Waiting..................

We still have no progress to report with the building! I´m starting to get a bit cross about it as there doesn´t even seem to be a reason for it, just the builders putting it off and putting it off. We´ve been back a month now  and all the materials for the next stage are bought and still nothing!

We´ve also had to make a couple of sad desicions because of hostel related business. We may have to relocate (the hostel) in the next six months or so and that could be a difficult thing to do if we´ve spent all our money on our lovely, ´green´ house. So, we´ve decided to build only the first half now and move in, hopefully by December (that is, if the builders actually do any work before then!) with the plan to chip away at the rest of the house as and when the finances let us. We were quite excited to have our house built and finished by this time next year but it seems business will have to come first this time. Anyway, we´ll still have our room, two bathrooms, a study and a laundry room (acting as a kitchen), so it´ll actually be similar in size to where we live now. The bulk of the expense will also be taken care of with the solar pannels, water harvesting system and filters and all the rest of it so hopefully it wont take too long to get things moving again, maybe 6 months or so after we move in.

On the positive side, the chickens are all healthy again. In fact we are the ones who are snotty and sniffly this week as summer has arrived and brought with it dust storms and hayfever. The veggies are also doing well and the tomatoes, onions, sunflowers and beetroots have started sprouting up, no sign of the peppers yet though. I´m making a second keyhole type garden to use up the rest of the seeds that I have left over as here it´s not easy to by less than a field´s worth of any one vegetable. We have also started getting our guests in the hostel to start helping with compost collection and so we should have plenty to fill up those keyholes. Watering is the issue with summer here. With no roof to collect rainwater off so far, we´re now carting tanks of water as well as the usual, buckets of compost, tyres for the forest stairs, old clothes, seeds, medicine for the chickens, building and gardening equipment, sunscreen and snacks. Lucky we dont have a nicer car. The poor thing is so full of junk that our mechanic sent it off to the car wash before he would check over a problem with the fuel pump! We tried to put bamboo poles on the roof at one point too but after a few nasty scratches, decided it was cheaper in the long run to pay for a truck to drop it off.

Our Ned Flanders neighbour let us play with his grass strimmer last weekend and now we can see what we´re dealing with! We missed a couple of bits and some other bits are completely bald but on the whole it´s a big improvement. I was toying with the idea of getting a grass cutting sheep but after reading about clipping and worming and suicidal tendencies, I was pretty much put off. Once we have grass, I suppose we´ll have to figure out how to cut it. Currently we just have weeds which we´re slowly but surely digging out.

Tony bought a mini wind turbine on ebay this week. I´m not sure quite how it´ll work here given that the staff at the hostel were complete puzzled as to how clothes can dry outside on a line in Scotland if it´s cold there. They have never experienced the common sight (especially where I grew up) of knickers wrestling themselves horizontally off of the line and finding their way into a neighbour´s garden 5 houses down the street. 100 mph winds are not that uncommon in the NE Scotland and in Popayan we experience around 8 mph winds once a year in July/August and dedicate a kite festival to it! Well, we´ll see how it goes, it´ll be a fun project anyway.

At the moment we´re looking for a chest freezer to turn into a fridge. The zeer was great and successfully cooled a cucumber for 2 weeks in the blazing sun, before it was eaten in a salad. It´s a few degrees warmer than you´d like your beer though and has a fairly limited capacity. Seemingly by bypassing and reprograming the thermostat on a super A* energy efficient freezer, you can create a pretty good fridge that consumes only a teensy amount of energy, not much more than the super expensive solar fridges and much bigger.

Other than that we´re just waiting (not very patiently) for the builders to get our house built!

Moving in...

We had a busy weekend last week up at the plot of land. We finally got the chicken coop finished and settled the chooks in on Saturday morning (after a night in our flat - big, smelly mistake!). They seemed very pleased with it and although we now realise that they can in fact jump out of the run whenever they like, so far they are choosing not to. They are three lovely ginger-coloured laying hens named after our sisters; Jenny, Lucy and Kelsey.

