DIY Network Stars' Homestead - 41 Years Off-Grid

What was the name of the DIY Network TV show you were on? >> Building Off the Grid. >> So, Mary, you're from Australia and you're from New Jersey. How on earth did you both end up in Oregon? >> Oh, that's a really good story. >> Where did the logs come from to build this house? >> Well, most of it came from uh logs that we had milled here on the land. >> We both had similar dreams of being off-rid homesteaders. >> You are completely off-rid here, correct? >> Completely off-rid. And you've been >> always have been completely off grid. >> 33 years for me, more for my husband. >> 41 years for >> Yeah. >> for him. >> Yes. >> This is Cedar Hens. I got approached by somebody who had a contract to make a video for DIY Network. So, this is a Cobb structure. Our house is a straw bell house. I believe in elves, fairies. We believe there's a troll involved. Want to pay the troll. Tell me about the bungalow I stayed in last night. The construction and how long it took you. >> This is the raw broom. This is the real deal in progress. >> Yes. >> 110 in a year of rain at least. >> Rock Hopper here. And today I am in the hills of western Oregon with homesteaders Mark and Mary. And they built this house with a little help from their friends. And they're going to show you around this homestead which is pretty spectacular. So stick around. Oregon, the Beaver State, has always attracted pioneers and homesteaders ever since the days of the Oregon Trail in the early 1840s to its fertile valleys and forested hills. Summer is a beautiful time when the lakes sparkle in the bright sunlight and the highlands turn a verdant green once the snow melts. The rest of the year, however, can bring seasons of unpredictability. You might see rain, fog, mist, drizzle, snow, or maybe all of it in the same day. Living here can be well, I'll let Forest Gump tell you. >> Like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. >> It was a long drive down a lonely road. Tucked away within the woods are a couple of modern-day homesteaders, Mark and Mary, who are featured on the DIY Network. They're going to show you how they live self-sufficiently and what they've built. not only surviving but thriving with the abundance of what the land provides. A spring for drinking water, vegetables and fruit, timber and earth and sand for building. As a buddy and I were driving around looking to possibly interview a group of people at what we thought might be a sustainable living center, we happened upon this couple. There was a sign out front and I suggested we pull into the driveway. There I met a woman and I learned that we just serendipitously found a couple that was the real deal. That sign was indeed a sign as these were the perfect people for me to interview. In the next several episodes, you're going to get a look within their lives and their home as I have an in-depth interview whereby they offer you insight and knowhow to the off-grid homestead lifestyle and teach you how to live this way and what mistakes to avoid in doing so. In this episode, we'll start with some of the basics like water. Just because you have it doesn't mean you can use it. There are regulations one must adhere to, and that might be to protect the salmon that are also in your backyard. We'll see the Cobb cottage, learn how they keep pests under control, and see what's growing in the garden. We're going to show you the water ram that they have set up here, but first, we're going to talk a little bit about the regulatory issues of the state of Oregon with water. Tell us about that. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff with uh water rights and uh that the state owns all the waterways. There are rare people and rare uh homesteads such as Brighton Bush that have it grandfathered in that they're allowed to use the water from. In that case, the Brighton Bush River and the Flume if you've ever seen it there. But most places like here, you're not allowed to just, you know, throw in a pump. Can't get our garden water from here. But then that goes into the water ram thing. I have a number of um springs on the other side of here where you can't see at all, but they they coalesce in a pond they call Melody Pond and then it comes through to this water feature down here which takes the water which is still on my land and goes to this pump. Uh and this is a water ram. I might point out that this is legal partially because this never touches the water. state owns the water. They don't own the land a foot above the water. Same with the ropes. Here's a water ram. And what it does is it pumps about once a second and 90% of the water is going up out of the top and 10% is going up in this tube which at some point we should go to the garden and point out the flow there. We're getting about 500 gallons a day out of that. And this this was invented in the 1700s. very popular until the Rural Electrification Act of 1933. I think rural places got mostly electrified and then Reagan repealed that in 1984 when I moved here, which is one reason I'm off the bridge. Doesn't take electricity, doesn't take gas, doesn't take anything but the power of falling water, which then pumps it uphill. So, it'll keep going there for a while and sooner or later there won't be enough pressure and it'll stop and just pour out the top. And look, now it's like this is my water. This is the state of Oregon's water. Ever go for walks or hikes where you didn't bring enough water or you didn't bring any water