Making a home
A true home should be a vessel for reviving hospitality and providing comfort, one essential characteristic of a home is its craftsmanship. Every person’s home should be an expression of their creativity and energy, and so our expression will be in our building design. Within the home, other individual characteristics are the scents and smells. The homemaker ensures all of them are unique to their home. The world is focused on the subject of sustainability, but all current furniture is mass-produced. The woodworking craft seems to be receding in our current age because of this. Crafting in wood goes back in our ancestry for hundreds of years. Our current knowledge and identification of wood types and uses is also a great resource in this age of information. Wood-related items in our lives are being produced in factories by machines, being able to work in wood is a vital skill if…
Managing rubbish in our household
A major challenge facing us in this modern lifestyle is how to manage rubbish in our household. We take and process the items from nature, use them briefly and then throw our rubbish away. This rubbish ends up in landfills that continually grow with every bin collection. With an attitude toward becoming self-sufficient, the household must look to reducing its rubbish down to almost nothing. The first step towards reducing waste is with a compost heap where kitchen scraps and any organic material is collected. The principle of compost-making is that vegetation is broken down by aerobic organisms. These organisms are bacteria and fungi that break down the cellulose in plant matter and convert this matter into soil through the process of decay. Paper can also be composted or burned, and recycling is also an option if it is available to you. A household can certainly reduce or eliminate rubbish…
Humanure
A compost toilet is a very easy solution to disposing of waste and keeping it in the cycle of nature as humanure. The two-chamber system works very well, but there is also the ‘bucket’ method. The bucket method is simply using 20 liter paint container. This method is easily manageable and also has no smell when used. The bucket is only filled with your waste as well as a blend of ash, soil, leaves, and wood chips. These are added after every deposit. As with the two-chambered system, you want to keep the soil dry. Urine is always separate from humanure. The bucket fills within two to three days in a household with two adults. A hole 600mm is dug measuring approximately 400mm wide. The bucket of humanure is then emptied into the hole and comfrey is planted to assist in the breakdown of the waste. It is also important…
The composting toilet
The composting toilet also called a dry toilet, is a two-chamber system that uses soil instead of water. The composting toilet is commonly used in many parts of the world. There are thousands of different bugs, bacteria, and manure worms in the chambers. All of these elements work together to break down waste and return the nutrients to nature’s cycle. The composting toilet’s design is two-chambered with a ventilation pipe leading vapors and odors out. The chambers are below a platform with a toilet seat as the lid will keep flies out. Once the chamber has been filled and closed, the soil is then left for a year to ferment and break down completely. The flushing toilet pollutes fresh drinking water and keeps essential nutrients in our waste from being returned to the soil. When mixing water and human waste we create ‘sewage’ which is a toxic combination and it…
Homestead
We are a group of like-minded individuals who have decided to live off-grid on a homestead and sustain ourselves in the most conscious manner moving forward. Our desire is to live as close to the earth as we can by using the Permaculture principles. During our conversations around decisions that we make, there are multiple discussions around deciding what conveniences and comforts to include on our homestead. The combined homestead is situated in a forest. Our first buildings will be tiny homes. Living closer to nature allows a person a rare opportunity to observe time and events differently than living in a concrete jungle. There you rush from one task to another. In nature the relationship that you start building begins tentatively. In time you re-learn your place in its rhythms and cycles. The start of the journey was to focus on our needs and build around them. Basic needs…