For hundreds of years, Native Americans in the Southwest Desert have been eating the beans of the mesquite tree. Last summer, we decided to give them a try with some of our own mesquite beans milled into flour. We harvested fifteen gallons of beans from mesquite trees that abound on our land, dried them, and milled them into flour. We spent about two hours picking ripe beans from the trees around the shop and the orchard perimeter. Then we dried them about six weeks on a screen spread on sawhorses in the shop.

Friends of ours, Dan and Roxanna, have recently purchased a hammer mill for processing mesquite beans. They offer a brief but excellent training on picking and drying mesquite beans.

It takes a hammer mill to efficiently mill mesquite beans because they are seriously hard. Dan and Roxanna offer custom milling for people like us who pay them a comparatively small fee for turning our mesquite beans into tasty and healthy flour.  They also process beans harvested and sold to them by neighbors. The flour is available for sale at local farmers markets.  

After we picked and dried our beans, we brought them to the local community harvest festival where Dan and Roxanna had set up their hammer mill. We gathered around the sorting screen and culled stems and other foreign matter that would spoil the flour.

Their son, Justin, operated the mill and bagged up the resulting flour. We came home with over ten pounds of sweet, slightly nutty, golden mesquite flour. The taste and nutrition available in the flour makes the work well worthwhile, however.

This remarkable native flour has no gluten, a low glycemic index, high protein content, and all kinds of essential vitamins and minerals.Because there is no gluten, you will want to limit the percentage of mesquite flour to about 25% of the required flour. For muffins, cookies, and great yeast-raised pancakes, we use 75% organic whole wheat flour and 25% mesquite flour. There are recipes available for cookies using 100% mesquite flour. While they are delicious, they are also expensive and have only local accessibility though our local health food store.  But used in any good recipe they offer great flavor and a super nutritious result.  

This morning, I tried out Barbara’s recipe for Mesquite Pancakes. I’ll soon be on deck for B-n-B guest cooking for a few days while Barbara is out of state and I wanted a practice run. The results were incredible. I credit the quality of the mesquite flour and the recipe. I just put the stuff together.

Barbara’s Mesquite Pancakes 

Ingredients: 

Honey (or sugar) – I used a bit less than 3 tablespoons of honey

Dry Yeast – 2 level teaspoons

1 1/2 cups milk (we use soymilk and it’s great)

2 eggs

1/3 cup canola or other neutral oil

1/2 cup Mesquite flour - (harvested from our trees and milled by a neighbor)

1/2 Wheat Germ (we use raw, but roasted is fine – make sure it’s fresh)

1 teaspoon salt

Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – you’ll use 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups

1/2 cup warm water

Assembly: 

Wake the yeast by measuring 1/2 cup warm water (NOT too hot) into a large bowl (at least three quarts) and adding 1/2 tsp honey and 2 tsp yeast. Stir to dissolve the honey and set aside until mixture is bubbly.

While the yeast is waking up, measure out the remaining ingredients in separate containers – one for wet and one for dry.

In a large measuring cup or bowl, combine 1 1/2 cup milk or soymilk (warmed slightly), 2 eggs, 1/3 c oil, 2 T honey.  Mix ingredients to break up the eggs and begin the blending process.

In a separate bowl, combine 1 c whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 c wheat germ, 1/2 cup mesquite flour, and 1 teaspoon salt. Blend with a whisk.

When the yeast is awake, blend liquid and dry ingredients in the bowl containing the yeast until thoroughly mixed. Add flour (up to 1/2 cup) a bit at a time until the batter is thickened to your preference.

Place the bowl of batter in a sink filled about 2 inches deep with hot water to encourage rising. Cover with a plate and allow batter to rise until bubbly and increased in volume. Be patient, this could take a half hour or so. Don’t stir down!  

Cook in your favorite greased pancake griddle or frying pan. Turn once when bubbles are breaking and brown on the bottom.

Serve with honey, syrup, fruit compote, applesauce, or your favorite preserves. Soooo good!

A couple months ago, a good friend who operates a very successful bed and breakfast here in the Arizona desert asked if we would be willing to accommodate guests when she wound up with double bookings. As a favor to her, we agreed. Then the wheels started turning and our mindset about our homestead changed a bit.

While our fairly frugal budget and our current income permit us to live simply and well, it is pretty much a no-frills operation here. We decided we could use some more consistent extra income here at the homestead to make visiting our kids and grandkids easier.

   
We really didn’t have much to do to make the Bear Cave attractive, in a rustic sort of way. We hoped to attract those who enjoy the outdoors, built-by-hand living, and good farm cooking. I trenched in some Ethernet cable from our straw bale house to provide internet access for those guests who wanted to maintain contact with the outside world. Stuff stored in the Bear Cave was moved and we relocated our computers to the main house.  

Our little 320-square-foot Bear Cave, now referred to as the Dragoon Mountains Guest House, sleeps four with a double bed and by pulling out the trundle bed. We lived in the Bear Cave while we built our straw bale home and loved it. We believed our guests would feel the same.

 
A comfortable recliner, a wicker-seated rocking chair, and the trundle bed doubling as a couch with pillows and bolsters provide relaxed reading for those who just want some time to wind down.

Winding-down, serenity, and plenty of quiet are really some of the big attractions.  Recently, I read and listened to two separate accounts on the importance of quiet.  One was an article in the Dec 9, 2011, New York Times by Pico Iyer titled “The Joy of Quiet.”  The other was an interview on NPR’s Diane Rehm program with Dr. P.M. Forni discussing his new book, The Thinking Life.

Pico Iyer, educated at Eton and Oxford, now lives in Japan. He refers to himself as a “global village on two legs.”  Dr. Forni is a professor at Johns Hopkins and writes and teaches on Civility and Ethics and their role in our social world. Both articles are worth reading and listening to in their entirety.

In his article, Iyer suggests that we people are moving away from what has become a barrage of input. He says that the average American spends 8½ hours per day in front of a screen and that the average American teen sends or receives 75 messages per day. Think of the people you see in markets, cars, parks, or wherever with eyes or ears glued to a communication device.

Iyer contends that Americans are getting tired of the constant deluge of input. He cites an advertising CEO as saying that the upcoming market among young people will be for stillness. In the article, he mentions a California resort that offers lodging for over $2,000 per night and features no TV, WiFi, or telephone. There must be an easier and cheaper way to locate the ‘off’ button.

Dr Forni’s book title speaks for itself. The subtitle is “How to Survive in the Age of Distraction.” Forni warns of the perils of not taking time to just think. He writes, “If we agree that life is important, then thinking as we go through it is the basic tribute we owe it.”

 
We asked family and friends that had visited us as unpaying guests what they valued most about their stay at our homestead. Most said the combination of silence, serenity and scenery made them want to come back. The ability to sit quietly with a cup of coffee or tea and look across the valley at our many mini-mountain ranges, our Sky Islands, was very meaningful to them.

 
While many of our guests enjoy at least one meal prepared by us, most like to find their own rhythms for meals and choose their own diets. We stocked the guest house with basic kitchen utensils – plates, cups, glasses etc – and installed a propane range (a drop-in designed for RVs that I enclosed in a plywood box), an under-the-counter fridge, and a microwave. They’re good to go.

 
On the other hand, hiking, biking, and rock climbing around our homestead appeal to many. We have had competitive racing cyclists stay here for winter cycling and lots of birders and hikers.

Apart from the extra income, which we appreciate, there are other benefits. We have the opportunity to share the land we have come to love – its history, its scenery, its wildlife – with people unfamiliar with the beauty of the desert. We have made lots of new friends. People from England, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California have been our guests during our first three months of operation.  

 
If you would like to quit a “day job” and spend your time on your land, you might want to consider sharing the beauty of your place and making some money and some new friends. We even found a network of guest houses that manages the financial end of things for us. If you’re curious, take a look at this website for yourself (http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/281607)  Or, if you feel you just have to come visit us to see what we’re doing, you can make arrangements there as well.

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”   ~Henry David Thoreau

A few days ago, I was gifted with a real treat. My son, Brent, invited me to join him and our oldest grandson, Lydon, for a birthday outing on Lake Pleasant, a reservoir near Phoenix. While the ostensible purpose of the trip was to fish, it quickly became apparent that actually catching fish was a pretty low priority. Instead, it was a time for the three of us to enjoy a beautiful day together – being on the lake and just having a good time. What a great way to celebrate Brent’s 40th birthday!

There is something about being on the water, whether in a canoe or on a luxurious pontoon boat, that is mesmerizing. Whether floating quietly or flying over the water with wind and spray blowing, it is easy to forget both past and future and just exist in the present moment.

Watching grandson Lydon sitting on Dad’s lap and steering the boat jogged wonderful old memories for me. As a kid in the lake country of northern Minnesota, I spent hundreds of hours on the water and in the woods. My dad had a small cabin, a little one-room building the size of a chicken coop that had been hauled to the lakeshore on a machinery trailer the year I was born. From this primitive little home-base, I fished with Dad or, as I got older, by myself on the little lake. Although we often caught fish, it really didn’t seem to matter much. We would trudge back up the hill at the end of the day empty handed with smiles on our faces as wide as if we had caught our limit.

As my memory slide show moved forward in time, I recalled a few of Brent’s first fishing trips with me. One mental picture was of Brent, only a few months old, propped in a car seat in the shade while I fished for trout in an Oregon lake. Later, I remember him landing a really nice smallmouth bass while we were canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness. The smile on his face became an indelible image which I’ve treasured for 25 years. Since then, we have fished together on streams, lakes, and the ocean. These treasured activities over the years provide all of us, from my Dad to my Grandson, with an appreciation of our wild places that has been unbroken now for four generations.

Our day started, as many fishing trips do, well before dawn. After an early breakfast of serious proportions – in my case consisting of chicken-fried steak, pancakes, potatoes, and eggs – the three of us drove through the sunrise to the marina at Lake Pleasant to board our pontoon boat. I was blown away when the marina attendant brought it to the pier.

This was definitely not my idea of a fishing boat. I thought back to when I was a kid in Minnesota and it was a big deal to go fishing in a 14’ aluminum boat with rock-hard seats and a 5 hp outboard. There were a few pontoon boats around then, but they were primitive affairs cobbled together by local blacksmiths or welders. Comparing this luxurious craft to those old rafts was like comparing a Model T Ford and a Lexus. I admit to some nostalgia for both the Model T and the old boats with their single-digit horsepower “kickers” moving them through the water at a very modest speed.

During the day, we were privileged to see a variety of local wildlife including heron, bald eagles, and, special to me, a small group of wild burros. These delightful critters are the descendents of the animals turned loose by gold miners many years ago. They have thrived and now can be seen in much of northwestern Arizona. While some area ranchers consider them pests, I regard them as a beautiful example of the resilience of life in the wilds.

Beyond the enjoyment of a day on the water and the welcome wildlife sightings, the opportunity to spend time with Brent and Lydon was the high spot of the day.

Sadly, a day in the company of loving family while enjoying the outdoors is an experience that too few people know. Our day on the lake helped me to understand the happiness my Dad must have felt when he took me fishing all those years ago. As we meandered around the lake, I watched my son and grandson and could appreciate the feelings Brent now enjoys as he introduces the love of Nature to his children. I like to think that we are  passing forward a legacy of love for Mother Earth. All things considered, I am a very lucky person to have had such a day.

Winter is coming on here at our Arizona desert homestead and, even though the temperatures are dropping, we still look forward to eating fresh kale, chard, escarole, lettuce, and other fresh hardy produce all winter long with the aid of a mini-hoop house. Don’t be misled by the fact that our homestead is in the southeastern Arizona desert. Last year, one storm dropped six inches of snow on our place. The following week, another cold front brought our temperatures here at the Bear Cave down to 2⁰ F here at our 5,000 ft elevation. Down in the valley, it was below zero. It certainly gets cold enough here to zap most tender growing garden plants without some protection.

Last year, we simply protected as well as we could with row cover. We found that without supports, heavy frost and snow broke down some of the plants under the row cover. While it probably didn’t hurt the nutritional value when we used them immediately, we really felt sad about the squashed greens. They looked pretty pathetic.

