I'm still in permaculture school and about to wrap up the course. I'm doing that, working full time, and looking after a baby and two large dogs. And a house where I no longer live.

So I haven't been doing much else. To include blogging.

To Be Continued ...

• My Zone 1 where I walk the dogs is my uncle's Zone 4, where he just bush hogs 3 times per year and takes the occasional 4-wheeler ride.

• I marked the back yard between Dad's house and the Man Cave, as well as my uncle's yard between his house and the barn, as Zone 2 because it's for hanging out and doing projects like making boat paddles or playing with a rocket stove. They don't do these things every day or even every week.

• Zone 4 is really the majority of the land. #PermacultureDesignCertificate #PDC #OregonStateUniversity #permaculture

Yesterday I ordered and put down a deposit on the outdoor kitchen/porch/ shower/outhouse thingy which will from now on be called the quincho. (Thanks Sergio!)

Today I ordered and put down a deposit on two studio style sheds for bunkhouses.

I still need to draw out the plan for the wraparound porch for my tiny house, which, by the way, was moved and placed on foundation Monday and Tuesday. I love love love the new location. My north window is filled with the view of the pond. I get much better sun for the solar panels and am strongly considering a mini wind turbine because that stuff is abundant.

I had mentioned fire ants in my presentation and my instructor had a few ideas. But I also spotted a discussion about them on Mastodon and joined in. This yielded some great info on this thread here. Here are the relevant excerpts:

myrmepropagandist @futurebird @CStamp @jericevans

There are probably things a park could do to reduce their numbers. They are not very successful in their native range. It's not like they are super ants. They just thrive on disturbed soil, human construction, basically all the things we do to make it easy for them.

myrmepropagandist @futurebird@sauropods.win @CStamp @jericevans

They can't be contained. But, they can settle into something more like the niche they live in their home range. There they are not numerous. They are opportunistic, nesting near storm-damaged trees, forest margins, places recently touched by fire. They are the “first ants in” and they can't dig packed soil or deal with real competition.

The way we tend lawns, cut down trees, clear brush, and plow soil is a delight for these ants. Perennial native plants are their enemy.

Coach Spore Diesel @springdiesel@spore.social @futurebird @CStamp @jericevans

And this applies to Solenopsis invicta? I have them. I'm also in permaculture school and am working on a school project to design for my land. If perennial native vegetation works against then, that would be awesome. I don't really want to use pesticides.

myrmepropagandist @futurebird @springdiesel @CStamp @jericevans

Take a look at the inaturalist page for Solenopsis invicta. Look at their nest and the places where they are found. They like direct sun, water, and above all disturbed soil. A shady garden with hard packed clay soil is something they will struggle with. And these same conditions will attract ants that attack them.

Learn to spot Dorymyrmex bureni, these non-stinging ants love to eat young fire ant queens and overlap with them in most places.

myrmepropagandist @futurebird @springdiesel @CStamp @jericevans

Dorymyrmex bureni likes sandy sidewalk cracks, sand, hot places, and ruining the day of fire ant colonies when they send out their alates.

Where it isn't possible to make a garden fire ant proof it could be made to attract Dorymyrmex bureni more.

So that was fantastic! This user is a huge fan and hobbyist with ants, super knowledgeable. And I stumbled onto this thread today.

Alex Wild @alexwild@mastodon.online On a research trip to Argentina many years ago, we were unexpectedly delayed several hours to clear permit paperwork at El Palmar National Park.

So I poked around with my camera instead and found a trail of fire ants being harassed by an ant-decapitating fly. #Ants #Phoridae #Insects

Fabian Egli @fabianegli@fosstodon.org @alexwild This is the first time I hear of ant decapitating flies. How surprising! And they produce torpedo shaped eggs. There's so much great information in the Wikipedia entry. Also, that their introduction to America was the first instance of a successful introduction of an organism to regulate another which is invasive and detrimental to the local ecosystem 🤓 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudacteon_tricuspis

So maybe if I can cultivate some of these predators or fire ants, that can help the situation. Plus more perennial native vegetation!

