Mr. Kraft does life

• Cow hide dry scraping and scraper sharpening
• Community-wide wireless internet extension and repeating project
• Listening to a stranger to provide moral support
• Ongoing daily reading of “I Am That” with notes and reflection
• Work-trade of carpentry and building work on a neighbor’s house in exchange for a week’s share of vegetables from the CSA
• Sun-bathing
• Custom-crafted two black walnut, hardwood handles for knives, from scratch
• Assisted Noah the baker for evening bake shifts each Friday night in work-trade for farm-stand credit and more
• Picked up a few road-kill squirrels
  • Skinned and butchered
  • Turned meat into a stew for a potluck
  • Scraped and tanned the hides
• Enjoyed a community member’s birthday – DJ’ed in our friend’s house in the woods – what a surprise!
• Visits from an old friend
• Designed, planned, wired and installed a high-quality audio system at the bakery to replace the dinky portable speakers that had been there for years.  Whee!
• Acorn flour milling by hand; leaching acorn flour by various methods
• Grinding and mixing spices
• Watched Nate and learned about how to burnish and fire primitive clay pottery
• Meals from the garden
• Compound bow tuning and repair
• Hanging slate, rabbit and pig feeding for CSA work-trade
• Began to get an education of the types of guns, various caliber sizes, and their applications
• Continued to raise awareness of wild animals, and to grow a sense to more often look out for them in their various habitats
• Prepared a very large soup stock for the fall Harvest Fire festival, with Noah.  We roasted veal and pork bones in the wood-fired oven, and then stocked them with fresh herbs from the garden, along with turkey, duck and chicken feet from Marty and Ellen across the street.  Yum.
• Harvested, cut and dehydrated apples
• Deep conversations with friends on topics ranging from food and nutrition to the meaning of it all…
• Setup event tents and did a lot of vegetable preparation for Harvest Fire Festival
• Enjoyed Nate’s acorn flour-beaver fat-black walnut-butternut-butter biscuits he prepared for his week-long bowhunting trip.
• Strolled the woods to a special spot where we harvested Hemlock boughs to lay a new floor for Nate’s tent.  Learned how to fashion a functional, pleasant smelling, biodegradable, free flooring solution for outdoor living
• Practiced setting dead-fall traps
• Lived in Nate’s wall tent while he was away.
  • Tended to the space, cleaned and re-organized many things.
  • Burned two fires a day, to keep tent dry.
  • Harvested, cut and stacked firewood.  Here I learned a lot about how to identify what wood from the forest will be best for firewood that is easy to carry out solo and buck up, that is dry and will burn well.
• Conversations with neighbor Jim who, among other things, has experience and knowledge about how to cure meat into sausage without nitrates or refrigeration.  Wow!
• Learned about poultry processing and helped neighbors by plucking a Peking Duck and gutting four chickens.  Enjoyed their conversation and fresh chicken and garden-herb sausage afterwards.
• Enjoyed the pleasures of a thin-skinned structure when sleeping and working.  The canvas tent allowed me to hear coyotes, owls, wind and rain, the chuckling of the red squirrel, and the presence of passers-by…  And of course the pleasant ambiance of candle light.
• Eating large quantities of local, raw, heavy cream.
• Lots of squash and root vegetable roasting in the latent heat of the wood-fired oven
• Garden tool repair
• Cleaned and reorganized farmhouse wood and workshop
• Shotgun target practice
• Enjoying pumpkin-miso soup by candlelight in Nate’s tent
• Joined Nate for a successful wild turkey and Canada goose hunt.  Plucked and butchered the birds, and served a community meal with all local food.
• DIY Yurt construction project.  Nate wants to build a yurt… from scratch.
  • Found and cut down gray birch trees for poles
  • Limbing poles with axe
  • Making a master log, cutting poles to length
  • Taking split poles and using a pattern, drilled holes for lattice ties
  • Tied lattice poles together for wall support structure.
  • Cut pine boards with chop saw and band saw, created two rings, layered them and assembled a roof ring.
• Rendered lard from a friend’s piggy
• Wall-tent breakfasts on sheepskin rugs atop fresh hemlock bough floor
• Enjoyed the ever-changing northern New England foliage
• Star gazed on clear nights
• Moved and installed a composting toilet into the orchard
• Picked and mashed apples, pressing them for raw cider.  Lacto-fermented some cider for long-term storage
• Began cutting out leather for a knife sheath
• Rebuilt Liv’s yurt floor
• Spent time in a neighbor’s 330 square-foot woodland cabin.  Inspired yet again by small spaces and what it takes to make them possible.
• Belt repair.  My belt tore, so Nate and Ginny walked me through mending it.
  • Learned to awl, and sew buckskin
  • Sewed together Nate’s bark-tanned buckskin to leather belt with glover’s needle
• Ongoing exploration of food and it’s interaction with my body, energy and mind
• Pond dips continued even through the end of October.
• Running on deep hills, upon dirt roads, in moccasins.
• Computer repair at the Orchard School
• Stretching, movement, and meditation
• Solo late-night sauna
• Took down canvas wall tent
• Riding bikes on empty New Hampshire roads, feeling the wind in my face.  Loving the pace.
• My sister came to see the community in which I’d been living.  To meet my friends, to taste my world.  How different it is from hers.  The contrast sparks so much curiosity.