So this year, we decided to give them another layer of protection. Our neighbor had done some plumbing in a new out-building and had left a small pile of scrap 3/4" PVC out behind his shop. Our Arizona sun had baked the pieces for a number of months and they were definitely too brittle to make a hoop. Enter the PVC angled joints. With a few PVC fittings, a pair of 45⁰ and one 90⁰, we had our own version of a hoop for our mini-greenhouse. By repeating this five times, we had the supports for our mini-greenhouse.

Barbara, our resident math expert (among so many other things), drew out a plan using the width of our raised bed as the length of the hypotenuse of the isosceles triangle that was then used to calculate the length of the top or diagonal  sections of our “hoop”. In the above drawing, the diagonals were cut at 31".

This calculation gave me a very accurate measurement for the length of the angled “hoop” sections. This resulted in the top sections of PVC being cut to 31” based on the 43” outside width of the raised bed. We determined the rise of the “hoop” by estimating the height of the greens at the edge of the raised bed. In our case, we made the side pieces 14” high.

We assembled five of these hoops to give us a mini-greenhouse with supports every 2 ½’. We dry-fit the joints for convenient dis-assembly and storage next summer

We drove pieces of  rebar into the ground at the outer edge of the bed and slipped the end of the PVC hoop over it. We then tied the PVC hoop to the raised bed with plumbers tape and a couple short sheet rock screws. Besides allowing us to level the tops, this seems to support the hoops well enough to handle both the weight of the plastic cover and the persistent wind we have here. 

We cut off a section of 10’ wide 6 mil plastic long enough to enclose the ends of the structure. The fold in the plastic at the center made it easy to mark and reinforce the tie-off spots with 10 mil PVC tape that we had left over from running our propane line from the tank to the house. We punched two sets of holes in the tape and plastic to create a make-do grommet.

Two sections of light cotton line tied with the ends out on one side and in on the other made a system that allows us to tie up either one side or both sides for picking produce or working in the garden.

On the coldest nights, we raise one side of the plastic and lay in row cover directly on the tops of the plant and roll down and anchor the plastic on both sides.  With the plastic shelter above, we don’t worry about frost, snow, or heavy rain on the row cover flattening our greens. The double layer is a bit like putting a down comforter on the bed on a cold night.

This is a picture of the payoff. Yesterday, Barbara opened the mini-greenhouse and picked a few carrots and some chard to put in our turkey and dumplings. What a great finale to a Thanksgiving turkey feed and a great reward for the work of building our little hoop house.

We are constantly looking for ways to improve the way we build and garden.  Many of you have offered great suggestions. We hope some of you will benefit by the mini-greenhouse plans we have shared. We invite you to visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com for more about our desert homestead experience.

Fall is giving way to winter here at the Desert Homestead. The sun goes down early and the winter rains make for some gloomy days. During the day, Barbara keeps the house warm and inviting by baking on a regular basis. Today, apple crisp in the oven will fill the house with one of my favorite odors. But, in the evening and during the days of clouds, snow, and rain, we rely on our candles to bring a measure of joy and a feeling of cozy warmth to our straw bale house in the desert. Despite the cold and wet weather, candle burning season is great!

      
We love the fragrance of scented candles, but they are expensive. So Barbara has come up with a frugal method of ensuring that we have our much loved candle light and fragrance whenever we choose, with little cost. We do occasionally purchase scented candles and, even more likely, receive them as welcome holiday gifts from friends and relatives who know how much we enjoy them. But most of our candles are “personally modified” by Barbara.

 After burning our purchased or gift candles until the wick is a blackened stub at the bottom of a well of unburned wax, the candles often have as much as 25% or more of great scented wax remaining. This holds true of last year’s rehabbed votives, as well. Throwing the remains away would be a real waste, so we rehab the candles.

         
The first step is to clean up last year’s votive candle holders. Barbara puts them on a pan in our solar oven. You can use the oven in your kitchen, of course. The pan keeps spills from the oven which could hurt the flavor muffins baked in the solar oven or your kitchen oven. What tragedy that would be! A kitchen oven set to about 275 degrees should work fine. Whichever method of melting you use, be careful. Don't burn yourself.

As the old wax melts, Barbara  removes the burned wick stubs and wick bases and pours off the remaining wax into a pint glass jar for reuse. This year she accumulated nearly a pint of delightfully scented wax just from our last year’s candles.

Note: It is important to remember that wax and water don’t mix. To clean our used votive holders, we heat them until the wax is just melted and wipe them with a paper towel. Don’t bother trying to wash them in soapy water.

When melting the wax, it’s important to remember that a solar oven can get well up into the 300 to 400 degree range. Don’t neglect your melting wax. If it begins to smoke, which it will if left too long in the solar oven, you have allowed it to get too hot.

     
During the summer, we look for sales on unscented votive candles and buy a few dozen. Most of our votive candle holders are about the same size and shape, so when we get ready to rehab our candles we want to know how much scented wax will fit in our holders without submerging our new votives, not filling the holder enough, or, worst case, spilling wax over the lip of the candle holder. Barbara does a few experiments with a typical votive holder filled about a third of the way with water. She puts a new votive in the holder partially filled with water.

When the water in the holder just meets the top of the new candle, she notes the level.  She then removes the water and dries the holder. Melted scented wax is then poured into the votive holder and the new votive is placed in the melted wax.

Note: Your wax should be just barely melted. If it is too hot, it will melt the new votive, the wick might collapse, and you’ll have a mess.

      
While occasionally  we do use tapers, especially for the dining table in the evening, we prefer our votives for a variety of reasons. We can reclaim unused wax. We rarely have to clean up wax drips from the burning candle. They are less expensive to burn, so we feel very comfortable about having candle light on a regular basis.

     
We try to isolate our candles by fragrance, keeping sandalwood, bayberry, cinnamon, and vanilla separate as we prepare the candles. But, I’m sure that we wind up with “mystery fragrance” from time to time. As yet, I have not found one of the rehabbed candles to have anything but a delightful scent. You can do your own custom scents by adding some beeswax or some scented oil to the melted wax. Experiment and have fun with your homemade scented candles. For us, this is all part of simple, rural living. There is no rule that says you can’t make your own scented candles in town, as well.

Autumn is here in the desert and it’s time to plant garlic again. We’re closing the windows on our straw bale house to keep warmth in rather than encouraging those cool summer evening breezes in the high desert. This is the time of year for hot and zesty meals and the time of year that garlic really comes into its own here at the Bear Cave, for cooking and for planting next year’s crop of tasty and healthy bulbs.

Garlic and onion added to slow cooked pinto beans is a staple here. Spicy bean burros for lunch can happen pretty regularly and make me a happy guy.  Adding garlic to stir fry, marinara sauce made from our garden produce, and salad dressings are just a few of the many ways we enjoy our garlic. Because we use garlic nearly every day, certainly every week, we keep a good supply on hand and make sure we plant and preserve enough to carry through the year. Apart from our belief that garlic contributes to good health, we know it contributes to good eating.

To ensure we have a plentiful supply of garlic, we always overplant. Last year, we went a bit too far overboard and planted 120 cloves of four varieties. Our garlic loving neighbors thank us on a regular basis. This year, we chose the best three of the four varieties and are planting 90 cloves. Should be more than enough for our use and sharing with friends and neighbors.

Preparing the bed for garlic planting is pretty straightforward. We spread strained compost over a new bed. We like to rotate beds for planting all our varieties. In this case, we are putting our garlic in last season’s green bean bed.

Recently, there have been larger numbers of earthworms evident in our garden beds. YEA!  To keep from damaging even one of those welcome little critters so rare in the desert, we quit using a tiller and turn our compost in with a spading fork.

When the bed is prepared, the best of last season’s crop is selected for replanting. Only the largest and healthiest bulbs are chosen.

Bulbs are separated into cloves until we have 90 of each kind. Care is taken to leave the skin on the cloves intact as they are separated from the bulb.

Barbara lays out the bed for planting by running masonry string down the middle and laying out a steel measuring tape between the about-to-be-planted rows. She plants our garlic in rows by variety with one row in the center, on the masonry string and the outlying rows midway to the edge of the bed. The cloves are planted 2” deep and 6” apart in the row with 12” between rows.

In addition to hanging our garlic for preservation, as shown earlier, we also freeze sacks of prepeeled garlic cloves. That’s it, just peel the cloves, put them in freezer bags, and they are ready to add zest to your cooking all year long.  For more on planting garlic in the desert, please visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com and learn how one of our favorite “bean friends” fares here at the Bear Cave.

Good bread is no accident! While most bread recipes are simple and most bread ingredients are readily available in any grocery store, the fine art of baking great bread takes practice and mindfulness. No written directions can replace the knowledge of a good baker in determining when bread dough is ready. Watching Barbara work her magic in our kitchen is like watching an alchemist turning lead to gold.

As a kid in rural Minnesota, I often stayed at my Grandmother’s house. Each morning I woke to the smell of fresh bread wafting out of her kitchen. Those smells and my pleasure now are found in our kitchen.  I still react like I was 10 years old and can’t wait to eat that first warm slice with butter melting and honey oozing off the edges of the crust.

When Barbara and I were making the transition from a teaching career to homesteading, we began baking our own bread for healthy eating and low cost. We used a bread machine while we were teaching because of time constraints and now use a dough hook on a stand mixer prior to hand kneading. The results are incredible bread at a low cost either way.

While there are countless bread recipes, our default is simple, wholesome bread made from organic whole wheat that requires no exotic ingredients and is easy, especially if you are just learning the art of baking bread.

Basic Whole Wheat Bread Recipe 

Ingredients: 2 teaspoons granulated yeast 
1/2 cup warm water 
6 cups whole wheat flour, if possible stone-ground 
2 1/2 teaspoons table salt 
2 cups warm water 
2 tablespoons canola oil 
2 tablespoons honey 

Procedure: 

1.       Dissolve the yeast in the 1/2 cup warm water in a small bowl; set aside until foamy, about five minutes. 

2.       Meanwhile, measure the flour and salt into a large bowl and mix. 

3.       Measure the 2 cups warm water and add the oil and honey; stir to dissolve honey. 

4.       Make a well in the middle of the flour; pour in the water/oil/honey mixture and the dissolved yeast. Mix well, either with a machine equipped with a dough hook or by hand with a large spoon. 

5.       Knead, either by machine or hand (turn out onto a floured board), until the dough is smooth, pliable and stretchy, about five minutes by machine or up to 20 minutes by hand. 

          
 6.       Form the dough into a smooth ball, return it to the bowl, cover loosely with plastic or a damp towel, and let rise until doubled in volume. This will take from 45 to 90 minutes depending on the temperature of the room. 

        
7.       Deflate the dough, form once again into a smooth ball, and let rise a second time in the bowl until doubled; this second rise will take 30 to 50 minutes. 

          
8.       Divide the dough in half, form into loaves, and place in two greased  4”x8”  loaf pans, and let rise until the dough arches up over the tops of the pans. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 425 degrees. 

9.       Place the loaves into the hot oven. After ten minutes, reduce the temperature to 325 degrees and bake for another 45 minutes, until the loaves are an even golden brown color. 

          
10.   Turn out the loaves onto a rack for cooling. Brush the top crusts with melted butter if you wish while the loaves are still hot. 

Note: This recipe was adapted from The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, by Laurel Robertson, with Carol Flinders and Bronwen Godfrey. Consult this complete guide for detailed instructions on the art of bread making. For more information on Laurel’s Kitchen food books, see our book reviews at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com. 

At a time when ONE loaf of bread of comparable quality costs $4.00 or more in most markets, these TWO loaves of bread found their way to our kitchen table for just a bit over two dollars, a little time, and some skill in baking. Great, healthy food that is easy on the budget.

If you are still working full time, you can get excellent bread with a bread machine with about five minutes of prep time. If you are like  Barbara, who thrives on cooking “hands-on”, you can use a stand-up mixer or a big bowl and stirring spoon for the first mix and knead by hand. Whichever method you choose, I wish you joy in baking and eating your own fresh bread.

