Author: ryochiji

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Journal: February 21, 2011

The last couple of days have been fairly uneventful. The weather wasn’t great yesterday, so I spent most of the day on my computer working on my software project. I finally got out for a bit around dusk and went for a little walk. Today, I went for a walk in the afternoon, and came upon a cluster of nice (dead, but mostly still upright so free of snow) mountain mahogany trees, so I went back to camp, picked up my saw and a pack to go collect some firewood. As I was heading back to the trees, a startled jackrabbit ran off from a nearby bush. I instinctively reached for my gun, but quickly realized that what I had cradled in my arms was my cordless reciprocating saw — hardly the right tool for hunting rabbits.

I noticed that half a bag of potatoes I’d left in Hut 1.0 overnight for one night had started to go bad. I guess they froze during that one night spent in Hut 1.0, then thawed after I moved them to Hut 2.1 and started to rot. I boiled some of the worst ones over the stove last night, and fried them up for breakfast this morning. They tasted a little dry, but were otherwise edible. I’m currently making potato and leek soup with the rest of the potatoes that might’ve gone bad. I still have the other half of the bag that I’d stored in Hut 2.1 to start with, which are fine and should last a while. I also have a couple of pounds of sweet potatoes, so I’m pretty good in the potato department. Otherwise in the food department, the pot of curry I made last week lasted me 4 dinners, and I had the last of it last night. I’ve also discovered that making pancake batter in a ziplock bag works great. It spares me the trouble (and water) of cleaning a bowl, and I can throw the unused portions in the cooler.

My electricity supply is being constrained somewhat by the overcast weather. I used a lot of power yesterday when I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening on my computer, which, combined with the overcast weather today, put me in a slight energy deficit (i.e. I’ve used more power than I’ve generated). My battery array is still above 12 Volts so I’ve got plenty of power, but I decided to spend the evening with the lights off today to conserve power. I’m still just using the single 100W panel, and haven’t set up the new 45W panels yet. I figure if I could get by with less, I might as well.

It looks like more snow and colder temperatures are predicted for later this week. I’ll probably go gather some more firewood tomorrow, just to shore up my stockpile, even though I think I have enough to last me at least another 2-3 weeks. I’m actually quite happy about the snow. In my ideal world, it’s either snowy or sunny, but never rainy. Now that I think of it, that’s kinda how it’s been up here.

Overall, things are going surprisingly well. I haven’t yet faced any major issues as I enter my second week of my continuous stay here, and I’m enjoying each day, even if I’m not being as productive as I perhaps could be… My floor is still half unfinished, but I’m sure I’ll work up the motivation to finish it one of these days. After all, I’m not in any particular hurry. But, other than that, I’ve got plenty of food, plenty of water, and so far, plenty of firewood to stay warm. So, basically all my needs are met, and I have no concerns there.

I guess the one thing that’s worth noting is that I’m still adjusting to having internet access up here. It’s certainly a mixed blessing, though it hasn’t been as detrimental to my life here as I feared it may be. Though, I still spend more time on the computer, and less time reading or simply pondering than I used to. It’s not necessarily bad, but different. But then, a lot of things have changed in the year and half that I’ve been on this property. I used to live in a tent, without decent electrical lighting, without internet, without cell phone access, without heating. It’s hard to say that things are worse, but it seems that something is lost every time I add a new convenience or comfort. But, that’s what this journey is about. It’s about finding that right balance for myself, and it’s an on-going process.

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Pondering the State of Nature… in Nature

The weather was beautiful this afternoon, so I went on a long-ish walk. I headed north up the clearing in front of my camp, where, just beyond visible range of my cabin, I found dozens of deer tracks, coming and going from every which way. It almost seemed like they’d gathered for a little cocktail party, or perhaps a protest of some sort, as those seem to be in vogue these days.

There’s this steep ravine that cuts across my property, west to east, that splits my property roughly into two-thirds and one-thirds. My camp is on the one-third side, and since I rarely cross that ravine, I’m generally confined to a relatively smaller portion of my property, and there are acres and acres that I probably haven’t even seen yet.

Today, as I was walking down the ravine, I noticed a rock cropping up on the north-side (the less visited side), so I clambered up the steep slope to see what I could see. As I reached the top, a frightened flock of birds beat a hasty retreat. When I said “beat”, I meant that quite literally, as the flapping of their wings reverberated through the crisp air like a dozen drums.

I didn’t get a good look at the birds, but the awkwardly loud and hectic flapping suggested that these birds were pretty big, and also not entirely accustomed to this “flying” thing they were attempting. Though I know little about fowl, I somehow imagined that these birds might make for good eating. If they’re sticking around this time of year, they must have a nice layer of fat to keep them warm, or so I imagined, and I could almost taste sizzling fat and juicy bird flesh on my palate (though, on second thought, I realized I was remembering the Peking Duck I had in Beijing last summer…).

