After many months of living in town, we are now back on the farm, homesteading once again. You may remember from this post that the metal structure was almost done, and since that time we have sealed up the floor and moved in.
This is the view upon opening the door in the morning:
So we are back to homesteading, this time with an improved living condition and internet. The internet usually works well and as long as there is also electricity, lack of which has caused us many delays over the present rainy season. But now we are coming into the summer season, June, July and August are known to be quite dry here, especially during the days and there is a lot to do around the farm still.
Last November I was suffering from some homesteading burnout. But conditions have changed, and after a generous break I am eager to be back, wielding machete and snips, opening pathways and uncovering biological treasures.
Here I found an interesting Caterpie Caravan, all headed for this strange parasitic plant latched onto a Tachuelo tree (Zanthoxylum rhoifolium). Later I went back and they were gone, with very little damage to the leaves of the parasite. Is it possible that this parasitic plant defended the Tachuelo? If the Caterpie had reached a branch of the Tachuelo, might they have stayed there and eaten it all, but because of this weird node attached mid trunk, they left without even minor damage!
In this case, the parasite seems to be more of a symbiote in its effects. The question is, do I tear it off or not. I have left it on for now to keep observing.
The first task for me was to clean up the main area for a party. This bungalow is right on the edge of our camping area, and over the weekend we had some friends over, which requires lots of cutting and pruning. I was able to test out our new SunJoe chipper, visible in the below image. The chipper does a great job with small and medium sized branches, but has trouble with twigs and some leaves, they just don't pull through properly.
I continue to use a biomass mounding system that has worked very well, I will do a further breakdown in a future article on my evolution over composting towards biomass mounding.
Over time our system has developed, and I want to continue to develop the plans over the summer. We need a new bathroom, and that means learning more about septic tanks. There is also a lot of optimizations to make in, around and under the new construction, where we hope to maximize the effectiveness of dry storage areas.
One thing definitely on the list is to build some simple platform dog houses. One great benefit of these metal stairs is the dogs cannot get up to the second level, but they can sleep comfortable and dry down below.... just as soon as I clean them up some space!
There is a lot to do, and one of the hardest things has been mobilizing materials. I have been working with a crafty welder while building the mostly metal bungalow, and he has been working with me on some ideas about mobility. When we moved a refrigerator up to the farm he made a four wheeled cart, and then to bring up the metal panels, he modified it to have two wheels on the same axle, something that we had never seen before and were interested to test out on our rugged mountain trail.
If you want to see a functioning version, check out the video of this design from Mercedes, called a 6x6 'Mamute'.
But the current frame we have was not up to the task, there was no good way to apply force, so we need to open up the front and provide a bed to which we can tie off the cargo.
I'm not quite sure how this prototype will end up, let's hope that while we learn some lessons, that it will be genuinely functional in its newest iteration. There are lots of things to move around the farm, but I'll also need to open up a driveway that leads from the entrance across to this flat, social space, which is currently a workshop.
So much to do - let's have a productive day!