• Preparing garlic for storage
• Scouting for bear
• Draw knife restoration and sharpening
• Ax restoration
  • Patterning old handle
  • Disassembling old ax
  • Finding an appropriate piece of hardwood for the handle
  • Splitting an ash log for the stock
  • Shaving the stock on a shaving horse with a draw knife
  • Rasping and spoke shaving details
  • Filing ax head
  • Shaving a piece of black locust for the wedge
  • Assembling ax
  • Aligning and sharpening blade
  • Sanding handle
  • Oiling handle and adding paracord for missed swing protection
• Archery practice
• Crafting meals with beaver parts
• Gleaning apples from the drops in the orchard
• Roots Rendezvous gathering in Vermont
  • Weaving cat-tail and Phragmite reed grass mats on a primitive loom
  • Icelandic Lamb Project: Using the Whole Animal with Nate
    • Slaughter
    • Skinning
    • Breaking down
    • Butchering
    • Foods
      • Blood and acorn flour pancakes
      • 3 types of sausages
      • Char-grilled meats
      • Headcheese soup
    • Hide processing
      • stretching on a rack
      • scraping
      • Brain tanning
    • Bone tools – awls, sewing needles
  • Wild Rice workshop
  • Stone tools and flintknapping workshop
  • Mushroom walk
• Swimming and bathing in the pond
• Gathering and cutting firewood
• Firemaking with bow drill
• Cooking on open wood fires and wood stoves
• Cracking and shelling red oak acorns
• Scouting for deer and wild turkey
• Foraging mushrooms, including about 15lb maitake (Grifola frondosa)
• Sewing tarps
• Dinner with friends
• Dehydrating mushrooms
• Apple picking for cider pressing
• Fabricating an archery target from scrap cardboard
• Integrating into the little community here
• Visiting local fields, forests, farm
• Gleaning tomatoes
• Hand-squeezing cultured butter with the neighbors
• Hanging out in the bakery for the late-night bakes
• Walks in the woods
• Walking barefoot or with moccasins
• Bowhunting safety course – passed
• Wood-fired sauna
• Fasting
• Restored my wooden bowl
• Harvesting grey birch poles for DIY yurt construction while doing Tree Stand Improvement
• Sleeping outside, even when it ain’t warm

Updates thus far have been from a mobile device; thus the content has been curt.  Now I write from a full-fledged machine.

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A recap of construction techniques from the build:

• Site was assessed for house location before crew arrived.  Re-bar was set for corner posts and strings were laid down to demarcate the corners of the structure, the centers of the U-shaped rooms, etc.
• Rammed-earth (pounded) tires were laid down to start the first course (layer) of the rear part of the structure.  Tires are placed by following a pre-determined distance from the architectural drawings, measured from the center post of the room to the outer wall of the tire.  For example, the first room we worked on had an 8 foot radius, so we measured 8 feet from the center re-bar in the room to each tire on each course that we laid down.  Each tire is checked before and after pounding such that the radius curves evenly around the room.  Tires are selected carefully for their size.  It is wise to select tires of the same height when laying on their side with each course, as consistent sizing will allow each course to lay flat, so that the stacks remain level.  This is easily done by reading the tire dimensions printed on the side of the tires.  For example we commonly used 235/65 R16 tires.  [Size guide]  This would mean we would keep the first number (235) constant with each course.  The second dimension (65) would refer to the sidewall depth.  Larger numbers would indicate large profile tires, which are preferable to their low-pro counterparts, as they allow more dirt to be pounded into the tire.  The final dimension (here =16) designates the diameter of the wheel (here 16 inches).  We also aim for consistency here, as it keeps the courses in a consistent form.  Tires are pounded exhaustively and take an enormous amount of dirt to fill.  We line the bottom course with plastic before filling, and each additional course with cardboard before filling.  First fill with dirt by hand, then pound the sidewalls with a sledge, until the sidewalls bulge.  Then fill the center and pound.  It might take 15 buckets of material to fill a tire.  They become extremely heavy.  Level each one and recheck their distance from the center post before moving onto the next tire.  Be sure to alternate tire placement in the courses to ensure structural rigidity.