at all and there's water right in front of you, but you can't drink it? Well, problem solved with the Sierra Madre drinking straw. All you do is take the top off of this and then just put this end into the water and you can suck the water through the straw and it purifies it instantly. It's small, lightweight, fits in your pocket easily and ready to go. Takes non-putable water and turns it into drinkable purified water. Sierra Madre water straw. Don't go on a hike without it. >> 500 gallons a day. Is that sufficient for your needs? >> Uh, well, that's for the garden. That's only for the garden. That's like a trickle hose in the garden. And I'm going to show you what 500 gallons a day looks like so that all your viewers can freak out and go, "Oh no, I better fix my sink because it doesn't look like much." 500 gallons a day is a trickle. Uh I also have five or six hundred gallons a day coming down. Um from the top of that hill, 1,000 ft from here, there's a spring that gives me really good water. And if you did read chapter one of the my book nature of place, it talks about basically the spirit spring opening up there and praying for 12 years and then big storm and water comes out the the side of the hill. And so I was getting 1,000 gallons a day. Now it's down to about 600. That's what feeds our house and also the garden. This black line here goes to the garden. I've got another one going to the house. And so my water system is I have a a tank and when that tank overflows then the water goes into another tank and that's the only water I use for the garden. So my a lotment for garden is the overflow and this water amp and that way I always have 500 gallons for uh on hand for the house and for fire and stuff like that. And since I've done dozens of firew walks here with 10- foot tall flames and things like that, I always need to have water on hand. I don't do that anymore because the environment has changed. And I should mention I'm the next firefighter and I'm a water wizard, but I do have a background in in uh fire suppression firefighting. This here is the shortest um the shortest waterfall in the world. So, yes, that's okay. The water you're getting from that spring, that is just beautiful drinking water. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Artisian water. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's um Yeah. Um people don't drink the water out of the creek, even though you could, but there could be egg runoff or uh beaver dams way up the creek or something. Um and we're pretty near the headarters right now. The water that's coming out of um springs here is just amazing. You know, people do, you know, take, you know, grab a gallon and take extra water home from our place all the time. >> And do you have more than one spring that you can drink from on the property? >> Yeah, but uh all but one of them are pretty much you can see where the water line goes to. So, they're all on that level, right? They're all not high elevation except for one that's way high elevation. All the rest of them are near the bottom of the land. Um and the water gets up here. So the water that actually that spring is underwater sometimes [Music] it's unlikely you'll get ram stops working it does that just pours water out the top um cuz it doesn't have enough pressure but then you reset it by doing this and I'm going to let that sit for 10 20 30 60 minutes and it'll recharge the pond and then it'll start in. >> Okay. So, it's all just gravity feet. >> Gravity. Yeah. It's water pressure. For every foot that a water ram drops, we'll pump up 10 ft. So, this is a 3ft drop, 30 ft straight up. And I've tested it to 27 ft. It's true. I had one up the hill. It's actually the same unit from my other house, and it had to go 110 ft straight up, and it did. As long as the water can keep pushing through, it's got a check valve, so it can't go backwards. Um, as long as it keeps pushing through and can't go back, it'll keep going. This is not the best time of the year. We're at the end of the season. This will go for 2, three, 4 weeks without stopping in spring. And then I have to take it out. So, it's not glued together. It's components. And I have to in midepptember walk in the creek and pull all this stuff out. So, this is where the water comes out, right? >> Yeah. This is the water rim water. And we're just uh filming the the pond right now because when we don't know where to put it, we just put it in the pond. Uh we have frogs and uh salamanders and stuff like that that love the pond. Oh, >> that's cool. So, you're creating a like a little ecosystem for them right here. >> Yeah. Yeah. They have another pond in the front as well, too. So, yeah, it's good to have a pond in the garden. And we're really into the fenue and stuff like that. So, uh, helps abundance in life. And this is the what we call zucchini moon. So, you see yellow zucchinis everywhere. There's a harvest moon or a hunter's moon or something. We have the zucchini moon in the late summer. Joke is if you leave your car unlocked here, you have to watch out for reverse vandalism, people putting zucchini in your car. So these little fish in the stream are salmon fry. >> When they come back in four or five years, they are three or sometimes 4t long. >> Okay. So these little fry that I'm seeing, these are coho and steel head salmon. >> I don't know which I'm I'm not that when they're that size. This is all grally here. So they like to spawn here up there. They uh you can see it's all it's kind of a