Happy Baking!!! 

Here at the Bear Cave, we like our food spicy. During the summer and early fall, we love to overdo on fresh peppers in spicy salsa, pimento and cheese sandwiches, stuffed bell peppers and many other pepper dishes. Once in a while, when the poblanos are big enough, Barbara treats us to a great dish of chili relleno, peppers stuffed with a great cheese, breaded, and fried in hot neutral oil. I can’t resist them and have to say it’s a good thing she makes them on special occasions only.

By the way, anchos and poblanos are the same pepper.  Down here in the southwest, we refer to the Capsicum annuum as a poblano when it’s fresh and an ancho when its dried.

We've grown four kinds of peppers this year at the Bear Cave: bells, jalapenos, anchos/poblanos, and pimentos. We find that the sweet, heavy bells and pimentos are delicious if we allow them to ripen, then roast and pickle them. Many cooks recommend roasting peppers under the broiler or over the direct flame of a gas range in the kitchen, but around here it's still WAY too hot for that. We prefer to keep the heat outside by using the gas barbecue. The peppers acquire a rich, smoky flavor and the kitchen stays cool.

So it's pepper harvest and time to crank up the barbecue and roast those babies! Some peppers, especially pimentos and red bells, are perfect candidates for this treatment. They are thick-walled and sturdy, which makes them easy to peel once they're roasted. Besides being much easier to peel prior to pickling when roasted, we enjoy the flavor of a smoky pepper.

The process is simple. Turn all the bbq's burners on high (Our unit has three, and we roast up to a dozen peppers at a time.) and place the whole peppers over the hottest part of the grill. Protect your hands from the heat with oven mitts or heavy gloves, and use long bbq tongs to turn the peppers from time to time as they char. You want to end up with the peppers black all over, the skin completely charred.

Once the peppers are well blackened, they are put in a sealed container. We use an oven-proof casserole dish with a lid and place the peppers directly in the sealed container to steam after roasting. Peeling is a breeze. We then pickle the roasted peppers in the same way we pickle fresh jalapenos which we describe below.

Jalapeno peppers are easy to preserve. Just rinse, halve, and remove the stems and seeds. Wear gloves to protect your hands from the hot pepper juice, which can sting skin.

Note: Do not handle these peppers with your bare hands and then rub your eyes or any other sensitive part of your body. Some serious discomfort will be the consequence. But with some care, the very chemical, capsaicin, that can sting will make a great eating experience.

Barbara is very good about removing the seeds and inner tissue from the peppers. They are milder and still very flavorful with the seeds removed. I admit that when making salsa or pico de gallo, I leave the seeds in the mix. I enjoy the contrast between muchopicante jalapenos and the garlicky frijoles that I make up in a cast iron skillet and then roll in a tortilla with my HOT jalapeno salsa.

Note: If you are experimenting with these fresh peppers and feel like your mouth is on fire, have some milk handy. It is the best fire extinguisher I know for a picante capsaicin overload.

Because we preserve smaller batches of peppers, we don’t use our big canning kettle. Any covered kettle will serve for canning as long as you place an insert of some kind in the bottom to prevent the jar bottoms from contacting the bottom of the kettle. We use the insert from our pressure cooker.
 

Pack the pepper halves into clean pint-size canning jars which have been heated in boiling water. Then cover them with a mixture of 2 cups distilled vinegar, 1 cup water, and 1 teaspoon salt, heated to boiling. Leave 1/4 inch between the top of the liquid and the rim of the jar, apply the lids, and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. More detailed information is on our web site, www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com. Check the drying and pickling pages.

The pickling process is nearly the same for pimentos or other roasted peppers. Roast them according to the process we've described above, remove the stems and seeds, peel and pack them into clean, heated pint jars, fill with the pickling mixture to within 1/4 inch of the rim of the jar, and process for 15 minutes.

Pickled jalapenos can add zip to spaghetti sauce, chili, or salsa. Pickled roasted peppers are marvelous on sandwiches or in dips. We hope you enjoy these ways of preserving the bounty of your summer garden!

Barbara and I chose to homestead on a piece of ground not easy to garden. We live on a bajada, a rocky alluvialfan. Rocks have been washed down from the nearby mountains for centuries, lying in wait just below the silty surface to defy digging a garden. Besides being rocky, our land is covered with scrub mesquite, rabbit brush, and cat claw. Once a rolling and grassy savannah, the cattle boom of the late 1800s brought a level of overgrazing that altered the face of the valley forever.

Despite rocks, scrub trees, and brush, we knew that we were going to have a garden. We also knew that my back was not up to digging up the root systems of the many mesquite trees on our chosen garden site. With mesquites, there is a great deal more “tree” underground than above, or at least it seems so when digging them out.  So out came the baby backhoe aka Dave’s Tonka Toy. On one of the days of early garden prep, my son, Brent, and grandson, Lydon, were visiting. Nothing makes a boy smile (or a grandpa) like the first time on a machine.

After all the large rocks and trees were removed with the Tonka Toy, I hauled over about 20 loads of old horse manure from our neighbors pile and spread it on the garden site with the front loader. Two days worth of work with a front-tine garden tiller turned in the first application of fertilizer. Then we staked out and installed our fence, the first line of defense against jackrabbits, deer, and javelin.

In the desert, water is key to any attempt at gardening. As we wanted to control our water use, we ran a system of drip irrigation and installed valves at the head of each bed. This method saves water and gives us a lot of control over the amount of water to our garden beds.

After the irrigation lines were in, we put in raised beds of landscape timbers. Our garden naturally slopes and the raised beds enabled us to have a level bed to control water distribution. We built the beds 36” across inside dimension to make it easy to reach the middle of the bed from the aisles.

Before the planting began, we dug each bed one more time with a round-nose shovel and screened the soil through a framed screen of 1/4" mesh hardware cloth into a wheelbarrow. The rockless soil was then replaced in the bed. A heavy layer of manure, screened in the same way, was then added to the bed. We put four wheelbarrows of screened manure in a 15’ bed. Then out came the rototiller for a final turn and mix of manure and soil.

The emerging plants look pretty delicious to our crop of quail and other birds, so we built tents of hardware cloth and boxes covered in poultry netting to keep the birds from our new plants.

Over the past couple years, we have experimented with different methods of supporting tomatoes in an area of serious wind and intense sun. A simple rail fence is our newest method and one that we’ll keep. It is easy to install and provides easy access to our great tomato crop. Last year we ate fresh tomatoes until December and then switched to the bags of frozen tomatoes in the freezer.

One of life’s real pleasures is watching Barbara in the garden as she works her magic with the plants. Most of our meals consist of a very high percentage of produce from our garden and orchard. Inexpensive, healthy, and incredibly tasty eating has become a consistent part of our lives.

To look out over our garden during harvest time and then to look beyond the garden to the brushy and rocky desert offers a contrast that is hard to believe. Over the past few years, we have continued to enrich our beds with compost and each season brings more exuberant crops. With love and hard work, a lush garden in the middle of the desert can be a reality. For more information on desert gardening, I invite you to visit our site at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com.

The floors of our buildings here at our desert homestead are all different. Adobe and flagstone are the primary materials. One building has flagstone flooring and the other three have adobe floors. Each of the adobe applications used a different set of materials besides adobe and each has turned out to have very different color and texture from the others. We decided against concrete because we were a crew of two and a bit weak in concrete finishing skills. We had helped lay a large concrete patio base for our son and the drying time snuck up on us. The result was not what we would have liked. We knew from previous experience that adobe dries much more slowly and is more forgiving. There is also the comparative benefit of natural material, adobe, versus material with a great amount of embodied energy such as concrete for those considerate of Mother Earth. We do use cement, but try to use it sparingly.

    
In all the floors, we began with a well-tamped sub-floor of AB sand mix such as is used in a road base. With repeated leveling, wetting, and tamping, this material provided us with a solid base for our earth and rock floors. The material was inexpensive and available from our local sand and gravel people.

         
For those who don’t have a young fellow teacher ready to help out for a few hours, small power tampers are readily available from tool rental outlets. On damp evenings, my shoulders can still feel the effects of tamping down sub-floors by hand in three buildings plus the shop. We don’t have a rental outlet anywhere within 75 miles of the homestead, so it was a hand-tamper for us.

The results using hand tamping were fine, though the process took longer.  The tamped sub-floor was brought up to two inches below the ultimate finished floor level. The rest of the way would be either stone or layers of adobe.

       
The need to have precisely level floors was not as great in the Bear Cave and the shop, so we simply used wood guides for the layers above the sub-floor.

Using dimension lumber in the same manner as screed boards in concrete work, we spread and smoothed the first layer with a garden hoe and a long, handmade combination trowel and screed called a darby float.

    
In the main straw bale house, we wanted more precision and were dealing with a larger floor. Armed with an antique surveying level and rod, we put pegs in the subfloor in a grid so that each peg was reachable from two other pegs with a four-foot level. I know that there are wonderful laser levels and such that could do this job as accurately in less time, but we were watching the budget pretty carefully and the tool we used belonged to Barbara’s dad. Hard to beat a tool that works well and costs nothing.

    
For the main floor, the knee work started when the pegs were in. The floor was built up in three layers including the brushed on aliz. We put in a thick layer, about 1.5 inches, of a damp mixture of  adobe with straw and coarse sand. This was tamped down in much the same manner as the AB. After a few days to nearly dry, a wetter layer of the same material was troweled to the tops of the guide sticks to maintain level.

The final coat was put on in one day to prevent seams and cracking. We screened the adobe to a 1/8 minus clay and used very finely chopped straw. Before this coat was dry, we mixed up some 1/16 minus aliz clay and mixed in to the consistency of heavy paint. This was applied with a wallpaper paste brush and smoothed with a pool trowel. The results were very satisfactory. When the floor dried, we began putting coats of boiled linseed oil on as a sealer. More about that in another blog. The floor in our house is without cracks, level, and a pleasant brown. We will be adding another coat (the fourth) of linseed oil in a few weeks and then will use an acrylic floor wax to bring up a bit of a shine.

    
In the woodshop, I wanted to try an experiment. I read that well-composted horse manure is used around the world as a binder in earth floors. As it happens, we have a neighbor with three delightful manure factories named Bueno, Cody, and Bugsy. When we mixed the adobe in the same manner as for the house, we added one shovel of old manure for each five shovels of other material. The mixture troweled like a dream, has no cracks, and no odor. I would use it again in a heartbeat. While not for fecophobes, this is a great method for those that want a natural binder in adobe.

      
In the utility building, we decided to use flagstone. We had found a great buy on a substantial amount of flagstone and knew it would hold up with laundry, shower, and food prep spillages. I actually think a well-oiled adobe floor would do so as well, but we preferred to err on the side of strength and impermeability. There really isn’t much to say about installing flagstone. A simple, but labor intensive, job that requires a good bedding material such as a fine grit sand to accommodate the irregularities in the stone and then finishing the job a good grout and sealer. For grout, we simply used Portland cement in a ratio of 1 part cement, 2 parts sand, and 3 parts small aggregate. We used the 3/8 material left over from screening the adobe as aggregate.

Our floors are all unique in appearance. As is the case with most DIY projects with local natural materials, costs are very low and the rewards are many. While not recommended for those that like a slick, uniform appearance, the variegations in texture and color make these literally one-of-a-kind floors.

If you’re building with straw, cob, earth bags, or other earth-friendly material, you might do well to include an adobe floor.  For more on our desert homesteading experience, you're invited to visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com. Happy building!

Adobe clay is one of the most pleasant materials available for building. Adobe is forgiving. Make an error or have a problem and you can start over by wetting it down and peeling it off or retroweling. For newbies like us, this was really important.

Adobe clay is a natural material with only the embodied energy involved in transport, unless you count the energy expended by the builders. In many parts of the world, clay is abundant. For example, there are clay deposits in colors ranging from red to gray within just a few miles of the Bear Cave.  