As I had my shotgun with me, it occurred to me that I could try to hunt these birds. Though, I quickly realized that it would probably be illegal to do so, this being California where hunting seems quite heavily regulated. Besides which, I didn’t know what kind of bird I’d be shooting at, so there was no way to know what kind of regulations even applied. So, it seemed safe to assume that it’d be illegal.

Standing there among the snow and trees, I contemplated the incongruity of these two realities I faced. On the one hand, there I was in the middle of nowhere. I had a shotgun, conveniently loaded with birdshot. Beyond those bushes were birds that sounded tasty. I was hungry. Shooting those birds seemed like the most rational thing I could do. Yet, I had to contend with the other reality, which lay beyond my property borders. Those birds, though presently on my land, are legally property of the people of California, and therefore regulated (most likely) by the California Department of Fish and Game.

So, I turned around, and trudged off feeling somewhat defeated; a man living in the woods, who can’t hunt. I might as well have been a wolf without fangs, or a mountain lion without claws. While this seemed absurd, it occurred to me that we muzzle dogs and declaw cats. We’ve domesticated ourselves as much as we’ve domesticated wolves into dogs and lions into cats. To be a modern human, as it turns out, is to be something not quite human. It’s almost as if we’re not good enough to be, well, us.

Modern humans, it seems to me, are an oddly self-defying and self-denying species. We find ways to feel guilty about everything, and this seems particularly true of Americans. We’re guilty about food, and we’re guilty about sex — two things a species can’t do without. We even find ways to feel guilty about drinking water. And while some may point at our country’s Puritan roots, this belief that we somehow can’t be trusted can be traced to early political philosophers who influenced the rise of modern governments, including our own. The 17th century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, argued that the State of Nature for man was one of perpetual conflict, and famously described life in such a state as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” He then argued that a better life could only be possible in a civil society, one in which we must cede our rights for the sake of peace.

If I recall Hobbes correctly from my college readings, he argues that, by nature, we are in a state of constant war because each individual acts to serve their own interests only. In other words, in the State of Nature, I would shoot that bird because I want to eat it. Conflicts arise if others also want that bird, and when two guys with shotguns fight over a bird, well, at least one of their lives could indeed end up nasty, brutish, and short. And even if nobody was there to fight me over that specific bird, humans have hunted animals into extinction, including on this very continent. We all know about the White Man killing off the plains buffalo, but less well known is the strong possibility that Native Americans (or their ancestors) drove other large tasty fuzzy animals (like the wooly mammoth) into extinction many thousands of years before those Puritans showed up in their funny hats and giant belt buckles. I don’t know about others, but I wish we still had mammoths. And if the California Department of Fish and Game (and Large Fuzzy Animals) had been around 15,000 years ago, it may very well be that we’d actually still have mammoths, and saber tooth tigers and North American lions, and other such wonderful beasts. So, perhaps Hobbes does have a point after all.

There are people in our country today who want a smaller government, fewer regulations, and less intrusion. As I stood there today with my shotgun in hand, I wished I could simply shoot whatever I wanted, when I wanted. But, if we are to deserve such a society, that is, a society that is slightly closer to the State of Nature, then we must prove Hobbes wrong. If we are to cede fewer rights and still get along with each other and our environment, we must each act responsibly and intelligently. If we don’t want the Department of No You Can’t to regulate us, we must regulate ourselves, and act not only out of our own self interest, but also in the interest of our fellow man and our future generations.

The question is, can we?

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Day 2

I’m pretty tired, so this’ll probably be a short post…

Had another late-ish start today, mostly on the account of having trouble getting out of my nice warm bed to brave the crisp air. Eventually, the combined realization that 1) it was sunny out, and 2) my solar panel was pointed in the wrong direction, got me out of bed in a hurry. I had my usual eggs, greens, and tortillas for breakfast. The eggs were the last of the dozen I’d bought in January, and were fine despite being 3 weeks old, and having been left in freezing temperatures. The tortillas, however, had frozen, but other than a few at the top having frozen in weird shapes, they tasted fine.

I spent the early afternoon gathering more snow, and collecting some twigs and branches that I use for kindling. Before starting Project 31, I had 2 buckets filled with kindling, but already burnt through one. Since the sun had dried out some branches, I decided to fill up that bucket again, so I still have the other bucket. I also have a large pile of branches under a tarp, if dry branches aren’t otherwise available.

Later in the afternoon, it started snowing again, so I worked some more on the hut floor while listening to music. At this point, half the floor is done and insulated. The raised floor feels much, much more solid than the original floor, partially because the joists on the raised floor are spaced closer together and are laid perpendicular to the original joists to spread the load, but also because the OSB is oriented in the right way (after all, the “O” in “OSB” stands for Oriented). I still need to do the other half, though it’s more like 3/4 of the half since the area near the door will not be raised. The lowered floor near the entrance is a standard feature in Japanese houses, where you’re expected to take off your shoes. Your shoes stay in the lowered area near the door, and the height difference also helps keep mud and dirt out of the rest of the residence – a feature I intend to take advantage of in Hut 2.1.

