Quarter Moon Pinehowl Campstead Blog

Boozhoo from the Pinehowl Campstead, a reality adjacent to any community experience you are likely to be familiar with. Many moons ago a seed was cast into what remains of the 'wilderness' in the land sun-ward of Gichigami, or South of Lake Superior as those inclined toward European culture normally refer to it. That same demographic would mostly view what has resulted here as some sort of social weed, but the enlightened audience of Permies may prefer to view it as something akin to permaculture. A more sideways view might see it as the conflicted bastard child of globalism and localism.

Earlier efforts to relay progress and aspirations for this project were made here and here. These initial attempts to present a cohesive view of the endeavour proved unsuitable over time. As an individual attempting to bootstrap a unique community, the idea of presenting it in a concise post of words and pictures didn't fit with the goal of adopting and advancing the real world activities required. I ended up spending time on physical tasks and letting promotion of the general project sit on the back burner.

Numerous discussions have been held with interested seekers, but it seems without a critical mass most are reluctant to chance the leap into unsure territory. The question becomes, what does it take to find those who are willing to pierce the ineffable fog shrouding the path to the ethical development needed to guide humanity back to a responsible relationship with nature? Or, barring that, who wants to live a simple, fulfilling life and not worry about pretentious word salads that get tossed about on utopian web logs?

This blog version will simply focus on establishing a cycle of communication concerning status of the project. I'm starting at the idea of an update every quarter moon. We'll see how it goes.

If anyone has interest in working with the project, please reach out with a PM. Arrangements are being made for spring to accommodate those interested in going through the moccasin camp experience next year, and other arrangements will be considered on an individual basis.

As an example of works done so far, I did document the building of a Rocket Mass Heater for the first yurt (yupee). Dubbed Rusty the dragon with the help of a young acolyte, it is providing a comfortable living environment heading into it's third winter...

Good stuff! I can echo much of what you wrote from similar standing and orientation with a ~4 year new effort on beautiful semi-wild, long neglected land in far north California, which holds lots more to offer currently than people to embrace it. Glad to hear I'm not THAT eccentric or misguided

I take it you'd like this to be a personal record thread as your project evolves, so I'll steer commentary and discussion elsewhere. But good on you for persevering in a principled manner, I too believe this is important foundational work that will only grow in relevance and appeal - assuming all manner of inevitable pitfalls are nimbly dodged, hah! Thanks for sharing the journey.

I am not sure if the realization that winter does not start for another week and a half is inspiring or intimidating. The first year living here in the yupi (my hybrid yurt/tipi) was a very mild winter- not very cold and almost no snow. Last year fall seemed to portend a return to harsher weather with a cold, snowy December, but the rest of the Winter mellowed out some. This year, the end of November and beginning of December have been even more extremely winter like. But after last year, I'm curious to see if the pattern of oscillating temperatures will repeat. I looked a bit into the El Nino/El Nina phenomena last year, but don't have personal resources to devote to grasping a new branch of knowledge.

I did finish mounting insulation on the yupi this week. While working at an organic cranberry bog this fall, I diverted large cardboard sheets from pallets of incoming materials that were destined for their burn pile. I removed the canvas from the yupi frame and stapled a layer of the cardboard around the outside of the frame, being careful to shingle them top to bottom to shed any water that seeps through the canvas (don't ask how I discovered this need). Then I did the same on the inside. The corrugated cardboard sheets have ~1/8" thickness, and the roof rafters (uni) give a 1 1/2" of air gap between them. I have no idea how this might translate into R-value, but it makes a huge difference for inside comfort. The first year, with random blankets and sleeping bags stapled up around the interior, I could only raise the interior temps about 30* above ambient, and they quickly fell once the RMH was extinguished. Although the bench under the bed was still warm in the morning, the air temp was usually just above freezing. Now, when I'm running the RMH hot enough to cook dinner on the barrel, I've essentially created a sweat lodge, with room temp measured close to the wall at knee level reaching up around 90 by the end. Air temp has been around 30-40* above ambient in the morning. It feels more like an old farmhouse than a yurt, a little chilly on frigid nights, but very livable with plenty of fresh air. All major constituent elements of the structure are of natural materials.

Of course an ongoing concern is firewood supply. I've built up my own stock here, but am also supplementing it by purchasing more. All my wood is conifer (mostly pine), but I have a friend local that sells face cords of well seasoned hardwood for a good price so I'm buying that while building up my own reserves more gradually. When I spend the entire day at home and run the RMH, it has been averaging 3 banana boxes of wood (1/3 soft, 2/3 hard) on the colder days. It has been a few weeks since temps were above freezing, and morning lows have been in the teens or single digits, with a few brief spells below zero already. One of these days I'll calculate what those boxes add up to in the long run, but last year I ended up burning 5 face cords of hardwood, 1.5 of pine, plus an occasional load of sticks when I went around to gather other stuff lying around.