rock rock ledge. They don't like to spawn there. They need the gravel. The female will take her tail and uh dig a red with two D's making a nest and then I'm just going to say it straight. Basically, she does a very erotic dance and all the guys nearby cream their shorts basically. Um that's kind of like how they mate. Um, I've seen everything happen in teenage and other romantic relationships happen with the salmon. I've seen playing hard to get. I've seen the thing. I've seen the, you know, like waiting for your soulmate. I've seen the soulmate show up and two two swimming off together after after females hanging out for a week or something here waiting for the right guy. I've seen all kinds of stuff. Um uh and I didn't even have to go to National Geographic cuz it's all right here on this 50ft stretch. >> Have you ever seen a salmon smoking a cigarette after mating? >> No, but I wouldn't be surprised. They just don't show us, you know, it's like the far side joke. All the cows are kind of, you know, smoking the sig in the pasture and somebody yells car and they'll get down on all fours. I always respected that. talking about the fiveyear cycle. Basically, they spawn here and then they uh go out to sea after about a year. So, I'll see like next spring I'll see those those little fish will be like this big. And then they swim out to the ocean and there's no dams between here and the ocean. They swim to Japan, they swim back and they try to find their particular home pools. is specifically the ones that we saw here are going to want to come back here 5 years from now. And look, there's a crawad. >> Oh, you got a crocket. Where is he? >> Craad. You see the orange thing in there? It's rare to see him now because my ex-roin-law, previous partner um 40 years ago, he went on a rampage and harvested them and ate them. Ate about 40 of them. So, we've had a depleted supply. I shouldn't say that cuz that'll make a lot of people mad. But that was so long ago and I didn't do it. I don't even eat fish. What time of year do the salmon swim upstream and lay the eggs? >> Okay. So, the water's super low now and they need the water to be higher. They come in about midepptember from the ocean and start being fresh water. Now, once they're fresh water, once they're exposed to the fresh water, they start to rot. They start to rot before they lay eggs. So when they're up here after about a, you know, well, I always say it's when the sun is in Scorpio. From the end of October to the middle of November, they're up here for about 4 weeks. And they're not good to eat when they're up here. There's a thing called salmonella. Now you know why they call it that. Everybody has to tie up their dogs at that time of year because if they eat the the decaying salmon, they would die. Cats are too smart to do that. The bear are somehow kind of immune. You know, they have some antibodies or whatever. The spawning time is between I just have to say the month of Scorpio, which is October 23rd to November 22nd. They always come the second full moon um to this spot. And that's because the rains come and without the rains, they can't spawn in this, you know, they'd be sticking out the whole time. Um so they need the water to be deeper. So, Alpha Farm 3 miles from here will get them the salmon about two weeks before we do three miles away. Um, and it matters, you know, the growing seasons also like that. >> This looks like a cool little suspension bridge. Did you build this? >> Uh, yeah, three times now. Um, first time in 1985 uh with my dad. My dad didn't grow up here, but I bought this land as a adult. And then we've had three 1,000-year floods here in the 40 years I've lived here. Now, that's, you know, thousand-year floods, you'd think once every thousand years. And a thousand-year flood, the ones that happened. Here's the top of the bridge. This is underwater in a thousand-year flood. The water level is up here. It's like right there or something. So, you look at if you could get a shot of the creek right now as extreme low, you can see how different it is. See, one reason we don't damn the creek right there. This got washed away a few times, but I've made it strong enough now with enough infrastructure below. It's more solid below now. Got knocked over sideways. First time it was like a string of pearls, you know. Second time it was like over. Third time is just knocked over. And I had to figure out without access to a crane, how am I going to take these sideways 15t tall timbers and how am I going to go like that with them? The answer is a tripod. Demonstrate this with the house too. You have something that's taller than the thing you're trying to raise. That's the big, you know, the given or you have some way of fulcrum fulcrrimming it. I have a little nubby thing there, a little post and that was employed in uh cranking the bridge so it went from from sideways this way up like that. So that was the third fix. You know, I replaced all the tread last year with recycled wood. Some of it was from the previous bridge. In western Oregon, coming up with amazing building wood is not not a problem. >> Is this bridge sturdy? Yes, it is. If you rock the bridge, you know, I always tell people, don't jump and don't rock the bridge because that will cause wear and tear. The only time I've had a problem with the bridge was a major cable of this. And here's the replacement cable. Uh, this was sawed through by having a a scissor-l like uh back and forth on it. So, I've had to have the individual hangers