Goats and chickens

August 5, 2015

Despite my intentions another two months have gone by without a post on this blog. Some of you get our news and occasional photo on Facebook, however I want to maintain a full account of our projects here  –  permaculture, bio-construction, small-scale animal raising.

Speaking of which, the farm has numerous new residents since the beginning of June. On June 8^th we picked up two young goats, both does expecting their first offspring in a few weeks. We named them after our mothers: Nina, for Guy’s mother, and Polly for mine. After all they are the matriarchs of what we hope will prove to be a fine lineage. Neither of us had any experience with caring for goats though Guy’s relatives in Easton had goats at Mary Farm back in the mid-twentieth century. (Don’t you love how that sounds?)

Polly and Nina are the two goats on the right. This is at
the small goat farm where we picked them up

We took them home in our little Fiat Uno.

The day we brought Nina and Polly home they escaped twice and led us on a wild chase through woods and pasture. It took us around three hours, with no lunch or rest, to finally get them safely tied up. For me, after six months of sciatica, the ability to engage in such an adventure was exhilirating at the same time that it was frustrating and scary. What if we never caught them? What if they ran into the hills and disappeared altogether? What if the neighboring dogs, a goat’s worst enemy I hear, joined the pursuit and ended up tearing them to pieces? 

"Catch us if you can!"

Polly and Nina: "OK, what's next?"

By now they have a pleasant fenced in area, with electric fence to keep out the dogs and other predators, as well as a sturdy shed to give them shelter. We understand that goats don’t like rain and mud, therefor the importance of an elevated covered area.

"You're welcome to visit. You should know that I, Nina, am the boss!"

On June 16 friends in Cocalzinho gave us a hen with nine tiny chicks. Of the dozen or more free-range hens and roosters on their little weekend farm, wild animals – dogs, otters, hawks, wildcats – had taken all but this brooding hen and three roosters. The chicks hatched on the weekend while they visited and it was a no-brainer to bring the brood to us. Unprepared for this sudden addition, I hurried out on the town to get provisions. At the stuff-for-sale dump (ferro velho) I found a rusty but strong cage, and at the farm store I picked up a feeder, a water server, and five pounds of feed.

We brought Henny-Penny and her babies home in a cardboard box. As we transferred them to the cage a very excited Lolita (our dog) grabbed one of the chicks and ran off with it. I think she only wanted to play and had no idea how fragile that little bundle of feathers was. I collected the mangled chick, scolded Lolita soundly, and put the little body on the porch in front of her until she understood that she was not to touch it. It took a few more scoldings in the following days, but now Lolita doesn’t blink and eye while the chickens roam, including a new addition – another hen donated by a neighbor. She has to live outside the chicken pen because Henny-Penny attacks her relentlessly when they’re in close quarters, supposedly guarding her chicks from the intruder, establishing who has rights in the chicken yard. We release the whole brood in the late afternoon for two hours of roaming. Otherwise they eat grains and leftovers from the kitchen. I can’t tell for sure but I think most of the chicks are females – soon we should start collecting eggs!

Inspecting the cob house.

Six weeks later - chickies growing up.

Unwelcome addition - she lives outside the coop and
perches in a tree overnight.  Check out her beautiful tail.

On July 10^th Polly gave birth to little Nellie, who entered the world ready to go, up on her legs and following her dam around right away. Guy reminded me that the newborns of many roaming herd animals need to be able to move on with the herd immediately after their birth. 

Welcome Nellie.

Polly and Nellie in foreground. Pregnant Nina behind - we don't know when she'll give birth. 

Guy and I work together to milk Polly and so far we’ve gotten up to a half cup at a time. It’s not easy, but we’re determined to keep at it, and we like the milk a lot. It’s like a mild low fat cow’s milk; I don’t think I could tell the difference in a blind test. 

                                                       Please leave a comment.

                              Stay tuned for news on the cob house - next post soon.

A New Phase

June 5, 2015

Once again we want to put out an appeal to anyone who is

ready for a Brazilian adventure and eager to learn about cob or desirous of participating in a permaculture project – come join us for a week or a month, or even longer. To come from the US you will need a minimum of around $2000  for airfare and incidentals. We will pick you up at the airport in Brasilia and host you (good food and wonderful sleeping in a quiet dark space where the stream gurgles by and the stars jump out at you at night) in exchange for working alongside us, a few hours most days,  very flexible. We have people scheduled for this Fall and Winter, but right now June, July and August are wide open. Contact us through the Comment section below, or by email or Facebook.

A new phase begins

This is where we left off at the beginning of the rainy season. We covered the cob to protect it from the daily, sometimes torrential rains that we expect between November and April. 

The rainy season is finally coming to a close – the June 2^nd full moon may have brought in the dry season - and we’ve taken the cover off the cob house.  On Monday, June 1, we mixed our first mud cob and started building again. It took us four days to complete a full round and now we’re ready to work on the floor for a few days – a new task for us.

We started at the upper side, covering the foundation stones.