• It's harder to identify microclimates in the dead of winter. Usually the differences in climate encourage differences in vegetation. There currently isn't much vegetation. Just red deadnettle all over the place.

• Google Slides' polyline tool is the most infuriating thing.

• Google Slides' tendency to jump the screen all around when trying to click in it while zoomed in is also crazy making.

• I can download the slides and work on them in PowerPoint and then put them back. Waaaaaaaay better. Going to do that for every assignment from now on. Libraries sometimes have PowerPoint on their public computers, so that's an option for others as well.

• I may have split the hairs too fine on the microclimates. I put three different kinds of pasture land and two different kinds of shaded land. Also the edge of the pond hasn't been allowed to grow the things edges of ponds should grow, so it's not that different from pasture land itself, but I still put it as a distinct microclimate.

#PermacultureDesignCertificate #PDC #OregonStateUniversity #permaculture

I feel like I posted this already but I don't see the post. I finally found a builder who will do it. These images are not the whole thing.

Look at the first image, where there are double shed doors. Now imagine that roof keeps extending from that wall, and that there is a porch there the same size as the enclosed building.

That's the thing I want.

(Snap.as cannot handle alt text that includes line breaks or periods, so for the floor plan image, I am fully describing it in the main text. That's why no alt text.)

Here is the floor plan I submitted getting quotes. The letters for the sides have to do with one of the design apps they offered. The biggest providers cannot do this design. They won't do interior walls, porches more than 4 feet, nor porches on slanted roof designs. The most local one will do the job, so they already won.

Alt text: On yellow lined paper from a legal pad that is letter sized, go figure, a floor plan labeled "Deer Camp Porch + Outdoor Kitchen + Shower + Outhouse. Because of the app I was using to make a mockup, the right wall is labeled A, the top wall is B, the left wall is C and the bottom wall is D. A wall divides the rectangle into left and right halves - the left half is labeled "open porch". That wall has double shed doors swinging outward. The right half has another wall dividing that space into left and right portions, and the wall is labeled "full interior wall". The rightmost section is divided into top and bottom chambers by another interior wall that is labeled "NOT full height". Each of these chambers has an outswinging door to the outside, labeled "3' shed doors with transoms". A curly bracket indicating the entire right half of the structure is labeled "enclosed 8'x10' ". A line along wall B is labeled "transoms this wall". An arrow to the double doors "prefer a roll-up door but double shed doors will do". Also a note that the total is 16'x10' and my quote number and name.

So, next to the open porch, that is the outdoor kitchen. The wall between it and the rest of the structure needs to go to the ceiling, for hygiene reasons. It should be full of countertop, cabinets, and appliances. A person is not really meant to be inside it — the doors are for protecting the contents from dust when not in use. I'd like to have it kitted for low-scale electric for a dorm fridge and small appliances. Sink with gray-water drainage. Room to run a gas cooktop.

Yeah, that sounds on-grid but I want to be able to run the electric a variety of ways. Solar, wind, mains, extension cord from the house, generator. And I want it to be useful without electric. Like a well insulated dorm fridge that can work as a cooler instead. Or maybe use a DC powered cooler fridge instead of dorm fridge. I do plan on a wood stove + oven but not for inside this thing. That's a separate build outside.

BTW I'm borrowing a lot of ideas for this from #VanLife and #teardrop design. Space and electricity are at a premium so I want to make the most of what I can get.

The other two chambers are for the shower and the outhouse. Their wall doesn't extend all the way up because I want to maximize the light from the transom windows. I observed that working great in shower houses of various parks.

The outhouse will use a bucket dry toilet system, probably two separate buckets with a urinal going to one of the buckets.

The shower will get warm water from an elevated tank. In the summer, the sun heats the tank. I want a rocket mass stove outside for cooking and baking, but also to supply hot water by heat siphon to the tank in cold weather. The water will come from rain harvesting off the roof.