like that instead of because the uh it sawed through the cable and actually broke the cable once. That's a whole story itself. >> Well, how many people or animals could this thing hold, do you think? >> It was one day where we had eight people and three goats. And I joke about that because I've had 12 or 13 people on here. It's just really funny, you know, when you think and three goats. Uh I used to be a goat herder here. um got over that face. So, picture a dozen beings on this this uh bridge. But we encourage people that when they cross one at a time, please. Also, it's a troll bridge. So, you have to pay the troll. I believe in unseen beings. I believe in elves, fairies, the goodness of the heart, you name it. So, basically, we believe there's a troll involved. Want to pay the troll. And paying the troll is, and I'm going to have the signs up next week, but you're not here. Paying the paying the troll is like you sing a song, you tell a joke, you um uh do some poetry or whatever. If I don't want know what to do, I always quote uh Tom Weights. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labbotomy. You know, I love jokes like that. That's one of my faves. Or I sing the the theme song, the Zena, or what have you. Um, any rock and roll hit from the 60s that comes to mind. Anything. So, every time I cross the bridge, I sing something or do something here. >> Well, let's cross the bridge now. And you want to sing something or say something? >> The theme song goes. [Applause] >> All right. So, uh, I'll sing something, too. I guess I'm not a singer, but like a bridge over troubled water. Yeah. And this is the water right here. And it certainly doesn't look troubled. It looks really, really beautiful. I mean, this is a nice creek. >> Good to get some shots because this is like where salmon don't spawn is see it's all it's kind of rock shelf there. See, it's not a bunch of little grally rocks, >> right? >> And then that's also a great shot of the water ramp. >> Yeah. Crossing the river right there is the water ramp. >> So, this is my main water supplies right here. Uh, going to the house. >> Oh, so this is your drinking water line. This is my drink and water line. Drink and water and washing and showers and all that. And then we have a separate line. That's that black line over there. And that just takes the extra and that goes to the garden. So you always have enough for the garden and enough for the house. And this is Oregon in August. And summer fire danger is no joke. In 10 years, that's how I made my living doing 100hour weeks um fighting fires. That's how I paid for a lot of this. No, I'm not a dope grower in Oregon. Sorry, that's not that's not my main thing. Okay, this is Cedarhs. This was a kiosk with open sides that I built in 1997 just to have a place for firewood. And then what happened was I got approached by somebody who had a contract to make a video for DIY Network. The premise was after years of learning eco building doing her first professional build. We were building in the early 2000s. We'll show you in the course of this. We'll see our house too, but but uh so this is a cobb structure. Our house is a straw bell house. The inside of our house looks a lot like the outside and inside of here. Hob is a lot like adobe but it's a mixture of um sifted straw uh clay and uh sand. Sand provides strength, clay provides elasticity. The straw which is different from a lot of adobe uh it provides this interlocking kind of thing. So those three components. Now this did really well for not putting any energy into it for about seven years. But last winter there was a leak. So you can see this previous layer. This would be um generally there are three layers in a uh cobbing project on each side. Let's see. Scratch coat, brown coat, and finished coat. That's what they're called. And so this is like kind of scratch coat or brown coat right there. That's a finished coat. So, these folks got um headed by this 21-year-old who was the same age as the structure, got to, you know, build and finish it and we all got filmed and it was it was really amusing. They wanted to tout it as if it was we were going to be the amazed owners of the land to get a um at the end to be get a tour because they always do what they call the um reveal. And uh the reveals, they always, you know, standard to take a non-nowledgeable person on a tour and go and look at this and look at that and they go, "Wow." Um well, they couldn't do that with us because we were every day out here about 10 hours for seven weeks cuz the the builder very good at cop had never done windows, doors, run a chainsaw, any structural stuff involving wood at all. Um, but she's very very good at uh the cobbing. But maybe we'll go in. >> Yeah. Let's have a look. >> Yeah. And so you can see the finished plaster in here is white and it's more, you know, fine. And so that's um that's because we bought uh commercial white clay. We had to take out a lot of the goddesses and a lot of the, you know, the extra work because our project was supposed to be seven wings from start to finish. uh which is if you've ever done a cobb or straw bale, you know that doing a structure start to finish in seven weeks is ridiculous. You need about a year and a half. You need it over one season because it's got to dry in between coats and there's six coats. The finish work on the plaster here is really beautiful and you know I can't take responsibility for it but we had a hand in it. I was doing sealing and I was doing stuff