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Personal Update

 
pollinator
Posts: 3847
Location: Marmora, Ontario
595
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Greetings, all.

I just wanted to post an update.

Happy news: We decided to quit our jobs in the city last September to fuck off and live in the woods.

We got really lucky a number of times, and in a number of ways, because it all started with our notice of renoviction in May from our Toronto apartment, and the comparables had us outpriced in that market anywhere commuting distance to our workplaces.

I found a job at a bindery in Campbellford, Ontario, and we bought a two-bedroom cabin on an acre woodlot halfway between Toronto and Ottawa on Hwy 7. My much better half is now able to commute to the job she was previously staying out of town for every month, and all she has to do is get up at 4 with me to drive me to work.

We're currently renovating to make the place livable, including painting, updating the countertop, sink, and faucet, and trying to find an end-of-season deal on a good woodstove. Yes, I would much prefer an RMH, but I don't have the time to pour proper footings or to pour a slab foundation for it.

It's mainly temperate hardwoods with some conifers in our patch. I have seen maples and oaks. I plan to observe and tweak the hydrology, and perhaps run our greywater trench high up on our property. It's gently sloping, with two step-downs, almost terraces, though it's unfortunately to the north. It's gradual enough that I don't anticipate shading-out issues.

When I have time for projects, I anticipate starting culinary and medicinal mushrooms first, with as diverse a sampling as I can, but just watering with greywater should make any edible fungi already there come up more reliably, and we are living in the land of the chanterelle. I also want to pursue beekeeping, considering how well bee forage grows around here, and the distinct lack of corn/soy agriculture in the immediate area.

I should be able to carry out a working homestead model of my carolinian forest analogue, structured into swaled silviopastoral alleys on-contour, separated by food forest hedges comprised of apples, pears, stonefruit of all kinds, and an understory of hazels, mulberry trees, different species of raspberry (to spread out the flowering and harvest season), and probably some currants.

For next season, the best I will be able to achieve for gardens are probably raised mounds surrounded by chickenwire-wrapped tripods, but I am already planning to start tomato and pepper plants, perhaps this weekend, and I will basically make as many tripods as I can and plant out all my old stock of seed and see what germinates.

We're already feeding the local songbirds. They're amazing to watch. I am hoping that their increased numbers will draw the local redtailed hawks in greater numbers, and end up taking care of the unbelievable number of squirrels and other rodents in the area

We are two-thirds of the way up the southern side of a bowl, so we are somewhat exposed for being surrounded by forest. I anticipate using some wild-harvested chanterelle spore-inoculated jackpine (the symbiotic partner for the eastern variety) in alleys on our north and western perimeters for some structured wind breaks. I will probably introduce wild blueberries from wild sources if they don't just sprout when I let more light in the windbreaks. I will probably also mix in some christmas tree favourites and a future overstory of white and red pine. I will scout richer areas of soil and plant the white pine there, and the red will go in the shitty soil, as that's where they thrive.

I want to be able to get laying hens, but a dog comes first, and truthfully, I don't have the time and resources to start that up yet. But I should be able to do that here too, eventually.

We might have timber-grade lumber just waiting to be milled hung up on surrounding trees for a season or more, or else at least firewood and materials for split-rail fencing, and there are people with portable sawmills offering their services in the area, so we may have our new roof sitting unmilled outside our window. I want to change our conventional equilateral triangle truss roof to an open barn truss to give us a full second story, and probably put an enamelled raised-seam metal roof on it so we can hear it properly when it rains. That said, we also have southern exposure, want to put a greenhouse on the southern side, and like the idea of solar, so nothing is set in stone; we also really like green roofs, with the sole complicating factor being my want to collect rainwater. So we'll see what happens. We might also glom on an A-frame addition to one side or the other, and maybe that's where the masonry heater will go. Who knows?

On a sad note, Mizzou died. She injured her back and legs jumping off a chair this spring, and there was progressive atrophy because of her paralysis. She made it here, and had some weeks of hopping around outside, where the green treats sprouted up from the ground. She died while we were both home, working on our home, on Hallowe'en, and we buried her under some maples by the drive. She now has lots of room for infinite ghost bunny binkies.

I don't know if we'll be here forever, but there's a ton I can do here, including underpinning and digging out the basement for more space. I wouldn't dismiss building a wofati freezer and root cellar combo, as the terrain favours it in several places, and whatever I'm doing is going to involve squash and root veggies, and canning, drying, and freezing food.