Gray water collection from the drain here for the pond, as with the sink.

Yeah, I could build this thing myself, especially if I get some help. But the last year has taught me that I can't rely on my body anymore. I get ready to do something like install my wood stove, and my back, knees, hips give up and I just can't. And I can't get “help” if I'm not participating myself. That's a hire-out thing.

Forgot to mention that the water heating system would connect to the kitchen sink as well.

I already have solar water heating for the outdoor shower, but obviously that's not happening just now. It works well, though, on a truly tiny scale. It's a black five gallon bucket with lid, connected to a sink sprayer. Love it. I plan on using it even after the new one is built.

Haven't even mentioned the porch part yet. It has to be screened in, because mosquitoes. None of the builders will do that, so it's on me. But what I'd love to do is outfit it so that transparent/translucent corrugated panels can go on it in the winter for year-round and maybe even greenhouse use.

My dad likes to be outside a lot, but he hasn't done it much this year due to fear of taking ill. I'd like this little intermediate zone for him as well as me.

#DeerCamp #OffGrid

Oo freezing rain just now.

Temps will be back in the 70s end of next week.

For school I have a lot of reading and videos to catch up on. Also quite a lot of self assigned homework in addition to the official homework. Map corrections mostly. I completed my tree inventory but not my junk inventory. I may have captured enough drone imagery of the junk as to not have to waste a perfectly good walk on it.

To-do list for my presentation:

• Site introduction
  • Add the long drone views
• Base map
  • Fix the ditch in Mares Pasture
  • Move the south sinkhole toward the west
  • Fix the addition to the shed
• Do the “current features” map
  • All the trees on the site and the major neighboring trees that affect the site
  • Current location of tiny house
  • Campers, boats, farm equipment
  • Sigh. Map the junk.
• Do an “imminent plans” map with new locations for
  • Tiny house
  • Outdoor kitchen/porch/shower/outhouse
  • Bunkhouse
  • Gravel driveway and loop
• Do a “deer” map
  • Where they have been lured
  • Where they aren’t wanted
  • Where the stands are
• List the existent tree and plant species inventoried so far

#PermacultureDesignCertificate #PDC #OregonStateUniversity #permaculture

I'd like a lot fewer trees on the fence line. And I'd like more vegetation at less than ten feet tall. I'm thinking trellises with blackberries, grapes, passion vine, hops, that sort of thing. To be fair, a lot of that cover would go away in the winter, but some is better than none. I'd have to be sure that whatever goes there is harmless to horses.

Meanwhile, I'd like more, shorter trees elsewhere. Good pruning can keep them manageable sizes, keep the branches accessible. And also help prevent gigantic branches dropping on us from fifty feet during an ice storm.

Most of the trees are towering oaks and pecans, some of them diseased and crumbling. I'd like to have figs, persimmons, pawpaws, native plums, mulberries and all sorts. Not just your usual apple, pear, peach that folks often go for, though a few of those might be nice too.

#PermacultureDesignCertificate #PDC #OregonStateUniversity #permaculture

So as you see here, water affects the whole site. It's quite flat and absorbent, and we do get rain.

Crop dusting most severely from the west but also from the east and south.

The reach of the summer sun is much wider than the reach of the winter sun, as it's more overhead, while the winter sun is more from the south.

We get highway noise and pollution from the east and train noise and pollution from the west.

We get wildlife from the woods to the north and across the field to the west. Now that I think about it, we probably get it from Mares Pasture to the south too.

Public view has to do with lack of privacy. Our entire south side is wide open from the highway as it curves around us. I'm getting some ideas about this.

I thought it interesting to distinguish the usual prevalent winds from the south-southwest from the storm winds of south-southeast and east.

#PermacultureDesignCertificate #PDC #OregonStateUniversity #permaculture

#PermacultureDesignCertificate #PDC #OregonStateUniversity #permaculture