Trees! It's interesting how I see this garden differently as time passes. Areas previously over-looked suddenly resonate, ripe with potential and promise. Thus it was with a wonderful clarity of vision that Isobel, Hannah and I travelled over to our local nursery (http://www.woodburyestate.co.uk/) and filled the trailer with trees. My well thumbed copy of Ken Fern's 'Plants for a future' was invaluable as we worked round the hundreds of species offered. It often surprises me how many feature in the book, though I suppose there is no reason why it should. The more I discover about the plants already living in my garden, those many would call wildflowers, or weeds, the more I realise that they all have a 'use', either directly as food, fuel or suchlike, or as a contributor to the system as a whole. Is it better to clear the ground and plant trusted old vegetables, or simply learn to eat what is already there?
The vision I had last week in the half light of the evening (a great time for garden planning - distracting details give way to a clearer view of the big picture) was of a line of trees between the polytunnel and the dell. This will serve several purposes: firstly, more trees is good, full stop. Secondly it will act as a windbreak on the most exposed side of the garden. Thirdly it will screen the polytunnel from the wild beauty of the dell. Finally it will provide food, construction materials and fuel. Over 40 metres I have planted 6 hazels, half Gunslebert half Corabel, cherry plum, spindle, amelanchier, Siberian pea tree, sea buckthorn, and a service tree.
It is always a good feeling planting trees. Elsewhere this year I've planted several apples that I've grown from seed. They are vigorous and healthy, and I have high hopes for them. I may have to wait a while for the fruit, and how it will be is as yet unknown, but the joy they've already given me is repayment enough for my efforts. The top end of the garden is now home to an oak, some willow and alder, an alder buckthorn (much loved by bees), an Amelanchier RJHilton (hopefully the Amelanchier will fruit better now there are four of them), and a Japanese dogwood. All I need to do now is keep them weeded and watered, and make sure the deer cannot get to them. They seem to be away up in the hills now the spring is here, but you can never be sure...
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Sunday, 5 February 2012
wwoof wwoof
This week we had a visit from Ana. She is making a film about Wwoofing. Wwoof, if you are unaware of them, are an organisation bringing together volunteer workers with hosts who garden or farm organically. The deal is that the wwoofer is given a place to stay and food to eat while they give their time and energy to help the host. It is a brilliant concept, and a scheme that is gaining popularity across the world. In fact, when I first heard of wwoofing some 20 years ago it stood for 'working weekends on organic farms'. The acronym now stands for 'world wide opportunities on organic farms', neatly bringing it up to date with the current reality of Wwoof. As a host I receive up to 20 emails a week from people wishing to stay and work with us. And everyone's a winner - as a host we get 'free' and generally very willing help around the holding, as well as new energy and fresh perspectives. Volunteers are able to travel all around the world, meeting and staying with people, being involved with their day to day work and lives, at no cost other than their time and labour. Fantastic.
It was a great pleasure to walk around our smallholding with Ana, speaking about the many projects that we have achieved with the help of wwoofers. Many of these would not have happened without the many wonderful people that we've had the good fortune to welcome to our home.
First up we visited the two wood stores. David helped with the first, on the back of the house. It seemed that he had never swung an axe or hammer in his life, being more familiar with a tennis racquet, or a pen. He soon got the hang of things however, and began to deliver uncannily accurate blows to split the larch logs we used to build the frame. So much did he enjoy this process that when Lara came this winter we had most of the wood we needed already split, and the new store was built in two days.
I next took Ana to the geodesic greenhouse. Alfredo and Natalia were here helping with this job. They made a good impression by being outside waiting for me on day one, dressed in overalls, stout boots and work gloves, a good impression that grew daily. During the two weeks that they stayed we built the dome, a bridge, clad the chicken house in hand split and shaved shakes, and mended the roof of the house. There was still time in the evenings for me to enjoy drumming while Natalia played heavy metal guitar and Alfredo held us steady on the bass. We also had Piers staying, who is no stranger to the microphone, and his girlfriend Anya who took a little persuading to join in, despite playing cello for the Munich Philharmonic! Good times.
