Bathroom #3

It's hard to believe that we've actually built two bathrooms at the farm at this point. The posts on the first one can be found here and here. Bathrooms are always my favorite part of the house for so many reasons. A: They are so intricate and you pack so much into such a small space. They really are the most complex room in the house (well, maybe that and the kitchen) B: They are fun to create and lay out C: Face it - sitting on the pot and showering are two of life's leisures and you should enjoy them D: Do you need more reasons?

Here are some pictures of the different stages...

The Carter's finishing up the cement board installation

Jeremy working on the grout

The final product

Looking toward the toilet and sink

The tile and sink were all products of the Habitat for Humanity ReStore here in San Diego. The medicine cabinet (which you can't see) and the light were also salvage products from Jeremy's uncle in Arizona. The toilet, tub and faucets were the only things that were new. The toilet is an Aquia Toto II Dual Flush, the same one we had in our old house and installed in this house when we moved in. We've used it for years and already know we love it! It seriously saved so much water when we first made the switch in our old pad - 0.9 liters per flush if you use the small button. That's HALF what a normal water-saving toilet uses. I can also vouch for the fact that um, the small (#1) button does the job perfectly fine for everything I've ever seen go into it, if you get my drift. More pictures and posts of the rest of the construction coming soon!

Panoramic Views...

Of course, it doesn't even look like this anymore. The guys are building so fast I can't take pictures fast enough.

Home Improvement- the BIG build

The grandest and most costly project at Radio Acres to date.  Before April, I used to think the biggest farm project we had under taken was building our chicken coup.  While we were still in escrow we had 30 baby chicks living in our apartment, bought an old playhouse on craigslist for the henhouse, and we're buying materials. Then before we even packed a moving truck, we were building their coup and stringing chicken wire.  

Yes, that was a humdinger of a project. But this one takes the cake.  We are adding about 600 sq. ft to the farmhouse.  Which sounds modest, but is almost 2/3 the size of the current house.  So we are excited for the space and the extra bathroom.  

It has been an ordeal to get permits from the city, but we eventually prevailed and since April 1st we have been pouring concrete and framing.  Jeremy's uncle has come out from Arizona to help us, since we all are truly construction novices and he has been invaluable in accomplishing everything.  

I (BJ) have been Ron's primary assistant and in construction terms, I think my position is called unskilled laborer.  Which includes, pounding nails (I haven't graduated to nail gun yet), busting up concrete with a sledge hammer (I did eventually graduate to jackhammer) and moving lumber around the worksite. Here are some pictures of the progress. We hope to get the roof on by late this week!

Lord willing and the creek don't rise...

Permits are through! Ground breaking next week! The addition to Radio officially has begun... at least in the eyes of the city.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from our recent rain, and the creek fillage this year.

Just a little update

The ball is still rolling on our permits! They are to go to the city one last time tomorrow, so fingers crossed we get the stamp of approval and can move forward with our plan. Man, everyone tells you that it takes longer and costs more than what you plan, and so far at least the former is holding true. We are really just excited to be *hopefully* breaking ground sometime soon, though.
We are also starting to move forward on really maybe possibly actually farming a little more, which is FUN. Our farm-mates will be gone again next week, but I think that come April we may be ready to turn the soil on our freshly made plots and start planting a good strong summer and fall garden. We are also in the process of developing a cool partnership with The Coffee & Tea Collective here in San Diego in which we will collaborate to grow, forage and process tisanes and tea blends for them. I am super excited about this project and can't wait to see where it leads! We will likely be hosting a community event with them to get a bunch of stuff in the ground and also to walk through a harvesting and foraging session with interested community members. Stay tuned for info on that!
We've been throwing around the idea of doing a kick-starter type investment thing going so that we can get moving on either goats or tilapia - what do you think? Would you be interested in investing? If so, what would you be most into? Sound off in the comments with your opinion!

Owls: nature's rodenator.

Sarah and I (BJ) have been a little obsessed with owls lately... I know they're trendy right now and its hip to have vintage owl bric-a-brac around your home, but what about the real thing?  We have a Barn Owl that flies around our canyon at night, and I have been trying to attract him and his friends to our property since we moved here in May of 2010.  Why? because the one thing we are really good at growing on our farm is gophers.