We wet down the dry cob so as to lay down a new layer.

The earth is waiting on the tarp to be trampled into cob.

About three inches higher on either side of the doorway.

A complete circle added. The cob at the far right starts at floor level, behind the pails, about 18 inches. The outside walls have a high foundation to protect them from the rain, so there's only three inches of cob on the high end.
 

We’re moving slowly, a bit tentatively since about five and half months ago I entered a period of chronic pain caused by degenerative disc and osteoarthritis symptoms, both cervical and lumbar. I’m finally better but more limited in my activities than before. I’ve had to give up some of my jobs such as tree hole and trench digging, and heavy weeding.

Re-cap for those who missed earlier phases (you can, of course, go back in the blog and see our work from the beginning, including references to some of the sources we’ve used):

At this point we’re building the first bedroom of a two bedroom house with bathroom, open space for living room and eating area, and ample porch/patio area. 

First we made trenches with a lining of gravel, over which we built the stone foundation. 

We determined the correct mix of earth, sand and straw for our cob mixture, and began building up the walls. Guy and I can do it alone, but we’ve enjoyed the company and help of several people: Sofia, Camila, Kimberly, Lisa, Hale, and Cesar. Victor, Sofia and some neighbors helped with the arduous task of collecting stones along the road and creeks.

Sofia and Kimberly putting down the first layer of cob.

We’ve spent less than US$500 (R$1500) for construction grade gravel, several bags of lime for the foundation mortar, and a load of stones to continue the foundation for the second bedroom. Soon we will need to build or buy doors and windows, and eventually wood and tiles for the roof. We’ll probably also pay for outside help – we hope to move more quickly now in order to finish at least the two bedrooms by the end of August, but even better the whole house by the end on the year!

The pit where we get our earth, an appropriate mixture of clay and sand, is close enough to the building site.

The sand mound that provides additional sand for the cob is left over from when our
brick house was built two and a half years ago.

What else is new? I’m in the middle of harvesting cotton from one plant and coffee from two little trees. 

Cotton and coffee.

 The lemon tree is full again of ripening lemons and a second tree is starting to produce this year after two years of pruning. Both trees were here when we arrived, in the middle of pasture land where the cows rubbed up against the trees, breaking branches and trampling new growth. Our new trees this year are a cashew, a cajá-manga, and a tamarind. And six banana plants forming a grove just back of our house, where the  water from the kitchen and shower drains.

Newly planted banana sprouting a new leaf.


Stay tuned for the next chapter: GOATS!

  

Written January 28 - Posted May 22                         

Every so often I lose touch with the significance of what Guy and I are doing here on this little piece of land. Then along comes a book or an article that puts things into perspective again, such as this article by Nafeez Ahmed: Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?

Nafeez writes about a study, partly sponsored by Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, that looks at the possibility that our global industrial civilization is headed for collapse.

[The study] finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations  are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

Permaculture, an approach to living sustainably on the Earth, could save us from the catastrophe of the collapse of western industrial civilisation, which sometimes seems awfully close. The news that the new director of NASA is a climate-denier adds a notch on the toppling timber.

Once again I understand our commitment here on this farm to be part of the global effort to bring some sanity and hope to our civilisation. We do not deal here in cynicism, consumerism, commodification of people (racism, sexism, pornography), selfies, swear words. We eat little meat and avoid processed foods. We are trying to find the simple and basic ways of meeting our need for shelter and food, comfort, friendship, entertainment, beauty.

Kimberly and Cesar transport gravel to cob construction site.

Guy supervises placement of gravel.

We do use technology and the internet, we have a car (flex: gas or alcohol). We use gas for cooking for now. We get electricity from the municipal grid.

But slowly we are moving in the direction of solar cooking as much as possible, as well as solar heat for our shower, and solar panels for electricity. We already use only a dry toilet system with composting of human waste in addition to a separate compost area for kitchen and garden waste. Our use of electricity is minimal: four overhead lights, six outlets for our gadgets, the refrigerator and an electric shower.

We tried a new technique: in the strip above we burned wood to char, then covered.
Thanks to Hale, who helped us with this project.

T

Eventually we successfully planted mustard, arrugula, lettuce, radishes and cilantro in
the char strip.

Gardening

continues to present us with constant disappointments: pests of many varieties (ants, caterpillars, grasshoppers, aphids, cutting worms, and other bugs we never see except for the damage they leave), and failure to thrive that we still don’t understand. We use no chemical fertilizers or pesticides as most of our neighbors do. We haven’t been able to find answers in books or on the internet for our specific problems, so as we find our own solutions we’ll be able to share with others in our area.

There’s actually a lot of interest in organic vegetables in this area for two reasons: a) the knowledge of the negative health effects of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is becoming more widespread and people decry that Brazilian food is the most contaminated in the world; and therefor b) the market for organic foods grows not only in the big cities but in the small towns like Cocalzinho as well.

Green coffee beans. We have two young plants and this is their first crop.