After the limited snow the past two years, this past month has been a surprise as it has snowed frequently. It seems I haven't gone more than 3 days without having to brush off the truck, tents, and solar panels. It has been dry, light snow each time, but very regular. Hopefully it will serve to insulate the roots of various perennials I've recently started on the hugel and other places.

Yesterday was our Homesteader Club meeting nearby in Rhinelander. I took the pickup for the trip because I had just found an electric stove on the free page of the local Craigslist, and it was along the route. The gentleman was helpful in loading the stove into the truck and graciously accepted my gesture of gratitude in the form of a bottle of homebrewed cider. It looks like a simple, low power stove/oven- perfect in case I upgrade the batteries on the solar power system and have space for it in the outdoor kitchen, but regardless the main thing is I now have a sheet of high temperature glass to install in a rocket cooktop/oven once I'm ready to work on that.

My biggest free time project right now is advancing toward spring construction of new structures. I'd like to put up a second yupi and 2 or 3 wigwam/longhouse inspired storage spaces. Putting together the frames of these should be pretty easy, but assembling the covers for structures has been the sticking point to date. I bought a couple bolts of lightweight canvas when I started out here and was able to use an old sail cloth sewing machine to assemble the yupi cover I have now, but have been searching for another way to sew large, heavy cloth since then. A local leather worker suggested buying a Singer 404 slant needle as they used to be in many school home economics departments and are now widely available on eBay for cheap. I picked one up for $80 shipped, but am now on my 5th or 6th session with it trying to figure out how to make it work. The bobbin shuttle is not picking up the thread so I'm seeking out the leather worker for guidance.

Ben Brownell wrote:Good stuff! I can echo much of what you wrote from similar standing and orientation with a ~4 year new effort on beautiful semi-wild, long neglected land in far north California, which holds lots more to offer currently than people to embrace it. Glad to hear I'm not THAT eccentric or misguided :)

I take it you'd like this to be a personal record thread as your project evolves, so I'll steer commentary and discussion elsewhere. But good on you for persevering in a principled manner, I too believe this is important foundational work that will only grow in relevance and appeal - assuming all manner of inevitable pitfalls are nimbly dodged, hah! Thanks for sharing the journey.

I'm guessing you won't echo much of this latest installment, you being in norcal. I'm also sorry to inform you that I'm no standard to find exception to being eccentric/misguided by, but am likely to be available to commiserate should problems grow too large.

Discussion in this thread is quite welcome, as long as it doesn't drag on about ideas not related to the goings on at Pinehowl. I think comparisons to similar ventures would be very interesting. Do you have your own project thread?

Deal, happy to aim for mutual uplift and/or sympathy as needed!

Actually I do get a taste of winter in my vicinity, being located above one of three major rivers that crosses the Cascade crest allowing much colder interior air/weather to 'leak' out West. Touched 2F last winter...although yes, generally above freezing most days and little accumulating snow.

This year has been a process of reorienting my game plan somewhat and trying some different angles of outreach, both locally and further reaching. I summarized that here a few months ago, and haven't advanced much since in terms of finding enthusiastic engagement:

https://permies.com/t/287020/Join-creative-rewilding-community-trial

Might work toward a more structured apprenticeship program next year where people could learn by building, and have use of the space provisionally thereafter, similar to programs running here (Permies). Lots of very affordable land nearby too, where people could then plant themselves longer term if desired. We'll see! I will do a little better end of year recap either in the above thread or a new one more like your blog format here.

I spent the last few days writing up something to post here that was more abstracted about background and goals for the project from my perspective. It hasn't come together well enough for me to put on here. Maybe over the holidays that will manifest into something, but here is another slice of the moon's worth of activity...

I got some help from the homesteader who had recommended the sewing machine. Almost by accident we found that the bobbins i had bought specifically for this machine were flat, and that the machine requires a slight curved shape to the sides to allow the shuttle to pick up the bobbin thread. I find it very disappointing that there is no standardization published by Singer on these. I had been focusing on Singer machines because of their deep history and assumption that this kind of information would be organized and available to convince people to stick with their name brand. But apparently the name has been bought and sold many times and no such standardization exists, recent owners not recognizing a reason to treat the brand with much respect. I had to go to third party websites to find the manual on line. And the bobbin was never categorized by Singer- I followed what was printed on another website and it turned out wrong. I'd be happy to pay a premium for parts if these things were supported by Singer, but that is not the case.