The gophers have made it clear that they were here first and aren't leaving without a fight.  I've tried traps, smoke bombs and even flushing them out with water from the hose. All to no avail. Our biological controls (our cats) were working OK.  Like the gophers, Max the Cat also came with the purchase of the farm (although I don't remember seeing him mentioned in the lease agreements).  Max survived on gophers for the 1.5 months we were in escrow and continued to be his favorite food after we realized he wasn't a neighbors cat and he was our responsibility.  Unfortunately, like all bad ass tom cats, Max would not be contained indoors after dark, and eventually he and a coyote had a run in.  I like to think he took a piece of that coyote with him before the end.

What I really want is a Rondenator, but I can't justify spending $1,600 on something that blows up gophers (a little too much like the movie Caddy Shack). Which brings us back to the owls.

Right around the time we moved in, that OwlCam thing online was really big, my dad kept sending me the links, so eventually I too got sucked into watching baby owls eat various rodents for hours on end.  It was here I learned that nesting owls can consume something like 3,000 gophers a season!!  So I promptly built my first owl box and precariously hung it in an old pepper tree on our back hill, and to my surprise someone promptly moved in. Unfortunately it was bee colony.  Owl box #1, Fail!

I currently find myself with a lot of free time, so I decided to try again.  This owl box is complete with metal roof and is attached to 4 separate branches in a tall lemonade berry via hooks and wires.  My thought was, if it fill with bees again, I can lower it down by the wires and scoop out the bees and put them in our unoccupied hive (currently Sarah's project).

For those of you that want to build an owl box there are about a 100 different ways to do it, and every internet site will tell you their way is best.  But really Barn Owls they need is an enclosed space with a 6" diameter hole in it.  In nature, they use tree hollows, they aren't picky.  Just make sure there are some drainage holes.  And think through if there are anywhere from 2-10 owlets in there (plus parents) how much space they might want.  Lastly, make the entrance hole higher on the box, so baby owls can't accidentally fall out. So there you go, build a box, put a hole on it and hang it at least 10-15ft up.  Happy owling.

Cob Stompin

We took the short drive to Euclid Ave to participate in our Friday ritual of fresh local food and community. I was prepared to meet up with some great people and buy some local produce, but we stumbled upon an unusual scene. There was a group of Second Chance youth collecting rocks and asphalt on the outskirts of the parking lot. Second Chance is a program that works with incarcerated youth and teaches them valuable job and life skills to transition them into the "real world". There was a large tarp with rocks, clay, sand and hay set up and a crowd gathered around Chad Bliss the youth farm coordinator for Second Chance. Chad asked the group of onlookers why farming and earthen building skills are important? Answering his own question Chad eloquently rambled on about how people are totally dependent on others, sometimes working 2 jobs just to survive, eat and have a roof over our heads. People who can grow their own food and learn earthen building can create a sustainable future and be less dependent on a "thing" based economic system that values "things" more than people. Chad took off his shoes and started mixing materials found in our back yards like clay, sand and water. Cob squished through his toes and the smiles of the crowd were contagious.

He started stompin and mixing the materials and rolled them back and forth using a blue tarp like a spring roll wrapper to roll the materials back and forth. His wet muddy feet were to much for my daughters and with a little prodding we too were cob stompin. Another local kid had already joined in the fun and we were dancing the Cob Stomp. Around and around we went with reckless abandon. Our dancing feet were creating a natural building material and maybe some community art.

Cob has been used all over the world as a building material and is known for moderating the internal air temperatures of homes. Cob is constructed using rocks as a base to keep the cob away from moisture, and is blended with hay which provides a sort of natural rebar to strenthen the structure. Cob is sealed with bees wax, wheat paste, or limestone paste to keep moisture out. It is easy to work with, hard as a rock and virtually free. You don't need multiple trips to Home Depot and your kids can help create and design the structures. The only problem is the permitting at this point but hopefully this to will change like gray water policy in San Diego.

So go ahead get some neighbors together and throw a Cob Stompin party. Take your shoes off and let go. You just might even create your own pizza oven, bench , wall or maybe even a house. Consider it a neighborhood art project, pedicure or a free mud bath.

This Peoples Produce Farmers Market workshop is a series put on by Victoy Gardens that will happen every other week and teach our community valuable skills of self sustainability. This is a great opportunity to meet your neighbors and support your local economy. Check them out at http://www.victorygardenssandiego.com/.  

For your information: Just a couple million years ago there were whales swimming down Euclid and Market right smack dab on top of the People's Produce Farmers Market and the graffiti walls of Writers Block. The only predictable part of life is change. Enjoy it!

Our Bathroom...the stuff of dreams.

We have built a bathroom!

You may remember that we built another bedroom a shed/office on our property. We impressed even ourselves with how great it turned out. You can read more about it here.