Unfortunately yesterday when we went to check on them, Kelsey and Jenny were looking a bit snotty around the beak and generally sad and mopey. Of course, I panicked a bit and got straight on the internet to check the symptoms and had fully convinced myself that they were all going to die (the usual ''headache + google = brain tumour'' situation). First thing this morning I went round to the farm supplies place where we bought them and the guy said that sometimes it just happens with a change in environment because they dont sleep or eat well and get a bit low on defenses, so we have to give them medicine for a couple of days. Hopefully they´ll be ok!

We also got started on the veggie plot and although the raised bed is less than beautiful, we´ve got some good, nutritious earth in there and have planted (in accordance with the moon phases) tomatoes and peppers straight away. From the 15th we can plant some beets and onions and then in a few weeks, at the new moon, all the leafy stuff like herbs, broccoli and lettuces. We´ve also tried to match up the veg with the right herbs and neighbours to encourage growth, deter pests etc. I dont know if it´ll work but we might as well give it a go.... although I´m starting to think that maybe less love and care gives better results. We went to such lengths with our hens; designing the house, painting it with non-toxic oils, choosing the perfect roosting branch, selecting the special hens who were imported from Cali etc etc etc. And they still end up sneezing snot all over the place! Our neighbours have happy healthy hens running about, eating scraps and living in the trees - no sneezing at all.

Tony and Eddie also built a retaining wall out of tyres which will hopefully give us a lawn-type area up by the house which can be a chicken and veg free zone, somewhere to sit out on the grass with a beer perhaps. We are just waiting for the builder to render the wall and then we can get the earth in to level it all up.

The builder still hasn´t got organized with the quote for the next stage (walls and electric and water piping) but he´s supposedly coming round in half and hour with the details so we´re hoping that we´ll be able to get started straight away!

One little green step at a time...

So we´re back here and into the swing of the usual routine again after our trip to the UK last month. Unfortunately our builder took another contract in the time we were away and it´s dragging on a bit so we haven´t managed to get back into the building with as much gusto as we would have liked. Nonetheless, it´s given us some time for planning and experimenting with a few things and generally sorting out what we should be doing to get started on the non-building type of things, both on our land and in our hostel.

The first thing we did was reassess our hostel to see if there are some ways that it too could become ´a wee bit greener´.

Popayan for the first time ever is introducing an official recycling system which is really great news and although it´s not up and running yet, we´re trying to figure out how we can coax our guests into separating their rubbish. We have also started collecting the coffee grinds from the free coffee we offer at the hostel and are chucking them into our composter. We´re also investigating building a green waste digester to dispose of scrap food, peelings etc from the hostel and use them to feed the soil up at our land.

The next step was to convince the staff that we can work with more natural cleaning products. Bleach has long since been a no no in the hostel (much to their grumbling) but having read about concoctions made from vinegar, bicarb of soda, citronella, lemon juice etc, I was keen to try as much as possible to move away from the toxic cleaning detergents that we have to use on a daily basis. Luckily they were very easily convinced as the products speak for themselves! They are even talking about using them in their own homes as it´s considerably cheaper and just as good as the shop bought options.

Up at the plot, we spent last weekend (with the help of some friends) building a hen-house so that we can get started with some chickens as soon as possible - hopefully we can pick up the three that we ordered tomorrow and get them settled in. The neighbours cant understand why we don't want to fill the coop up with 10-15 hens (the recommended occupancy for a coop this size here), but as long as our three are happy, healthy and productive, I reckon we´re onto a winner.

The sister of a friend of ours also has a bee hive that she´s not using and a contact who can teach us about bee-keeping (because we have no idea where to start!) so it´s looking promising for bees! Popayan has a honey co-op but I was worried that unless you are joining the co-op, they might be reluctant to share tips, sell equipment etc so this is the perfect solution, hopefully we can do it all independently. First though, we need to get planting some flowers so that they have something to eat.

