Alexandra Malecki's 8 BB Countdown to PEP2

Welcome,
A month ago, I was talking to an elder farmer and he said that you have to be as good at marketing as you are at farming to make a living at it. I think about my desire to be matched well to an ‘Otis’ or ‘Otessa’ and subsequently my dread of becoming more public to the internet as a means of marketing myself. I prefer to be a private person and not have much on the internet but I’d also like to do what it takes to be successful at the SKIP program. So, I’m here trying to market myself in hopes that by the time I reach PEP 2, I will be contacted by an Otis/Otessa with land, infrastructure, and tools.

I hope to continue the legacy of an Otis/Otessa’s permaculture system so that my family and I can enjoy the gifts of fruit trees planted long ago, soil built over decades, and a small part of this planet that has been stewarded and loved.

Currently, I’m 80% to PEP2. This seems like I still have a way to go since, at this point, I have completed 291 BBs. However, I currently have ~10 more BBs to go (depending on how many points my BBs are awarded) since most of the last tasks are Wood or Straw level tasks. These few remaining tasks require a lot more time investment or correct seasonality to complete.

A bit of backstory:
I found out about SKIP around 4-5 years ago when I supported Paul’s SKIP kickstarter. At the time, I relished the idea of doing SKIP instead of college as a viable pathway in life for my kids. I never thought that I’d do SKIP since I was already too deep into the corporate and already paid off my loans to get my Mechanical Engineering degree. I also have a family and doing SKIP seemed like a program targeted toward teenagers and young 20s.

For so many reasons, I need to get out of the city. I want to live toxic free, close to nature, grow and forage my food and medicine, raise animals, build rockets and other natural structures, build community, mental and spiritual well-being, and more. I knew I needed a plan to make large changes in my family’s lifestyle before my kids get too old to grow up in a more healthy, natural environment.

Two winters ago, I was working the numbers and timeline to see how much more I’d need to save to get out of the city and start a life in the country. Option 1: raw land, move now? That didn’t seem like a viable plan; it would be too radical to get buy-in from my family. Option 2: whatever we can afford that already has infrastructure, move now. This option sounded like settling for a non-permaculture property; would it be better to start at nothing? Option 3: keep working my corporate job, save more for a better permaculture property, move later when kids are older? I’d rather accelerate the timing. But wait, was I actually ready to move? Did I actually have the skillsets I needed to start homesteading?

That’s when I thought about SKIP and the structured means of building skills, confidence, and property by the end. Suddenly SKIP seemed like the perfect program for me.


Thanks to SKIP, I’ve pushed myself out of my comfort zone and have accomplished so much! Here are a few links to some of my favorite BBs and why:
1)  https://permies.com/p/3109385 and https://permies.com/p/2962594. This past spring I built a rocket season extender with a hügelkultur on top. This was a significant project. I tested out new design aspects, built bigger hugels than before, and planted it differently than I have before. The rocket has a clean combustion within 5 mins, the integrated cold start works without leaking smoke, and the growies are so lush and layered. I can’t wait to see how this system continues to perform over time!
2) https://permies.com/p/2509584 This was my first time operating large machinery and I had so much fun! I’m eager to make a hügelkultur maze similar to Allerton Alley at Wheaton Lab one day. Having competency with an excavator makes this dream viable!
3)  https://permies.com/p/3110622 I subsequently gained a large amount of respect for the amount of maintenance required to use large machinery. I’m glad I had this experience.
4)  https://permies.com/p/2521931 I never thought that I would ever fell a tree and this was a very exhilarating experience!
5)  https://permies.com/p/2938754 This 3-log bench now rests in front of my home and I love how beautiful it is. I feel so proud of this project!
6)  BB not yet submitted – add link here when available. I’m currently working on a rocket oven, this required a lot of cutting, welding, grinding, and burning my skin. I suppose as I continue to practice these skills, I won’t burn my skin as much. I’ve had to learn a lot about metalworking, masonry, cob and fibers, and perseverance. I’m nearly done with this build and I’m so excited to host a pizza party soon! I’m thinking I should probably also take a welding class. I’ve really enjoyed building various rockets and talking to people about rockets. I can see myself continuing to develop my skillsets in building rockets as a right livelihood. I get excited thinking about the possibility of traveling for rocket workshop builds as a family business one day.