Further good, though more gruelling times were had building the pond. When I collected Jonathan and Cleo they had been rough camping in the Grampians. In November. And them hailing from the south of France! I knew they would be hard, and they needed to be. Most days ground work could not begin until 10am as all was frozen solid, and by 4 in the afternoon all had again turned to stone. Cleo suffered terribly with chillblains. She bravely and artfully cracked on with Jonathan and I, creating the hole that was to be filled with over-flow from the spring that feeds our house with clear clean water. We had expected to be digging away earth, but what we found where the pond was to be deepest was a huge pile of rocks. So we took each in turn and built them into the pond wall. Big stones, and there were some goodly 'wee chuckies', were placed carefully to form a gently curving dyke, while the shrapnel was packed in behind to shore it up, and to create the slope required in the inside. Of course we still needed to somehow seal the pond. What we did not expect as we begun to dig at the end nearest the spring was clay - a rare commodity round here. This had been brought up and laid down by the spring over lord knows how long, and was naturally the perfect material with which the line the pond. Ultimately just a few barrow loads of earth needed to be taken away (actually just enough the level the path there abouts). As with most projects before and since, our job had been simply to organise the elements already there. Nothing added, and nothing taken away - most satisfactory. Elegant, zero carbon, and so far, looking to be long lasting. Annoyingly we did subsequently have to drain the pond and take apart a section of wall to lay the pipe for our hydro-electric system (thanks to Damien and Ron for invaluable help there). However, the wall is now once again complete, and the pond holds water beautifully. There were many reasons to build a pond there in the middle of the garden - wildlife, micro-climate and as a feature - but the driving force was to be able to grow water cress in clean, fluke free water. Having thought that the ducks (now all eaten, both by us and the fox) had themselves eaten all the cress, I am happy to report that in munching their way through much of it they also succeeded in spreading it all around the pond. From there it is taking advantage of a mild winter and making a strong come-back. I look forward to sweet and spicy salads this summer, when I also hope to watch trout feeding amoung thick, dense, and healthy water cress stems.
I had hoped in this post to cover most of the wwoofer assisted structures - the rest will have to wait, as bed beckons. Until then...
It was a great pleasure to walk around our smallholding with Ana, speaking about the many projects that we have achieved with the help of wwoofers. Many of these would not have happened without the many wonderful people that we've had the good fortune to welcome to our home.
First up we visited the two wood stores. David helped with the first, on the back of the house. It seemed that he had never swung an axe or hammer in his life, being more familiar with a tennis racquet, or a pen. He soon got the hang of things however, and began to deliver uncannily accurate blows to split the larch logs we used to build the frame. So much did he enjoy this process that when Lara came this winter we had most of the wood we needed already split, and the new store was built in two days.
I next took Ana to the geodesic greenhouse. Alfredo and Natalia were here helping with this job. They made a good impression by being outside waiting for me on day one, dressed in overalls, stout boots and work gloves, a good impression that grew daily. During the two weeks that they stayed we built the dome, a bridge, clad the chicken house in hand split and shaved shakes, and mended the roof of the house. There was still time in the evenings for me to enjoy drumming while Natalia played heavy metal guitar and Alfredo held us steady on the bass. We also had Piers staying, who is no stranger to the microphone, and his girlfriend Anya who took a little persuading to join in, despite playing cello for the Munich Philharmonic! Good times.
