Hardscaping and Homesteading

My new site presented a lot of challenges in that it was a virgin hillside full of weeds. And in the winter the mud. So my first order of business was to lay stepping stones and provide cement blocks as boot scrapers. I then discovered a pile of shredded wood chips at the bottom of the property that I was free to use. Pushing them up the steep hill provided me with leg strengthening exercise.

I also wanted to create a garden and had seeded a semi-circle of fava beans just to see what would happen to them. Those that survived the slugs provided a row of beans that was also in effect a fence. The gophers bit through one bean stalk and left the rest alone. The deer didn't seem to like them either. I also had plants I brought from my previous space, agave succulents mostly and a bucket of soil in which I had mixed bokashi poop mix. This bucket provided me with a brace of tomato seedlings and I decided to build a planter of the scrap redwood cut-offs I had been saving from the rebuilding of my mother's deck a few years ago.

The planter was a mathematical challenge so I eyeballed it and was pleased with the resulting planter tower reinforced with hardware cloth on the bottom to ward off gophers. Having fended off the gophers I also put up netting to fend off the deer. As the fava beans came to maturity I seeded some scarlet runner beans which are barely making it through the slug fest. In my hopes I took out some landscaping poles I had long had in storage and lashed together a bean teepee.

My gardening attempts were proving to be a wonderful pastime during this stay at home quarantine, giving me something to look forward to checking on every morning as I monitored the gopher activity and collected the soil they mounded up. It took over ten buckets of this collected soil to fill my planter. I filled the planter with tomato seedlings and had more bean seedlings of another variety and assorted other seedlings in my homemade newspaper pots.

These pots turned out to be a good choice. The seedlings thrived in them and their roots easily found their way out of the bottom of the bots so were not root bound.

I disassembled the toilet after months of looking at it as a discarded toilet as a note of irony from living with a composting toilet. It had come out of my landlord's bathroom when he remodeled.

The upturned toilet had a certain sculptural kneeling temple elephant look to it.

Before the ground could dry up much more I decided to mulch the patio area in front of the tiny house where my battery bank lived thinking to plant camomile between the pavers, but the ground was already too hard for much more than one.










I also got it into my head that I would recycle all the tree clippings from my fire maintenance chores last fall by incorporating them into a hugelklutur bed which I dug out on contour just above the incline of my field. Cutting up all the little branches was time consuming, but was a meditative activity and it was done in a couple of days. This activity also allowed me to get to know the neighbors as they walked by with their dogs on this busy corner. One even remembered he'd seen me on TV. And another complemented me on my homebuilt planter tower. Just about everybody has made me feel at home in this mountain retreat full of DIY homesteading sorts.

With all this activity I was exhausted, but happy wth my plant companions.

Outdoor Expansion And A Party

I promised my writer's group that I would have a house warming party two years ago when I told them of my tiny house adventures. They were all very intrigued so when I met up with one of the members for a hike over the summer she encouraged me to do it and said she would help. The group had disbanded several years ago and we hadn't had a reunion in some time so before the summer slipped away we had our party. The prep for it was nearly as intense as my original work on the interior and took just as much brain busting for the space planning.

The only way to seat six people was to build an outdoor table, but the central space was taken up by two kiwi trees. They were too close together to permit a table top to be placed between them, but eventually I found a way.

I got my folding work bench out of storage and it just fit between the trees. From there I could build a table top around the trees using what wood I had on hand.

It was largely a matter of fitting a board on the workbench that would then support the "leaves" of the table. I also happened to have a framed board given away by an artist that fit perfectly in the remaining space between the trees.

For a table cloth I laid down two pieces cut from a canvas drop cloth we bought to cover the furniture once when the dogs were still chewing on things.

As a finishing touch I hung a tapestry of a pastoral scene that I thought was very tongue in cheek. A client off loaded it to me.

Then I bumped out one of my fence pieces and put one of my benches outside for seating.











I also felt the need to have a washing up station to do the dishes afterwards which would be the perfect opportunity to use the fish cleaning table I got off e-bay to use with my solar hot water unit and to use as a laundry table should I ever feel compelled to do off grid laundry.

This is a folding table with integrated sink. It comes with a detachable faucet that connects up with a hose. I used the top of my storage box as a dish drain. The faucet is the selling point of this unit as it allows for water to be turned on and off at the point of use.










I hooked up my homemade solar hot water heater to the faucet, but there was not enough sun to keep it warm throughout the day. This was a project I had been meaning to do because it meant cutting a hose in half and finding fittings to connect it to the black irrigation hose. I did manage it, but later in the summer the fittings popped off.

And finally I provided guest facilities behind a privacy curtain made from bent conduit pipe that I stuck into a pot of dirt.

The commode I borrowed from my mum from when she broke her ankle. I modified it with a $50 urine funnel I ordered from England off e-bay and never used.

Because the urine separator would only fit metric fittings it was near impossible to find a hose that would fit it. Finally I found a funnel that would do. In fact it perfectly connected into the gasoline container I had. 

Behind the separator I put a waste basket partially filled with straw for a poop bucket. 

Two of my guests used the toilet with good humor. It actually would have been fine for them to use my toilet inside, but this made things less complicated with the kitchen being in use.

The weather was still just warm enough. Everyone brought beverages, salads et al and I made fried chicken. I got them all inside for a tour and they could see that I had indeed managed to fit my whole life into this tiny house. At least my writing life. They loved the hammock where I do my serious writing. Two of the members had moved into retirement homes. One commented that she thought her apartment was small, but now she could feel it was spacious by comparison. And that was one of the messages I wanted to impart. Here is our group photo taken with my camera on a tripod attached to the trellis.

(This post has been backdated to keep a record of the timeline. Actual date of writing is 12/24/18).