It was Abe's birthday last week and we all had a wonderful day. We did absolutely no work (beyond the bare minimum of chores, like feeding ourselves and the animals). Instead, we spent the day playing games, eating cake and cookies, lounging in bed, surfing online, etc.
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Rain season has started and the place has exploded. We have an almost endless supply of beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, purslane, greens, herbs, and onions. We can even start to dig up new potatoes whenever we want them. We also have raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, and plums. The apples, peaches, and figs aren’t ready yet, but will be soon enough. Many of our other trees haven’t really started to produce yet, but that’s something to look forward in another year or two.
Although everything is lush and beautiful, there is a slight downside for me. I am kind of a tidy freak, and Abe usually doesn’t interfere with my need to keep things organized and neat. However, he puts his foot down as far as weeds and overgrowth are concerned. My inclination would be to take the weed-eater to everything, to keep the paths looking tidy, but he won’t let me :( Of course, he’s absolutely right, seeing as that growth takes care of almost 100% of the rabbits’ dietary needs right now. Each day, I am allowed to cut (tidy) just a small portion of our jungle, which is fed to the rabbits and ducks. Of course, it’s not very satisfying for me, as the stuff we cut first has grown back well before we can finish the rest of the area.
Oh well, I guess I only have to put up with a messy property for a few months of the year, so it’s not too much of a burden. And there is a slight ray of hope. He wants to try silage (fermenting the grass as an animal feed). If that works out, he may let me weed-eat everything all in one go, so that we can ferment large batches of weeds at the same time. Thank-you, silage!
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We have two large chicken groups, which we keep mainly for eggs. One set lives in the forest garden rows that haven’t yet been planted. Their job is to eat bugs out of the compost piles and to spread that compost once it’s ready. The other group lives in a pen by the barn. They have access to underneath the rabbit cages, and they are constantly scratching through the manure for maggots and discarded food. Each day, we let one of the two flocks out to free-range.
We have a few hens who are almost constantly setting nests or raising chicks. Once they are setting, we put them into the nesting/hatching stall of the barn, along with any duck that is setting. After the chicks have grown a little, the family gets moved to the pen by the barn. The hen will generally not allow her chicks to free-range for a while longer, keeping them under the rabbit cages and teaching them how to scratch for food.
The guineas pretty much free range all the time. They have a huge territory, well outside our own fence-line. Their job is to hunt for bugs like grasshoppers. They roost in the barn and eat a little of the feed that we put out each day, but generally they are pretty autonomous.
Right now, we have several guineas that have nests under various Juniper trees around the place. We also have a chicken that is setting a nest of guinea eggs and another hen that has just hatched out some chicks.
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The Bus
Our first home together was an old bus. We had removed most of the seats and replaced them with a bed (single at first until someone gave us a double), a sink, stove, shelves, and rack for clothes. A hail storm took out most of the windows, so we had them boarded up with plywood. We had a solar panel and wind generator for power, satellite for internet, and had to haul water.
Grey Water garden
Our first building project was a grey water garden. It was our first experiment with wicking beds, but on a large scale. We built a rock box with a sotol stick roof and screened walls. We laid down plastic on the ground, then made gravel pits with pipes going through them. The dirt then went on top. This produced a very lush garden for the middle of the desert.
Power House
Before building the house, we decided to experiment with a much smaller building, namely the powerhouse. We played with cob (hand sculpted adobe), forms, and ended up inventing the T-Brick. These were T-shaped forms that we placed directly on to the wall. The vertical part of the T covered the gaps left on the wall by the forms, while also keeping the wall plumb.
Foundation
We then moved on to the main building. We have photos on the site and flickr of the roof, walls and interior, but we thought we'd lost the first phase, the foundation. It consisted on trenches filled with gravel, with a three foot tall rock wall.
Wedding
It was at this point, in April 2004, that we got married. I guess we figured that if we could live together in a bus in the middle of nowhere, and then build half a home without any money or amenities, we could be happy for the rest of our lives. We had the wedding on our property and it went on for several days. Everyone brought something to contribute to the food and festivities, including tables and chairs. I wore my mother-in-law's old wedding dress and Abe wore a Jedi suit I'd made him :) It was a blast.
Some photos of the property
I much prefer where we live now, and our home is beautiful. However, it was wonderful looking back on our time in Terlingua. There is something truly magnificent about the desert, and it was a time that had a deep and lasting effect on our lives.
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It took us a long time to find Muscovy ducks near us, but the effort has finally paid off. We now have a full on flock of ducks, and more are on the way. They are beautiful creatures, and very gentle. They eat rabbit viscera as if they were starving, and can catch flies right out the air.
We have a total of 21 ducklings, 4 or 5 of which we’ll be keeping. We weigh and sex them at 5 weeks old, and then again at 12 weeks. We have several that are 6 lb and we’ll soon get to taste the apparently delicious meet.
Now that they’re all getting bigger, we have started to let them out to pasture during the day. They move as one and are very easy to herd.
We also have two ducks setting nests at the moment. One is near the end of the 35 day incubation period, so she has been moved into the nesting/hatching stall of the barn, where she won’t be bothered by the rest of the poultry. The other has been on the nest less than two weeks and is still in one of the other pens. We’ll probably have to move her soon.
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Most of Leo’s friends have already lost several teeth, but he still hadn’t, which was starting to worry him. So, when a new tooth appeared a few weeks ago, he was super excited. The only problem was that his baby tooth hadn’t fallen out yet and so the new one was coming in behind.
It kind of freaked us out, but after a search online, we discovered it was quite common and is called “shark’s teeth”. People say that the baby tooth usually comes out on its own and then the adult one will gradually move into place.
He was very happy to have lost his first tooth and was thrilled when the tooth fairy paid him a visit. It begins...
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