Further good, though more gruelling times were had building the pond. When I collected Jonathan and Cleo they had been rough camping in the Grampians. In November. And them hailing from the south of France! I knew they would be hard, and they needed to be. Most days ground work could not begin until 10am as all was frozen solid, and by 4 in the afternoon all had again turned to stone. Cleo suffered terribly with chillblains. She bravely and artfully cracked on with Jonathan and I, creating the hole that was to be filled with over-flow from the spring that feeds our house with clear clean water. We had expected to be digging away earth, but what we found where the pond was to be deepest was a huge pile of rocks. So we took each in turn and built them into the pond wall. Big stones, and there were some goodly 'wee chuckies', were placed carefully to form a gently curving dyke, while the shrapnel was packed in behind to shore it up, and to create the slope required in the inside. Of course we still needed to somehow seal the pond. What we did not expect as we begun to dig at the end nearest the spring was clay - a rare commodity round here. This had been brought up and laid down by the spring over lord knows how long, and was naturally the perfect material with which the line the pond. Ultimately just a few barrow loads of earth needed to be taken away (actually just enough the level the path there abouts). As with most projects before and since, our job had been simply to organise the elements already there. Nothing added, and nothing taken away - most satisfactory. Elegant, zero carbon, and so far, looking to be long lasting. Annoyingly we did subsequently have to drain the pond and take apart a section of wall to lay the pipe for our hydro-electric system (thanks to Damien and Ron for invaluable help there). However, the wall is now once again complete, and the pond holds water beautifully. There were many reasons to build a pond there in the middle of the garden - wildlife, micro-climate and as a feature - but the driving force was to be able to grow water cress in clean, fluke free water. Having thought that the ducks (now all eaten, both by us and the fox) had themselves eaten all the cress, I am happy to report that in munching their way through much of it they also succeeded in spreading it all around the pond. From there it is taking advantage of a mild winter and making a strong come-back. I look forward to sweet and spicy salads this summer, when I also hope to watch trout feeding amoung thick, dense, and healthy water cress stems.
I had hoped in this post to cover most of the wwoofer assisted structures - the rest will have to wait, as bed beckons. Until then...
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Power to the people
It's been a long and at times rather slow journey, but we are finally producing our own electricity!
A surprisingly small but pleasingly heavy box sat in the porch when I arrived home from work a week or two ago. I unpacked the turbine with great excitement. It is beautifully made, my Stream Engine, with its cast alloy casing, tight coils, chunky magnets and bronze turgo wheel. This wheel is only 5 inches across, and with the fire hydrant flow thundering out of the penstock I wondered how on earth it could capture all that water and all that power.
I managed to pilfer a couple of concrete blocks, cemented them down on their sides, and bolted the turbine on top. From the four way manifold I wrestled four lengths of 2" flexible hose into place, supplying each of the nozzles. These terminate in brass nuts drilled with a 5mm hole, each firing a jet of water directly at the cups of the wheel. Energy Systems and Design, who I am more than happy to name check, sent a selection of these nuts with nozzle sizes ranging from 2mm to 10. We will experiment with these to eek the maximum juice.
Once the plumbing was finished it remained only for me to rudely ignore numerous newly arrived guests, who seemed not to share my single-minded enthusiasm for the imminent realisation of a long held dream. I nervously connected up the cable. Hannah and the children back from school, it was time to release the flow. The family gathered around the door of the turbine house. I turned on the valves. With a mighty roar of water the turbine spun into life, sending the numbers on the voltmeter racing up!
After a day or two the whistling from the turbine quietened down, and now the loudest noise is the rushing of the water. This in itself is not quiet. In the turbine house itself (actually Gordon's old garden shed, more recently our pig house, now plonked on top until we build something better in the spring), it is deafening. But the swine bashed panels hold most of sound in, and I like to hear the energy anyway. Electricity is usually so silent in our homes.
As I feared the power is making only a small difference to our heating. The oil fired boiler is rated at 20-25 kW. Although I have yet to measure the wattage, the turbine is likely to be producing around 0.5 kW, fifty times less. Heating our homes and hot water require huge amounts of power, making lighting and appliance consumption seem slight. Our hydroelectric system is a better match for the latter, and with the PV system we are now planning, could supply most if not all of our needs. Heating will be better met with the wood stove and boiler, to which end we have just built another lean-to shed, ready to store the vast amounts of wood required!
It takes truly scary levels of power production to supply the needs of a 21st century home, and for most of us it simply comes with a flick of a switch and a quarterly, and currently largely affordable bill. I am beginning to stop taking this for granted.