Adobe clay is economical. Our 320-square-foot adobe cottage, the Bear Cave, has adobe block walls, adobe plaster, and adobe floors. Total cost for the clay was less than $500 in 2008.

When it was time to finish the walls on our straw bale house (above), we didn’t think twice. It had to be adobe. We used the same clay, with different screenings, for every application except the finish coat on the interior. For that, we bought some Kaolin clay mined and bagged in northern AZ and mixed it with 60 grit bagged sand. We love the outcome, a nice balance of finished wall with a flavor of rusticity.

With the straw bales up, windows and doors installed, and interior build out finished, it was time to plaster. Materials for preparing the walls included adobe clay, chopped straw, and water. The first step was to chop straw. We had a few bales left from the house walls and bought a couple more from the local feed store.

At first, we chopped using a weed whacker and a thirty gallon heavy “rubber” garbage barrel. The straw chopped with this method was fine for filling seams, but when we began work with the trowels after this preparation process, we wanted more uniform chopping and borrowed a neighbor’s mulcher.  For some finish applications on the adobe floor, we ran the straw through the mulcher twice.

Our adobe clay, fresh off the truck, had been ostensibly screened to 3/8" minus. However, we had some variety of rocks up to 3/4" or larger. We set up two screens outside, one with 1/4" hardware cloth and one with 1/8" hardware cloth. For brown coat and scratch coat trowel work, we screened with 1/4" and for finer work used the 1/8".

For filling in the seams and holes left in stacking our straw bale walls, we mixed adobe clay screened through 1/4" mesh with chopped straw. The mixture was heavy in straw and the clay was simply a binder. Straw, clay, and water were put into our old cement mixer until the right consistency was achieved. Firm enough to hold when slapping it into the seams and wet enough to bond to the bale. For major holes and seams such as around window bucks and above the doors, we would push in as much as would stay, let it dry over night, and make one or even two more filling applications. This process was the first step in getting a straight and even wall.

It must be noted that there are probably as many different ways to plaster a straw bale wall as there are plasterers. We have tried a few and this one worked well for us. There are many who will swear that there is only one method - theirs - that should be used. Probably not! This one worked for us and I have seen other, different, processes that turned out beautiful walls as well.Many right paths to a desirable result.

One of the methods often promoted is the use of poultry net or chicken wire as well as metal lath and other such materials as the base for plaster. I have to come right out and say that I hate, yes – hate, plastering with adobe over chicken wire. Granted, it grabs the mud, but often leaves air space between straw and plaster that compromises the integrity of the wall. I know that if other plasterers read this, many will strongly disagree. So it goes.

I do agree that it is important to provide a surface with “tooth” that will allow the brown coat to adhere to the straw. To that end, we did a final screening of our adobe through a kitchen colander, getting a very fine and uniform clay.

Mixing water and this fine adobe gave us an aliz or fine plaster about the consistency of heavy paint.

With a sprayer designed for joint compound purchased from our hardware store, we sprayed all the surfaces we intended to plaster. Please note, there will be over spray, so mask all the windows and doors as well as any outlets or fixtures already installed that you don’t want coated in a fine layer of adobe clay. As we wanted uniformity on our walls and out interior build out was done with frame and sheet rock, we taped the sheet rock and then sprayed it with the aliz as well.

We did not put either a brown coat or a scratch coat over the sheet rock and the finish coat of plaster adhered beautifully.

This wall is now ready for the trowel!!! 

The pictures you see here were taken while preparing the interior walls for plaster. The exterior wall preparation was identical. The finish plastering process was different and will be addressed in a later blog.

We have been through two monsoon seasons and one winter with our new home protected by adobe plaster. It is withstanding temperature swings over 100 degrees, driving rain and snow, and the fierce Arizona sun. No problems.

Plastering is at once the most labor intensive and the most satisfying activity in building a straw bale home.  If you are going to create a straw bale home with adobe plaster, I suggest reading about the process. I also suggest a practice wall. Stack and support three straw bales, attach a layer of burlap on which to apply plaster, and apply different plaster/straw mixes until you find one that works for you. After you check out one formula, just peel off the burlap, rinse it off, and start over  It would be pointless for me to try to give portions of straw to clay as all clays are different. Besides, it's fun to experiment.

For more information on this process and for other resources and books, I hope you will visit me at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com. I would be happy to answer specific questions here or on my web site.

So, read, think, plan, experiment, and, above all, enjoy the process. It’s worth it!

One of the real benefits of our intense Arizona sun is the incredible efficiency of our solar oven. Granted, solar ovens are used nearly everywhere the sun shines, but at our nearly 5,000 foot elevation in southeastern Arizona, it works exceptionally well. While we do have a conventional oven in our propane kitchen stove here at the Bear Cave, our solar oven is often the tool of choice in the hot months. It saves energy and doesn’t heat up the house in the summer months.

The list of dishes cooked in the solar oven is extensive. We cook beets to ready them for my favorite beet pickle recipe. Winter squash is cooked, scooped, and frozen in freezer bags for our winter recipes. Candle holders and glass votives with candle stubs are put into the solar oven and melted down ready for cleaning and new candles with very little muss and no odors in the house. You’ve got the idea! We love our solar oven.

Perhaps my favorite use of the solar cooker is home-made granola. Nearly every day when the weather is warm and that is much of the time here, we breakfast on home-made granola, with Barbara’s home-made yogurt served with fruit and honey. A slice of Barbara’s whole wheat bread with peanut butter and a hot cup of coffee and I am a happy guy.

When the level of cereal in the canister is nearly empty, it is time to break out the solar oven and make a new batch of great granola. Granted, there are wide varieties of packaged granola and even bulk granola available in grocery stores. But commercial granola is typically more expensive than I want to pay for cereal and who knows how long the cereal has been waiting to have its package opened.  Packaged or bulk granola  just can’t compare to home-made for cost, freshness, and flavor  

Barbara's Solar Granola 

 Ingredients:

3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup raw whole almonds
1/2 cup raw wheat germ
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup honey

For granola in the solar oven, Barbara uses a 10” springform cake pan. There isn’t anything particularly special about this. It just happens to be a container that fits our solar oven and holds the quantity of ingredients for a batch of granola. If it happens to be cloudy or excessively windy weather and we do have to use the kitchen oven, she uses a conventional cookie sheet with sides high enough to keep the mix from spilling.

Mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly and put the pan of mix into the solar oven. The intensity of the sun here makes it necessary to be pretty attentive to the process. Take a glance at the mix in the solar oven every 10 minutes or so. When signs of browning appear, remove the pan and stir the dry ingredients.  Usually, the coconut will begin to brown first and is a good tell-tale. The purpose of this first step is to heat the dry ingredients so that the honey will disperse evenly when it’s added.

When the dry ingredients are browned to your satisfaction, remove the pan and add honey and canola oil. Stir thoroughly and replace in the oven. Continue browning the mixture. Be very attentive at this time and check every five to ten minutes as the granola browns to suit your inclination.  When the mixture is browned to your satisfaction, remove the pan from the solar oven. Be sure to use oven mitts or hot pads! Give it a final stir and let it cool.

Barbara sometimes adds dried cranberries or raisins when the mixture is cooked, but still warm. If you only have roasted sunflower seeds or wheat germ, also add them at this time and mix them in thoroughly.

This basic recipe allows for a great deal of creativity. For example, cashews can be substituted for almonds. Almost any dry fruit can be added to the browned and warm mix. Knock yourself out and give your family a real treat!

Not only will you appreciate the wonderful taste of fresh granola, but your budget will thank you!

For more on Solar Cooking, visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com.

One of the exercises in the practice of mindfulness meditation is stopping before an open door and being mentally aware and in the present before passing through. It might well be that this meditation teacher spent some time in the Arizona desert. After discovering a half dozen or so rattlesnakes near the doorways of our buildings, we have become extremely mindful when we pass from inside to outside. At night, a flashlight is absolutely a necessity when outside.

Over the past three years, we have been visited by more than 25 rattlesnakes. While we have seen Banded Rock, Crotalus lepidus klauberi, and Blacktail, Crotalus molossus molossus, rattlers near us, they are typically a little higher in elevation. The scaly visitors that frequent our place are either the Western Diamondback, Crotalus atrox, or the less common and extremely dangerous Mojave, Crotalus scutulatus scutulatus .

Western Diamondback on the porch 

The venom of the Diamondback is certainly dangerous, but the neurotoxins of the Mojave make it one of the most deadly critters in North America. As a consequence, we treat these snakes with the respect they deserve. On the other hand, I can’t bring myself to destroy these beautiful creatures unless there is no alternative available. Without our snakes, venomous or not, I am sure we would be overrun with rodents. We have a real abundance of pack rats, kangaroo rats, and a wide variety of ground squirrels and mice. All of which are fine and fun to watch scurry around but only when not overrunning the place. The snakes help us keep some balance with the rest of the smaller wild life here by the Bear Cave.

 Ready for the capture box! 

So, while I am a good deal more timid than those snake/crocodile hunters I used to see on television before we abandoned the “tele”, I no longer have a protracted adrenalin rush during the capture. I’m just REAL careful.

    
 Ready for a New Home 

After having done some research and equipped with a snake hook, tongs, and  a sturdy home-made capture and release box, we are able to relocate our unwelcome reptilian visitors. While I’m aware that some say that a snake transported away from their territory won’t survive, we continue to relocate them based on a couple of reasons. First, they were traveling to a new territory when they got here, so we figure we’ll just help them along a bit as they look for a new home. Second, we are outside a lot and would rather not have a surprise when reaching into a bush bean plant or rooting in the foliage for elusive zucchini. So, if they could not be relocated, I would have to destroy them, and I’m simply not excited about unnecessary killing, whatever the species.

Is it safe to come out?
 

We live next to the Coronado National forest and when we catch one of the rattlers, we take them into the desert at least 3/4 of a mile from our buildings (or our neighbor’s). During the transport they often “adopt” the catch box as a den, however temporary, and are cautious about coming out.

           

Heading for a new home

Sometimes it is necessary to literally shake the box to get them out.  But, once out of the box, the snake will generally head for the nearest shelter, in this case a mesquite tree with some underbrush.

        
 Free from the netting and ready to go... 

While rattlesnakes get most of our attention, we also have a variety of non-venomous snakes. Gopher snakes are fairly common and I would love to see a big one take up residence near the garden to control the round-tail ground squirrel population and protect our beets.

On occasion, when we use a bit of bird netting to protect our young lettuce, we run afoul of our local coach whip snake, the gorgeous Red Racer, Coluber flagellum piceus. For whatever reason, these snakes cannot seem to leave a piece of bird netting alone. They will twist and tangle up and can do damage to themselves if not discovered in time. When we do use bird netting near the ground, we monitor it closely and have rescued three or four racers in the past year or so. While not venomous, the Red Racer is not only incredibly fast, but aggressive. I always wear gloves when handling them while Barbara cuts the netting from them.

Because of the danger to these snakes, we have nearly abandoned the use of bird netting and use a finer meshed screen through which the snake can’t pass to get tangled. Here at the Bear  Cave, we feel a real  tension between protecting critters and protecting crops without harming the wildlife.

         
A resplendent Texas Horned Lizard 

One of the great delights of sitting on our porch is watching the antics of a whole bevy of lizards, from the Texas Horned Lizard, Phrynosoma cornutum, to the whiptails and collared lizards staking out their territory on our rock piles. When we dug the septic tank, we were left with a big stack of rocks. I made of few rock piles near the house to serve as lizard condos. The lizards do eat a lot of bugs and they’re fun to watch.

Unlike the more verdant parts of the world, at first glance our desert seems a wasteland, devoid of life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. From way too many kinds of bugs to rodents of many shapes and sizes and on to the larger mammals such as mountain lion, deer, javelina, coyotes galore, bear, and the rare jaguar plus a bird population that attracts birders from all over the world, the land around our desert homestead is thriving and alive. We love the concept that we are just one more life form among many and we try to fit in with minimal disruption. We do, however, take whatever measures we must to protect ourselves, our orchard, and our garden. So, when we are visited by our fanged friends, we make them feel as welcome as possible – somewhere else!

