House Heat

After a bit of chaos surrounding getting the wood stove from kijiji (my new favourite pass time) I am now the proud owner of a used Regency wood stove. I'm hoping this will be my primary source of heat when I'm eventually living in this house of mine.

Heat Source! Plus a kettle! And it all fit in the Jeep!

I also found a lot of insulation on Kijiji along with doors and a million other things, but realized I shouldn't get that far ahead of myself. 

I've also been working on getting a well put in. Who knew you had to get a septic report that requires a soil test by a technologist in order to put a well in. I do now. Looks like the well will have to go in to the list of August projects along with roof, fixing hole in the wall, insulating, etc.

For now, it's time to go tree planting again to pay for it all. Look for updates in August and make room in your schedules to see it first hand!

Maybe a window?

Needs a touch of work.

Happy H20 Heating

Though there isn't a lot that I can do at the house right now, I can google.
The compost water heater is something that I really hope I can attempt this year. It may be the neatest idea I've come across EVER!

Here's a video of how it works.

I'm so excited! Could it be possible that I will have hot water from wood chips? Maybe even be able to do some sub floor heating and heat my house with it? Maybe make the pile the floor of a greenhouse and heat the greenhouse and my water with compost? The options sound endless and I'm so stoked to try this.

Real time house update:
The house is now empty of the stuff being stored in it by the previous owner. The hope in the next few weeks is to get the energy audit done (fingers crossed for grant money), take down some of the inside walls down to the studs (Ben and I started this only to find more wood panelling underneath the wood panelling), check the place out with a contractor and get some estimates, take the kitchen cupboards out and potentially try to take the tiles up so we're at the wood floor.

So much to do, but most of it will have to wait until August. Let me know if you have any more super sweet ideas and when you're free to come help!

the "new" homestead

The view of my house from across the road. (Don't mind the dates on the pictures, they're more recent than 2005)

That's right it's home owning time!  Which means the blog will now be used for home renovating ideas. My hope is to make the house as sustainable (or green if you will) as possible. I've been doing some research in to cheap and sustainable options and have found some pretty amazing ideas. Some of my favourites this far include a compost hot water heater and pallet crafting.

Currently the house is in rough shape, but with a little bit of work it will be amazing! I have an acre and a half bordered by my maple syrups friends' new farm's land. We are all very excited about the possibilities for this land. There is also a garage that has seen better days, that I have big plans for in the future.

I look forward to sharing the renovation plans with all of you and welcome any ideas (and labour) you may want to contribute.

Coming in the side door to the kitchen.

From kitchen door to front door... will hopefully be all open soon.

Front door in to 'for now' living room.

The barn... needs work.

Food for Thought

I'm so lucky to have such a great group of people to support me in my adventures. Now that I'm back in Canada, my adventures may slow down, but I thought I'd try to keep the blog going.

I wanted to share with you a story about a friend (soon to be neighbour) of mine.

A few weeks ago, as she was passing a drug store, she saw a sales clerk throwing away a cart full of bagged milk. She stopped to ask if it had gone bad and was told that the expiry date was the following day so it had to be thrown out. Instead of walking away from this situation, this friend asked the sales guy to load the milk in to her car. She then brought it to the Mission, a homeless shelter, where they did not have the funds to buy even powdered milk, let alone real milk. The Mission was very appreciative and the drug store didn't know the difference. As this friend delved deeper in to the situation of waste from this particular drug store she did not get the results she'd hoped for. The manager suggested he would be locking his dumpsters from now on, instead of providing it to the needy, due to a bad experience he'd had. At this my determined friend went home and called the head office to find out about the store policy. She had researched other groups and found out through Second Harvest in Toronto that stores are protected from being liable when donating food in good faith. So why is it that we still have food being thrown out when people rely so heavily on food banks? How can we be so quick to throw out food, before it's even expired, when other people are hungry? Imagine if every store donated their near expiration food to organizations that could use it quickly?

When she shared this story with me, I was inspired. She's still working on the situation and should be receiving a copy of their store policy soon. She saw something wrong and took a few minutes of her time to make an important contribution to other people's well being.

Sometimes we recognize helping people as charity work done in other countries. Sometimes we justify our inaction to our location or time constraints. What we have to remember, as part of the global community, is that the actions and decisions we take in our own local communities are just as influential as any work being done overseas. We all have the power to make change, it's just a matter of standing up for what is fair.

Urban Growing

Lucy and I.

For my last few days I checked out different projects around Nairobi. Oddly enough everywhere I went growing bamboo came up a lot.

I started out by going with a 65 year old man I met at the hostel to see a bamboo plantation. This was a man who has put a lot in to starting imported bamboo seedlings to sell on a commercial scale for furniture, but also as a fuelwood to dry tea at some of the big plantations. It was a bit confusing as he doesn't want to sell too much, but he's not interested in small scale. His farm was beautiful and the idea is good, he's just trying to work out some of the kinks in his plan.

The Headquarters.

 Monday I went to Kibera, a well known large slum in Nairobi. I met with Ras Ambassa who works with the Haile Selassie I Foundation and Shiriki Organization. They run youth organic farming projects outside of the city, though they also had a small tree nursery behind their main office. The organization also makes sandals from old tires, which were pretty neat. We spent a few hours discussing organic farming, but mainly talking about Ras Tafari. It was very educational. I enjoyed that many of their principles are similar to those of permaculture in that people care for the earth, they care for their fellow people and they practice fair share. There were a few points I took issue with, but this is the case when discussing any one faith.

Organic kale, spinach, cowpeas and onion.

