This is a 180 sq.ft. house built on an island in British Columbia. I just discovered it on Solar Burrito, a great blog, of special interest to builders, homesteaders, and do-it-yourself people: https://solarburrito.wordpress.com/
Above: tiny (each (4″ x 7″) roughs of a few pages
The tiny homes book is taking way longer than anticipated (what else is new?) I have over 250 mailboxes for contributors, am corresponding with them to get decent-size pics. We have about 124 pages laid out now, around 600 photos.
I’m trying to get out to the studio around 6:30 AM, usually work until 6:30- 7 PM, 2-3 days a week. Shit! Most of my contemporaries are retired. But you know what? I love it. Every day is vital. It usually takes me hours to deal with general publishing biz stuff before I can get into layout. But then, I’m havin fun. I can’t imagine being retired.
Part of the thrill is not knowing what the finished book will be like. Kind of like skating downhill with no brakes. Here we go; it’l be what it’ll be. The best way to make a book. Organic. (Am in repeating myself here?)
New material coming in almost daily. Lew is starting to help with layout. He just did 4 pages of photos by Rick Auerbach, a photographer who documented hippie buses and campers in the ’60s – ’70s. (You know that the ’60s happened in the’70s, right?) There are over 80 pics on these 4 pages. So there’s a bit of old stuff along with the new. These days I’m putting together pages on pre-fabs and kits available in the US and Canada. It’s just staggering, the interest in this subject right now.
I’m gonna stay home for a while now, except for the BEA book convention in NYC the end of May, and the Frankfurt Book fair in October. Once the book is done I’m either going surfing in Hawaii or trekking in Borneo. (I hesitate to say it, with all that’s going on in the world, but) life is pretty darn good.
At this very moment, the Stones came on singing Gimme Shelter. Cosmic!
Been playing the ’50s Sirius station a lot lately. The vocal harmonies of that decade were unique. A few minutes ago, Elvis singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” so beautiful it gave me chills. The Isley Brothers doing “Twist and Shout,” Coasters (originally the Robins) doing all those great Lieber and Stoller songs. “Searchin’,” “Young Blood,” “Loop de Loop Mambo.” (The latter a little-known song with special significance for me: my roommate at Stanford was Richard Zanuck, now the uber Hollywood producer. One night (probably 1954), we were drinking at a party and about midnight decided to drive to LA in his 20th Century Fox Ford convertible. There’s a vast difference between San Francisco, my hometown, and LA. Things are a lot looser in LA (duh!) I was a wide-eyed northern foreigner. Things was hangin’ out down there. It was relaxed.
We got into LA around dawn and at a coffee stop, I saw for the first time, pieces of pie in the wall cabinet reflected by mirrors. Sheee-it! The visuality of LA.
As we pulled back onto the coast highway a little north of Santa Monica, we were listening to the great LA DJ Dick “Huggie Boy” Hugg and “Loop de Loop Mambo” came on. Another world. (I’ve loved LA ever since.)
I tried to find this song fore years, and just rediscovered it, like 55 years later on (and I recommend this CD if you’re into R&B, now called “Doo-wop,” of the ’50s:) The Coasters Singles A’s and B’s – 1955-1959 I’m playing “Searchin'” as I write this, and I’m 19 and we’re heading to Zanuck’s beachfront house with our Dale Velzy balsa wood surfboards. We’re both buffed and have full heads of hair…
Rats will usually steal bait off the trigger without tripping the spring. I’ve been tying peanut butter wrapped in plastic to the trigger with Baggie wires, but it’s a hassle. Now I attach a half-inch copper pipe cap to the trigger with a sheet metal screw (grind down projecting end) and filling with peanut butter. Most of them are wood rats, not the awful Norwegian rats, but they need to be controlled, what with our wood piles and chic.
Pretty clever, huh? Well, I just went out and the fuckers had somehow got the bait out of 3 of the 5 traps I set yesterday. Hmmm…
I wrote an article for Mother Earth News a few years ago on coping with homestead critters, but now I don’t feel so clever.