Anyway, after some more experimenting and help with more experienced friends, we were able to get it working on some patches of sample denim. I'm not fully satisfied with the ability to balance between upper thread and bobbin thread tensions, but it looked close enough to make a solid stitch that should last if not look perfect. After the holidays I will start working on Yupi/Quonset hut covers.

The continual light snow continued into this week. I had been focused on firewood and building prep stuff, but finally took a day to wander around the more mature forest surrounding camp. There were more tracks around than clear snow. With the constant trace amounts of snow falling, it was very difficult to see the finer detail in the tracks, but I'm guessing there is a good mix of deer and coyote, with perhaps a few wolf trouncing around.

I finally had time to work on an insulated door. Back in summer, our homestead club had a member offer wool scraps from sheering their sheep, so I grabbed a few bags and offered them some cider from last year. I built the door out of lumber we had cut here a year ago when another club member offered to bring his portable mill over. The plane of the door is made of 1" boards from red pine. They were rough edged and planed with a battery powered, hand held planer so that they closely matched. Some other ~1/4" boards salvaged from pallets were placed over the seams board-and-batten style. A frame the size and shape of the opening was made from some home sawn true-by-fours. In retrospect this might have added too much weight to the door, might have been better to have smaller, nominal 2x4s. I cut cardboard to fit the top and bottom of each pocket inside these frames, then filled them with the wool scraps. I just grabbed handfuls of the wool and pulled apart any clumps, tossing the loose fibres into the door cavities. Then the opening was covered with home sawn 1" boards, again rough edged and planed to fit together into a cover for the insulation, after being lined with another sheet of cardboard.

Has anyone else done insulation with wool scraps like this? Any tips on ways to improve the application of it?

I hope everyone finds a way to enjoy time with their families...

The last half moon mostly involved travel and visiting with friends and family. I won't go into family details here, but will note this felt like one of the best years of Fall/Winter holiday interaction in recent memory. Good spirits and overall health for almost everyone. One branch of the family tree had some sort of bug going around, but they were bouncing back well and no one else seems to have caught it.

The gap in recent posts prompts me to write a little about a meta concept concerning this blog. The idea of writing something once a week made me hesitant because of consideration of the thing people are calling the "News cycle".

Growing up, I remember my grandparents faithfully reading daily newpapers and watching the evening news every night around supper. None of the content ever resembled information I could process outside of the comics and the sports. But there was a sense of importance about the whole thing that I suspect others might get from being in a more socially religious family and going to church. The vessel becomes the thing of import, the message it is supposed to convey goes unrealized. (Eventually my apathy toward the church 'container' would give way to a deep fascination with the spiritual 'contents', but that is a subject for another entry.)

As the concept of a greater society around me grew clear enough to make sense of the content of news articles and programs, one of the first things I noticed was that it didn't really make any sense. All they ever talked about were problems happening at differing distances from my actual life, and it was clear there was effectively nothing I could do about any of it. This brought an epiphany about "news".

Start with a supposition that 'News' is information outside your immediate awareness that is of vital importance. What happens when someone pumps out 'news' periodicals on a set schedule? In humanity's recent past, Newspaper publishing created a social environment where readers on a daily basis had their minds filled with information of 'important' events outside of personal experience, elevated to the sphere if 'vitalness' by definition of it being published. But this information was being produced by journalists who received pay based primarily on their ability to string together enough words legibly to fill up the periodical. It was the size and frequency of a newspaper that dictated 'newsworthy' content, the actual subject matter became more of a side product as time moved on.

The same applied to a radio announcer filling a news slot, or the TV news anchor. This gave rise to McLuhan formulating the phrase "the medium is the message". Something is "News" because it is presented by media, not necessarily because it has any convincing importance or merit. Anyone attempting to keep close tabs of the news cycle as it turns over is slowly robbed of the ability to determine the relevance of any information they are exposed to.

So, I see this as a disastrous element of modern society and it was one concern I had when deciding to post 'news' of activity here. I plan to make more focused entries over the next few months but staying on a schedule does not seem like a strong pull right now. Perhaps once the weather makes it more favourable to be outside at night, the pull of the moon's schedule will bring more of a flow to regular publication...

I'm glad you have a local homesteading club to be connected with.

Riona Abhainn wrote:I'm glad you have a local homesteading club to be connected with.

Yes, a fortunate find in one of the least populated areas of Wisconsin...