Here at the Bear Cave, Barbara and I eat yogurt nearly every day. It shows up on the breakfast table with hot grain cereal in the winter and homemade granola in the summer. We love the tartness of our yogurt contrasting with the subtle, sweet honey flavor of granola.  By carefully selecting the yogurt “starter,” we can control the flavor so it is consistent and tasty every time. Years ago, we had a yogurt maker with four little cups in a row nestled in a heated chamber. The machine was plugged in and “voila,” yogurt would result. Unfortunately, I like yogurt a lot. I eat it on my breakfast cereal and in the evening with fruit or even a bit of local honey as my evening treat. The little machine just couldn’t keep up.

Now, with very little fuss and no special equipment, we enjoy the knowledge that there is always yogurt in the fridge. The security of good food on hand is a happy thing. The “tools” Barbara uses to produce great yogurt are simple and handy – a three-quart saucepan, a simple whisk, an instant-read thermometer, a small travel cooler and a couple “squeaky clean” old quart mayo jars. With these, Barbara provides us with firm, tart yogurt for the price of whole milk. We tend to use organic milk, which drives the price up a bit, but equally tasty yogurt can be made with any quality whole milk.

Beyond the great eating yogurt provides, there are significant health benefits to this great food. The cultures in “live” yogurt assist digestion. This is especially true for those who have taken antibiotics for a time. Yogurt can reestablish necessary flora in the intestines so necessary for good digestion and good health.

The first step toward great yogurt is simply heating milk to 180 degrees F in a saucepan. Barbara generally makes 2 quarts of yogurt and uses a 3-quart saucepan. Care should be taken not to burn the milk so this step requires some consistent attention.

When the thermometer reads 180 degrees, the saucepan of milk can be placed in the sink in a couple inches of cool water. We use a half gallon milk jug with frozen water to cool the milk quickly.  Monitor the temperature and when the milk reaches 110 degrees, remove the pan from the cool water.

For a richer yogurt, Barbara adds 1/2 cup of NON-INSTANT powdered milk to the pan and stirs it in with a whisk before adding the starter. After the powdered milk is well blended, add 2 tablespoons per quart of room temperature yogurt. This process is similar to using sourdough starter. Typically, we retain the last four tablespoons of yogurt to serve as a starter for a new batch. Every few months, we will introduce a new strain of starter by buying a small container of good commercial yogurt to reinvigorate the process. Be sure the new yogurt has the degree of tartness you prefer. Not all plain yogurts are equal by any means. Also, be sure your yogurt starter is at room temperature or it will cool the entire mixture and have a negative impact on your yogurt.

After both the powdered milk and yogurt starter are completely blended into the milk, pour the mixture into “squeaky clean” jars. We simply use old mayo jars. Barbara washes and rinses them carefully, but does not sterilize them as you would for canning.

The jars are closed with the plastic lids and placed in our old camping cooler up to their necks in 110-degree water. Monitor the temperature of the water periodically as the yogurt ferments. Because consistent temperature is important, a thermometer reading is made every two hours or so.

If the temperature of the water drops, remove some of the water from the cooler and replace it with hot water until the desired 110 degrees is established. This part of the process takes from 8-10 hours. But, other than a few checks for temperature control, really doesn’t involve any effort.

When the yogurt is ready, it will have a firm texture with little or no liquid at the neck of the jar. Barbara places the jars in a large bowl with cold water up to the necks of the jars prior to placing the jars in the refrigerator. More or less yogurt can be made in any one batch simply by adjusting the amounts of milk, powdered milk, and starter. Our two-quart recipe lets us enjoy homemade yogurt for desserts and breakfast for about 10 days. Additional uses of homemade yogurt at our house include substituting for sour cream in bean burritos and on pancakes and waffles.

We hope you enjoy both the eating and the making of homemade yogurt.

Climate and weather in the high desert of Arizona are harsh. Granted, we don’t have the severe cold of northern states, but monsoonal rains driven by 50 mph winds and intense sun that will burn skin through a long sleeved shirt can be tough on a building made of straw and adobe clay.

To counter the effects of the wind, we built our house with its back to the prevailing winds from the west and put only one window in the back wall. For rain and sun, we opted for a 360 degree porch or patio. Choose the name you like. Basically it’s an extension of our roof 8’ past the outer wall and floored with flagstone. With this overhang, our adobe plaster walls were protected from all but the most severe driving rains and our windows were shaded from the intense Arizona sun. The overhang also gave us a shady spot out of the wind to enjoy our mountain views any time of day. All good things!

Our porch began once the trusses were installed on the house. We completed the sides of the porch completely before starting on the main house roof to allow access under what was to be a shallow, 12 inch overhang from house to porch as well as making work on the main roof accessible without ladders.

We had dug out and poured 12”x12” blocks of concrete with 6” post anchors to accommodate our porch posts when we poured our footings. Out here, peeled logs called vigas are often used as visible supports in roofs and ceilings. We used them as vertical porch posts for Southwest aesthetics and the price was not too bad.

With the vigas plumbed and braced, we fastened the bases firmly in place with lag screws. Eight foot 4”x6” beams spanned the distance between the tops of the vigas. To attach them to the uprights, long barn spikes were driven in at an angle through predrilled holes. We used a lap joint cut into the beams at the corners and secured them with a spike driven through the lap joint into the top of the viga.  After the beams were set, 3" garden post stock was cut into 2' lengths with opposing 45 degree cuts and used as a corner brace for the top of the viga. We liked the way it looked and felt it was another move toward stronger building.

In honor of my blacksmith grandfather who believed that it was impossible to build something that was too strong, we used steel t-straps to further strengthen the joints between beam and post.

With the outer “wall” of our porch in place, we measured and mounted angled rafter/joist hangers from the bond beam plate. Angles cut with our trusty chop saw made a good fit for the rafter ends against the bond beam. Recognizing that wood twists and warps and that sometimes we aren’t as accurate as might be, we left the outer ends of the rafters to be cut in position with a handsaw after a chalk line marked our target. This enabled us to have a straight fascia board.

After ensuring the 2”x6” rafters were true and square, we fastened them to the bond beam with hurricane straps. A little more time spent with some accurate marking and cutting a series of double miters produced our corner hips. I found that double miter cuts on an inexpensive chop saw such as we have is a bit time consuming. One of those places where someone who is not a pro carpenter learns to measure twice and cut once. Crossing your fingers doesn’t hurt either, but not while you’re cutting

Before nailing on the fascia boards, a chalk line and adjustable square gave us our cut lines and we sawed off the ends of the rafters parallel to the bond beam.  Some heavy lifting brought the OSB sheathing up on the rafters, followed by a few snaps of the old chalk line and the nail gun fastened the sub-roof to the porch. Our first shade! When the OSB was in place, cut long to allow for the depth of the fascia, we began nailing the 1”x6” fascia boards into place.

Rolling out tar paper or felt roofing paper, call it as you like, in a high wind is not my idea of a great time. As a consequence, we began our roofing early in the morning, before the daily winds and used some lathing and short sheet rock screws to keep our paper in place in the event of a stray gust. We only did the porch sides and left the corners and gable ends for after main roof was completed. We wanted to be able to build from the porch roof without damaging the finish on the roof steel, but had to put steel on before hand to accommodate the roof overhand. A matter of planning and staging.

So, leaving the ends unpapered for now, we attached our drip edge above the felt paper and made ready for the steel porch roofing. Each manufacturer and each roof rib design calls for a slightly different screwing pattern. When we received our steel, a cover piece was included to protect the finish on the purchased pieces. We set up saw horses under our newly made shade and made a template from the cover piece following the pattern recommended. Carefully predrilling holes in the template meant that we could drill a pattern of starter holes in each sheet of roofing steel on the ground.

Being able to start gasketed roofing screws in predrilled holes meant that there was consistent fastening and less bending over.  As you can see from the pictures, this is a desirable thing for me, enjoying an excess of both years and girth. The uniform screw pattern made for better roof aesthetics as well.

The ground crew, Barbara and Anneke, attached strips of mastic or roofing "bubble gum" on the appropriate edge and sent up the predrilled sheets. The side roofs were covered with steel in about an hour. We had a porch and were ready for the main house. After that, the remaining paper, drip edge, and steel was installed to complete our project.

While we have more square feet under roof on our porch than on our house, with attendant costs and work, I would not build differently.  I can wander outside to view our beautiful desert and be dry while watching the rain fall on our often parched desert or relax in the shade while sheltered from wind.  I am thankful we decided to build a wrap-around porch for our straw bale home.

When Barbara and I undertook the building of our homestead in the desert, we committed to doing things ourselves as much as was reasonable, even some things that were perhaps unreasonable. One project that began as a DIY and morphed into using a manufactured product is roof trusses.

Our adobe Bear Cave, the first building to go up, was also my first attempt at DIY roof trusses. I read articles and books and looked at pictures and drew sketches by the dozen before creating a plan for a roof that I liked. We decided on a simple shed roof truss with the porch rafters attached to a plate at the front of the truss to create a gabled roof appearance. 

 As the only level place on the building site was the well-tamped sub-floor, I laid out a couple sheets of plywood inside the building, fastened them with a scab and laid out a truss jig. Because I was hauling all our dimension lumber on the roof rack of my old Blazer, I was pretty much confined to ten-foot lengths. As the bottom cord of the truss needed to be 16 feet long, I had to make a joint in two 8 foot 2 x 4s. With an 18 ft top chord to provide an overhang out the back of the building, I used a 10’ and an 8’ 2x4 for each truss.

The result of all the labor was a system of trusses that was satisfactory, but just barely. Our lumber was off-the-shelf dimension lumber from a big box building supply store and tended to twist and warp. Because we were using purlins rather than sheathing, nailing was not the disaster it might have been. To compensate for screwed and nailed steel joining plates, we put extra scabs on the trusses to reinforce them. Once they were mounted on the bond beam and secured with bracing, they work just fine. But compared to manufactured trusses, they just don’t make it for me. Way too much work for very little savings.

On the other hand, when it came to be time to build our main house, we shopped around within 75 miles of our site and got bids from three different truss manufacturers. Our chosen vendor was able to custom-make and deliver trusses, vent plates, and end trusses with vents for $63 USD in 2009. Our hand-built road is too narrow and curves too tightly for a flatbed trailer, so our trusses were dropped off at our neighbor’s place. When we were ready, we loaded them in Dan and Anneke's horse trailer and carted them over to our site.

With a 100’ tape, we measured and marked the truss locations on the bond beams before lifting them into position. Then, again with the able assistance of our neighbors, we lifted the trusses to the top of the wall. Two lifters on the ground pushed the trusses up to the two catchers on the wall. It took less than an hour to move them all into place.

We began with one of the end trusses, cut to accommodate the vents, and a second truss. Cross braces were installed from the end two trusses to the bond beams to make a secure, rigid box.

Then it was position each truss in its turn, check for plumb, and fasten it with hurricane straps. As the trusses were secured at the bond beam, a cross brace toward the roof peak was nailed into place and vent plates at the roof edge were installed.

It was such a great feeling to look down the peak of the trusses and see the perfect alignment and know that the sheathing and the steel roofing would go on with ease. This was the payoff for the extra time we took to square the foundation, the walls, and the bond beams as we built. The trusses were all mounted and secured in one mornings work.

Our DIY work in almost every other aspect of our buildings was more than satisfactory. But the ease of installation, the comparatively low cost, and the quality of truss construction with our purchased trusses make them a no-brainer for us. Happy Building!

From installing the window and door bucks to topping the walls with bond beams, this crew of four completed the exterior walls on this DIY 720 sq ft house in four days. Next comes the roof!

