A garden shed

 Finally built a garden shed, as the garage was getting rather crowded.

A lot of the material was scrounged, or leftovers, or bought at random intervals, mostly from a friend who had to end his sawmill days and clear out the inventory before moving. So, some odd choices, but it made it more interesting to design as we went.

I had read about the wood preservation technique of Yakisugi ( or shou sugi ban), as mentioned in a post from last year. That is one of the bigger experiments in this adventure. Turns out to use a LOT of propane to do the treatment. That, or perfect the traditional method, which is quicker, but trickier. We decided to just do part of one wall with this method, and wood shingles ( also made by the friend from pine on his land) and metal for the rest.

Flat land is hard to come by here, so we had a contractor flatten an area near the house. The drop off was still rather much, so I am building a retaining wall to stabilize things. I've used tires for walls in the past. While they can be had for free, they require lots of labor and are time consuming, so went with the easy landscaping blocks. each weighs 82 lbs( 37kg). 

Since I was rather in a hurry, and not getting any younger, I actually hired a young fellow for the day to help. First time I had ever done that, and it went well.

 A harbinger of things to come??

Next up is a greenhouse. Will report on that when it is finished.

hazelnut lessons learned

 This year's hazelnut harvest is the largest yet, as the trees continue to come in to full production. 

It was a real challenge for just my wife and I hand harvesting, since the ripening nuts start falling to the ground a couple weeks after ripe enough to harvest, and they are impossible to gather once on the ground in the tall grass. The window is narrow with all the other things going on. Research is being done to mechanize harvest, but likely we'll be hiring help for the near future.

Harvest is a one time pass through, and all are harvested even if some of the husks (involucres) are not drying back yet. The genetics of these selected hazels is still variable, so they don't all ripen at the same time. Multiple picking passes would be quite onerous, so we put in drying bins for a couple weeks to finish drying, making the husking effort  much easier.

After husking they are bagged and hauled to where the prototype shelling equipment is, a five hour drive from here. This equipment is far quicker than hand shelling, but again, the genetics of these hazels is still a work in progress, so the equipment has to handle a large range of sizes and properties.

Hazelnuts as a new food crop for the midwest is slowly progressing, but in a low energy future, perennial food crops will be much more central to our diet. Us early adapters and permaculture advocates hope eventually millions of acres of corn and soybeans will be switched to trees like hazels, but the current system does not want to change. 

Here are photos of the processing and kitchen experiments.

These are kernels back from the sheller. Note that in the real world, food is not all cosmetically perfect, and one uses their own judgement as to how much funkiness is acceptable.

Not the greatest photo, but these are hazels that have been toasted a bit and lightly coated with maple syrup, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Crunchy and tasty.

This is some nuts being turned in to nut butter in a melanger. Normally, melangers are used to take cocoa nibs and make very smooth cocoa liquor, but it works fine to break down the nuts. This this has granite wheels that spin around and thoroughly grind the kernels. I've also made a batch of hazel and chocolate spread to replace Nutella, which is yummy, but environmentally poor. We are calling our stuff "chazel". It has hazelnuts, cocoa powder, and sugar- that's it. No palm oil or other stuff.

Here is some nut oil fresh from the press, with fines and water/oil emulsion settling out. I'll pour off the clarified oil and store it that way. The Piteba press works optimally if the nut are at 10% moisture. I checked moisture content, adjusted, and pressed, so this emulsion results. I boil the water off and filter to get there rest of the oil.

Some lessons learned: The nut butter has an odd mouth feel, way more stick to your mouth compared to peanut butter. We will do more experiments with added ingredients.

The nuts are around 30% oil, but this home scale press only gets a little over half the oil. The rest stays in the press cake. We are using the press cake in baked goods, and if nothing else, food for the chickens, who love it.

The volume and weight ratio of harvested nut in the shell with husks still on to the shelled kernels is crazy. Lots of effort to get to useable food.

Snow and rumination on acclimatization

 

Got a wet, clingy snow this past week, and it really hung on to the trees and caused drooping and breaking of limbs.

We hiked the trails through our woods, and reveled at the transformed landscape, but had to really tunnel though in spots where the crusted vegetation blocked our way.

Got me to thinking once again about how not just plants and animals have figured out how to get through winter with all its challenges, but what about those hardy souls that walked across the Bering Straight and lived here for thousands of years once the glaciers receded and the land recovered?

We've domesticated ourselves in the last few centuries, and we've gained a lot of knowledge, but lost some as well. As we try to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and are forced to move from the lifestyles that are really only a very recent thing, what will we relearn? 

I recently read a book that had some accounts by early European impressions of the indigenous folks who got here first. They were seeing the lifestyles of people that had not yet been altered by the brutal imposition of the European replacement. Anyway, the writer was watching some kids playing on an iced over pond, with scant clothing, and having a ball, seemingly unaffected by the cold.

So humans have an ability to acclimatize, maybe more than most of us in coddled modern lifestyles realize. All warm blooded animals strive for homeostasis, and that is one aspect of it.

To give an example, we had an early cold snap here this winter, and so I got a lot of acclimatization done early. Yesterday, a relatively warmer day at 38F/3C, I did some work outside finishing up a shed I had built this fall. After a bit, I had to take off the coat, hat and gloves to feel comfortable. Two months ago, I'd have been chilled to the bone at the same temperature.

We heat the home with wood primarily, but have propane heat backup for the upstairs bedroom. We set that thermostat for 50F/10C and are quite comfortable with a good comforter on the bed. (Admittedly, it seldom gets that cold except on very cold nights, 55F-60F or so is more normal).

As the end of fossil fuels continues and becomes more evident, turning down thermostats, intentionally acclimatizing to the seasons will not just save energy and cost, it will prepare us for the future that is coming.