In general, I’m feeling good. Even though this is Day 2, I got here on Monday, so I’ve been here 4 full days now, and I’m settling in. It’s nice to have everything I need here, and not have to worry about going into town, or the roads not being clear (seeing how they haven’t been anyhow). There’s also a certain peace of mind in being committed to staying here. I get emails about things happening in the city, and normally, there’d be a pang of doubt: a part of me would wonder if I might have a better time there than here. But, now, there isn’t. I simply file away those emails, because I am here, not there.

29 more days to go.

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Day 1

I guess this is technically the second day, but since yesterday was Day Zero, today would be Day 1. The idea is that I can leave on Day 31, while if I’d started counting at 1, it wouldn’t be 31 full days until Day 32. Though, I’m sure in a few days it won’t make a huge difference either way.

Let’s see. I didn’t accomplish a whole lot during the day today. I got a late start, so instead of cooking breakfast, I just toasted a bagel, slathered some cream cheese and strawberry jam, and scoffed it down with some coffee. The only other noteworthy day-time activities were a couple of short walks I went on around the property. It stayed more or less below freezing so all the trees are still mostly covered in snow, which is really quite pretty. There were a few snow showers, and during one of them, I just stood in the doorway with the door open, and watched giant snow flakes fall silently to the ground. While on my walks, I tried to spot animal tracks, but all I saw was a single deer track on a known deer trail. Normally I’d see some rabbit trails, but I didn’t see any today. Maybe it was too cold last night, and they just stayed in (I wouldn’t blame them). Or, perhaps I was too distracted by the scenery, that I missed the tracks that were there. I think this is about as gorgeous as my property gets, and walking around the snow-covered woods made me feel like I was in a fairytale (though, hopefully one without big bad wolves, or witches that try to eat me for dinner).

For dinner, I cooked some Japanese-style curry, with pork, onions, potatoes, carrots, and brussel sprouts. I briefly sautéd the ingredients in a pan over the propane stove, just enough to get the meat browned, but then let it simmer in a pot on the wood stove for a few hours. I made a big pot full, so there’s plenty left. I’ll probably leave the pot on the stove tonight, so that the pork can cook a little more until it’s nice and tender.

Speaking of food, I’m still trying to figure out where to put everything. I’ve got all the meats and dairy in a single ice chest outside, and I’m not too worried about that unless it gets really warm again. I have some vegetables in my unpowered fridge, also outside, which seems to stay reasonably warm even when it gets really cold out. The rest of the veggies I have split up between Hut 1.0 and Hut 2.1. Hut 1.0 is totally unheated, so it gets as cold as it does outside, which is to say, everything freezes. Hut 2.1 is obviously heated, but most of the heat rises, so I suspect temperatures down on the floor rarely go above 40 degrees, but probably also rarely falls too far below freezing. I have a bunch of bananas up on the loft where it’s warm, since I’ve learned that they just turn black without ripening if left in the cold…

In general, not knowing how long things will last makes it harder to ration my supplies. A part of me wants to use up the fresh veggies while they’re still good, but I also don’t want to use up all my vegetables early on, and only be left with canned goods for the second half. Of course, the worst case would be to let things spoil, but I guess I’ll just have to keep a close eye on my supplies, and use them wisely.

I realized that I hadn’t done a very good job of utilizing the stove’s heat yesterday, so I did a little better today. I’ve had both burners occupied for most of the evening, partially to cook, but also to melt potfuls of snow. I’ve decided to try and get as much snowmelt as possible, because it’s a lot cleaner (and better tasting) than the old rainwater I have in my bins. On the downside, my wood consumption rate is much higher than it was in previous weeks. Part of it is that it’s just simply colder than it was in January (right now, it’s 12F/-11C), but I’m also using the stove more for cooking, so I burn more wood to get it nice and hot. One other thing I’ve come to realize is that, ideally, I should use different kinds of wood for cooking. I’ve been gathering mountain mahogany, which is the densest wood on my property and therefore burns the slowest. That’s great for heating, but when I’m cooking, I want the stove to get hot for short periods at a time, and for that, oak and juniper would probably work better.

I still haven’t set up my 45W solar array, so I’m still just running off of my single 100W monocrystaline panel, which obviously hasn’t been producing much power during these snowy cloudy days. I spent most of the evening with my lights off to conserve electricity, and ran my laptop off its own battery power. My battery array still hasn’t dropped below 12.4 Volts, so I’ve got plenty of power, but I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I get decent sunshine, so I might as well conserve if I can.

Okay, that’s it for today. 30 days to go.

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Day Zero

Project 31 is off to a good start. I wanted to spend a month here during the winter, and I’m getting exactly what I asked for. After weeks of warm and sunny days, winter is finally back. It snowed about 4-5 inches last night, then after a beautifully sunny (albeit short) interlude this morning, it snowed another 5-6 inches. It’s about 16F (-9C) outside, which is respectably winter-like.

