DIY Cider Press and Rocket Stove

In Permaculture we talk a lot about "appropriate technology" vs. technology for technology's sake. My friend Ruthy would always say sometimes technology can be like toasting a bagel with a blowtorch. 

So what can we make that is both low-tech, meaning anyone with basic skills and knowledge can build or fix it, and gives more self-determination. Since so much of our world seems out of our control even the basic necessities of heating your home, growing your food and cooking it. What happens the next time a super storm comes through knocking out power for a week or longer? Appropriate tech can both be used as back up emergency systems, ways of living in rural or remote locations, or even designed to get folks off of the grid.

The following are three systems we modeled and played around with last weekend in our Permaculture FEAST course.

Apple Press

The other day I was walking down the alley behind my house and saw a beautiful apple tree with most of the fruit covering the ground. Even though it was a really bad fruit tree year there is still so many apples in peoples yards, not to mention orchards that have drops and go bad. Pressing apples (and other fruits like pears) is a great way to preserve the harvest and use "ugly" apples that otherwise wouldn't get sold for fresh eating. Historically in New England making cider was very common on most farms. Specific varieties were developed for juicing and many varieties have been lost (more on that in a later post).

Here is what the underside looks like. The garbage disposal mashes and drops the apples into the bucket

Then the apple slop gets poured through a cheese cloth like filter into another bucket with wholes drilled into the side. The "press" is a car jack.

the juice pours out of the bucket and into a bus pail with another whole drilled at the tip and finally flows into another 5 gallon bucket.

Chopping apples and putting them down into the garbage disposal. Plywood top doubles as surface area for cutting boards and 5 gallon bucket catches apple slop. Looks like a giant batch of mashed potatoes!

Heating and mulling the apple cider with a rocket stove. Mulling with reishi mushrooms, cinnamon, cloves and cardamon

Heritage Wheat Harvest at Crabapple Farm

Sash Bruce/ Beet Street Cabana Design Concepts

Here is some images on a project I am consulting on with lead designer/ builder Jesse Cooper. The Cabana shed is a mixed use storage and community "hub" facility located in Washington D.C. Here is what they say on their website: Beet Street Gardens is a nonprofit that builds gardens on the grounds of social service organizations that work with disadvantaged adults, teens and families. They aim to create a space where economic and social divisions do not dictate who has access to nutritious food, outdoor spaces and the enjoyment of gardening.

Beet Street Gardens partners with Sasha Bruce Youthwork to give youth the chance to experience working with the land to yield produce and to build the skills necessary for growing one’s own food. The garden is located at Bruce House and continues to thrive due to the efforts of the Beet Street Gardens team and SBY youth.

Holy Crap

Holy Crap! from Xuan Vu on Vimeo.

Holy Crap! is a film which marvels at the work of SOIL, a non-profit organization working in Haiti to convert human waste into rich, viable fertilizer using dry, composting toilets. www.oursoil.org www.holycrapthefilm.com

Katherine Mallory: Origins of Private Property

With a goal of integrating social and economic justice work with the Permaculture community here is a recent lecture from my UMass Summer PDC course with Katherine Mallory from the Social Thought and Political Economy Department. It is a prelude to our class's design project that is working to integrate private, and shared joined back yards. More Soon!

Planting Brown Rice at Whole Systems Design Research Farm

L/A/N/D "Raising"

Montview Neighborhood Farm, 38 Henry St, Northampton, MA 01060
May 28th all day starting at 9am
Please RSVP and Walk or Bike to the farm if you are physically able

RSVP to montview@pedalpeople.com
www.montviewfarm.org

Artists in Context is working in collaboration with C3 (a creative community collective) and Montview Neighborhood Farm to present L/A/N/D, a series of participatory events and projects centered around creative place-making, food-growing, and story-telling. L/A/N/D takes place at Montview Neighborhood Farm, a human-powered farm, forest garden, and learning site situated on three acres of conservation land at the corner of Monview Ave and Henry St near downtown Northampton.

"Raising" is planned as an interactive building event during which participants construct the temporary structure that will serve as the locus of L/A/N/D programming at the farm. The outdoor classroom, part arbor, part gazebo, will be built largely from salvaged materials and feature on-site construction of a reciprocal roof.

Help C3 and Montview Neighborhood Farm raise the roof and see what else is happening at the farm on "Raising" day.

About the structure:

Permaculture looks to ecology for principles, patterns and examples to help design for healthy, resilient and beautiful human systems. We have named the structure we are creating a "gaz-arbor," part Gazebo, part Arbor. The gaz-arbor takes its inspiration from the pattern of the honey comb. Bees are able to calculate, design, and construct a hexagon structure that provides the most living and storage space for their larvae, honey and pollen utilizing the least resources and energy.

Like the honey comb the gaz-arbor is a public gathering space that feeds the neighborhood and greater community with ideas and inspiration to pollinate a cultural transformation within the landscape from that of scarcity, pollution, and oppression to abundance, health and solidarity.

The gaz-arbor is built with black locust posts (Robinia pseudoacacia) an incredibly rot resistant wood often referred to as natures answer to pressure treated wood. Considered a waste wood by many, the tree is in the Fabaceae (Pea) family and hosts a bacteria on its roots that takes atmospheric nitrogen and transforms it into a form of nitrogen that plants can uptake. Nitrogen (N) is one of the three basic nutrients that all plants need to thrive.

The gaz-arbor roof is reciprocal, also known as a Mandala roof, and has been used since the twelfth century in Chinese and Japanese architecture. Its assembly resembles the pattern of the spiral and consists of mutually supportive rafters.

The neighborhood will come together on May 28th to raise the roof in an event titled 'the raising'. The Montview Neighborhood is a community supported farm and like the rafters in the roof depends on a larger network of neighbors, artists and community members for its support.

The function of the gaz-arbor will be a community gathering space used, among other things, for potlucks, as an outdoor classroom and will feature edible vines to provide shade.

SWARM! Catching my first (two) swarms