Eco-Stewards Program 2011

We're thrilled to be the site of this year's Eco-Stewards Program! The following is from an IRISH church news blog post... (and their info is right on!)

A week long summer opportunity in Montana for young adults who are looking to connect their faith and environmental stewardship.

Young adults from all denominations are encouraged to participate.

The Eco-Stewards Program is for young adults ages 20-30 who are interested in exploring the connections between our faith and environmental stewardship.  The 2011 program will take place June 2-9 with the theme “Living with and from the Land on the Crow Reservation in Montana: Sustainability and Reconciliation through Agriculture, Health and Green Building.”  The program will be held at Greenwood Farm, a 40-acre organic farm on the Crow Reservation, just outside of Hardin, Montana.

There are also limited paid summer internships available at Greenwood Farm in Montana, one of several churches, or one of several Presbyterian Church (USA) camps around the country.

The Eco-Stewards Program blog describes the 2011 program:
“Through discussions with environmental experts, local farmers, doctors and tribal leaders, we will consider how communities can achieve sustainability and reconciliation through better agriculture, health care and green building practices. Our exploration of these issues will include lectures, community gatherings, field excursions, hands-on project work, creative worship, and sharing of personal passions and vocational discernment. While paddling the Bighorn and hiking in the Sand Rocks, participants will have time to absorb the region’s powerful landscape while reflecting on their own eco-life journeys.”

Apply by March 1.  Email Rev. Rob Mark with questions at robfirstpres@gmail.com.

The Eco-Stewards Program is a partnership between the Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Association and Presbyterians for Earth Care.

More info can be found on the Eco-Stewards blog at http://ecostewardsprogram.wordpress.com/2011-program/.

Part Two-- building away...

One project that did get done is rebuilding the firebox for our main heat source, the rocket mass heater.  With firebrick and a tighter angle iron collar for the feeding tube, it works better.

We can now pile in trash cedar posts and let them burn.  They are very combustible, but if we run the fan it keeps the flame blowing down.  But I don't trust cedar post firewood enough to set them in the stove and leave.  We're thankful for this stove!  The recent cold spells had many days with very little sunlight.  That means we need to run the stove.

All in all, we sure like the help from our grandkids, operating their heavy light equipment to fill in the cracks between the urbanite.  Now everything is buried in snow.

Too much! We had our hopes for getting the solarium finished before winter set in, so we had another heat source.  But to get that done, the sunny john must be built. Josh helped me pour the floor of the vault after Springlane Construction did the stem wall for us.dd caption

Here's the heat storage for the sunny john. Look up sunny john on line to see how it works.

We snaked the pipes from a central barrel for airflow through 20" of fill to keep the place from freezing in winter.  Maybe.

We got the west wall done barely in time for some fall rains.  See the white walls between exposed studs?  We painted elastomeric over $1/yard mesh on the surface of our  EPS (styrofoam) 4" thick panels, and it makes a very adequate indoor surface.  Not quite as hard as sheetrock, but durable enough.  Works good.  Sand the styrofoam surface well so the paint adheres

The east wall is still open, after sever cold and plenty of snow it looks like we will not have a real thaw until springtime.  We have about 10" of snow on the ground. So our solarium cannot really get warm.  But it is protected enough for lumber, and for Sheila.

We tried to get it done!  Here's the backing for the solar air collector for the sunny john, a baffle to allow air to flow into the black ducts at the bottom and out the opening at the top into the Sunny John.

Here's the window with insulated glass for the collector, it's 5' X 6'

The collector surface is old aluminum siding, painted with a special highly-selective solar collector black coating, formulated to soak up the sun's rays efficiently, but block out radiation.  This allows the surface to get considerably hotter than something painted with normal black paint.  Well, it's not done, and the forecast is for more snow tonight....