I started the day with a short walk around my property to take in the snowy scenery, snapping pictures along the way. But, I couldn’t idly stand by as the sun melted the snow away, so I also spent some time piling snow into my water bins. I packed snow into 5 gallon buckets to make snow-cylinders, which stack up nicely. After brunch (tortillas with scrambled eggs, cheese, and mixed greens sauted with mushrooms and onions, topped with salsa verde and yogurt), it started snowing again, so I retreated to Hut 2.1 to do some work inside. I continued work on the floor, accompanied by music blaring out of the new iPod speakers I’d picked up earlier this week. I’ve been thinking of getting speakers for a while, but it seemed like a luxury item that I could ill afford. After much consideration, I decided to get them for Project 31, partially because they were down to $39 at Costco, but also because music could be a real morale booster. I’m happy to say, I had a great time singing along (poorly) to some of my favorite songs. After all, one of the perks of being out in the middle of nowhere is that you can listen to music really loud and sing along poorly without worrying about your neighbors or roommates throwing rotten tomatoes at you.

People have asked what I planned on doing for a month up here, and the truth is, I have more to do than I probably will actually accomplish. Obviously, there’s a lot more work to do on Hut 2.1, and apart from that, there are various chores, like gathering snow, collecting or cutting firewood, and filtering water. As far as entertainment goes, I’m trying to not waste too much time online, and will try to get through some of the 20 or so books I borrowed from my friends. One of my friends also lent me her guitar and a book about playing guitar, so I spent over an hour this evening repeatedly strumming the G7, C, A7 and D chords (the first 4 chords in the book). That’s another thing your neighbors might throw tomatoes at you for, but out here, nobody can even hear me. Not being very musically inclined, I doubt a new career as a guitarist is in my cards, but making your fingers do new things is a pretty good exercise for one’s brain. Along similar lines, I also have yarn and a crochet hook, if I want to learn how to crochet (and also make myself something warm). And if none of those activities seem interesting, I also have a software project I’m working on and would like to finish while up here.

And then, of course, there are meals to be cooked. I’m going to try and cook as many of my meals as possible, at least while I still have fresh ingredients, which means I could easily spend 20-30 minutes cooking a couple of times a day. Other than brunch, which I mentioned earlier, I also cooked dinner today. Granted, it was just rice and stir-fry (with onions, carrots, brussel sprouts, zucchini, mushrooms, asparagus, green beans, and turkey, seasoned with a secret soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and rum sauce), but, it still took close to 30 minutes to prepare. So, including the time it takes to eat, I could easily spend a couple of hours a day just cooking and eating.

Ultimately, though, I’m not here to live a productive little life. In fact, my goal is to slack off, and show that you can get away with it, at least for a while. In order for me to come out the other end of the 31 days, I need to eat, drink, and keep warm. Anything that doesn’t directly relate to those three things isn’t all that important. Work ethics in western societies can be traced to Christianity, and the belief that hard work will lead to either salvation or grace, depending on the denomination (or so I’m told). If you believe that hard work in this life will lead to something better in your next life, by all means, go at it. But, personally, I believe we only get one shot at life, and you can spend it working, or you can spend it trying to do something interesting, or fun, or awesome, or different. Which is to say, I’m not going to judge my 31 days based on how productive I was. In fact, I’m not going to judge it at all, other than based on the goals I set up for the project, and try to simply appreciate it for what it ends up being.

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D-1: Final Preparations

I got back to Serenity Valley yesterday, after spending a little under a week in the cities celebrating my birthday with friends and soaking up human contact before entering Project 31. I was surprisingly successful on both counts, and managed to squeeze in a birthday brunch, birthday dinner, a hike to the beach, lunch with ex-coworkers and friends, a BBQ, and a party all in a few days. After having spent over 3 weeks up here mostly alone, it was good to see friends, and I feel better prepared, emotionally, for a month of isolation.

As far as logistics goes, I think I’m just about ready. I got a ton of food yesterday on the way back, though I haven’t pulled everything out of the car yet, so I haven’t itemized everything that I ended up getting. I’ll post the list once I have it, but it’ll be a long list. Rather than buying large quantities of the same stuff, I bought small quantities encompassing a wide variety. I figured diversifying would be a good idea, since I don’t know what I’d be in the mood to eat, and also because I don’t want to risk losing a ton of one thing if it turns out that it doesn’t keep as long as I think. My original list was pretty light on dry goods, but I ended up buying a lot of cans and other non-perishable goods, mostly as backup.

I also hooked up my new Xantrex inverter last night, so now I have real sine wave AC power in Hut 2.1. I still have the modified sine-wave inverter as a backup, in case the Xantrex experiences a premature death. I also ended up buying another 45 Watt solar panel kit from Harbor Freight (the same one I bought then returned a couple of weeks ago). I haven’t yet set it up because it’s been super windy today, and I didn’t want to walk around with large flat fragile objects. Once I have that up, I’ll have two sets of panels, again, for redundancy. Hopefully the addition of amorphous panels will boost output on cloudy days.