like making this be erect. There's a great moment that they repeated three times in the broadcast of the DIY network thing and where I'm saying, you know, we're going to knock out the temporary poles here and see if this doesn't fall over and kill us all. And I was like, be ready to run if this doesn't go well. This is remnants of a rocket stove. So, the folks that did it were like, "Oh, earthn plaster is just as strong as um cement." No. Okay. This is where I'll tell Mr. Rockhopper for telling all of you guys that all cobbing is local. So the mixes matter where you live, you know, where you got this stuff. So our cob isn't the same as the cob outside of Bandon where there, you know, where a lot of the cobbing was done. Um, so it melted over time and so we're going to rebuild it, have a stove in here. But frankly, we're abandoning the rocket stove because the people who really like this idea of the rocket stoves are like, and you just need little pieces of wood. I live in 15 acres of mature forest. I don't need to burn sticks. In addition, what I've seen is to do a rocket stove like this, you're feeding it all the time. It doesn't stay going for hours. It stays going for minutes. That's the drawback to to rocket stove and the little tiny pieces of wood and all that. If you just want to boil some water, that's great. Uh but if you want to heat your home, go away for the entire day and come back. It's really different. In my house, I have one heater and we can go away for two days, come back to a warm house. In this case, the fire goes in, goes up, curls around here, goes back down through a tube in the middle of there, and then goes down through this seat. And then there is a tube that goes out to the outside. And we've undid this cuz we're redoing it. You know, we have about three things to redo on this. A rocket stove like this, you have to have 20, 22 feet or whatever of line to get the draw. It would have been better. And actually, if you ever see the the video, it's sort of like she should have gotten a smaller drum, but this is what she got, you know, because that's what was available at the time, the honey company that sells off the barrels and all that. And this looks like we haven't taken care of it that much, but it looks like it's funky and old, but you know, that was new in uh 2017. >> But as far as efficiency, as long as you keep throwing sticks in there, it is very efficient. >> Yes. Yes. But you have to sit there and, you know, you can't go away for hours to do that, you know, and that's not my lifestyle. If that's all you want to do is, I don't know, uh, feed the stove and do crossword puzzles or something, that's great. But, uh, my lifestyle is very much more active than that. >> All right. Well, I'm just going to show a little bit around here and get a look inside this little Cobb cottage, I guess you could call it. Is that >> uh yeah, Cob Cottage is the name of the company that this person trained through and they're they're famous. You can you know Google them. The show that we did was DIY Network uh building off the grid number 18 Cobb Cottage in Oregon. We are not affiliated with Cobb Cottage though I know the people you know I I know the people starting it and do it and all that other stuff. We thought of doing this as a project in 1997. We're thinking about cving this. So, it's funny if somebody shows up that's 21 years old and and that much later and then we actually did that. >> Well, te tell me about this floor here. How difficult was this to make? >> This is an earthen floor. I'm also going to say that our our builder to to demonstrate her high level of integrity. We didn't get this done before the show was over. So, she said, "Oh, don't worry. I'll come back from Belgium next year and do the floor." And she did. This is uh same thing. This is uh sifted straw, sand, and clay in a certain mix. And basically the way to do it is do some sample mixes because the one for our house is different than the one for here uh depending on the local uh materials. So basically you do a section at a time and then you squish it down. You flatten it with tools like cement working tools and all that. So, in ways it's a lot like cement, but if you mess up, you can always make it wet and start again. It'll dissolve in water. This is not sealed. When we see the footage for our house, it's got five layers of linseed oil on it. And there's a whole story. This is what it looks like unsealed. If we put linseed oil on it, it would look just like chocolate and be really beautiful. Well, speaking of things dissolving, isn't that what happened right out here to this? Let's let's just show this. >> Yeah, let's show this again because you've got Now, this is the finished layer down here. And this is what happens when water hits it, right? >> So, water came through this uh through a leak there and ran down there and just melted that. And look at the bottom. See, there's the melted. >> So, that's the remnants. >> Yeah. Which is, as you can see, dirt. >> Yeah. You can actually use that again. You can use that same material, but we'll probably use fresh. And the thing is, it's not just, oh, let's spoon it because it's not going to be the same color. So, we might do both sides or something, you know, and it's kind of an art thing. And and frankly, it's like we have lots of structures here. So we haven't been putting this was like an e an extra you know we weren't even planning to do this but got involved in this filming thing and it was such a beautiful