Our cotton plant has started to produce.

Cob House Update

November 2014 - Cob House Update 

My last post on the cob house was early in August, when we were still working on the foundation. Since then we've raised the inner walls up to the level of the outer stem walls (the part of the stone wall that rises above the ground), and have started to create the space for the door. However when it started raining in early November we found that we've had no dry periods long enough to lay down more cob. So the site is covered and we will probably have to wait until the end of the rainy season sometime in late March or April to make more cob. In the meantime we plan to gather more stones and build the foundation and stem walls for the second bedroom and the bathroom.

This is where we were at the end of July.

We still had to gather a lot of rocks, along the roadsides and creek beds. We'd traded our 1996 Peugeot in for a 2008 Fiat Uno - less trunk space but enough to carry a good load of rocks.

My son Victor helped out one Sunday afternoon, but he was disappointed that the rocks were so small.

Our neighbors - three generations - helped out with their pickup truck and a lot of good energy.

 Now we had a lot of rocks to choose from.

The stem walls started going up.


We used a mortar of earth and lime to hold the stones.

For first time stone builders we feel pretty good about our results.

Sofia and Kimberly prepare the first cob.

Now it's time to mix another batch. Kimberly brought the earth up from the pit, and Lisa, wielding the machete, cut the straw that gets mixed into the cob.

The other inside wall.

It was wonderful to have Sofia, Lisa and Kimberly help us get the cob walls started. Their energy and enthusiasm gave us a big boost. After they left Guy and I carried on.

We were blessed with the visit of a woofer (world wide organic farm volunteer), Hale from Turkey, who spent a week with us in September. Sofia and my granddaughter joined in on the weekend to make a cob.

Detail of the wall where the cob gets laid on the stem wall at the joint with the 

wall of the next room. Pieces of straw will help bind one wall to the other. 

We had to stop shortly after we reached this point, because of the heavy rains and high humidity. The space where the board lies is the opening for the door. 

And here you can see the outline of the second bedroom. We plan to work on the foundation and stem wall for this room and the joining bathroom while we await the rains to diminish some time in March or April.

Hopefully these photos give you a good idea of the simplicity of cob construction. It's work but something that everyone, old and young, can do, requiring very little in the way of tools and gadgets. Granted, when the walls get higher it will complicate matters, and we'll show you how we do it as we go along. Setting in the door and windows, laying the floor, and finishing the walls - all this lies ahead. So keep checking - it's a real adventure.

Construction inspector, Mr. Fofo, on the job.

Thanksgiving Day

      

                                                  Be sure to check the update on our cob house in a new post this weekend.

Thanksgiving Day 2014

View from our house - November 2014

We're thankful today for the privilege of living on this peaceful and abundant land, and the opportunity to work on projects that are meaningful to us and will hopefully add a few drops to the bucket of inspired efforts around the planet to build a more sustainable world. The Cerrado (Central Brazil) is indeed a special and beautiful place, threatened by big agribusiness including cattle, and soy, corn, and other monocultures. Our project is to develop a small (one acre) piece of farmland into a permaculture homestead. If this is the first time you're reading this blog I invite you to go back and at least skim the entries since August 2012.

We’ve been living on this little parcel of land for over two years now – the builders completed our house and we moved in at the end of October 2012.

Our house with a jaboticaba tree in the foreground and a large mango tree to the left side.

When we arrived here there were already five mature mango trees, as well as two jaboticabeiras and a lemon tree that I’ve pruned back to health after years of abuse by the cattle that pastured here. We’ve planted about fifteen fruit trees that have established themselves successfully, and another ten or so that are coming along fairly well. We also have a grape vine, a passion fruit vine, two neem trees, two bougainvilleas and a bamboo plant that are doing well. Two little coffee trees will produce their first small harvest this year.

One of two coffee trees we panted last year.

They're producing their first coffee beans.

 






























Our pets

Lolita joined us this September and had become best friends with Fofo. Both Guy and I enjoy our furry friends who give us affection and hours of entertainment. They each have a job to perform: Fofo keeps the place free of mice and rats, and Lolita warns us when anything strange makes an appearance. She’s still figuring things out – she barks at rain and shadows, and beetles and moths. And she’ll bark loudly when a person or animal approaches while at the same time she scampers to safety on the porch.

We’re hoping to put in some chickens soon but we have to figure out how to keep them safe as well as protecting our young vegetables from them. 

Lolita, who came to us as a puppy in September.

Fofo, who showed up on our doorstep in March.

Our biggest job this year has been the new cob construction we undertook as of May. The last two posts (June and August) show the planning phase, the clay model, the trial bench, and the beginning of the foundation. In a day or two I'll post an update of the cob house, but today I want to express our gratitude for those who helped us make cob and build the walls: Sofia, Kimberly, Lisa and Hale. Also, Victor who helped collect rocks, and both Enriques - son and father - who helped with the design.

Thanks for your visit. Please leave a comment if you have one, and tell others about this blog.