Today, I also got my DIY water filter set up. It’s just a plastic bottle with gravel, charcoal and sand, and I was somewhat disappointed when the water coming out ended up being dirtier than the water going in. The gravel was dirty, and even though I rinsed them a few times, I think it took a while for all the mud to come off. I ended up passing a gallon or so of water through the filter before the water started coming out reasonably clear. If my hypothesis is correct (that the filter needed cleaning first), I should get cleaner water the more I use it. Of course, I’ll also be passing the water through a Britta filter and boiling it too. The first pass using the sand-gravel filter is mostly to remove the big stuff, which should keep the Britta filter from clogging up too quickly.

The weather’s gotten rather nasty, but I suppose the month of nice weather we had was more of an anomaly. I woke up several times this morning, starting right around dawn, with strong gusts slamming into my cabin. The structure would noticeably shudder with each gust, which was a little disconcerting, though I was also concerned the wind might knock over the chimney. Although the winds today were about as bad as it normally gets, I might reinforce some weak-points in the structure, just to be safe. Otherwise, it was gusty but clear during the day, up until late afternoon when it started raining. It’ll be good for my water supply, but I would rather have snow, which was forecasted, but has so far failed to materialize. Perhaps the rain will turn to snow later tonight when it gets colder. It also amuses me that, while sunshine is good for my electricity supply, rain and snow are good for my water supply. In some ways, I win either way. I guess that’s one of the benefits of taking advantage of what nature can provide…

In any case, I think I’m pretty much ready to start Project 31. After all, there’s no sense in eating my Project 31 food and spending days alone if they’re not going to count. So, tomorrow (Wednesday February 16) will be Day Zero. If all goes well, I can come out on… March 19th.

Wow. That really is a month, huh. I guess it hadn’t really sunk in, even though I’ve been spending weeks preparing. I’m not too concerned about logistical issues. I’m sure I’ll find things that I wish I had, equipment will break, and things’ll just go plain wrong. But, I’m pretty good at solving problems and improvising. If it’s a problem that has a solution, I’m not worried. I predict that the biggest challenges won’t be logistical, but emotional. The longest I’ve stayed here without leaving, so far, has only been a week or so. Granted, that’s usually been because I try to go online at least once a week to update my blog, and to make sure I haven’t missed any important emails. Now that I have internet on my property, I obviously don’t have that excuse. But, over the past year or so, I can also remember times when I just got in a funky mood, and went to the city to get a change of scenery. If that were to happen over the next month, well, I’ll have to find some other way to unfunk my mood. One way or the other, it’ll be a challenging month. Let’s see how it goes…

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Food for a month

I’m down to my last few days before starting Project 31. I’ll be going on what will likely be my last supply run on Monday. I’d originally planned on “starting” Project 31 three days before the official Day Zero, so that I have a few days during which I could still leave if I think of anything missing. But, if current weather forecasts are accurate, I may be snowed in after Monday, so whatever I get on that run might end up being all I’ll have for a month.

Fortunately, I’ve got all my gear, so I’m down to just picking up a few odds and ends at the hardware store, then going on a big grocery trip to buy a month’s worth of food. This is easier said than done, as I’ve never planned a grocery list to last me a month. In fact, I don’t really even plan a week at a time, because I know I can go to town if I need more (though, generally, I buy enough fresh provisions to last me 5-7 days, and have weeks’ worth of non-perishables as backup).

The other limitation is that I’m not using my fridge/freezer, which means I need to buy food that won’t spoil in weeks of sub-freezing temperatures (which could be tough on vegetables), or above-freezing temperatures (which could limit the shelf-life of meats). Stocking up on non-perishable foods would be easy, but I don’t want to eat out of cans everyday, and having fresh food and diverse options is pretty important to me from a quality of life perspective. So part of the exercise is anticipating the kinds of foods I might crave, and to ensure I have the ingredients to cook them, and to make sure the ingredients last me as long into my stay as possible.

Obviously, there are trade-offs there. For example, in addition to fresh meat, which may not last longer than 2 weeks, I’ll have salted and cured meats that will last a month if kept cool (and I ignore “best before” dates). Instead of my favorite leafy vegetables, I might add root vegetables that have a better chance of surviving freezing temperatures without going bad. Instead of fresh milk, I’ll have canned milk and dry milk. And so on and so forth. There are some things that simply won’t last past the first week or two, and that’s ok too. At least if I can have, say, yogurt during week two, I’d only be without it for a couple of weeks thereafter. In some cases, it’s hard to guess what the shelf life would be (as advertised shelf lives are all super conservative), so finding out how long things actually last would be an interesting experiment in itself.