A surprisingly small but pleasingly heavy box sat in the porch when I arrived home from work a week or two ago. I unpacked the turbine with great excitement. It is beautifully made, my Stream Engine, with its cast alloy casing, tight coils, chunky magnets and bronze turgo wheel. This wheel is only 5 inches across, and with the fire hydrant flow thundering out of the penstock I wondered how on earth it could capture all that water and all that power.
I managed to pilfer a couple of concrete blocks, cemented them down on their sides, and bolted the turbine on top. From the four way manifold I wrestled four lengths of 2" flexible hose into place, supplying each of the nozzles. These terminate in brass nuts drilled with a 5mm hole, each firing a jet of water directly at the cups of the wheel. Energy Systems and Design, who I am more than happy to name check, sent a selection of these nuts with nozzle sizes ranging from 2mm to 10. We will experiment with these to eek the maximum juice.
Once the plumbing was finished it remained only for me to rudely ignore numerous newly arrived guests, who seemed not to share my single-minded enthusiasm for the imminent realisation of a long held dream. I nervously connected up the cable. Hannah and the children back from school, it was time to release the flow. The family gathered around the door of the turbine house. I turned on the valves. With a mighty roar of water the turbine spun into life, sending the numbers on the voltmeter racing up!
After a day or two the whistling from the turbine quietened down, and now the loudest noise is the rushing of the water. This in itself is not quiet. In the turbine house itself (actually Gordon's old garden shed, more recently our pig house, now plonked on top until we build something better in the spring), it is deafening. But the swine bashed panels hold most of sound in, and I like to hear the energy anyway. Electricity is usually so silent in our homes.
As I feared the power is making only a small difference to our heating. The oil fired boiler is rated at 20-25 kW. Although I have yet to measure the wattage, the turbine is likely to be producing around 0.5 kW, fifty times less. Heating our homes and hot water require huge amounts of power, making lighting and appliance consumption seem slight. Our hydroelectric system is a better match for the latter, and with the PV system we are now planning, could supply most if not all of our needs. Heating will be better met with the wood stove and boiler, to which end we have just built another lean-to shed, ready to store the vast amounts of wood required!
It takes truly scary levels of power production to supply the needs of a 21st century home, and for most of us it simply comes with a flick of a switch and a quarterly, and currently largely affordable bill. I am beginning to stop taking this for granted.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Better without batteries?
The new DC immersion heater is fitted into the water tank, ready to take the 48v output from the hydro-electric turbine. Having wavered from the straight path for a while and toyed with the idea of batteries, I have returned. Batteries are hassle it seems; they need looking after and replacing, contain nasty chemicals, emit potentially explosive hydrogen gas, can be rapidly ruined by an incompetent user, and are hideously expensive: nearly two grand for my small system. I have not ruled them out for good, however. But I am for now setting up with a wonderfully simple system: a cable runs from the turbine to the immersion heater. That's it. No inverters, charge controllers, or monitoring systems. Of course there is no flexibility - the power will only heat water for our domestic hot water and space heating. There are also two concerns - one is that we will be in danger of boiling the water in our tank (unlikely), and the other is that the power will hardly make a dent in this mighty task (more likely).
In either event the system will need rethinking. But for now I am delighted and excited to be getting it up and running in such a clear and simple way. Those enchantingly passionate and geeky folk at Energy Systems and Design have finished the turbine now. It is on it's way.
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
hydro
The pipe is in, ready to take water from where the burn flows into the garden and carry it with building pressure all the way to the back of the byre. This is a fall of around 20 metres giving a pressure of 2 bar, or 30 PSI in old money. With a flow rate of 8 litres per second (about average for the Camnacar burn) this should provide a constant 800 watts, through the Streamengine. I have plumped for this solid little turbine despite, or perhaps because of it's relative expense. Buy cheap, buy twice (and live with second rate rubbish all the while)! I have a friend already dissatisfied with his second cheap far-eastern turbine.