  A note about the tires – these are all waste tires.  Typically these are a liability and tire shops have to pay to dispose them.  They are either burned or take up space in a landfill after their useful life.  This way a waste-stream is diverted into a useful structure.  The tire walls provide structural support and thermal mass to help keep the temperature stable inside the home.

• As tire course are being laid out, large metal tubes are laid horizontally and space is provided to allow these tubes to enter the room at the base.  These tubes will run in this case 40 feet outwards to the north away from the house, and will act to draw in air from the outside.  The air will cool passively in the earth as it is drawn into the house, also taking out any moisture along the way.  These will be buried soon into the construction process.  Grills to keep out pests and doors lined with insulation and a seal are placed at each end of the piping.
• Rebar is cut and bent into a squared upside-down U shape and pounded into the finished courses of tires.  These are leveled using a leveled sight or surveying tool.  These re-bar pieces will support the roof arches.
• Arched roofs are constructed by a separate team.  Each roof structure is made of a re-bar skeleton and covered with a 6×6 inch re-mesh wire mesh, or cloth.  This also has an layer on the bottom of metal lath.  The re-bar is bent by hand to size and cut with a manual cutter.  No machines necessary and no welding needed, either.  These are all held together with bailing wire.  Once finished a large group of people pick up these domes and walk them over to the building, carefully lowering them into place, adjusting them as needed.  They are then attached to re-bar with more bailing wire, double tied.
• Behind the tire courses on the north side of the structure a small gap is dug, and behind this are placed two sheets of R-13 insulation with a poly sheet acting as a vapor barrier on their outside.  The space between them and the tire walls are filled with earth.
• Rainwater catchment tanks are placed behind the insulation boards.
• Screws are set into the top course of tires to ‘porcupine’ the surface in preparation for cement.
• Cement is layered atop the tire courses narrowly, to support and accept aluminum beer or soda cans which have been squeezed in the center.  They are set horizontally in layers.  Concrete > cans > concrete > cans, etc, until the wall of bond beam created is 3 inches above the base of the arched roof’s base layer of horizontal re-bar.
• Temporary wooden frames are placed inside the roof domes to keep its shape for the oncoming processes that have great loads.
• Cement is laid atop the domes in thin layers.
• Trenches are dug at the front of the house and poured with concrete with vertical re-bar inserts.  (Horizontal rebar laying across the trenches, too?).  These will support the frames of the window panes and doors for each room.
• Simultaneously a solar (PV) system is being assembled.  At this project, 12 x 230 watt panels are linked up with 4 sets of 3 panels in series.  These feed two charge controllers, a bank of (HOW MANY WHAT TYPE OF) batteries, and a DC > AC inverter.  The house’s lighting and refrigeration will be run off DC and any appliances that can’t accept this will be run of the inverter with AC.  This allows for the inverter to be shut off for a lot of the time, which is quieter and more efficient.
• Another set of tire courses is laid a few feet in front of the house.
• A massive trench is dug between the frames at the front of the house and the tire courses.
• The site is covered each day with a massive tarp to keep off rain and other weather-related damage.

The Garden parties are finally starting to come to fruition.  Last year’s design is slowly becoming a reality, piece by piece.  These permablitzes have been a wonderful opportunity to learn how it feels to teach people about Permaculture.   And, they are all getting hands-on experience, making real, positive change on their community.   Turning lawns into food and beauty.  They will hopefully have some skills paired with understanding that could allow them to make transformations in their own spaces.

I just received this email from my good friend, this evening.

“just shot a wild turkey while hiding behind a manure pile at my
friend’s farm while he ran a call from the asparagus patch
having a feast tomorrow:
roast turkey legs and breast
ramps, fiddle heads and nettles stir-fried with beaver tail
turkey stock with acorns

come on over”

A current theme.

Let me know if you’ve got questions.

_S

Again, let me know if you want to learn about anything specific. Enjoy,

_S