Currently, I homeschool my elementary-aged children who are 10 and 8 years old. My husband works a virtual job as a Mechanical Engineer and is an aspiring woodworker/craftsman. I would prefer to start transitioning my family and I to the country as soon as possible. The photo attached below is the most recent family photo I have from my birthday in March. It’s a bit blurry but I also don’t love the idea of posting photos of my children online.


I’m grateful to Paul and Mike for creating the SKIP program and hosting the SKIP event last summer. I’m grateful to all of the permies volunteers for supporting the program. Thank you!


What’s next for this thread? I’ll give updates on my last ~10 BBs until I get to PEP2! Perhaps I’ll think of new things to add or perhaps someone has questions for me? Maybe this thread will end with my family and I getting to move out into the country to homestead!  

Hey Alexandra, it has been really impressive to watch your progress! I appreciate that you have been doing some of the bigger projects for your friends.

Thanks for your post, Jeremy, and for taking so much of your time to review so many of my submissions!

Most of the bigger BBs I’m not able to do at my suburban house so I feel like I’m the lucky one who has a few permaculture friends who welcome me to do these projects on their land. I love that I get to bring my kids and husband to visit and stay on these permaculture farms. Mostly, I benefit greatly from the collaboration. One of my friends gives me the kindest constructive feedback: "listen, Alex, I see what you’re trying to do and I’d like to empower you, try this and that instead.”

Funny timing to see your response Jeremy because I was just taking a break from working on my rocket oven and thought about adding to this thread. I was just mixing cob when some straw sliced my finger open. I put some cut rescue powder on it and I’m amazed by how well this stuff works! See first photo. I didn’t use to trust remedies that weren’t a name brand and I use to faint at the sight of blood but I actually got excited that I started bleeding so that I could use this herbal powder for the first time! My husband got a deep cut a few weeks ago from cleaning a knife and it was amazing to see how this powder stops the bleeding. I’m thinking about spending this winter studying herbalism; maybe finding an in-person class. It’s been a while since we’ve used any sort of pharmaceutical but I need to learn more about plant medicine.

Then I started thinking about how intimidated I use to be of making cob wrong. It was such a helpful exercise in testing different batches of adobe brick for a BB. I've since made and tested various long straw cob, short straw cob, cattail mortar, sifted chopped straw plaster, and flour clay paint. Now I even harvest and process sand and clay from my 0.35 acres and forage for my cattail fluff. I’ve made so many batches now that I was just reflecting on how far I’ve come in developing natural building skills! I would like to live in an underground, earthen home instead of the modern house I have now. Cob is an amazing building material.

The current state of the rocket oven is that I need to finish the cob around the wire mesh and buy ingredients for pizza night on Friday!!!  Oh, I’m so excited to see how the oven performs and I invited a few of my permie friends over for pizza night to celebrate. Yay!

Every day I aim to make forward progress in many little ways. Most days don't feel like there was anything particularly notable about the tasks I've done. However, now looking at my last post, so much has changed.

I wasn't able to host the rocket pizza workshop as originally planned on account of a week of rain. However, the sky cleared and I was able to run the rocket and have people over! I invited all the people that I've been keeping updated with my rocket build work. Building this rocket oven took a lot of momentum to complete. It required a lot of metalworking skills that I haven't had much practice in previously. The entire time I kept thinking of ways to improve version 2. Anyhow, it was so fun to explain the rocket oven and teach people how to run it and make pizza! I also learned a lot about what went smoothly with having 14 people making 20 pizzas in <90mins. I'm looking forward to hosting another rocket pizza workshop with a whole different group of permies in my community who weren't able to attend yesterday.

Given the rain, I had to wait a week after finishing the rocket oven to run it and the first run ran very inefficiently because the firebrick needed to dry out. Even still, I was able to keep the temp above 350degF to bake zucchini bread. The second run during the rocket pizza workshop, the operating temps were way higher and ran efficiently. The workshop went so smoothly. The pizza was so tasty! The cleanup was a lot but fortunately for me everyone pitched in and helped =) My husband was so proud which meant a lot because he's been so supportive of me allocating so much time to skip.

Today I also found that my version 1 ash scoop works near perfectly in the combustion chamber of my new rocket oven. I've since made a version 2 ash scoop that I plan to test out when I return to my friend's orchard. I've been noodling around ideas for a version 3.