Tuesday I met with a woman named Lucy who I had met at the permaculture course. She is an amazing Kenyan woman who has worked with the Kenya Institute of Organic Agriculture for many years. She invited me to come see the projects she was working on with COOPI in Huruma, another slum outside of Nairobi. There was a presentation being given to the community, mainly the women of the community, on none other than bamboo! I liked the concept of growing bamboo more in this context as it is planned to be used for income generation and will grow well on the grey water that is rushing in to the river that flows through this slum. Ideally the bamboo will purify some of this water as well as being a material to work with in making different types of marketable goods.

River side farming.

Lucy also showed me the small plots they had where they were growing with the garden sacks. In one fenced area they had around 40 bags and in another 68 bags and a cow. It was inspiring to see so many people interested in growing food. There was also a lot of independent pieces of land growing different foods on them... it looked like the Kenyan countryside compacted beside this small river. The project faces different challenges, but are working through them and expanding to include more of the community and train them in organic food growing.

Wednesday I went to visit Amrita Childrens' Home in Athi River, outside of Nairobi. This home is sponsored by Amma, the hugging saint (I'd probably let her hug me). Here they are starting small and hoping to be certified organic. The teacher I had for the permaculture course, Warren Brush, had done the design last year and two girls who had taken the course in previous years were working on the upkeep. It looked great and it was amazing to see how quickly this piece of land came to life after only 8 months. Currently the kids who come to school there are being fed lunch with foods that all come from their kitchen garden as well as being involved in the maintenance. Pretty super.

I also met with a friend of a friend who introduced me to many different projects happening in Kenya and the idea of numerous grants being offered to do similar work. So now it's time to hibernate in Brockville with my computer and start putting the pieces together to develop a program. Any ideas are welcome and I look forward to seeing you all soon!

Winding Down

Here I am back in Nairobi, after a wonderful few weeks enjoying the beaches on the coast.

New Years was spent around a bonfire drinking champagne and eating a fire-grilled Kingfish. We camped on one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen, falling asleep and waking up to the lapping of the ocean. Just beautiful. The newspaper guy would come in the morning, after the mandazi and samosa woman, the fruit guy and the fish guy. Almost like room service to our tent!

view from the tent.

And now it's back to city life. For my last week here I hope to pack in seeing as many projects as possible. I've been in touch with children's homes that are practicing permaculture, slum project working with organic agriculture and today I go to see a bamboo plantation.

The ideas are churning in my brain and I'm looking forward to getting home and putting some plans into action. I'm soaking in as much sun as possible now before I hit the Canadian winter, but am looking forward to being home. See you all soon!

Yesterday we went to visit the farmer in Mgongo (Mombasa slum) with some advice on how he could produce more on his shamba. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I'll try to give you a description.

We got off the Matatu (mini-van bus) at the end of the line and walked down the puddle filled road to the shamba. We entered through the corrugated metal gate into a relatively green area that might be the biggest open space in Mgongo. Sammy and Eric (the farmers) meet us and immediately we take another tour around and get to discussing some options. The house on the compound is falling apart, with half of the roof still intact and the other half completely fallen into the house itself. There is a roofed area where they do tie dying of dresses to sell at market that has a roof that is for the most part intact.

The almost dry borehole (the well) and the underground rain water tank are located directly beside the septic tank, which is definite cause for concern as most of the community comes here to get their drinking water. Both the well and the tank are covered by cracked cement that the goats walk over and could be contaminated really easily.

The growing area is dry and not nearly as productive as it once was, we were told. There is one area where the grey water from the neighbours seeps under the cement wall which is watering the banana trees nicely, making for a little green oasis in the corner of the property. There are papaya trees dispersed throughout the production field in an attempt to offer some shade to plants growing below, which is a step in the right direction. There is a small forested patch that Sammy has left as he understands the importance of shade. This area is beside the chicken coop which is great as the chickens go in and forage frequently. As we're chatting seven goats come running along butting each other out of the way to get a drink of water.

Sammy and Eric are set. They have small animals, land to use, trees growing and are keen to produce more food in any way possible. We told them it may be more experimental at this point and their response was that so little grows now that they are willing to try anything.

We offered the advice we could. One suggestion was to stop tilling their land. Currently they weed all of the dead plants out and mix up the soil. This is fairly common procedure, but in doing this they're drying out the soil and killing the micro-organisms that keep the soil healthy we explained. They agreed to try direct planting into the soil without tilling. We also pushed the idea of mulching everything. It's crucial that they not have any soil bare in this climate. When it's exposed to the elements you run into erosion and evaporation, which they already knew, but needed reminding. When we mentioned using a green mulch like groundnuts and squash they were happier to hear that they can do this and produce food at the same time.

A borrowed picture of the garden bags.

We decided that as there are no gutters on any of what's left of the roofs that planting things below it would be ideal. Sammy decided to do garden bags, grain bags filled with compost and soil in which he'll plant kale on all sides. This way he can grow as much kale as he would have on his field in bags and leaves the field space free for growing different things. He was jazzed about this idea. He also has a lot of tires lying around. This is a great place for him to grow potatoes we told him. Just fill the bottom tire with soil and plant some potatoes in it. As the plant comes up through the soil, add another tire and fill it with soil. The plant will continue to reach the top of the soil. By the end you'll have a stack of tires with kilos of potatoes all only using 2 square feet of ground space. He liked that too.

These were some of the ideas we presented them, mainly Sammy as he's the main farming guy. We also talked about swales, intercropping and not using straight lines. I'll keep in touch with Sammy and Eric and hopefully we can get them to a permaculture course in the future and use their plot as a demonstration to the community at Mgongo.