Apart from renovating the house, our next step, as soon as we can, anyways, is finding a fuzzy guardian friend. The kicker is, she (probably a female, but we're flexible) needs to be hypoallergenic, and I would like her to be an LGD, ideally. Accordingly, we're checking out Komondorok (singular: komondor), but there are a variety of poodle crosses that might also suffice, like a Newfypoo, or St. Bernadoodle, or a Bernedoodle, or any number of poodle-LGD crosses. I would prefer a komondor girl, but we'll see what we can manage. Pulis, the small cousin of the komondor, are also on the table.

So I hope everyone is doing well. Hi to any permies that happen to be in my neck of the woods. Drop me a moosage or respond in the thread. I'd love to see if anyone is around.

I will post some pics soon. Take care, and good luck in your efforts.

-CK
 
pollinator
Posts: 5501
Location: Bendigo , Australia
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Sounds like a plan.
What does this mean?

carolinian forest analogue



I dont understand why people look at a house and ask, 'Is this my for everhome?
I cannot imagine working on a property, for a few years building it up to move on and start again.
Unless its a 'flipper'.

Why not get another vehicle, a motorcycle to get to work and let the 'missus' sleep in?
 
pollinator
Posts: 3873
Location: 4b
1400
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Excellent news Chris.  Very glad to hear it.  Looking forward to updates.
 
steward
Posts: 16553
Location: USDA Zone 8a
4341
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Great to see you back, Chris!

It is great to hear an update and hear what all you have been doing these last few months!
 
gardener
Posts: 828
Location: Central Indiana, zone 6a, clay loam
589
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So good to see you back and hear you're doing well, Chris! That's exciting y'all have a new place, it sounds lovely and full of possibilities! Looking forward to hearing more updates and seeing pictures.

Sorry about the loss of your bunny friend. They're such special creatures.
 
Chris Kott
pollinator
Posts: 3847
Location: Marmora, Ontario
595
4
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Hey guys,

Thanks for your well-wishing.

I would have posted sooner, both since moving and with this response, but for the amount of work I have to do. I am working 10 hour days, four days a week, with a half-day on Fridays, which doesn't sound like much of a change, but I'll tell you, on top of the shift to rural life, it takes it out of  you. I'm hoping that my adaptation will speed up as the daylight increases with the progression of the seasons.

A "carolinian forest analogue" is my term for an agroforestry approach I am going to try that uses the base structure of a carolinian oak savannah, but structured for maximum human utility on the specific site in question, using edible contemporary analogues of what wild elements a carolinian oak savannah would comprise.

In this context, that means gradually replacing less productive or useful species of mast or nut tree with more productive ones, replacing wild rose with, for instance, a rose variety that produces larger rosehips, and fleshing out the secondary canopy with productive apple, pear, and stonefruit, with hazels and mulberries in the shady understory, and raspberries, for instance, with cultivated grape varieties, either table or wine, according to what the site and homesteader needs, occupying the vining category, or paw paws, if it's warm and humid enough.

I feel similarly, John, about the forever home versus flipper discussion. For me, it's my forever home until it's not, at this point. But if I do it right, the property will yield more operating as a permaculture food forest farm, and serving as the nucleus of a business, a seed of expansion, than if we were to sell, barring the property value skyrocketing at the same time that something with more house and land in a better location pops up and begs me to buy it.

As to the motorcycle, my morning commute occurs at 0530, dark most of the year, and deer are a real threat. And we get snow here quite regularly. A snow-covered commute in my VW stationwagon is fun, if challenging, at 0530. I don't think I would enjoy a bike. Here, I need a small pickup, hopefully one for which parts are readily available, and that is easy for a novice mechanic to fix themselves for most things.

As to Mizzou, I miss her every day. The truth is, though, that as soon as she injured herself, it was a struggle for her. She couldn't thump when displeased, she couldn't binky when happy, couldn't run, couldn't flop over to her side easily. And she was in pain, for which we had to medicate her daily, which put her to sleep and messed with her eating. We ended up cutting her dosage in half, which made her more mobile and increased her appetite, but not to the same level as before. She just couldn't live her best bunny life, so when she was sure we were safe in our new space, she decided to move on.

Thank you all, by the way. I look forward to being able to generate more new content in this space.

Good luck, and have a great day.

-CK
 
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