I submitted a BB for building a rocket oven  

9 BBs left to go!


Then I also submitted a BB for hosting a 1.5hr workshop teaching a crowd how to run a rocket oven and make pizza in it

8 BBs left to go!


In other tangential news, the rain in the last week tested the experiments that I've been doing on the hillside to mitigate flooding and erosion issues. I'm so proud to continue to notice that my check dams and other earthworks have been slowing, spreading, and sinking the water such that it doesn't accumulate as a beach on the road in front of our house. Every year I've been at this house, I've been continuing to make small, incremental improvements and it's good to get a soaking rain to get feedback. This week I noticed that a cute purple bindwind was growing on a rather large check dam upstream of my house.  See first photo. Beautiful!


After cleaning up from the workshop, I started getting back to work on completing the plumbing bits for the rocket water heater build. Unfortunately the copper coil that I arrived was a different size than what I ordered so I'll need to pick up reducers and sweat it in tomorrow. There always seems to be something that goes awry to troubleshoot for. But some good news is that my husband put on a new safety screen on the grinder for me! Otherwise, I'm ready to depart for my friend's orchard to finish old projects and start new ones.

I arrived on my friend’s farm this week without (any members of) my family. I wish they were here to get to experience life on the farm but it has been easier to focus all of my energy at the tasks at hand. Not bringing my kids also means that I don’t need to rush back home for something on our calendar but instead, I’m able to stay here until the tasks get done. No more unfinished projects!!

The first thing that I had been eager to check on was my rocket season extender hugel and GAMCOD plot. It’s changed so much in the last 6ish weeks since I was here last. I have since found out how challenging the watering situation has been and I’ve been grateful that a number of people in the community here have tried their best to keep my garden watered. However there was a period of drought that killed off a lot of the plants. Yet, surprisingly the corn has thrived despite the drought. It’s looking tall and lush and I’ve taken video footage for the GAMCOD project so that’s all I’ll say about it here. See first photo.

The next thing that just made me happy was in seeing how the baby turkeys have grown up. They’re so cute! One of the residents here traded for a mating pair of turkeys in the spring and it’s been fun to watch the progression of what it’s like having turkeys on this land amongst all of the other animals. There are now 30 goats and 21 ducks, dogs, cats, and I suppose that’s all. There are a lot of animals and different people who live here are responsible for parts of the goat herd and I get to see how they have figured things out. See second photo.

When I arrived the 5-gallon poop bucket situation was in need of attention so I spent some time sorting that out. Which led to a conversation about humanure. My friend and I disagree on a few things. However, one thing is for certain, it’s ridiculous that my family and I defecate into perfectly clean drinking water at our suburban home. I wish to discontinue this practice and find a better solution. I also don’t like the ick factor with my friend’s 5gal bucket method.

After a 6hr, beautiful drive to get here, I spent time unloading and sorting my materials across all of the different work sites. There are a number of projects that I plan to complete and a few that I’m just starting.

One of the new projects is a rocket water heater. I anticipate that this project will require the longest project timeline due to curing delays. Getting the 6in concrete foundation started was the highest priority. I don’t like to use concrete but this will be a very heavy installation. See concrete slab photos.

The next priority is to build a fruit rocket stove for my friend’s future business. This isn’t for a BB but it’s a gift for my friend and another opportunity for me to experiment. I don’t have a photo of that built to post but I do have photos of the mortar mix. I sifted and soaked the clay from subsoil onsite to an eighth of an inch and also sifted eighth inch imported sand then added in cattail fluff that I harvested last year. This mix is my favorite one to make, it feels so luxuriant. I need a LOT of mortar mix for the upcoming builds. See following two photos.

In my downtime I did some hand filing of the p-channels that I fabricated at home. I wanted it to be as tight of a fit in the RMH j-tube feeds that I’ve previously built here. I think my next post will cover the two incomplete RMH builds that I have underway. I plan to finally complete them and submit for those BBs before I leave this time. There have previously been water shortages, time shortages due to cob drying times, and – also – I’ve wanted to wait until I’ve finished fabricating all of the Rocket accessories. This includes a feed cover, a p-channel, and an ash scoop at each build. Oh, and I have yet to mention my favorite part: my metal dragon! More to share soon, I’m sure!