chickens!

Welcome to the chickens!
Our 3 new feathered friends arrived over the weekend, and they are charming, from their freakishly large and scaly feet to their fluffy little butts.

Things I can't do in Italy

It's a pretty long list.
- Speak Italian
- Inflate a bicycle tire
- Open the doors of the house I'm staying at
- Find the @ sign on keyboards (I cut and paste it)
- Read Italian
- Make capuccino
- Start a burner
- Charge anything

Things I can do in Italy:
- Smile
- Wait
- Nod/Gesture
- Eat
- Order cappuccino (fingers crossed)
- Operate a flashlight
- Ride on trains
- Eat some more
- Walk
- Bike up hills
- Swim

The swimming in Italy is especially good. This is our third day here and we're going to set forth after a few more cappuccinos to explore the medieval town of Orvieto. Central Italy, in case you were wondering, was settled by the Umbrians sometime around the 8th century BC, a 'peacable farming tribe' according to my EyeWitness guidebook. They were then were conquered by the Etruscans, a long time ago. In the 13th Century the independent provinces fell one by one to the papcy, who pretty much owned everything and controlled everythign else. Then the area joined Italy proper in 1860, when Italy was unified.

Let's talk more about the house. It sits on lake Cordova, which is calm and pretty and attracts a lot of birds and bugs. One bird has a call that sounds a lot like a cat meowing into a microphone. It travels, that sound. You can't swim in the lake, because it's a reservoir, but you can admire it, and see fireworks across the way, and sometimes hear people partying, or camping, as the sounds of voices carry, indistrinctly, over the water.

Each night we stay up late, trying to digest the 6-course dinners that Lorenzo and his handsome American minions (aka culinary students) prepare for us. The portions are much too large and Lorenzo, who Roger calls 'Chef', glowers at us when we don't finish. We all try to exercise more so we don't earn his wrath. Needless to say, each night seams are split. Dessert wine is uncorked. I resort to lie-downs with a finger of Frenet Branca. (Thank God for digestifs.)

It's a quiet spot, with a lawn for Ruth and Roger's young son and daughter to run around, kick soccar balls, ride bikes, and general be adored and adorable. In the evenings a not-very-stray dog comes and visits us, begging food but otherwise keeping her distance. Duncan, Liz's husband, chases her off. The company is excellent, the food is divine, the drinking is non-stop, and we're all having a lovely time.

Last night, we had a fire in the open pit and watched the nearly-full moon rise. Roger used his iPhone app to locate the big dipper and identify the stars. We have an excellent view of the hill town of Todi, and the lights blinked off through the hours until there was just a single string that defined the battlements that kept the Visigoths (perhaps) at bay.

Italy-bound

Two things never to take for granted: the kindness of strangers, and the generosity of good friends. Some old friends invited me to join them in their house in Umbria in June, so I'm heading to Italy for a week. Super excited to have a trip! It's been years since I traveled and it's remarkable how much things have changed. Guide books, for example, go light on accommodations information, because it can all be found (up to date!) online. I'll also be traveling with a computer, so can make arrangements as I go.

Things have come together in the past week -- my guidebooks and Eurorail passes arrived. Checks came from my freelance clients so I'll have a bit of spending money. And this morning, I tried on all the clothes I planned to take, then cut them in half, then added in a few. Packing light truly is an exercise in discipline.

A huge congrats to my friend Ginger, who bought a bike on Friday. It's a Novara - REI's brand -- and is a fabulous green color. It's chromolly steel, but light and very classic. Kinda makes a girl think about a second bike, with fenders and a chain guard and a front basket for carrying strawberries and daschunds.

Today we're setting up the chicken coop in the back yard, in preparation for getting 3-4 feathered friends in July. But first, a long lope up a hill to feed a friend's bunny rabbit. Go Hoppy!

Stage Dive

The best cocktail in the Science of Cocktails 2011 exhibit at the SF Exploratorium earlier this year. Yum!

Stage Dive
by Jared Anderson, 15 Romolo

Collins glass

Ingredients:
2oz hangar one vodka
3 muddled kumquats
3 sage leaves
.5 oz honey
.5 oz lemon juice
splash of soda

Random Greenie Tidbits

Pulled from the many green building pamphlets they circulate up there in the Pacific Northwest.

