Will Wendy Weed or Wander?

Wendy is staying home. This time I will tell you more about my home and homestead.

We live in an underground house back in the woods of Vermont. Here in Vermont, winter is a major part of our lives, so keeping warm is a biggy. An undergound house cuts air infiltration from wind as most of the home is under the earth, out of wind's way. Our house started out 14x28ft., completely underground, except for some windows peeking out where earth was terraced away from the house. Next, we added a 14x20ft. bedroom/bathroom addition into the west bank, then a 12x48ft. solar greenhouse on the entire south side. We wanted a larger door to get out back, so added on a 9x9ft. computer/sewing room while we were at it. Last year we began a 10x30ft. bedroom/kitchen/dining room addition.

I highly recommend building small and adding on so you never need a mortgage! Also, you learn as you go what you most need and want and every year your building skills improve.

Water is gravity-fed from a spring I found and developed. There's a small pool in the springhouse and water is piped into the houseall without electricity. In the summer, water is heated in a coil of 100ft. of  black hose in the greenhouse. In winter it goes through the woodstove.

Human wastes go into a homemade composting toilet. This is a box enclosing a 5 gallon bucket. The top has a regular toilet seat. The box has a 4" vent pipe going to the outside. Whenever a deposit is made, sawdust is added. When the bucket is full, it is taken outside and dumped into a 55 gallon drum. After a year, this becomes wonderful compost. Of our yearly output, half goes on the sod roof to fertilize the wildflowers and the other half goes out to our half-acre orchard to fertilize the trees.

Vegetable and other food waste goes into a 5 gallon bucket under the countertop where I prepare food. When it is full, it goes out to a compost pile in the garden. Here, it is layered with rotten hay, leaves or corn stalks.

Newspapers are stacked in a pile in the house until critical mass is reached and then they go out to the garden. I use newspapers in thick layers to mulch between raised beds. Hay on top of the papers makes a nice dry, weed-free pathway that is pleasant to harvest from.

We have an 8x8ft. root cellar built into the north bank and accessible from the kitchen. This room is divided into two partsone side is drier, the other side is cool and damp. The dry side is full of cans and bottles, the other with apples, potatoes, carrots, etc.

Heating is accomplished with two wood stoves. With ten acres of land, we cut dead or dying trees, storm-damaged trees and crowded trees for a continuous and sustainable harvest of firewood. Wood is brought out of the woods using a 4WD-ATV.

The main woodstove is in the greenhouse. Firewood is stacked outside on pallets, then fed through a special wood door into the greenhouse, where we pile a week's worth of wood at a time. There is a small woodstove in the living room. We use this one as the only source of heat in late spring or early fall, when we just need a boost. In the winter, when it is below zero, both wood stoves are cranked up.

A nifty way to get firewood into the house and stored in the living room is a 3x3x12ft. wood closet. Wood is fed in using a slide at ground level and fills up the closet. We access it in the house by starting at the top of four doors and working our way down as the pile dwindles.

The solar greenhouse is the major source of heat in spring and fall. There are a dozen 55 gallon drums of water along the north wall. These soak up heat from sunlight or the wood stove, then slowly release it at night. There is also a rock wall next to the greenhouse wood stove that does the same thing.

Our bathtub is an old cast-iron claw-foot tub that was slathered in tar and sunk into a bed of sand in our bathroom. This insulates the tub so that a small amount of water keeps it toasty warm.

For years we did laundry using a wringer-washer. These are great because you can wash the cleanest clothes first and then a few more until it is time to change the water, thus saving on water consumption and detergent. The actual machine was cheap, but washing required lots of labor. First wash, then wring, rinse, wring, hang, take down clothes. This year I decided I was too old and tired for all that work and we purchased a horizontal-axis washer. These are expensive to purchase, but are also water and energy conserving and the clothes come out pretty dry. In the summer clothes go out to the line and in winter they hang in the greenhouse.

Gray water disposal is done with a dry wella big hole full of big rocks and capped with a waterproof layer. Water drains into this and eventually percolates through the soil. We don't need a septic tank because of the composting toilet.

I have a two acre raised bed garden. Here in Vermont we need to start as much as possible in the greenhouse so plants have long enough to develop in our short growing season. The solar greenhouse is filled to capacity twice each season with seedlings. As the weather warms, the plants go out to a hoop house and to beds in the garden.

The whole homestead is set up as much as possible using ideas from permaculture. The garden is out by the road on the only land suitable for crops. The house is back in the woods on a hillside that would be difficult to utilize otherwise. Areas closest to the house are the most intensively used.  Sap is gravity-fed to our back door in the spring  for boiling into maple syrup.

If you would like to see more pictures of our house and farm, visit our web page at 

http://www.homestead.com/peaceandcarrots/   You can also find links to web pages that will teach you how to build your own sawdust toilet, learn permaculture, find recipes, learn about homeschooling, etc.

Write to Wendy Martin at  PO Box 69, Calais, VT 05648 or write to me at wsm311@aol.com