Warrick Mitchell lives deep in one of the world’s most remote locations: Fiordland, New Zealand. His home in the country’s oldest national park is nestled in a vast wildness accessible only by boat or airplane, a four day’s walk from the nearest road. Life in isolation can be hard, but surrounded by breathtaking, pristine natural beauty, plentiful wildlife and a small but tight-knit community that is always willing to lend a hand, Mitchell would have it no other way.
Dear friends of Dickinsons Reach and Bill Coperthwaite,
We are very pleased to announce the creation of 4–6 week long homesteading residencies at Dickinsons Reach in honor of Bill Coperthwaite and his way of life. The residencies will start this September and occur every season thereafter. We are very excited to offer individual and couples this wonderful chance to live within the homestead and landscape that has inspired so many of us. The Homesteading Residencies also reflect a new phase of our shared stewardship of Dickinsons Reach.…
Abandoned house located near Sequim, Washington. Similar houses are often found in rural areas and small communities with high unemployment. An abandoned house like this would require a large investment of time and energy, but might possibly be an option for someone with limited resources.
I’m going to post sneak previews of our next book, Small Homes, once in a while, as I proceed with layout. There will be 6 pages with photos of Mark and Meg’s home, built out of recycled wood, and garden.
I’m experimenting with Twitter to post references to other websites; it’s quicker than blogging. www.twitter.com/lloydkahn
Summon the word “homestead” and you likely think of hardy farmers with 10 or more acres on which they keep livestock, grow and preserve a great deal of their own food, and fell trees to build their homes. But more modest-sized homesteads are more attainable for most people, and these smaller-scale acreages can embody old-school homesteading in principle, if not in scope. Our half-acre homestead is one of those. Following are some of the most useful tools and techniques that have made Lesley’s and my 40-year journey toward greater self-sufficiency possible.
A young family is making a last-ditch effort to save its cherished “hobbit house” from the bulldozers after planners deemed it had to be razed.
Charlie Hague and Megan Williams used natural materials to lovingly build their roundhouse tucked away in southwest Wales. But the pair, both 27, applied for planning permission only after moving in with their newborn son, Eli, in 2012.
Though many local people did not even know the small building was there, planners ruled the house did not fit in with the surrounding Pembrokeshire countryside and decided it had to go.
Kirsten Dirksen is a filmmaker with Fair Companies, a bilingual media operation that she and her husband Nicolás Boullosa run out of Barcelona. Kirsten is a former TV producer for MTV and the Travel Channel who now focuses on “…community and access to tools on sustainable culture.” She has produced almost 600 videos, an amazing body of work when you consider that it’s the editing, not the shooting, that is so time-consuming. I don’t know how she does it.
We’ve had a bunch of people shoot film (OK, OK, video) around here and they generally take a long time to get set up, then follow a preconceived series of shots and questions.
Kirsten walked in the first time and within 5 minutes, was shooting. We were comfortable with her. She winged it, seeing what we were doing, following us around. On one of her visits, her two little long-haired girls explored the garden and chickens and Nicolás shot photos.
…[more on full post page]…
One thing I love about this video is that she recognized what Lesley is doing in her life and with her garden, her art, and her attitude towards a home. Often that gets missed in people coming here to see me. Read More …
Lloyd Kahn will present “Fifty Years of Natural Building” at the San Francisco Maker Faire, on Saturday May 16, from 12-12:30 at the Maker Stage. You can visit our booth in the Homegrown Village to get great deals on our books. The Faire is incredibly fantastic; check it out!
I’ve done some talks/slide shows on the subject “The Half-Acre Homestead in the 21st Century” and picked some time-tested tools that we use in our daily lives. Here is a link with access to each tool:
Lloyd Kahn and his greenhouse built from recycled windows and handmade bricks made from local clay. Photo by Art Rogers
Lloyd, who was born and raised in San Francisco, began building things in the late 1940s when, at age 12, he helped his father construct their family home in Colusa. After building a large timber home for himself from recycled materials in Big Sur in 1967, he became interested in domes and began his publishing career with a series of publications titled Dome Book 1 and Dome Book 2; he became the “Shelter” editor in 1969 for the Whole Earth Catalogue. He moved to Bolinas in 1971, built a dome, tore it down and replaced it with a stud-framed house and became a pioneer of owner-built simple structures using recycled materials. He has since published over 20 books on the subject, including Shelter, and The Septic System Owners Manual,Builders of the Pacific Coast, and Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter.
He will be giving a slide presentation and book signing this Friday, November 7, 2014, 7:30 p.m., at the Point Reyes Presbyterian Church for his latest book about living in small structures, titled Tiny Homes on the Move: Wheels and Water.
I got a robot phone call last night (around dinner time, of course): “Hello, this is not a solicitation, this is about your septic system…”
The object was to sell homeowners on additives that will “…improve septic tank digestion of solids.”
Don’t fall for this scam. Below is what we wrote in Septic Systems Owner’s Manual (There are 5 complete chapters from the book reprinted here, along with other septic info.).
Septic system additives, especially enzymes. (You don’t need to add enzymes; they’re naturally present in the sewage.) Beware of telemarketers or ads hawking additives claiming to avoid tank pumping. They actually break down the scum and sludge into small particles, which are then readily flushed out into the drainfield, increasing possibility of premature drainfield failure. The State of Washington has banned septic tank additives. In Tiburon, California, a homeowner recently added enzymes to a septic system that had been working perfectly well. Soon after, sludge moved out into the drainfield and the system failed.
I wrote an article that appeared in The Mother Earth News in 2008 about the sorry state of septic systems engineering and regulations in the U.S.: www.motherearthnews.com/….
“When I was a kid I had a little workbench with holes in it, and the holes were square or round or triangular. And you had to pick the right little piece of wood block and hammer it in with a little wooden hammer. And so I’d hammer with it, put the round dowel into the round hole, and hammer it through. And then maybe the most formative thing was when I was twelve — I helped my dad build a house. It had a concrete slab floor, and concrete block walls. And my job was shoveling sand and gravel and cement into the concrete mixer for quite a while. We’d go up there and work on weekends. One day we got the walls all finished, and we were putting a roof on the carport, and I got to go up on the roof. They gave me a canvas carpenter’s belt, a hammer and nails, and I got to nail down the 1″ sheeting. And I still remember that, kneeling on the roof nailing, the smell of wood on a sunny day. And then I worked as a carpenter when I was in college, on the docks. I just always loved doing stuff with my hands…”
In 1973 we published Shelter, which turned out to be station central for people interested in creating their own homes. Now, in the 21st century, we continue this dialog here online on shelter, carpentry, homesteading, gardening, and the home arts with this blog. We hope you will join us and contribute.