Barbara and I retired from teaching high school the last week of May, 2009. With the help of our neighbors, Dan and Anneke, we moved lock, stock, and barrel from Tucson to Cochise with a couple round trips in a pickup with horse trailer, Chevy Blazer, and Barbara’s little Corolla. After a day of resting from the move and getting organized, we were ready to build. This blog is not just a chronicle of our straw bale house walls going up, it is a “thank you” to our neighbors, Dan and Anneke. They not only got us moved, but devoted their time and energy to helping us get our walls up. They are the kind of people that put the “good” in good neighbor.

About a week before we retired, our ranch supply store delivered about 180 straw bales freshly baled and tightly packed. Bales from different machines can vary in size, number of strings, and the length of the straw strands. Our bales averaged about 4 feet long x 15 inches high x 24 inches wide.  The bales we bought had long strands, which made a variety of building chores easier than a chopped straw bale. The market here at that time was $6.50 per bale. Thus, our walls, without rebar pinning or bucks, cost us $1,170 delivered. The bucks and rebar pinning added a couple hundred dollars more.

To accommodate openings less than 4 feet, we had to retie bales into shorter lengths using baling twine and bale needles. Retying with long strand bales was a dream compared to the choppy bales our neighbors used. A long-strand bale holds its shape, while a short-strand or chopped straw bale tends to crumble when retying. Ugly!

To retie our bales, we measured our new bale length and pushed a bale needle through the bale near one of the existing strings.  We pulled a loop of new baling string up through the bale and tied off in both directions, creating two new shorter bales. Once a new string was tied next to all three original strings and the two new flakes were tight, the old string was cut and put aside for the next use.

I made the bale needles from a couple pieces of galvanized fence end strapping that were salvaged from a neighbor’s project. Our needles were about two feet long, excluding the handle. I bent the handle in my vise and used a grinder to cut a retaining notch and make a point on the needle. Cost = Zero. It is possible to purchase “professional” bale needles from a variety of resources, but why?

Wall raising day arrived. We were rested and ready to go. June is hot here in southern Arizona and our neighbors have their own ranch to tend, so our work day usually started about 6 a.m. and stopped about 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Our first day was something of a shake down. We got our tying system running well and the door and window bucks installed and the first course of bales on the stem wall. It felt good to get started. After Dan and Anneke left, we did clean up and got ready for day two.

 On the second day, the wall grew to four rows. We began pinning the wall at the fourth row. Five foot lengths of 3/8 inch rebar were cut and driven through the bales every two feet to stabilize the wall. We made sure to drive the rebar entirely into the top bale to avoid tripping or kneeling on an exposed end. With the bottom course of bales firmly pressed unto pins sticking out of the stem wall and the additional rebar pins every additional third course, we had a strong wall.  

At the corners, we impaled each corner bale on a piece of 3/8 inch all-thread three feet long. The first section was anchored in the stem wall. We joined each length of all-thread with a long nut to give us an adjustable mechanical tie from stem wall to bond beam on each corner. This helped secure and level the bond beam. We were careful not to cut any bale strings as we drove the rebar pins.

There are many methods of stabilizing straw bale walls. Interior pins, exterior pins of bamboo tied through the bales, strapping and on and on. If done well, all will do the job, I suspect. We found that exterior pinning caused cracking in the plaster on the Annex wall, so chose interior pinning for our home.

 As I am getting to be a bit “long in the tooth” and much closer to 70 than to 60, I don’t try to buck bales above four courses anymore. When I was 20, it was a different story, but – Oh Well!

As a consequence, we used Dan’s little tractor bucket and a scaffold to work the wall as it rose. I must admit that walking along a wall made of a single row of bales as it shifted and moved is no longer a source of entertainment for me. And when the job involved reaching into the bucket of the tractor with a hay hook and dragging a bale into place on the wall - well, I’m glad it’s done.

Once the bond beams and final pinning was done, the wall didn’t move at all and working the trusses in the next phase of building was a breeze.

By the end of the third day, we had the end in sight. We had originally intended to build a wall only six courses high. But when we were through with the sixth course, we discovered that the door and window spaces had left us enough material for a seventh course.

Nothing in my body wanted to do that as I was one tired puppy.  But in retrospect, I’m happy we pushed the wall up one more level. Our interior ceilings are about 9 feet now and, although our house is pretty small, the fact that the interior space is pretty open and the ceilings are high makes it feel much more spacious.

The fourth day was comparatively easy. We had few bales to cut and tie as we were above the doors and windows. We had our system down pat by now. The job was finished with lifting one last row of bales and the placement the bond beams. Each 8 foot section of bond beam was attached to the next with carriage bolts and shimmed level.

We drilled holes and drove our second round of rebar through the bond beams and down three courses of bales to further strengthen the walls. The protruding all-thread on the corners was fastened with a large wood washer and a steel 1 1/2 inch washer to lock the corners into place. The following day, we began the roof. But that’s another story!

Today, as I write this, it is 103 degrees outside. Our R-42+ walls keep our inside temperature about 68 degrees with the help of a small evaporative cooler that runs on low setting and isn’t cranked up until late afternoon. This past winter was cold for Arizona.  We had a couple days in single digits, the lowest being 2 degrees above zero. We heat with a small wall-mounted propane heater. When we went to bed on the coldest night, the interior of our house was 70 degrees. We turned the heater off at 8:30 p.m. and, when I got up at 5:00 a.m., it was 62 degrees in the house. Straw bale homes are great! 

When Barbara and I began working on our kitchen design, we started with the general and worked toward the specific. Naturally, design ideas from books and internet were the starting point for layout and efficiency. But then we got down to specifics, keeping in mind both my relative inexperience as a cabinet maker and the fact that I had a very small shop with only basic tools.

One of the specifics that evolved in our planning was a door-mounted spice rack. Our purpose was to keep the spices off the kitchen counter and still have them readily accessible.

Before building our straw-bale home, we lived in a stick and stucco “adobe look-alike” home with stock cabinets.  Barbara and I both enjoy cooking and got real tired of digging around in a big, corner-cabinet Lazy Susan for our spices.

So as we designed and built our cabinets, room was made for a easy-to-use spice rack. The selected cabinet was built with recessed shelving to accommodate the rack. The spice rack itself was built from scrap wood from the door construction, so total material costs were a couple dollars for scrap wood, a half-cup of Polyurethane, and a couple L-brackets.

We set our cabinet shelving back to allow for easy door closure with a rack that was 3” deep. By fitting the rack inside the rails and stiles, we could use the inside of the door panel as the back of the cabinet, maximizing the space for spice jars.

Rack retaining slats were pieces of pine left-over from ripping the cabinet door stiles and rails. Ripping 3” rails and 2” stiles from a 1”x6” select pine board leaves a very usable strip measuring about 3/4” by 1/4". I rarely throw any shop material away. I’m not sure whether I’m just frugal or have some pack rat genes somewhere, but I usually find use for scrap wood, even if it’s in the shop wood stove in the winter. Nothing goes to the landfill.

Sides for the rack were scrap pieces from the 3” rails used in the doors and the shelves and bottom were scraps of the 1/4" birch plywood used in the door panels.

When the sides had been ripped and cut to length, I routed seating grooves for the shelves using a 1/4" straight router bit set for a 1/4"deep cut. The jig was simply a couple pieces of scrap wood the same width as the shelf side. With one piece screwed securely on top of the other at EXACTLY 90 degrees and both pieces secured to the workbench, I was ready to cut my shelf grooves.

I clamped my shelf stock securely to the scrap wood of the jig and extended my router channel into the throwaway jig piece. This prevented splitting when the router bit cleared the back of the piece. 

The shelf side was clamped to align the router bit with the desired shelf placement. It is important to make corresponding shelf channel cuts on exactly the same line. This can be done with careful individual cuts or putting both pieces side by side in the jig so the router cuts both pieces on the same pass.

Care must be taken to firmly secure both pieces if they are cut with the same pass as the interior board will drift if not independently clamped. Ask me how I know this can happen.

After the grooves were cut, the bottom piece was ripped to be the same width as the sides and then was cut to length to fit inside the door rails and stiles. A temporary top piece was attached to square and secure the rack as the shelves and rack retainers were installed. Then it was easy to slide the shelves into the grooves, attach them with small brads and glue, and install the rack retainers.We removed the temporary top to facilitate taller canisters before installation.

Sanding and a good coat of Polyurethane completed the construction. A couple small L-brackets secured the finished rack to the door. Then Barbara had a wonderful time sorting and installing spices.

As has been the case with all of our do-it-yourself projects, we enjoyed the doing and the results. Hopefully, you will find as much satisfaction in your projects.

When Barbara and I decided to build our home without professional assistance, the decision was based on a variety of motives. First, we didn’t have a lot of money and we wanted to own our home with no loans, debts, or mortgages. Second, we wanted to demonstrate that a couple with little or no construction experience could build a safe, efficient, and affordable home. Third, we wanted to demonstrate that this experience was not confined to young people – I was in my mid-60s and Barbara was in her late 50s. Last, and perhaps most important, we wanted to know our home.

When I sit down for a meal, I can look around the house and remember every board and load of plaster and feel the love and care that went into the building process. Despite all these reasons for doing everything ourselves, I was nervous about constructing the cabinets. The precision and care needed for this part of the house was daunting.

I had had some building experience over the years. I worked on a house framing crew in Colorado during the 1950s and, about twenty years ago, did the decks and flooring on our Minnesota home. But cabinets? No way. I was the kind of carpenter that 1/4“ wood putty was made for.

When we built the straw bale house, we planned and set securing 2 x 4 anchors in the kitchen walls to support the cabinets.  But this was an area where we felt ok about compromise and buying a manufactured system. When we had our layout and design pretty much done, we paid a visit to our nearby building supply box store. The store designer was helpful and ran out a cost estimate for island, kitchen, and bathroom cabinets. Even with a lower end cabinet, we were going to spend nearly $9,000 without countertop tile work. Ouch!

Our straw bale home, including septic system, cost under $25, 000. No way in the world was I going to move that far from our intent to build as economically as possible. So it appeared to be time to learn to build cabinets. This blog is not intended to be a step by step guide to building cabinets. Rather, I’m hoping that the following pictures and narrative will give courage to anyone who wants to build for themselves and keep costs down.

Once again, we bought a couple books and read them carefully, comparing their suggested techniques to our needs and our available tools. We had hand tools, a router, an old table saw, a reciprocating hand sander, a chop saw and some power drills – hand held and drill press. It was time for another vertical learning curve. We did not have a big shop with planer, joiner, band saw, high end router table or many other power tools that would have simplified our process. We made a very workable router table from scraps and a piece of masonite and moved the cutting and assembly of large stock outside to our sawhorse and plywood work table.

We chose to build simple frame and panel doors using select pine for rails and stiles with a birch plywood panel. The cabinet boxes were 3/4” plywood with select pine for the face frames. The boxes, with the exception of the island, were built and hung first, starting with the wall mounted cabinet boxes.

We built the boxes complete with shelves and hung them for use prior to making the doors so we could move into our house that much sooner. It was a happy day, however, when we put up the doors so we could walk through the kitchen without taking an inventory of glassware, spices, and corn chips.

Being the size and age that I am, the prospect of either getting down on my knees or bending low to get into a base cabinet shelf was just not at all appealing. So, in nearly all cases, the base cabinet shelves are sliders. We did splurge a bit on the quality of the slider and drawer hardware and feel that it was a good investment in durability and ease of building.

We spent a fair amount of time designing cabinet function such as pots and pans, plastic storage containers, baking pans, etc.  By taking the time to do this before we built, we are able to avoid collisions when two or more of us are working in the kitchen. As our neighbor says, this is really a “two-butt kitchen”.

Because my wood shop is only 8’ x 16’, we do a lot of work on a sawhorse table outside. Thankfully, Arizona weather lets us get away with that, at least most of the time. When we were assembling the cabinet cases and screwing and gluing the face frames, we worked on our “portable” table outside the shop.

To fasten the face frames, we bought a jig, a special drill bit, and Kreg pocket screws. With this system, we never split a frame and the screws drew the joints together so well that people thought I actually knew what I was doing. 