Event: Coming up this month is the Village Building Convergence in Portland, where urban humanization group City Repair performs "urban alchemy", transforming spaces (like intersections) into places for people to hang out together. Check it out at vbc.cityrepair.org, May 27-June 5.

Get rebates through federal programs for weatherizing homes. MOney for home improvements to the tune of 6 billion is coming through State Energy Program (SEP) and Energy Efficiency and Conservation BLock Grants(EECBG). You gotta be ready to start this Sept, though. Congress also considering Home Star, aka Cash for Caulkers, with rebates up to $4k. See what Portland's offering at www.cleanenergyworksportland.org. Seattle's Earth Advantage is runnin a pilot Energy Performance Score.

Solar water systems can generate up to 60% of energy needs for hot water in the home. Oooo.

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) of smaller than 800 square feet don't require a permit in Portland for the next 3 years. Great for empty nesters who might want to rent their homes and live in the guest cottage. Read about standards for green homebuilding: Passive House (qualifies for Energy-Efficient Mortgage (EEM) money through fed programs) and the Living Building Challenge.

More about EEMs and Energy Improvement Mortgages...
Available through regular lenders, but not promoted, EEMs give you extra money for home projects based on future energy savings. EIMs make you eligible for tax credits to cover new installations. First step is a HERS energy audit (home energy rating system).

Urban Permaculture

Learning heaps in Eugene, at Common Circle's two-week Urban Permaculture course.
Spent the last 4 days listening to Larry Korn, a 25-year veteran landscaper who studied with Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan, creating a sustainable and productive edible forest. Read more at One Straw Revolution.

Check out this great Permaculture Resource list at Toby Heminway's website, writer of Gaia's Garden. There's everything from soil to water management and aquaculture, Design and methodologies, plant guilds, and composting.

Got to go to Eugene's Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT), where they make custom cargo bicycles (because when peak oil passes and the economic shit hits the fan, we won't be able to source foreign parts anymore) in a youth apprenticeship program. Super cool.

CAT recently got funding in $10 and $25 personal checks as a result of the Superhero ride. Pedal power to the people!

It's halfway through the course and we're all tired, crabby and, apparently, dehydrated. We've also been on a low- to no-fat diet for 8 days. It's remarkable how my relationship to food has changed. I eat like a dog. I don't give it any thought, and then whatever is put in front of me I devour. It's been noted that our living conditions - highly communal with little time for personal reflection; sleep deprivation; very low-calorie diet - maps pretty well to what makes people susceptible to brainwashing. At least we know the course will end, and we'll all go home. Unless someone asks us to lace up the purple sneakers...

Peace and love to all. It's raining in Oregon and the frogs are quiet.

Laundry to landscape greywater notes

If you ever wanted to put in a quick and dirty greywater system, California law now allows you to use washing machine water in the garden. Constraints are: greywater must not come into contact with open air and you cannot store it, because it will smell within 24 hours. Showers are also legal, but are a different gravity feed system. Kitchen sinks are still considered blackwater, and not appropriate for greywater.

These notes are from a workshop with Greywater Alliance, and 10 of us installed a system in an Oakland home in about 3 hours. Most of the work is in digging the trenches (4-6 inches below the surface).

When you're planning where to put your drip lines, keep in mind that the water's going to be delivered to the garden intermittently, and can be a deluge. A typical top-loading washer uses 40 gallons per load, and a water-efficient front-loader 15-20 gallons. If you do all your laundry on the weekends, it can be 100+ gallons in two days, followed by a stretch of a week or more. For that reason, it's best to use this type of greywater system to irrigate trees or blackberry bushes. There are gravity systems for showers/sinks that operate and designed differently.

Laundry-to-greywater is the absolute simplest greywater system. It has no pumps, or filters, because they're a pain to maintain.

A greywater system isn't feasible if you have a high water table -- less than 3 feet below surface, because of the danger of contaminating the groundwater. This system relies on the washing machine pump to deliver water to plants -- so you don't have to deal with the gradient requirements of a gravity (shower) system, which is roughly making sure your pipe drops 1/4 inch each foot, to keep water moving.