Been back about a week now from road trip. Much as I love getting out there, it always takes a while to get back into the flow of work and homestead. We have about a half acre, and it’s pretty intense with structures and garden. I was showing someone around here the other day and he said it reminded him of Scott Nearing. (Scott and Helen Nearing were real rural homesteaders in Maine and wrote the by-now classic Living the Good Life)in the ’60s. All of us back-to-landers in the 60s and 70s read it.
Not really, I explained. We’re doing as much gardening, building, and food production as we can, but trying to balance it with the digital world, arts and crafts, having fun, staying in shape, and other aspects of the 21st century that don’t involve homesteading. It’s like a tightrope act.
I shot a few pics around here yesterday.
All this is oak from the side of the road. It’s a win-win: cleaning up roads, heating house, not using propane or coal/oil to generate electricity for heat. I’ve gotten good at avoiding the rangers, who don’t seem to get the concept. If they happen to nab me, I just came back under the cover of darkness and pick up the wood. In a few months I’ll rent my neighbor’s splitter and Marco and I will split it.
Another of Lesley’s raised beds under construction. Quarter-inch mesh placed on ground as gopher protection, blocks stacked on top. Bed filled with soil, blocks also filled & planted with strawberries.
“The owner of this unique teardrop-style travel trailer has lived in it for a few months and is now selling it on eBay. She said it held up really well during the Canadian winter. It was built in 2010 and is 20 feet long. The trailer has been road tested for nearly 4,000 miles through high crosswinds and in extreme temperatures with no issues. You can view more photos at the owner’s website, Tiny Home Teardrop Trailer or on the eBay page.” (Starting bid is $10,000.)
This, as well as the below post on the green wood stove, is from: https://tinyhouseblog.com/
Retail Price: $119.95
Dimensions: Stove: D-10 3/4 in H-11 1/2 in Door: W-4 1/2 in H-4 1/4 in
The StoveTec GreenFire-M MK2 features a refractory metal lining that protects the ceramic insulation, increases the life of your stove, and improves combustion efficiency.…This stove features a durable, reformulated 6-pronged cast iron stove top that improves heat transfer for all pots including round bottom pots and woks. The bottom of the combustion chamber is lined with a custom fit replaceable, abrasion-resistant, and kiln-fired tile to increase the life of your stove.…
More info: https://is.gd/stovetec
From: http://tinyhouseblog.com/
Dieter is an adventurer after my own heart (see below post), If he lived closer I’d be hanging out with him. All the stuff he does “resonates” with me, from sailing on a catamaran in Baja California to cruising in Alaskan wilderness waters. He finds ways to have fun out in the natural world. Top pic is Dieter, lower pic is Anne Lee.
Dieter Klose was one of the featured builders in Builders of the Pacific Coast. He recently sent us photos of him and girlfriend Anne Lee collecting moss for a living roof in his boat out of Petersburg, Alaska. He writes: “It’s a renewable resource, and doesn’t house any creepy-crawlies, none that bite anyway.…”
They also collected bark, as a base layer, for moss food. I asked about the boat and location: “The best harvesting comes off of downed dead trees, and boulders, but low branches often have a good load, and even hold what we call “Boa’s”, which are about a foot wide, 6″ thick, and 4′ to 7′ long. They’re the best!…Location is at Scenery Cove, about 18 miles from home by water; total wilderness, although theres all likelihood they will put a hydro plant in that otherwise untouched cove.
The cruiser is custom made for me by a friend, of welded aluminum, and her name is FANG (named after my daughter, Wrenna, whos nickname is white-fang, or Fang for short).
The boat is 21ft long w/ a 150hp outboard, a double bunk, small settee and mini galley. Its a perfect rig for around here, as it goes up to 40mph, comfortably 30mph, as this is not the best place for sailing: too much or too little wind, with lots of tidal current.”
More pics tomorrow…