After two coats of polyurethane, we shimmed, leveled, plumbed, and firmly attached our cabinet casework to the walls and base frames of the kitchen. After installing the shelves, we were ready for the tile counter top. We installed cement board on 3/4" plywood as a base for the counter top. Barbara did the design and layout of the tile and I did the cutting. We used an inexpensive, wet tile saw and it worked fine, albeit a bit slow. Then it was glue, grout, seal, and use.

The final step in the process was the assembly and installation of the doors. If I were doing cabinet doors again, I would buy a middle priced router table. My home-made version worked fine, but stabilizing the fence accurately was very time consuming and the lack of a feather board made for a bit of wobble when cutting the grooves and was not as safe as I liked.

Barbara and I want to wish all of you who might be taking on building projects around your place the best of good building and hope you derive as much satisfaction from the process as we did. 

Hanging doors and windows in a load-bearing, Nebraska-style straw bale building can be a challenge.  There’s just no way I that know to keep a two-foot wide straw bale wall from settling and no two bales are going to settle the same amount. To avoid jammed doors or cracked windows caused by shifting bucks, we built bucks with frames that extended from stem wall to bond beam.

Our bucks were built to do double duty. They were constructed to provide a secure and square opening for windows and doors as well as ensuring a strong mechanical connection between the stem wall and the bond beam, serving to tie our wall together. In this way, not only were our windows well secured, but our entire structure was strengthened.

We adapted this building strategy after looking at the work of a few straw bale builders here in Arizona and New Mexico and reading about the work of others.

Connecting to the Stem Wall 

During construction of our stem walls, we identified and marked the location of our three and four foot windows on the stem wall. We inserted J-bolts in the core of the blocks when we filled them with concrete. These J-bolts provide the secure stem wall end of the mechanical connection to the roof via the bond beam.  For the two by two bathroom windows, we didn’t feel we needed the full support of a stem wall to bond beam buck. So we used a floating buck for the small windows.

J-bolts were also installed adjacent to the door openings to secure the door bucks. On both door and window, we installed a 2 x 6 plate on the J-bolts and fastened the bucks to the plates with Simpson steel hurricane straps. We had not done this in building the small straw bale Annex and found that we needed the “wiggle room” for slight warp in lumber, unnoticed shifting of the J-bolts when coring, and just plain measuring a bit off. Fastening to a larger surface, such as the 2 x6, is much more forgiving.

Building the Bucks 

The bucks are actually pretty straightforward.  A box made of 3/4” inch plywood with 2 x 4 dimension lumber reinforcing across top and bottom with wall height 2 x 4s on both sides. Size your boxes by the actual size of the insert, whether door or window. Leave 1/4" per side wiggle room on the windows and more for the doors. I usually leave at least 1/2” per side.

Shimming a door for plumb is easier if you leave some room. You do NOT want the door opening too small and, unless you are very careful, door bucks tend to become a bit trapezoidal when packing bales on both sides. You may need to compensate for this, especially if it’s your first stab at straw bale building.

We determined the desired height of the window openings and mounted the sidepieces accordingly. For ease of construction, we positioned the box approximately 32” above the stem wall. Our bales are 15” high and two courses of bales would nicely fit under the windows with a minimum of hand filling. Inevitably a straw bale builder will have hand filling (stuffing loose straw into openings) to do in order to avoid gaps.

The trick is to do as little of this as possible as plastering over a solid bale is much easier than over a hand packed spot.

Before The Bales 

After the plates were tightened to the J-bolts, we mounted the bucks. The most important considerations here are leveling the box, side to side and front to back, and plumbing the walls. Remember to establish a plane with the bucks to help establish a straight wall.

Reinforce the square of your bucks with diagonal temporary braces and further brace the bucks with a brace to a stake in the ground, especially if you have some wind as we do here.

Measurements and Flexibility 

Our walls were intended to be about 9 feet high above the stem wall. So the sides of our bucks were built using 10’ 2 x 4s. When our walls were stacked and we were ready for bond beams, we simply cut off the excess with a saws-all.

The cuts were made up to 3” below the top of the bale wall to permit settling. The firmer your bales are, the smaller will be the amount of settling and the smaller the distance from buck to bond beam.  Connections were made from the buck to the stem wall using steel strapping. After we installed the bond beams and the roof, we sat back and watched our walls settle for about two weeks. As the settling took place, the steel strapping, which was in place to keep the roof from flying off, would buckle at each connection.  Taking out the screws on the bottom of the strap, tapping the strap straight and screwing in at a slight downward angle ever three or four days kept tension on the bond beams. By the end of the second week, the bond beams were touching the buck tops and we did a final fastening, using both screws and strapping nails.

 I tend to use "about" and "approximately" a lot when talking about straw bale building. That is because no two bales are the same size, ever. To be successful in straw bale construction, we had to relax, be flexible, and learn a whole different definition of "custom building."

Before you start the process of mounting the bucks, building the walls, placing bond beams and roof, be sure you have all your material on the ground. The building will go up quickly if you do. Avoid last minute ordering of  building material.

With help from our neighbors, Dan and Anneke, we were able to raise our walls and weather in the house and the porch in about a week. Pick a week with no rain in the forecast and enjoy the creation of your straw bale home. If you wish more information or a list of books we consulted, feel free to contact me.

In keeping with our goal of creating a pay-as-you-build desert homestead, we used our own labor and, as much as we could, hand tools. This included digging out the trenches for the footings and stem walls of our first two buildings with a pick and shovel.

 By the time we were ready to build our main house, however, my age (the wrong side of 65) and the magnitude of the task at hand dictated acquiring something heavier than pick and shovel for moving dirt.  Buying a used mini-backhoe, dubbed the Tonka Toy, solved our problem. It was powerful enough for our tasks, while small enough to maneuver among our desert plants without too much damage.

Building #1 – The Adobe Bear Cave 

When we built our three buildings here on the desert homestead, we had three different sets of conditions for our foundations. Our first building had the heaviest walls by far, being solid adobe. But it was also the thinnest wall, about half of our two-foot plus plaster straw bale walls.

We believed that a poured concrete stem wall over a wider concrete footing, both with steel rebar in the pour, would give us the most economical stem wall while preventing extensive settling and cracking in our adobe wall. Above the footings, we formed in and poured a single pour stem wall about 19 inches deep and 14 inches wide. The extra width on the stem wall gave us a plaster shelf for the adobe. Because we were putting on a moisture barrier of felt paper between the stem wall and the first course of block, we put rebar pegs into the stem wall and mounted the first course of block with holes drilled to match.

Our homestead site is on a bajada, a sloping alluvial fan, so we had to consider the slope of the ground as well as the wall weight and width. The Bear Cave is 320 square feet and the Annex is 192 square feet.  With these smaller buildings, having a slope of about eight inches from high to low points, we simply built with the slope, digging in on the uphill end and building up on the downhill.

  The Annex : Our First Straw Bale Building 

The Annex, our straw bale utility building, had thicker and lighter walls than the adobe Bear Cave. In the various books we read, owner/builders using straw bale construction have used everything from a trench of rock to railroad ties for a foundation. We had a lot of adobe on hand and not a lot of money, so decided on a treated adobe block foundation for the little Annex.

We used the same “recipe” for adobe block as we did in the building of the Bear Cave except that the liquid used to make the “mud” for the blocks was about 10% asphalt emulsion. The asphalt mixture made the blocks as little darker, as expected. We laid two rows of block and filled the space between the rows with more wet adobe with asphalt. The cost of the foundation, including the 10 gallons of asphalt emulsion, was about $50 in 2006.

When the wall cured, we applied a good coat of pure asphalt emulsion to the outer surface of the stem wall. We let the coating cure about a week and then backfilled. The stem wall was built high enough to provide clearance of about 10” between the ground and the first course of bales.

A side note on the asphalt emulsion blocks durability: To protect from sheet flooding during monsoons, we had built a 2 foot eyebrow berm around the uphill side of our homestead. We had 8 blocks made with asphalt emulsion left over and put them on the weather side of our berm. They have endured the Arizona sun and rainfalls as heavy as 1 1/2 inches per hour and show modest rounding on the edges of the block. They remain intact and strong.

Our Straw Bale Casa: At Ground Level 

The main house was larger and had one more course of bales than the Annex to give us the nine-foot ceilings we wanted, so it posed yet another set of problems. Because the site was larger with more slope, the footprint of the main house dropped about 18 inches from high to low.   

For economic and environmental reasons, we chose not to have a contractor come in to tear up and tamp down the base for the house. So, we did it ourselves. After stubbing in the plumbing and waste lines, we moved some of the dirt from the septic digging and brought the main house building site nearly to grade.

Our nearby sand and gravel people brought in a load of AB and we spread that over the site with the Tonka Toy and then leveled it with a rake and tamped it with a hand tamper. With the nearest equipment rental facility about 75 miles one way, we used hand tools such as the hand tamper for most projects.  After wetting and tamping a few times, we had a good base for our stem wall and footings. Again using the Tonka Toy when we could and pick and shovel where we couldn't, we dug into our new base for footings and stem wall.

We built a riprap retainer for the leveled AB base, then laid two courses of block 27” apart to provide a 1 1/2" plaster shelf inside and out over a reinforced concrete footing. For insulating the floor of a straw bale house using block as a stem wall, we suggest filling the space between the courses of block with vermiculite or some such material. 

It has been more than six years since we began building the Bear Cave and we have been living in our straw bale Casa for two years. All three of our explorations in foundation buildings have worked well. Our adobe Bear Cave is stable and has no cracks. We have no erosion on the Annex foundation and our main house is snug, comfortable, stable, and paid for. Our homestead  has taken a lot of work. The work continues, but every minute of labor is worthwhile. Building one's own home is truly a labor of love.

One of the issues Barbara and I had agreed upon when we started our desert homestead was that we would use composting toilets. The idea that humans take nutrients from the soil, process it through their bodies as food, and then turn the unused nutrients, especially nitrogen, into a toxic waste dump just didn’t sit right with us.

We had installed the plumbing in our first buildings to drain waste gray water from laundry and showers out to our thirsty trees. We had a composting toilet in the straw bale Annex (utility building) which ultimately fed the soil in our orchard and garden. We thought we were all set.

Then we ran into the intertwining of our local phone service and county building codes. To live in the desert and write for a living, we needed internet access. To get a phone line with internet access, we needed a physical address. To get an address, we needed a building permit. To get a permit, we needed an approved septic system.

We were building under an inspectionless permit called the owner/builder opt-out that allows a great deal of freedom for rural residents in this county. Unfortunately, the County P & Z permit office is not amenable to composting toilets. So, rather than taking on an ongoing and probably fruitless fight to get our composting system approved, we caved in and put in a septic system.

Thankfully, we live in a wonderful community of independent and helpful people. One of our neighbors is a licensed septic installer who agreed to do our soil leaching test. As a friendly gesture and as part of his very reasonable fee, Frank designed an approvable system that I could do myself. He recommended a nearby tank and pipe vendor for the septic tank, leaching rock, and pipe and we were in business again.

When we moved onto our beautiful desert land and started building our homestead, our digging needs were addressed with a pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow. We dug the footings for our first two buildings and put in our 300’ road with these fine examples of advanced earth moving technology. But by the time we were ready for the main house, I was on the wrong side of 65 years on the planet and my back was letting me know it far too often.

So when it was time to dig a septic tank, we were already in possession of a little Terramite T5C aka Dave’s Tonka Toy. We had purchased this used mini-backhoe from an equipment rental business in Tucson and trailered it out for the earthwork on the main house.

Armed with Frank’s design and specs, I cranked up the Tonka Toy and started to dig. We lined up the long axis of the excavation with the waste outlet from the house and dug in the hole for the tank. Our soil is pretty dry and crumbly, so our mini-backhoe couldn’t get quite deep enough for the tank. We needed about 6 1/2’ of hole and I couldn’t get close enough to go down more than 5 1/2 ‘ without a cave-in. So, back to the pick and shovel for the last foot.

After the main hole, we dug trenching for the distribution box and the leach pipe. Following the design, a trench from the tank extended about 16’ at a depth of about 2’. Then two 50’ trenches about 5’ deep were cut at right angles from the main trench for the leaching field.