We´ve also been reading a bit about Lunar planting and so want to get a veggie plot built this weekend to be in time for the next cycle. I´ve been looking at the ´keyhole garden´ designs that my mum introduced us to and it looks like an idea that we could use, given that our soil is fairly poor for planting. I think it´s an African model used to give good yield in small spaces with un-nutritious soil. Another idea we´ve been experimenting with from Africa is the ´zeer´ fridge. A clay pot with a smaller clay pot inside (or a plastic bucket in our case) with a layer of sand in between which you wet with water each day and then cover the whole thing with a wet towel. We´re still perfecting the model but it´s managed to keep two cucumbers nicely refrigerated for nearly a week now and we´re told that it can cool things to 6´C in optimum conditions, which is fine for most food products. The idea is that the water evaporates through the clay, pulling the heat outwards and in turn cooling the contents of the inner pot. It seems to be working and could be a big help given that the fridge is the main electrical problem with living off-grid.

It´s been a couple of weeks of small steps but on the whole we´re feeling that we have a bit more direction with things and although we´re frustrated that the building´s not making progress, it´s nice to know that we´re pushing forward on the projects that go alongside.

On the road research....

So, it's been a wee while since I've updated this... partly because there's not much to see at the moment as far as the building goes. It has been all foundations, supports and damp-proofing recently - not that interesting really, and most of it underground.

Also, we've been away for a month visiting family and friends in the UK. It was a lovely relaxing trip and in between cups of real tea and pints of real beer, we managed to use some of our time doing some research for the house as we went along.

Our first stop was Florida, a few days stop-over on the way home and a cultural experience we'll never forget! After a day or two with our hospitable friends in Miami, experiencing the sights (white beaches and glistening skyscrapers) and sounds (mainly salsa and Colombian accents), we joined the migration of RV dwelling 'snow-birds' with our rental car, tent and roll mats, and headed for the Florida Keys.

When researching our Florida trip, we were slightly offended by the term 'primitive camping' used to describe us humble tent users.  However, after one night in a $45 a night state park (blasted continuously with air-con exhausts from RVs either side of us) and one night in a forest clearing on an Indian reserve (with no facilities), we happily accepted our place among the 'primitive' campers.

Saying that, despite their air-con, satellite telly, dishwashers and other mod-cons, the RV club are effectively living off-grid and there are great 'green' systems in place at the state parks. We attracted some funny looks checking out their composting loos, solar water heaters, lights and recycling systems.

Once back in Scotland, we started buying books, reading articles and picking the brains of friends and family about off-grid living and generally anything 'a wee bit green'. We travelled south to Plymouth to visit the Eden Project and loved their ideas about permaculture and alternative architecture. Mainly though, it was just nice to see a collective group excited about things like compost and low impact living and so happy to share what they have learned.

We also visited the Findhorn Foundation which is an alternative community near where I grew up. They have some great building and community ideas such as a natural sewage processor, wind turbines powering the whole village, straw bale houses and generally great local produce like bread, veg, honey and lots of crafty type things which they sell in the community shop. The only frustrating thing is that  newbies like us, in search of ideas and inspiration, find it difficult to get info on implementing these systems or ideas ourselves without attending one of their (expensive) courses or workshops.

On the other hand, the local council is introducing some great recycling projects. My Mum introduced us to the 'Green Cone',  a kind of composter/digester which breaks down all you household food waste. It seems really straight forward, it's a basket underground with a plastic cone sticking out the top with a lid which you lift up and chuck in all the kitchen rubbish. Then you can plant veggies around it because as the sludge breaks down, it seeps out and feeds the earth around the cone. Simple!

We made the most of our time in the UK choosing and being gifted some great reading material too. A few that we found great are:
Barefoot Architect by Johan Van Lengen - sold over 40,000 copies in Mexico and is full of great and simple ideas that we're looking forward to trying.
Off-Grid by Nick Rosen - A really informative read which lets us know that it's not uncommon to live off-grid, not crazy and not as hard as everyone thinks!
The Self-Sufficiency Bible by Simon Dawson - Brilliant for all sorts of things, however far you want to take it, whether it's tomatoes in a window box or hunting, skinning and gutting your own rabbits.
Henkeeping & Beekeeping by the National Trust - very funny and passionate books for smallholders - everything simply put and to the point.

I also think the following websites are great for their no-nonsense, practical approach to what's often portrayed as a romantic lifestyle:
www.aselfsufficientlife.com
www.selfsufficientish.com

We were left with a lot of great ideas and were really keen to get back and get started. Now that we're here though, it's hard to know where to start!