poles dropped into magically appearing (not!) 3' deep holes every 12' and a low horizontal pole as well as a high horizontal pole is screwed with a single screw between the vertical poles.



 

Thank you Paul for meeting me at the gate!  Thanks all for making me feel at home......bed is calling me now.

BRK Day 2

So what is life like at Wheaton Labs? I dunno, only been here a partial day and a night....seems great so far.  Not having great people skills, I won't focus on the people here, which are good at working, bright and interested in what we are up to here. I'll talk about daily life:  how the garbage is handled, how we heat, how the composting toilet is used, and all other things like laundry.

...that way if you visit, you'll know what the daily logistics are and how to handle them (in a permies sorta way).

So of course today, Saturday, I have the day off from project duty and have some nesting tasks to do (four to eight hours per week). I like breakfast so that came first.

BRK Day 3

This pic was taken morning of March 8th around 8:30am....a little to early to plant as the ground is hard -wasn't yesterday but is this morning.....the ground will be soft and mushy around 10am today I suspect.

Alrighty then!  Now how does one handle refuse streams?  

Here's how it's done at Wheaton Labs currently in the Fischer Price house.

This post will start with the general and then the next post will focus on to handle compost.

NOTE: we also have a seed saver container for all seeds from grocery purchases!!!

Here's my baby  -how to do kitchen scraps composting!  Why? it builds soil with out chemical fertilizers while still providing fertilizers a.k.a soil nutrients which your food plants need to feed you. What does this mean to you?  No more buying black potting soil or that bullshit in plastic sacks you hope won't break in your vehicle.

Now you can do so many things with kitchen scraps:  compost, biodigester, or red worm to soil in a few days.

Here at Wheaton Labs, we do composting. No real work, no real infrastructure investment (a couple of buckets and a 20 gallon container) and no worrying about winter killing/freezing my red worms.

I like it because there isn't much work involved for a property that has a lot of grass, sawdust or other brown material you must handle no matter whether you compost or not  -it's a brown material that is just a by product of some other action. Here at Wheaton Labs, we don't have a huge amount of brown material cause we're always using it for _many_ other things....so we love it when the saw mill is working -lots of sawdust.

If you live in an urban environment and you have to cut your grass or rake your leaves -there you go- composting material for your kitchen scraps (and therefore free black potting soil you don't have to buy or lug back from the store)!

Here's how you can do it (and how Wheaton Labs does it):

BRK Day 4


This topic is not for the faint of heart nor of bottom. my, the things your bottom does. Potty talk, I think...the topic I mean.

And before I get all potty mouth on you, I want you to read my post right after this one if you, even for a second, think your water flush porcelain throne is superior. People are blind to their own bathroom culture. Yep. I said it.

No one wants to talk about bathroom habits. In Japan they use bidets not paper, in Nepal, water in a large cup is used, in Mexico, you use wrapping paper and throw it in the trash bin(not in the toilet), in Tom Brown Jr.'s class, plants are suggested.

But at a permies or composting site, you have to ask or else you might have an unhappy host. "why are you putting garbage/killer plant/water in my compost sir?" or "why are you putting shitty paper in my trash can" are questions you could be asked.

When I arrived, I got right to the point, "What do you guys use for butt wiping material?"

Awkward silence for a second.
Then Fred ,with a twisted grin said, "Dead trees". And Josiah said, "Toilet paper". I said, "What?" for verification which I got again: "Dead Trees". "Toilet Paper".

So there you have it! No corn cobs, no water in cups, no bidets (except the warm weather squeeze bottle version), no mullen leaves (Fred says mullen is used during the season for it but mullen turn to dust in winter).

...oooooh but wait there's more.

you don't flush.  Yup.   Like that.