Hopefully the Streamengine will live up to my expectations. Eccentric Canadian enthusiasts are currently putting one together to meet the demands of our system. Directing jets of water at the bronze wheel are four nozzles, each one controllable so we can make the most of the variable flow of the burn. When it's a a trickle then perhaps just one will be turned on. After rain or snow melt all four valves will be open, and water will still be pouring over and past the intake. This could be seen as an enormous amount of wasted power, but it is not worth designing the system around the sort of flows that are only available for a small proportion of the year. I hope I have pitched it about right with 110mm diameter pipe and 1.5 kW turbine. Time will tell.
To begin with I will direct the output to our 200 litre thermal store via an immersion heater and see how far it goes towards providing hot water and heating for the house. The way we use the power I expect to evolve over time. I don't yet have a grip on what this sort a wattage could usefully do for us. That the stream flows more strongly in the winter is ideal as our energy needs are very much greater then. Of course space and water heating is the greatest demand, and even with a wood stove and boiler running more or less constantly the kerosine boiler does much of the work. Hopefully the turbine will begin to make the kerosine redundant. Within five years I would like to see that back of that system altogether. Securing a bigger and better supply of firewood and creating more space to season it will help. There is no substitute for well seasoned wood.
I will post more as the hydro system comes together.
Hopefully the Streamengine will live up to my expectations. Eccentric Canadian enthusiasts are currently putting one together to meet the demands of our system. Directing jets of water at the bronze wheel are four nozzles, each one controllable so we can make the most of the variable flow of the burn. When it's a a trickle then perhaps just one will be turned on. After rain or snow melt all four valves will be open, and water will still be pouring over and past the intake. This could be seen as an enormous amount of wasted power, but it is not worth designing the system around the sort of flows that are only available for a small proportion of the year. I hope I have pitched it about right with 110mm diameter pipe and 1.5 kW turbine. Time will tell.
To begin with I will direct the output to our 200 litre thermal store via an immersion heater and see how far it goes towards providing hot water and heating for the house. The way we use the power I expect to evolve over time. I don't yet have a grip on what this sort a wattage could usefully do for us. That the stream flows more strongly in the winter is ideal as our energy needs are very much greater then. Of course space and water heating is the greatest demand, and even with a wood stove and boiler running more or less constantly the kerosine boiler does much of the work. Hopefully the turbine will begin to make the kerosine redundant. Within five years I would like to see that back of that system altogether. Securing a bigger and better supply of firewood and creating more space to season it will help. There is no substitute for well seasoned wood.
I will post more as the hydro system comes together.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Swallows inside
Trauma for the swallows nesting in the roof of the garage - a few days back their nest fell from the rafters leaving three dazed and confused chicks on the ground, and two very anxious parents continuing to fed and protect them. How they avoided being eaten by the cat I cannot imagine. They were at least close to fledging, and could fly about at ground level, but were unable to get themselves up to any kind of real safety. So there they stayed, huddled together wide eyed in the middle of the floor, madly cheeping with gaping mouths whenever the adults returned. It was actually rather wonderful to be working away building my shaving horse (for holding a piece of wood so I can sit and shape it with a drawknife) while watching these beautiful and rather helpless chicks being fed by two spectacularly acrobatic parents.
I last saw them two days ago sitting on the branches of a birch tree away up the garden, so I assume all is well and they are now fully fledged.
A red squirrel was bounding from tree to tree just by the house yesterday, a deer was outside the front door as I went out this morning, and rabbits are advancing on the vegetable garden, so it feels like the wildlife is closing in just now, some more welcome than others...
I last saw them two days ago sitting on the branches of a birch tree away up the garden, so I assume all is well and they are now fully fledged.
A red squirrel was bounding from tree to tree just by the house yesterday, a deer was outside the front door as I went out this morning, and rabbits are advancing on the vegetable garden, so it feels like the wildlife is closing in just now, some more welcome than others...
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Take a breath
Such a wondrous time of year: I don't know whether to watch bugs beetling through burgeoning blades of grass, or simply gaze up through unfurling leaves to the blessed canopy above.
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