So, with all that said, here’s my list so far:

Grains/carbs
10lb bag of rice, 3 loaves of bread, 80-100 tortillas, one bag of bagels

Fresh Vegetables
4lb carrots, mushrooms, 2lb zucchini, kabocha squash, 5lb onions, 5-10lb potatoes, 3 bags mixed “southern greens”, 2 heads garlic, fresh ginger, 2 heads of cabbage, 3 bags brussel sprouts, 3lb beets, 2 tomatoes, 3 avocados, 4 bell peppers, cauliflower

Meats
3-5lb pork, 1-2lb chicken, 1-2lb ground turkey, 2lb sausage, 2lb sandwich meats, 3lb salted pork or bacon, 6 cans of fish, 3 pouches of chicken meat, 36 eggs

Dairy
2 boxes dry milk, 4lb cheese, tub of yogurt, cream cheese, 2lb butter (salted & unsalted)

Dry goods, non-perishables, misc
canned soup, canned chili, ready-to-eat indian food, chef boyardee, canned coconut milk, energy bars, chocolate, peanut butter, jam, honey, maple syrup, flour, sugar, baking soda & powder, yeast, dried fruits, nuts

I’m sure I’ll add more when I’m at the grocery store, so this is kind of a baseline. Ultimately, I’m also not terribly worried because this is mostly a quality of life problem, not one of survival. I’ll have plenty of calories to survive off of — it’s mostly a question of whether I’ll have a high enough quality diet to be reasonably content. I also realize that no list will ever be complete, and that by day 15 or 20, there will be something I’d want that I simply don’t have. And that’s okay too, because the whole point of Project 31 is to discover the things I’m missing. In fact, I’d be pretty happy if by day 15 or 20 what I’m missing most is sushi, and not something actually more critical.

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Internet! Lights!

As those of you following me on Facebook or Twitter would know, the big news this week is that Serenity Valley has Internet! In the previous post, I said I was going to get an iPhone, but I changed my mind. I went into town just after midnight on the night of the 2nd (early the 3rd) to pre-order a Verizon iPhone, but failed to do so because I have a pre-paid account which isn’t eligible. By the time I was able to switch my account to post-paid later on the 3rd, the first batch of iPhones had already sold out, and I would’ve had to wait until the 9th to get in on the 2nd batch. That, I decided was too close to my planned Day Zero for Project 31, so it was time to switch to plan B. Additionally, I decided that I didn’t really need an iPhone. I have a first generation iPhone that was given to me for free as an award when I was working at Yahoo!, but shelling out $200 for a new one? And get locked in to a 2 year contract where I have to pay $75/month? I eventually decided that was too rich for me right now.

So, I decided to get a Verizon MiFi. With a 1 year contract, it’s $70 + tax (came out to a tad over $90 with various fees), and $35/month for 3GB ($10/GB after that). If I also have a pre-paid phone, that will only cost me about $15/month, so for $50/month, I can have internet & phone service. Plus, I can keep using my old iPhone as a mobile internet device by using the MiFi’s wireless connection.

For those of you unfamiliar with the MiFi, it is a thin, credit-card sized device that does one simple thing: it connects to the internet via Verizon’s wireless network, and turns into a WiFi base station (you can see it in the photo above, where it hangs near a window). To put it in simpler terms, I push a button on the MiFi, and then I hop on my laptop, connect to the MiFi’s wireless network, and presto, I’m online! And, I have to say, it works beautifully. The connection is fast enough to deserve the label “broadband,” though it probably doesn’t hurt that nobody else in my area is using that network (so, ironically, connection speeds may be lower in the city).

The speed is really a mixed blessing. Because it’s so fast, I can use the internet as I would on any broadband connection. Except, I have a 3GB cap (or, rather, would have to pay if I exceed the cap). On the one hand, this is somewhat frustrating. The connection is fast enough that I could watch TV shows on Hulu. But I have to restrain myself if I don’t want to exceed my limit. On the other hand, I think this works well for me. I have a finite amount of resources on my property, including a finite amount of electricity. It only makes sense that I have a “finite” amount of internet as well. When I’m in the city, I’m horrible at regulating my internet consumption behavior, so I’m actually glad that my electricity and bandwidth limits will force me to restrict my internet usage, at least when I’m on Serenity Valley.

Also, Hut 2.1 has electricity! By which I mean, I got a 100ft extension cable to draw AC power from my “power station” (solar panel + battery array + inverter, located in a clearing) all the way to the cabin. In the picture above, I’m using a 13W CFL bulb, but I’ll be switching to the LED bulbs soon. I also recently got battery-powered LED spotlights, but I’ll write about those in a separate post.

In other news, I’m getting better with the stove. In the last post, I wrote about how I was having a hard time keeping a small fire going. This problem has now effectively been solved, by doing two things. The first was to fill in a big hole in the stove with aluminium foil, so that the only place where air can get in is the actual air intake. So, now, I can actually control the air flow, which helps control the fire. The second thing I did was to put some rocks in the combustion chamber. What was happening before was that, as soon as a “log” (in my case, a peice of mountain mahogany 2-3 inches in diameter and 6-8 inches long) finished burning, the remaining hot coals would scatter over a large area, and the dispersed heat would be insufficient to burn the next log. By filling about a third of the combustion chamber with rocks, I am forcing the glowing embers into a smaller area, and the concentrated heat is sufficiently hot to get the next log going.

With these two changes, I can now keep smaller fires burning longer, and keep the hut at a comfortable 65F (18C) degrees. The one remaining issue is that, while it may be nice and warm up in the loft (which is great), it’s a good deal colder downstairs. This may be less of an issue once the floor is insulated, but I’m also planning on running some ducts and fans to circulate the air and even out the temperatures. (Question: should I blow hot air down, or cold air up?)