....but not like you think  -really- consider negative pressure to keep the airflow going away from your nose and towards your bottom.
No, it doesn't suck air out of your nose, it sucks air into "the hole"....the hole where the brown stuff goes...um, the hole you'd normally flush...erm, the hole where waste material is deposited.  {why does language get so tricky when potty talk arises???  ..not for me to say, I'm justa simple man}

This way fresh air comes from outside past your nose and towards your freshly wiped butt  -no smell-

And then you gotta close the lid. Not so the ladies won't fall in (and other hapless creatures). You close the lid so the compost doesn't hog all the fresh air flow and the negative pressure will be maintained for the next pooper user depositor.

Now the smell has been removed from your bathroom experience. Let's talk about the sight of what your bottom did.

In this case, you can cover the actions of your bottom with composting material (after you've wiped of course) -in our case, it is saw dust. For other actions your bottom might take, I remain silent as I like these forums and dontwannaget banned.

BTW, I know of some misguided persons who used cedar sawdust for their composting toilet:
20 years later their toilet still hasn't composted -ooops there is an action you can't cover up.  
Moral of story: if you use composting material, be more concerned with how well it composts and less with how it smells. Compost isn't going to smell until it's turned anyways.

Now look at that, you can't tell if that's kitchen scraps or freshly formed poo, it looks like sawdust and smells like fresh air!

I try go with the flow (and sometimes not) -oh, that brings up another thing. Don't pee where you poop. erm, don't wet the compost below, and if you can't help it, pee through the screen so the pee goes else where.

As a reminder, Paul isn't content with the current potty solution. He also reminded me we do have squeeze bottle bidets available after daily freezing stops.

We'll look into experiments later when the weather is warmer  -but for now, this is how the toilets are used.

Why???

Because, infact, your flush toilet is really nasty....you just think it's normal (just like the parts of Mexico which have bad plumbing and cannot throw the toilet paper in the toilet ).

How is your flush toilet nasty you ask???

If you only knew!!!

....well, okay, I'll tell you, just don't be mad cause every time you use that nasty thing, you'll remember this and get a little queasy.

Have you ever noticed when you take a dump in your toilet how bad that smells???     aaaaahhhh, that's the part that's nasty.

Because the reason you're smelling anything is because little particles of that item is inside your nose, brought there by the air you breathe.

That means when someone makes a stinky doo doo in your porcelain throne, you smell it cause you have their shit up your nose!  Yep. Like that.     feeling superior now???

okay then, do you smell pee when you pee in your nice porcelain throne???   Yep. Same thing. Pee in your nose.

Now you know you want your toilet to be negative pressure so the air from your butt (and everyone who uses your toilet) never gets near your nose!

Aaahhhh, but guess what? you aint' gonna get a nice porcelain throne with negative pressure!  

So whatcha gonna do with all that poo, all that doo in your nose???

Build a good willow bank like ours, silly!

Anyways, tomorrow I'll talk about food at Wheaton Labs.

BRK Day 5

The Food here is awesome!  That's food with a capital F mind you.  

Only organic purchases are made by Wheaton Labs. And there is a wide selection  -it's like the bulk food store in your local organic bulk food store!

....and the cooking implements!   grinders, blenders, scads of measuring untensils, pots of metal, pots of glass, crock pots, oleanders, jars........things I don't even know the names of!

There is an electric stove and oven combo at the Fischer Price House (I use the Fischer Price House's Rocket Mass Heater to cook oatmeal and yams), Fred uses his rocket stove, Josiah and Jen use the Alteron Abbey double shoe box cookstove.

Many of us are vegan here at the moment, however, meat eaters are welcome and a variety of meat is also available.

Our work on Alerton Abbey's junk pole fence will allow us to focus on growing more food here on the land (there is food being grown here but turkeys, chipmounks, squirrels, and deer keep interfering.  The cats sorta lowered the problems with chipmunks and squirrels but deer and wild turkey have decimated many large scale plantings.

Anyways, I'm not going to show pics of all of the food stores....people might show up in droves just for the great food. I will show how I use the rocket stove to cook with instead.



Oooops!  work time!   will post pics/vids after 5pm

BRK Day 6

Okay, here's an install we did a few days back (you can see the file name for a date).

It's a way to dry clothes on a raining day hung over the rocket mass heater.



Tomorrow, I'll show a chainsaw mod we did.