Category: Homesteading

Fancy Fencing at a Massive Discount

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We last wrote about the below-grade drainage mediation at our adobe home ‘Casablanca’ in the Spring of 2024 when we put the cistern in. Before that, we had begun our latest berm adventure while completing the turf stone driveway, forming the long shape from the excavated material. We have a special place in our hearts for berms since we started building them on the edge of our suburban street in Florida out of salvaged concrete curbing (much to our neighbor’s chagrin).

We love berms because they help protect the property from unwanted runoff and flood water, they provide a measure of privacy and soundproofing, and they create an interesting landscaping feature with a change in terrain and elevation.

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We are Going Nuts!!

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It’s piñon season here in New Mexico, and just like chile season, the fever is real! People not familiar with New Mexicans’ love, nay worship, of piñon will quickly find out when they see cars pulled over and people squatting under the piñon trees on a random stretch of rural road, or when their blog author unabashedly admits they just stepped away to pick piñon mid-sentence.

The piñon pine is New Mexico’s state tree, after all, and indigenous cultures have relied on this nutrient-dense food for eons. “Nutritionally, pinyon pinenuts are superstars, containing over 60% fat (the highest of any nut) and over 30% protein. They are a rich source of linolenic fatty acids, which helps to balance hormone levels. They are also rich sources of vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), thiamin, niacine, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, and manganese.” (Nomad Seed Project, 2018) While I am still relatively new to the piñon scene, I do not take for granted that our 15 acres of forest at Sahalee are covered in prized piñon pine trees and that 2024 is a banner year for these sacred nuts… Read on to learn more about these tender little delicacies!

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A Bedroom for My Mud Affair

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We first slept in this room the night we closed on the house, on my birthday, the day before the world stopped when the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect. We had the mattress bought and shipped in to our realtor friend’s house and built the bed in the garage with a case of beer. It was one of the first rooms we started working on when we immediately tore out the old built-in closet to discover a lot of hidden water damage. I closed up the original doorway and framed in the new entrance from the hallway during the bathroom renovation in the fall of 2021 and we used this is as our main sleeping space and guest quarters in it’s deplorable state for the past few years until we finished the backroom at the end of last year. Dang, it feels so good to have this one finally wrapped up (just missing the area rug on order)! No major plumbing, electrical, or structural work here, but a good bit of TLC to bring this Southwest-style chamber up to snuff for our next round of visitors… Read on to see the process!

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Super Ger Reset and Toono Replacement

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When we took delivery of our Super Ger in 2016, our Yurt Daddy Yves told us that yurts like to move – because they are nomadic, after all. The recommendation was to reset it at least once a year to replicate the Mongolian tradition of moving to seasonal locations. This ensures that the yurt is properly assembled with parts kept in good working order. In fact, the Groovy Yurts website explicitly lays out best practices, “Do not leave it up and alone for an extended period… It is not a set it up and leave it kind of deal. It is a lifestyle.” Sure, we said, we can do that… We’re all in! We earned a gold star in year one because we moved to the yurt deck. Every year after that, we failed miserably.

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Little Cistern, Don’t You…

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Post soundtrack: “Little Sister” by Elvis Presley

The east side of the old adobe house in town we affectionately call ‘Casablanca’ was sucking up water like a sponge and we needed a more permanent intervention to ensure our new adobe work inside would hold up for the next 80 years. We put in a triple defense system to help curb the surface water runoff from the highway on the north side. This included drainage channels and catchment ditches, a percolating driveway surface, and a berm running the greater width of the lot that closed the main driveway. With the east side driveway now closed to vehicular traffic, we could reconfigure the yard to be the place of rest for a 1,000 gal cistern to catch the roof runoff via french drain. Again, very little professional consultation here. No matter the methods, all the advice we were given aligned on the main idea to move the water away from the walls. Period. Read on to see what we did and find out if it worked…

The below grade construction and downward slope from the highway were keeping our adobe walls wet inside
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From Front to Back – Driveway Redesign

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In order to mitigate the below grade drainage problem at Casablanca, we needed to close off the main entrance and driveway from the highway and make a new point of entry coming off the side road. Calling on the expertise and goodwill of mighty fine and resourceful friends here, we were able to install a new gate and grade a new drive to enter the property in town. See what we did!

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Below Grade Garage Gotcha (Part II)

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You can see how we addressed the inside of the garage in Part I, but there was a lot more going on outside to resolve the below grade drainage causing problems inside our old adobe home that we’ll share here. Mainly, we still had to divert the water coming downhill toward the house from the north and west side. (You can revisit our work to first repair the interior living space that suffered from over-saturation of moisture on the west side here.) Without any professional consultation, we devised an action plan to install a triple-feature surface water defense system. Without any additional heavy equipment, a lot of on-site material was dug out, relocated, re-positioned, and thoughtfully placed for new useful purpose. We actually had a lot of compliments on the outcomes we achieved here facing the highway when all was said and done, but the real win was that the garage is now dry! Read on to see what we did…

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Louis Vuitton Meets Granberg Alaskan

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We called one of our favorite and most majestic Ponderosa Pines at Sahalee Louis Vuitton, or Louis for short. The way it caught the light on its richly textured bark emanated luxury and royalty, much more so than the pedestrian handbag designs we see in the high fashion carousels. When we first moved to Sahalee, Louis sheltered us when we took care of our personal business before we had a potty. It became a warm and friendly companion to us that summer. Sadly, Louis was bit with the bark beetle a couple of years ago and we had to take it down.

Enter the new 36″ Granberg Alaskan Saw Mill to Ben’s livery. We knew that we had other beetle kill pondos to fell on the property and that the moody blue-tinged wood grain would be much better put to use as planks or dimensional lumber than hacked into firewood, so this purchase was an investment in future building projects. First, however, Ben set to work on learning how to run it properly and Louis was number one in the practice line. (The video of him dropping the hog last year has been mysteriously lost, sad to say.)

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Below Grade Garage Gotcha

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So, we’ve written a few times about ‘bonus projects‘ and this part of the Casablanca renovation was full of them. The main issue here was that water flowed freely into the garage under the door because the whole house was built below grade. With about 80 years of settling in place and modern road improvements out front on the highway, we were about three feet below the crown of the road that shed water directly over the unfinished driveway into the large opening. Add the fact that this is the north side of the house so any accumulation of rain and snow would not melt/dry up in any kind of hurry. The result was pooling water inside cracking up the concrete pad and soaking into the adobe walls behind the cement-based plaster, causing ‘adobe muerto,’ or adobe death, according to my invaluable guide, Adobe Conservation: A Preservation Handbook. Read on to see how we confronted the reaper…

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Confessions, part 3

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Seven years ago, I confided some hidden and sometimes unsavory truths about the off-grid yurt life. I’m not real sure why it took so long to put more of my frustrations and failures down before now, but I’m feeling compelled to share what’s behind the smiles and reveal more of the darker side of our sunshine-filled days here on the Continental Divide. Honestly, reading my first two entries makes me both chuckle and sob. What I thought were serious problems now seem so inconsequential, like dirty feet (chuckle), and some of the very important plans we had in mind then for our mountain-side homestead are still left to be actualized, like water catchment (sob).

I confess…

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