Now there are two fantastic structures on our property! We have built the most awesome outdoor bathroom, right next to the studio. They sit side-by-side, two miniature architectural wonders (at least for us, who are all surprised that these things became reality... better than we ever imagined.)

Many thanks to Ron, Jeremy's uncle, and all of his skillz. He really made this bathroom, while at least I sat back and watched (I think I was actually out of town.)

There are many amazing features of the bathroom, of which I will let the other farm members blog about. I will simply comment on my favorite. The clawfoot bathtub.

There are a few things that I routinely search for on Craigslist. (Are you surprised?) One is a clawfoot bathtub. I have dreamed of having a clawfoot ever since I visited this amazing hostel in the wilds of South Africa, and partook of an aromatherapy soak. This was a clawfoot tub brimming with water heated by a woodburning stove, essential oils and flowers. I soaked in one of these, under the African stars, in the middle of the savannah, and it was magic. Obviously, I've wanted one myself since then.

The problem has been their exorbitant price, and thus my searches on craigslist. One fine day, I saw an ad for... be still my beating heart... a FREE clawfoot bathtub. It must be too good to be true. I thought to myself. Maybe rotting out or completely rusty. I emailed her, and this was her response:

"Yes! If you want it, I will give it to you at no cost. We just want to get rid of it. You must come right away, however. I will give it to whoever comes first! It is a nice old tub. Was in a house I lived in during college. House burned down and I got tub for free. Have held onto it for 30 years hoping to put it into our new house. My husband said NO!"


It was still a risk, but we sent the guys into Alpine (where she lived) to pick it up. I always get a little nervous when picking up Craigslist items, because you just never know if it will be a waste of time. Finally, the guys reported that they got it, and I could tell by my husband's voice that it had not been a waste of time. Hooray!


Overjoyed, we welcomed my dream tub to the farm! It was rusty and needed work, but it was solid, and had the most amazing lion feet. So we stored it outside by the studio, where it sat... for months... waiting for some attention.


Finally, as the bathroom was getting built, Kim and I decided to tackle the restoration. I called around and asked about getting it professionally restored (there's a cool place in San Diego that will come to your house and restore it for about $300) but in the end we decided we could do it for much cheaper.


We brought it into the backyard, flipped it over, and began washing it out with Barkeepers's Friend and some steel brushes.

We found this on the bottom, but Kim searched the Internet and couldn't find anything about A & O Manufacturing Company in Louisville, Kentucky. If you know anything, fill us in. And check out the date: Nov 12 -- 95...that sure ain't 1995.

These are the claw feet. Aren't they lion-y and Narnian? I love them.

There was much debate about whether we should paint the tub, and what color. In the end, we all liked the rust and decided to leave it in it's natural state. After the good scrub out, we screwed on the feet and placed it in the bathroom. That was the extent of our renovations.


The trickiest part was getting the shower kit for the clawfoot. Not an easy or inexpensive piece to find, and even though we got one, it seems to be made for Victorian hobbits, so my tall husband has to duck about two feet to wash his hair.

But nevermind that. We got this incredible, original clawfoot bathtub for FREE and it looks absolutely fabulous in our bathroom.


The bathroom being as it is (part greenhouse, part bathroom) I think the aromatherapy soak under the stars could be a reality.

Bathroom

Some of you may not know this, but we've been a one-bathroom community since we moved in this past November.  Four adults (at times, 5) and two kids all sharing a tiny 5' x 7.5' bathroom.  That's a lot of poop, not to mention the towels and toiletries.  Although everyone has been a fantastic sport about someone inevitably in the shower when you REALLY need to pee, or small kids walking in while some adult is trying to shower, we really would love a second bathroom somehow.  We don't have a heck of a lot of money, but we are good with random ideas and recycling old materials.  BJ came upon this picture of a greenhouse bathroom that has been an inspiration to us:

Recently, a friend of Jeremy's parents was replacing all of their old windows and french doors, so we nabbed them specifically for a project like this.  We also came upon an old claw foot tub that someone was giving away on craigslist and it happens to be in decent shape.  The last thing we really need is a composting toilet so we don't have to plumb it in to the main sewer system.  About a year ago on craigslist, I came across a really good deal for one and thought we might use it for something like this, so we picked it up.  This is what it looks like:

You can find info on in at the sun-mar website here.  Unfortunately, the toilet really has to be on a raised area so that you can put the composter somewhere below it, like in a regular house with a crawl  space or  somewhere with a raised subfloor.  If you know anyone that might be interested in this awesome toilet, let us know!  It is still in the box and everything, just really doesn't work for our purposes.  We really need to get something more like this:

This unit is all rolled into one so it works on something simple, like a slab of concrete.  So the exciting news of the day is that we finally broke ground and got a slab poured!  Hopefully in the next month we will be proud owners of a second (modified) bathroom.  It will provide some relief (haha) for the needy and just give us all a little bit more much-needed space.  

