In case you ever wandered, you can host overnight guests when you live in a tiny house! My friend Seth's sister Katie and nephew Caleb came to visit the mountains and stayed at my place along with him. So we had three adults and a child sharing my little place for a few days.
It was fun even while being crowded. I and I think everyone else enjoyed the time. But I don't know how some of you with families do that full time. It was crowded and while I realize that if you were all living there full time, some of the people would not be living out of suitcases and such. Still, I'd have to say, that's a little tighter than I'd prefer to live long term.
We had a lot of dinners around the fire pit outside which of course gave us plenty of space.
Seth and my neighbor Clay helped Caleb catch his first trout on fly rod.
They also spent a lot of time looking for obsidian and arrowheads along the river banks.
Roasting cherries over the camp fire (the healthy alternative to marshmallows) also consumed some time.
It was fun having guests and I hope to do it again before long!
There is a wildfire burning close to my house right now. My location is in no danger from it because the fire would have to totally change directions and then hop a major river, but depending on the wind direction, there has been a ton of smoke at my house. At times making it hard to breath and leaving my throat burning. And even making the trees around my clearing look hazy from the house. Above is a shot I managed to snap of the full moon through some smoke. That spot in front of the moon is a firefighting helicopter with a water bucket below that's headed to dump a load on one edge of the fire.
Here you can see a few little clouds in the sky, but the ones on the horizon that look like thunder heads are all smoke.
The same thing with the moon rising through the smoke and haze.
One of the times the smoke was rolling across the valley towards my place, almost totally obscuring the opposite mountains.
It's pretty early in the summer for big fires and hopefully we get some rain. The forecast is all hot and dry right now though, so it's not looking promising.
The 2016 Tiny House Jamboree is rapidly approaching. I will be there, and I will be teaching a workshop on off grid living. I'm finalizing my plans for what to talk about (there will be a Q & A part too! ) and would love your input. Please comment with the top questions you have about the topic of off grid life. Especially if you will be there, but even if you won't, I'd love to know what people are most interested in hearing about. Comment away!
Yesterday I built a water ram. If you are not familiar with the concept, a water ram is a pretty cool device. It pumps water uphill using the force of gravity to make the pump run. No electricity or gas or any other power required. I followed a design by MrTeslonian on youtube and was far too lazy to do any of the math myself, just using his work and copying it.
A water ram is made from pretty basic pipe fittings which most people will say you can find at any hardware store. This is probably true unless you live in a remote small town like me and actually have to find a bunch of them on Amazon. Above you can see the pvc pressure chamber as the fittings go from a three inch pipe down to a one inch to screw onto the rest of the ram which is all one inch fittings.
This is not a full tutorial on how to build one, lots of people have already made those if you are interested. But you can see the basic setup. A one inch intake at the bottom right, the two swinging check valves facing in opposite directions, the open top where the above pressure chamber will attach, and the 1/2 inch output connection.
Once I put everything together and got a good tight seal on all the connections, a friend built me this cool platform and stabilizing frame so I can set my pump anywhere without it falling over.
I was pretty sure it would work, but never having built something like this myself, I could not wait to find out for sure! So we rigged up a 6 foot fall of water coming into the pump with some pvc, a ladder, and a garden hose (indoors because it was snowing outside all day yesterday) and a 1/2 inch output that we strung up to about 14 feet in hight. Rigging up the test took more than twice as long as assembling the actual pump.
And it worked! Below you can see the water pumping though and the excess running down the floor drain. Once this is sitting beside the creek below my house, it will simply drain the excess water right back into the creek. A water ram only pumps about 10% of the water that comes into it up hill, but since if runs 24/7 with no external power, that becomes a lot of water!
Here's the stream flowing out of our little rigged up output hose. It will need to push a bigger head than this test to get to my garden, but it's looking like that will be no problem with the volume of the stream coming out here.
Now we just have to get an intake pipe set up in the creek. This may have to wait just a bit thanks to all the creeks in the area being close to max flood stage with spring runoff at the moment. Below is a short video clip of it running during our test.
I will update you all once this baby is settled into it's home and actually working. But still, I feel a little giddy that I was able to put together something that will pump water.
As of two days ago not, there is no snow left in my little clearing. All these shots are from the last two days. The yard is developing a greener haze every day.
This shady spot was the last to loose it's snow, and actually in this shot you can just see a tiny spot at the base of the one tree still. That is now gone. I've got my chairs and swing all back out and ready to have another bonfire. That object over on the far left in my new baby Traeger grill. I'm really excited about cooking on that this summer. I'd heard of them in the past, but thought they were probably just a fancy overpriced and over hyped thing. That was until my friend cooked me dinner on his. I was sold instantly!
The hay covered raised beds I made last fall along with my wood chipped pathways are looking good. That snow on the right edge, by the way, does not count as being in my clearing, since it's in the brush and trees off to the side of the garden. :)
My rhubarb looks great pushing up through it's mulch and I can't wait to have some to eat!
I have a few hundred little garlic plants up, all five varieties that I planted last fall. This is good because I use a lot of garlic in my cooking. They are such tough little guys that they were pushing green shoots through the snow before it even melted!
Manipi still enjoys snoozing on the porch in the sun, and though you can't see most of them in this shot, there are a lot of little plants coming up in those planters.
And we've had some stunning full moon nights. This is the moon rise across the valley from my house.
This is what my house looks like at midnight with the moon shining down through the clouds and trees.
The next night, there was not a cloud in sight. These are more midnight shots. (Yes I am naturally a night owl.) I'm always amazed to be living somewhere you can see this many stars, even with a full moon!
Sandhill or Whooping cranes are kind of amazing birds. An adult male like this one stand 4 feet high at the shoulders. So with that long neck, he's at eye level with your average 6 foot tall man.
This pair has been hanging out in a field close to my house. I'm hoping to get some shots of chicks a little later in the spring! They usually have two chicks, but these guys also live 20-40 years, so I wonder how long this particular pair has been nesting here?
While they mostly eat leftover grain and such, they are omnivores and I think here the female has just grabbed a worm. Those long stiletto like beak are something you want to stay away from though. They have the power to pierce a human skull with one strike I am told.
Then there is the tri-color fox that's been hanging around too. Hunting mice and chizzlers in the grassy meadows.
Not wanting to be too close for sure, but a very curious little guy none the less.
As I was photographing him, he decided to approach the pair of sandhills. He just trotted behind them for a bit. Whenever they moved, he followed. While a fox may get an unprotected chick every now and then, there is no way he'd take on a adult. The birds were totally unconcerned by his presence.
Bluebirds were flitting all around me, but this was the only one to sit still enough for a quick shot.
The clouds had been rapidly rolling in during all this, and now it started to pour. The fox headed for the shelter of the trees and I soon retreated to the dry inside of my van.
All these critters are part of what I love so much about where I live!