Here's hoping for a mid winter thaw to finsih some of these projects! 
Maybe I've been spending too much time on my column with the local newspaper.  Check it out if you like, http://www.bighorncountynews.com/clergy.html
Grandpa Dave. 

moon, mice and veggies

The late fall new moon is tipped almost vertical because the eclliptic–the path the sun moon & planets appear to follow around the earth–is angled almost flat to bring the sun lower in the south at noon, lowest by Dec. 21.  And that's the harbinger, fall ended two weeks ago, and we were hit the 2nd week of Nov with cold and snow, well below 0.  And it snowed more, and more.

Here's the evidence of some wee invaaders.  We unfortunately used a lot of old hay for mulch.  Our garden suffered a bountiful population explosion of mice.

Grandchildren did a good job harvesting carrots, but not before the previously mentioned friendly 4 legged harvesters took sizeable bites out.

 

 

 

 

We want to remember our bountiful fall.  Too much sweet corn, we ended up processing over 100 lbs and giving away at least as much on the ear for Crow fair, churches, etc.  And Hannah enjoys feeding the three chickens left.  The other 21 or so are in the freezer.  Grandma and I did the operation with almost no grandkid supervision.  Too gruesome for their age??

Those pesky invaders proved to be food for Sheila the Aussie Shepherd, but there are too many mice

Grandma's garden produced.  These are samples.

AFr. Charlie asked us to care for the apples in the tree behind his parsonage.  They were the right size, not oversize like modern apples, and delicious.dd caption

To be continued... 

A visitor

And just last evening, we ended three days of wonderful new friendship with Denise from Boston, a good friend/colleague of Dave (Dr. Mark), from Switzerland, more recently from Boston.  She  has been traveling the country, and Dave told her to stop in to see us.  She is an awesome chokecherry picker, so Grandma has her dozen quarts of canned chokecherry juice ready to transform into fruit juice or pancake syrup.  We had a wonderful three days fellowship. 

On chickens and rainbows

This post opens with an end of summer chicky challenge.  Here are the chickens just driven from the garden, because they ate of the fruit of the tomato.  We were curious why our tomatoes were slow ripening, and it didn't occur to us they would totally consume any at the first slight pinkening.  So they are banned.  This makes them vulnerable to our wild predators.

But Sheila the Aussie Sheepdog has become reincarnated as a chicken herder dog.  In fact, she is so protective and caring, she actually crawls into our little secure chicken pen in the evening with the chickens.  They are a bit distressed at having a dog so close, but we came home last evening and found sheila and the 25 chickens asleep in their abode.


We decided that wasn't the best, and have insisted Sheila not babysit chickens that close.








End of summer also means we have come home from our camping vacation, this August, with Bonnie's two brothers and children and friends.  We had an awesome time in Colorado, hosted by Ryan, Mark, and Cassandra and Troy.  Our family provided the only grandkids, and only four at that, so they had adult attention.

It also means I start to school, neglecting farm and house building for mondays and Wednesdays each week now.  Here's thumbkin.  Or rather, where is thumbkin.

 My K kids also learn to coordinate eyes hands and ears with drumming and singing Indian songs.  Here we're giving it a shot. 

pow wow is over.  sorry, no picts.  I was laid out with both eyes impossibly burning from one of the worst hay fever cases I've had.  Our house, with its high tech fan, was the best place to be.  But that lasted only four days, ruining Crow Fair, but not ruining plum picking with Bonnie and a friend.

And it's also honey harvest time, with our friend the honey man from Lodge Grass, Rich Behlow.  He filled six gal jugs for us this fall.

We are urgently now trying to get our solarium done.  stem wall is poured, ready to install a "sunny john" moldering toilet, and the arched pipes to support the glazing.  And then it rained, but thank God the two inches of rain--unheard of this time of year--came after we had it poured.  Only now, it's a pain to back fill.

With the storm gone, the sun has now started to warm up the place again.  They had 3 inches of snow on the highway in Glacier Park.   So we took advantage of the mud and went to town to work on the house K and Dave will occupy when they arrive 2nd week in September.  So we are not bored!  Enjoy the picts!  And
See my blog Spirit and Dust for my column in the local paper: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

Summer happenings

This blog begins at midnight looking north beside our barn house.  This is not aurora.  It is the dusk at the point of turning into dawn.