With Project 31 approaching, and with this strange spell of sunny weather bound to end with it (I mean, it just has to), I’ve been thinking about how much firewood I should store up. After all, if the weather gets wet, I may not be able to harvest more fuel for a while. But how much wood is enough? Well, that depends on how much I burn. So, to get an estimate of my burn-rate, after I got a couple of backpack loads (second load was less than full, so call it 1.75), I split the wood into smaller piles of 5 pieces each, with each pile weighing probably 4-5 pounds. I ended up with 13 such piles, which lasted me 4.5 evenings (though, a few of the evenings were pretty warm), burning 2.5-3 piles per night. So if 2 backpack loads give me 5 evenings’ worth, for 31 days, I should have 2x(31/5) or about 12 backpacks’ worth.

Having done all that work, though, I can’t remember exactly how many backpacks’ worth of wood I have right now… But I’m out of space under the hut, so, well, I hope what I have is enough. The nice thing about this mountain mahogany I’ve been harvesting is that its bark is usually stripped, leaving the hard wood, which doesn’t seem to soak up much moisture. So even if it snows (or rains), I should be able to find reasonably dry fuel, especially from trees that are dead but still upright (and therefore won’t accumulate much snow).

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Update on Project 31 Preparations

A quick update on preparations for Project 31 (though, in reality, it’s hard to say what’s just part of my life and what counts as “preparation”…) I still haven’t decided on the exact start date, but I’m guessing I’ll be ready by mid-February.

Water
It’s been surprisingly dry for the past few weeks, but it’s quite possible that the weather will get wetter during Project 31. I have about 30 gallons of rain water so far, so even if there’s no precipitation, I can probably live off of that for a month if I don’t shower (I also have 55 gallons of potable water as backup). As for sanitizing collected water, I have a length of PVC pipe, along with some sand, gravel and charcoal to make a filter out of. For actual drinking water, I’ll pass the filtered water again through a Britta filter. It might not remove 100% of contaminants, but that should make the water clean enough to not kill me in 31 days.

Shelter
Progress on Hut 2.1 has been slow but steady. I finished putting up the last of the exterior rigid insulation boards last night, so practically every square inch of the walls and roof are insulated at this point. The next step is to put in the insulated raised floor, and continue with the interior “furnishings”. But I can work on that during Project 31, so I’m not in a huge rush.

Electricity
I had a bit of a scare yesterday & this morning, when I realized that the charge light on my charge controller was conspicuously off, even though the batteries had run down to 12.5 Volts. My multimeter showed an unusually low voltage across the solar panel cables, which lead me to believe that the solar panel had stopped working. After trying a few different things today, I realized that the solar panel’s voltage was fine, as long as it wasn’t hooked up to my charge controller. In other words, when it was connected to my charge controller, some kind of anomalously huge resistance was dropping the voltage to almost zero, without actually sending any of the current to my batteries (I’m guessing a short of some sort). In fewer words, my charge controller is broke. Fortunately, I had another charge controller lying around, so once I did a little rewiring, I got some juice flowing to the battery array again. The broken charge controller is still under warranty, so I should be able to send it in for a replacement, which, hopefully will arrive before I start Project 31.

This incident had me thinking that I might want a back up to my 100W solar panel, in case it did decide to break. A week or so ago, I bought a 45W solar kit from Harbor Freight because it was on sale, but I ended up returning it because it didn’t seem like I’d need the additional capacity. But it might be a good idea to have another set of panels as backup, just in case. Without a backup solar panel, my backup-backup would be to use my car battery, but that would require running the engine to keep the battery charged.

Also on the topic of electricity, I ordered a Xantrex ProSine SW600 pure sine-wave inverter, which should be arriving soon. It’s only rated for 600W, but I don’t think I even own any appliances that use anywhere near that much power. The most power hungry device I own is probably my laptop, which should pull no more than 85W.

Heating
I’ve been using the stove every night since I finished the chimney, and it’s kept me nice and warm even when it got down to 15F (-9.4C) outside. In fact, keeping the heat low enough has been the bigger challenge, especially when I’m only burning wood. It’s hard to have a small self-sustaining wood fire that doesn’t burn out in 10 minutes, yet stays hot enough to ignite and burn bigger chunks of wood. I’ve been burning a mix of charcoal and wood, and might look into making my own charcoal once I’ve burned through the bags I bought for my previous experiments. I’m also continuing to gather firewood while the weather is relatively dry, with the goal of actually stocking up on a month’s worth, so that I won’t have to worry about fuel even if it gets wet and cold during Project 31.

I’ve also tried to cook using the stove, but that’s proving to be a little harder than I’d anticipated, because the cabin gets uncomfortably warm if I get the stove hot enough to cook with. I also only have the wood stove going in the evenings, so I’d need to use propane to cook meals or heat water during the day. This isn’t a huge problem, but I might need to revise my projected propane usage up, since I might be using my propane stove for cooking more than I’d anticipated.