How It's Done
1. From laundry machine
Attach three-way joint valve 1” to wall ($30) near and *above* the height of the washer.
This lets you direct the water either out to the garden or into the sewer. You must use a non-salty detergent like Oasis. If you want to use bleach or another non-plant-safe product, you'll want to switch over to sewer disposal.

Going into the bottom of the 3-way joint is dirty wash water.
Output from the T goes either to the sewer or to the greywater irrigation system.

- Sewer PVC pipe goes down (existing) standpipe about 2 inches. Do not make a seal; leaving it open means it won't siphon, pulling dirty water back into the washer.
- Second PVC pipe goes through wall/floor to garden, ideally immediately. To go through the wall, drill 2 test holes 1.5 inches apart using extra-long drill bit, and see if you hit anything. Use circular saw to drill 1 ½” hole, or round hole saw - Milwakee set is a good one.

2. Outside wall
- Install a 1½” Autovent - use 'bushing' to attach to 1” inside female adapter (threads will be on inside) PVC pipe. Autovent is another anti-siphon device, so system won’t pull the greywater back into washing machine.) You'll need to add a 1” barb by male adapter (need more info)

Putting PVC pipe together will require some tools, like a pipe cutter, and glue. For threaded attachments use 1/2 - ¾” teflon tape to seal connection. 3-4 turns. There is a correct direction to put on tape – clockwise and away from you.

Tubing
Schedule 40 PVC pipe above ground in/out house (avoid Class 20 – it’s crap); pipe cutters, Gorilla Glue is less toxic. Use 1.25” plastic straps (not metal) attached to wood wall.

3. In the garden
Blue lock tubing underground (“HDPV” high density polyethylene) Can also use more flexible black tubing, but less resilient/more prone to damage
Dig ditches ~4 inches below surface (may be easier to move dirt than pipe)
1” mains to mulch shield
OR
1” mains to ½” branches to mulch shield
Must have mulch shields at the end of every line.
You can pay $3-4 for mulch shields or you can create your own out of plastic 1 gal pots
Wing it in terms of water flow. There are thingies to put on the end of the line that allow you to slow the flow through the endpoints. You can always pull your lines higher to slow down the flow, or dig deeper to increase output.

Arrived in Eugene

I got to Eugene three nights ago, saw my sister's family, and am now settled into Darmalaya, the retreat center where the Urban Permaculture course is being held. The course is put on by Common Circle, and covers everything from straw bale housing to organic farming, solar installations, greywater use, and so on. THe first two days have been devoted to what they're calling Social Permaculture, i.e. the ability to affect desirable change in people and communities. I'm very excited for the hands-on work to begin later this week.

The retreat center has a greywater system installs, which drains to a small pond along with rainwater. It has composting toilets of four varieties: the $1200 kind with nice seats and heaters to dry up and accelerate the composting process of human waste. Then there's the rustic outhouse that lets nature do the same thing. There's a straw bale structure that houses two 50-gallon drums with toilet seats perched on top of them and a hell of a backdraft. And then there's the berm. For men, it's a pile or leaves. For women's it's a block behind the outhouse. This is for #1 only.

When one of the women arrived here, she asked to use the bathroom. The organizer asked her what she needed to do, exactly. She was then directed to the proper toilet.

So far, Social Permaculture seems to studied by engaging in lot of togetherness exercises. I haven't held hands so much since kindergarten. It's nice, in a way. It's also a step or two closer to woo-woo land than I'm comfortable with. What's that saying? Do one thing every day that scares you. Maybe next time a cuddle circle comes around, I'll dive in. More likely though, I'll save my hands-on experiences for piling up straw bales or pulling weeds...

This afternoon -- SWALES! Small ditches that allow you to retain water in a landscape.

on the road

I'm on my way to Portland! Left SF at noon on Tuesday and headed up the I-505. Stopped in Willows. In case you were curious, Tori Burke is the manager at the Walmart there, and she has hung her photo proudly over the paper towel dispenser in the women's bathroom. Took a detour through the lovely green hills east of the Mendocino National Forest, dreaming of goat herds and strawbale barns, clean rivers and chicken coops and beehives.


And when the dream of a compostable agrarian existence begins to tire, you can go to a Republican pancake breakfast at the local school.



It really is beautiful out here. Last stop was the perfectly adequate Mountain View motel in Yreka.