The biggest news is the three grandkids helping prepare Grandma and Grandpa's old house at 933 Rangeview for the big move from Boston back to Montana. They'll arrive in September.  Guess who they are?

Yes, Hannah, Toby, and Caleb.

And we had our first board meeting of the new Bighorn Valley Health Center. We have great hopes for improved health care  delivery in our community!

Our John Deere.  We sold the Allis 180 diesel and bought this 4020.  It bales very nice, 8 speed hydro trans, 4 speeds in reverse.

We attended the National Native Ministries conference at Ashland, where Dave presented on indigenous hymns of the Crow and Cheyenne, and yes, that's Bonnie, with our good friends from decades ago in Busby.  

We can't seem to avoid the wind in summer.  I placed large square straw bales west of the garden.  But the storm winds came from the north. 

The chickens we bought as babies love our weeds.  We have a conflict.  The chickens won.  But they will soon start losing their heads, as soon as they have depleted more of the grasshoppers.  The experiment in our garden was successful until they discovered the tomatoes.  

The wind that flattened the corn did this to Dr. Dave's tipi.  We have rescued what's left to get it repaired for next summer.  Care to come try it out at Crow Fair 2011?  

Greenwood existentialism

Life and death, struggle, defeat, triumph, and determination.  The beauty of it all is in the beholder?  It depends who's beholding. 

Bonnie caught me cutting the new seeded pasture ground at about 10 inches, opening up sunlight for the legumes and grasses I planted to grow.  My interference with nature.  See all the weeds? Obviously, they want to win over my seedling perennial pasture forbs.  Fortunately, after lots of examination, I found we have in this field only one weed that's listed as noxious.  But it is totally nutritious, so all the weeds in here make good forage.  In a couple weeks I'll cut and bale it, and see who wants it this fall.  The noxious one is only a problem for tender lips.  If your lips can tolerate the prickles, canadian thistle is delicious.  Goats love it, sheep will eat it, stickers and all, as long as it's green.  In this field, only a few dozen square yards have infestation.  We are committed to spending a half hour a week this summer keeping it uprooted.  As you may know, it's about the most difficult perennial to control, because of the vast lateral root network.  One thistle plant growing from seed in the spring can infest a circle 30 feet diameter with over a thousand plants by fall, all from lateral roots. Of course, it also produces seeds.  If we humans could network like that, we could out-populate our enemies too, if not the whole earth.  

This and other challenges get put aside in the evening to watch the sky to the west.  I couldn't resist using the camera last evening, after a hard day's work on cutting weeds, Russian Olive brush, gardening, digging in the bottom of the drainage ditch so it drains better, pulling fence posts, rolling up rusted barb wire, and rubbing sore muscles. See the progress of the sunset? It's like progress on the farm.  Sometimes so subtle it takes a picture timer to get the flow.  Near the end, Venus, the evening star, appears to remind me of a globally warmed planet with 400 degrees sulphuric acid atmosphere, and I'm glad to live on fragile planet earth.  It's enough encouragement, or barely enough, to handle the latest tragedy. 

The last picture is of the wood door frame on our chicken coop. A carnivore splintered it while attacking the latch until it gave way.  Bonnie has had difficulty opening and closing it, because I made it tight and strong so no predator could do the very evil act done.  I lost, he won.  It's not fun.  One lonely hen was left.  All the others disappeared.  Sheila the dog found one carcass, with a small hole from which all the blood was consumed.  We looked around, and found no others. 

Shall we give up?  Bonnie says no way.  I have plans in my head to build a heavy chicken range shelter using cottonwood logs for rails, and varmint proof wire (chicken wire is not strong enough), the whole thing heavy enough to keep it down in the wind, but not too heavy to scoot behind a tractor.  And now especially, with our Boston family coming in a couple weeks, we can't imagine anything but determination to make it better.

So the sunset progression reminds us of truth and beauty.  It's in the hope of another day, and the possibilities of winning in the bio struggle.  God rest our cute chickens.  We miss them.  And our culinary plans are now defeated, but there's another day.