Nick pouring our slab!

Up and Coming Projects

bees. 

meat birds.

goats.

 trailer.

(*picture courtesy of el cosmico, our inspiration.)

stay tuned.

Looking ahead.

Just getting off of an interesting week of change.  One kid is finally getting over her sinus-to-ear infection with a hefty dose of antibiotics (sigh).  This past week a big change occurred for all of us!  We have officially grown our farm numbers from 4 adults and two kids to 5 adults + 2.  Yes, yes, we acquired another adult somewhere along the way.  Colin will be living with us for a period of time.  It's very exciting because he is really into the FARMING aspect of all of this, and since none of us really have the time and energy to put as much as we'd like into it, he will be the designated farm hand for the next few months.  We've got projects on the drawing board and hopefully will be able to really make some movement towards feeling like a real farm!  Aside from our poultry endeavors and some rogue fruit trees we've managed to stick in the ground, we've been pretty lax about this food production thing.  It makes me so sad when I have to buy salad and chard every week!  This is all stuff that God has given us the ability to grow ourselves with nothing more than a little tenderness and time, yet we still haven't put seeds in the ground.

Another big change that happened last week was that I finally QUIT my JOB!  This is a big deal, and I'm still hyperventilating a little.  It seems that since I've started there, it's just been so tough for me to achieve any type of balance in my life.  It's a super high stress job and it's been difficult for me to manage and still feel good about the dedication I've been giving my friends and family (non-existent to some of you this past year, I know!  And I feel really bad about it, and that's going to CHANGE!)  My last day is the end of this month.  I will be entering the world of personal chef-dom, so if you know anyone that is interested in having a fantastic chef make all of their meals every week, send them my way!  I also hope to begin teaching more fitness classes and just be a better mom, wife, and friend in general.  BREATHE.

In the next week or two we will finally be getting our travel trailer!  Initially we had put some money down on an old vintage Airstream, which didn't pan out.  Turns out my gramps has an old 1960-ish Travel-Eze sitting on his lot that he offered to donate to our farm for free!  It's gonna need some TLC, but we can't wait to get to work fixing her up.  Here's a pic.  I don't for some reason have any full pictures of the thing, but you can get the gist.

We will be having a celebration next weekend for some of our friends that are moving to New York.  It's a fantastic opportunity for them and we are of course thrilled, but it's always so bittersweet to say goodbye.  I suppose it just means we'll have to take a trip out that way sometime soon!  We have friends in Boston we've been meaning to go visit as well, so maybe this will be the nudge we need.

I promise to look back soon and post those pictures and the turducken process.  Take care!

Shed

The shed is almost completed!  There are more pictures in the slide show on the right, so you can see what the free standing unit itself looks like if you haven't seen it in person.  This is J. finishing up some of the flooring.  It's got a floated bamboo floor, thanks to some overstock from his dad's shop.  Thank you, Wooden Floor Co., Inc!

We've just been pouring all of our spare time into 1) trying to finish the shed and 2) packing up and sifting through all of our stuff.  It's nice to be able to stretch it out and try to organize and get rid of stuff as we go.  We really need to whittle out any excess, so if you need anything at all you might want to ask before you go buy anything...

Jeremy mentioned yesterday that Andy told him there is a 90% chance the short sale will go through.  I guess I just (stupidly) assumed that since it got approved, there was no way it WOULDN'T go through.  Silly me!  I guess either way, we are out in the next two weeks.  There's really no way we can get 95% ready to move and then just unpack and stay here.  It's now or nothing.  Fingers crossed that everything pulls through, though, because I'd really much rather see someone who really wants this place get it instead of having it sit uncared for AND getting slammed with a foreclosure on our record.  We've loved this house, and cared for it and poured a lot of our energy into it for the past few years.  It would be more than a little heart breaking to just see it be one of the thousands that sit empty in this wreck of a market.

A time of excitement, of change, of movement and purging.  Emptying out our old life and jumping into the new.  It feels good to clean out all of this dust and throw away all of this trash.  Let's keep moving!