We ordered a load of leach rock sufficient to backfill the trenches after installation and called up our septic and pipe contact. I must say that I was one happy camper when the tank was lowered off the boom truck into the hole and it fit. Just inches to spare all around, but it did fit. Not only did it fit, but it was level.

We filled the tank with water in case of a monsoon rain. Hard to believe, but they will float out of the hole if a big rain comes and the tank is empty. Filling the tank also enabled us (and the inspector) to check for leaks.

We called the inspector and he made two trips. One for the trench depth and a check for level and leaks on the tank and one trip for level leach pipe installation. Approved first time around!

Although at the time, we felt the expense of a tank, pipe, and leach test (about $1,400) plus our labor might have been unnecessary, we agree now that both kitchen sink waste and flush toilet waste have to be treated as black water. As a result, on cold nights we have the luxury of a real flush toilet in the house as well as a way to handle the waste from the kitchen sink. We also have an address, an internet connection, and the approval of our county P & Z. It’s all good.

However, during the day and when company comes, we continue to use our composting toilet as a matter of principle. I wonder sometimes just how long it will take to require pumping out a thousand-gallon septic tank that is handling one kitchen sink, one bathroom sink, and one toilet used occasionally by two people. I hope to live that long.

A straw bale building is wonderful for us. It provides us with a super-insulated house. The buildings went up quickly and were easy on the budget.  Building a house out of natural material that is a by-product of food production gives us a good feeling in terms of environmental kindness. All good stuff.

However, no matter how tight the bales,  those golden grass stems don’t offer much in the way of purchase and strength for hanging a shelf for a row of heavy plates, glasses, and bowls. Even sheet rock expansion fasteners punched through the plaster aren’t strong enough to guarantee that you won’t wake up to the sound of crashing crockery some night.
 

Here are some tips on securing shelving, electrical outlet boxes, and even attaching additions and porches to a straw bale building. We used these techniques for both our straw utility building and our straw bale home.  Our cabinets and shelves are rock solid, our electrical boxes don’t wiggle when you pull out a plug, and neither the front porch nor my workshop have blown away.

There are essentially three techniques we incorporated in building for these attaching needs. One is for shelves and cabinets, another for electrical outlets, and another for attaching rafters for a porch or addition. Each of these is our adaptation of procedures used in a variety of natural building books.

Shelving hangers  

Materials for installing one shelf hanger include:

a 2 x 4 cut to length
2 - 3’ sections of all thread
4 -  flat washers at least 1” diameter
2 - 4” x 4” piece of  3/4” plywood.

The length of your 2 x 4 will depend on the shelf bank or cabinets being installed. In our utility room, we installed hangers vertically about 3’ apart and from floor to ceiling to provide for adjustable shelving. In our kitchen, we installed one hanger the length of our cabinets, about 10” below counter height and built a 1”x4” nailer into our home-made cabinet boxes.

Tools we used included a battery powered saws-all, 1 1/4" spade bit, 1/2" twist wood bit, power hand drill, bolt cutter or hack saw, hammer, and wrenches.

With the saws-all, cut out a cavity in the inside straw bale wall a bit wider than your 2 x 4, maybe 5” wide, for the length of the hanger. Excess cutting will be filled by plaster so don’t try for precision. Just make sure that the 2 x 4 is flush or a little recessed with the plane of your wall.

Drill two holes to just allow passage of your all-thread through your hanger, spacing them for even pressure. We put them in about two feet from top and bottom in an 8’ run (more in a longer hanger).  With your 1 1/4” blade bit, cut a countersink hole to prevent the fastening nut from sticking out from the plane of the board.

Place a steel washer and nut on the end of a section of all-thread, push the other end through the hanger, insert the hanger into the cavity and, using a piece of scrap wood over the end of the all-thread, drive the section through the bale wall as straight as possible.

With the saws-all, excavate around the protruding all-thread on the outside wall to a depth of about 2” and large enough for your 4” plywood piece. Drill a hole in the center of the 4 x 4 plywood and slide it onto the all-thread, put on washer and nut and tighten finger tight.

Repeat the process for the other hole(s). Secure the nuts very firmly, keeping in mind the need to keep the hanger evenly mounted. With bolt cutter or hack saw, cut off excess all thread. You may want to file down any sharp cutting burrs to save some skinned knuckles when plastering.

Electrical outlets 

Electrical outlets are installed in somewhat the same manner. However, instead of piercing the wall, wedges are cut and driven into the bale after a cutout slightly larger than the electric box is made in the straw with a saws-all. I make my wedges by ripping a piece of 2 x 6 about 12” long in half. I then make wedges from the 2” x 2 1/2” pieces.

Be sure to cut your wedge with two beveled sides to insure a flat surface for mounting your electrical box.  Drive your wedge into the bale with the wedge point parallel to the orientation of the straw. Don’t wedge between bales. It will be impossible to get enough contact to provide a secure foundation.

There are many methods of cutting the wedges. I use a table saw and a home-made jig. It is slower and less efficient than a commercial jig, but it only cost pennies to make.

Drive the wedge into the bale so that your box will mount about half-way into the wall.  If you use adobe plaster, as we did, the plaster coats will be about 1 1/2” thick. You don’t want to tunnel into plaster to mount your electrical box plate. Ask me how I learned this one!

When the wedge is secure and driven in the bale to the proper depth, attach the box to the face of the wedge. I simply screw in a couple 1 1/4" sheet rock screws.

Attaching a porch or small addition 

We really don’t recommend that you attach a porch or addition to straw bales, although we join interior stud walls using the shelving hanger process described above.

For an add-on, we take advantage of one of the building elements of a straw bale building. That is the bond beam that is installed at the top of the bale wall.  It is fastened mechanically to the stem wall using one of a variety of techniques (more of this in another blog). The bond beam that we use is a simple box with interior cross pieces made from 3/4” plywood and 2 x 6 dimension lumber.

The bond beam is securely attached to the wall and further stabilized by the attachment of the roof trusses or rafters. To the outside 2 x 6 of the bond beam box, we simply attach another 2 x 6 as a plate with carriage bolts. The plate will be exposed after the wall is plastered and provide a secure anchor for rafters attached with joist/rafter hangers. We have used this method for our workshop, our potting shed, and all our porches.

It is important to remember that there are many building techniques for DYI straw bale buildings. These are just some that we have used successfully. We wish anyone undertaking the building of their own house, straw bale or not, all the best. There are few more personally satisfying adventures.

 It’s springtime at the Bear Cave and our winter drought continues. The winter rains, with few exceptions, missed us and passed over us to the North. As a result, there is not much to eat for our deer. This is the time of year when our little orchard here at the Bear Cave is pretty tempting. However, we much prefer to eat from our peach, apple, plum and pear trees ourselves.

 Two years ago, when we first planted our fruit trees, we awoke one morning to some pretty badly chomped little trees. My response was to cut some 10’ rebar stakes, get a bunch of insulators, a spool of wire, and set up an electric barrier fence.  We installed an inexpensive 45 W photovoltaic system we had used to power our camp trailer and we believed that were protected.

We went to bed after installing the deer fence feeling pretty smug about keeping the deer out. Next morning, a section of the fence was a tangled mess and another meal had been taken by our local deer.

We straightened and reset the rebar and restrung the wire. This time, we added a bit of flair. On all three strands of wire, spaced about 6’ apart, we tied aluminum foil flags. On the flags, we put a heavy smear of peanut butter.

 Next morning, there were three sets of deer tracks approaching the orchard at a walk. The tracks were deep and far apart leaving the fence. We have not been bothered by deer since. Let’s hear it for aversion therapy!

Unfortunately, we found that in protecting our orchard from deer, we became a serious threat to our hummingbird population. The bright yellow insulators look way too much like flowers for the hummers to resist. They would perch on the hot fence wire and poke at the insulator. Either they would touch the steel stake or get close enough to produce an arc. There are few sights more tragic to a bird lover than a tiny lifeless body hanging from an electric fence wire.

Because insulated stakes are comparatively expensive and most are shorter than our deer fence, we found a simple and cheap solution. First turning off the power, we lowered the insulators down about a foot on the rebar stake. We then wrapped the stake with PVC tape for about one foot. After sliding the insulators back into place, midway on the tape, we energized the fence. No more problems for us or the hummingbirds.

Building in the desert presents a variety of conflicts between the indigenous species and us. Barbara and I work with and around the native animals, whether warm or cold blooded, as well as we can while still protecting our very necessary garden and orchard produce. In this case, we are happy with the results of our efforts.

But we just got done with the Bear Cave…  

Barbara and I had finished work on our adobe Bear Cave and were comfortably sheltered from heat, cold, and wind for eating, sleeping, and relaxing. However, we were still doing laundry in a five gallon bucket and scrubbing adobe-stained socks with a scrub brush.

Our showers came from a 55-gallon barrel on an elevated frame of 2x4s with a piece of hose and a sprinkler head. Trust me when I say that our January showers were brief. 

Our toilet was a bamboo booth with a plywood platform supporting a toilet seat over a 5-gallon bucket of peat moss and sawdust. We referred to it as our toilet model JJJCBCT/5-gal. That translates as a “Joe Jenkins Joint Compound Bucket Composting Toilet / 5 gallon.”  It worked great and contributed to our compost system, but winter visits were short and only marginally comfortable.

So, it looked like we needed another building. The thought made my back hurt.  After all, we had just spent 18 months on the Bear Cave. But out came the books, the pencils, straight edge, and calculator. It was time to build again: inside laundry, inside toilet, sink, and a truly HOT shower coming up.  A straw bale utility building was born.

 From the ground up… 

The stem wall for the Annex, the fairly pretentious name we gave our utility building, had to be 27” wide to accommodate a 24” straw bale and provide a base for a plaster coat. We decided that because we already had lots of adobe and forms for making block, that we would make a waterproofed adobe stem wall. 

Buying 5 gallons of asphalt emulsion from our building supply store, we mixed a 10-to-1 water to asphalt emulsion solution. With this, we mixed a few batches of adobe block and let them cure in the sun. We used the same solution as mortar when we laid the stem wall. We filled the space between the walls with wet adobe mud and put in rebar pegs to impale the first course of straw bales.

Once the stem wall was cured, about a week, we put in the door buck and window bucks and began stacking bales. We made bale needles from steel strapping for tying short bales as needed. When the wall rose above four bales, I decided to give my body a break. With the help of our neighbor’s John Deere Jr., Barbara lifted the bales and I walked around the top of the bale wall with a bale hook like I knew what I was doing, dragging the bales into position. 

We pinned the bales by driving in sections of rebar every three courses and topped the wall system with a bond beam of 2x6s in a segmented box over 3/4” plywood. In the corners of the building we had secured continuous sections of all-thread from stem wall to bond beam. With these we were able to both secure and level the corners by tightening the top nut over a broad washer. We used cable and turnbuckles at 4 foot intervals to draw down the bond beam and connect it to the stem wall around the entire building. We secured homemade trusses to the bond beam with hurricane straps and put up our sheathing and steel roofing.

 Once the building was weathered in and the door and windows were in place, we began on the walls. Using the same plastering techniques as we did on the Bear Cave, we started applying the multiple coats of adobe that transform an irregular bale wall into a finished product.

Inside the building, we laid out a basic straight line plumbing drain to accommodate a deep sink, a clothes washer, a bathroom sink, and a shower. Water was accessed from a 3/4" pipe taken off the main water line of the Bear Cave. The drains all fed into a gray water line that ran to our trees. Once the plumbing, in and out, was done, we started on the interior wall and shower construction.

 When the walls were up and the outside was plastered, we began working on finishing the interior. This process included installing hangers for shelves, cabinet and sinks, a flagstone floor, a tiled shower, a closet and finish interior plaster. After the interior was complete, we built the porch, potting shed, and work shop as appendages on the outside. This little building is truly the utilitarian heart of our little desert homestead. In future blogs, I will be sharing our process for the finishing the interior and the outside construction.