Communication
I was originally thinking of getting a Verizon MiFi for internet, but I’ve since decided to get a Verizon iPhone, since it has the same capability as a MiFi but would allow me to cancel my AT&T iPhone plan, and have one phone instead of the current two (I have an AT&T iPhone which doesn’t work on my property, and a Verizon feature phone on a prepaid plan for when I’m on my property). The Verizon iPhone goes on pre-order tonight, and becomes available on the 10th.

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Chimney!

I finally got the chimney up a couple of days ago. After all these months of agonizing over the location and configuration of the chimney, suddenly everything fell into place. Mostly, I found the one right place to put the stove, and the rest followed from there.

Let me go back to my fancy ASCII-art to illustrate the chimney saga. Below, you’ll see the rough floor plan of my hut (imagine looking down from straight above). To the left of the vertical line is the extension (so the 2’s are in the extension), and to the right is the main section. In the main section, the line of l’s indicate where the loft is. As you can see, the loft doesn’t cover the entire main section, and there are gaps on both ends.

+----+----------------+        S
|2   |  l         l  1|        ^
|    |S l         l  L|    E --|-- W
|2   |  l         l \ |        |
+----+---------------\+        N

My original plan was to put the stove where the ‘1’ is. This was mostly a fine plan, the only issue being that the roof overhangs there by several inches, and I didn’t want to cut a hole in that. Also, once I took down the scaffolding there, it became very difficult to do any work high up on that side of the cabin, since much of the work would have to happen higher than my ladder would go. The next plan was to put the stove in the extension, marked by the two 2’s. Since the roof of the extension isn’t completely done yet, I was more willing to open up holes and such there. The problem with 2′ is that it’s close to an oak tree just outside, and to safely clear that, I would’ve needed a lot of chimney sections, which would’ve been expensive. Also, all that chimney above the roof would’ve needed some support pieces, which the store didn’t have in stock. That left 2, in the south-eastern corner as a viable option. The problem with that was that, the stove would take up a large portion of the extension, which seemed like a waste of space. Also, it didn’t seem like an effective place for the stove, since the heat would rise, hit the low extension roof, before making its way to the main section of the cabin.

At the end, I put the stove where the ‘S’ is, in a pretty central location. This turned out to be the optimal solution in all ways. First, it leaves the extension completely open for use (I’m planning on putting the bathroom, sink and kitchen in there). Secondly, it’s a more central location, and the heat would spread more evenly. Since the loft isn’t covering that spot, I could have a nice long stove pipe extending above the loft level, for better heat exchange. Lastly, unlike the other side (where ‘1’ is), the extension roof provided a decent platform from which to do the external work. The last decision was on which chimney support kit to use: a wall-support kit (which goes out the wall and up), or a cathedral kit (which goes straight up through the roof). At the end, I chose the wall-support, which was more expensive, but had all the parts I needed (the cathedral kit didn’t come with the flashing, which seemed like a rather important piece).

All in all, the work took about 3 afternoons, going at my usual leisurely pace. The first day, I got the stove pipe sections together — all 9ft of them. It took a while to figure out how to assemble them, but after the first two, the rest went pretty easily. The next day, I cut a hole in the gables, and attached the outside portion of the thimble. Cutting the hole was the scariest part, since I had to make sure everything lined up properly. While a chimney that goes straight up through the roof only needs to align in 2 dimensions (the height being adjustable later), I had to make sure the hole lined up with the end of the stovepipe elbow in 3 dimensions, the height being particularly important since the stovepipes have a set height, and it’s difficult to adjust (i.e. I’d have to either cut the stovepipe, or move the stove itself up or down). Fortunately, the alignment worked out perfectly (seen above) to my huge relief. The rest of the work happened on the 3rd afternoon, and as you can see in the video below, the last piece went up right around dusk…

As I climbed up onto the ridge of my roof to attach the final piece of my chimney, the rain cap, I couldn’t help but feel as if I’d reached the summit of a mountain, after a long arduous climb. Indeed, protruding 3ft above my ridge, the rain cap is the highest point of my cabin, which also makes it the highest man-made item on my property. But, beyond the mere physical sense of height, this was, in many ways, a crowning achievement, literally as the rain cap closely resembles a crown, but also because completing the chimney represented the final step in my conquest over the last remaining challenge.

Though I bought this property with no particular plan in mind, it wasn’t long before I found myself engulfed in the challenges of making this little patch of wilderness habitable. Food, water, shelter. The basics weren’t too hard, at first. Then came the necessities of a more civilized life: sewage, electricity, and communications. I found solutions for each. The last basic need, heating, had however eluded me. Until today. But now I have that too, and I am ready to declare my part of the woods habitable, through all weathers, and all seasons.

Of course, there’s plenty more work to do on Hut 2.1, and in general, but I feel like most of the more challenging problems are behind me. At the very least, as I head into Project 31, I know that my major needs will be met: food, water, warmth. I’ll come out alive. The rest is a matter of comfort, and that’s a trivial luxury compared to the other challenges.