educational project that was and we were in a situation like we are now that we can do homesteading demo kind of stuff which is dear to our heart. So u this is something do attempt this at home. Oh around the side here this is significant. So you see we had this rock work and so what she usually liked working with what they call urbanite which is you take busted up all concrete and so you put it like um uh two courses of that with a space in between you fill that with rubble and build a wall from there. But she did this with local rocks which is really amazing because we don't have a lot of local rocks. It's really hard to find not sandstone and so so this is built about you can see there's a rock there. So it's probably built that high with uh the foundation. Now the important of that thing about that is uh what they say with straw bell is good hat and good boots. You need it to not wick up from the ground here which will happen in Oregon uh western Oregon which is not eastern Oregon. And then the other thing is uh a good overhang on the roof. And so that's the hat and the boots. Our house has like three foot overhang because it's two stories. And uh it's it's foundation is uh 2 ft. If you do this sort of thing, don't just put it on the ground. Raise it up. Now in the um southwest or even eastern Oregon, desert country, a lot more forgiving. this environment. I'm going to say it 110 inches a year of rain at least. And when I put that in my Mother Earth knees article, I got lots of negative feedback because, oh no, it only 34 in in Oregon. Yeah, if you you know, most or Oregon is is is a desert and I don't live in a desert. I live in the coast range. I don't even live in Cascadia. According to weather service before they dismantled it, we're getting 118 ines average a year. >> Yeah. And one thing that people forget is you're not only on the west side of Oregon, but you are in the hills, which also draws in more moisture. >> Yeah. What happens is the initial rain comes in, dumps here, then goes into the Lamut Valley like Eugene, Salem, Portland, uh the places that people associate with Oregon where people live and they get 50 or 60 inches a year. We get 110, 120. Half the moisture dumps in the coast range, which again is not the Cascades. Then it dumps again in the valley going up the mountains. So there's a prevailing western wind. And one thing that's really interesting about that is when it's really really really hot in the central parts of the US and there's a heat heat wave, it pulls in um fog from the coast here. So we get coastal fog intrusion. So in other words, we don't get the super hot thing because the super hot thing will pull in um fog. Very different here than most places. It's not what you think. You learned the hard way on this little issue right here. That's a new lesson. I mean, we knew that if it leaked anywhere, it would do that and it did. >> Is there any advice you could give to people who might be considering building this type of >> work? What we could have done differently there and I don't please don't even look up because I noticed cobwebs are here, but we could have squirted the um sealant underneath so that nothing could go underneath. that would have uh forgone this and then it all would have come down here >> like some silicon cocking. >> Yeah, silicon caul. Yeah. >> Okay. >> This was an add-on project. So, we didn't think of it the same way we thought of our house or whatever. And in fact, the original project I was getting meeting the literally 300 conditions to build my house in the country and they in 1997 I built this just without measuring anything. And it was sort of the rebelliousness because after that I was going to build a house with 49 pages of calculations that I had to stick to, you know, perfectly. That's not my style. This was my practice. Let's see what an eight-sided structure looks like cuz this is eight-sided just like the house is. But this was just fun. I was never going to live here. We will put a bed in there. And oh, you need to see the door. So, we took out we at the time of the filming this door was on, but it just needed to be like indented another quarter inch or something. So, we took it off for that. But my wife Mary did this door. And here's the other side of it. So, and it's really heavy. And this is um she might repeat this because our front door on our house is made this way, but you take a piece of plywood/ inch. Don't do three quarter inch. That's a mistake we made with our house. Too thick. And then you attach boards on either side of it. In this case, this this window would be rectangular. So, it's not cut off there. It's just uh looks like it is. And so, you cut out the plywood there and you insert and then you overlap and all that. So, you can do whatever you want with decoration there. In our case, probably paid for the plywood and the hinges and the screws. Probably free. And there's certain kinds of wood there. I don't know which kinds without talking to Mary. >> Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about repurposing wood in just a bit. One of the nice things about living out here is you have some really interesting guests like this girl. How you doing? Hello. Hello there. Come here, big guy. >> So, how many cats do you have? >> Four. >> And do they help with the mice? >> Oh, absolutely. They help with the mice. They're really They're great mouses. We used to be catch like at least six mice a day with traps. And then we got a family of four cats and no more mouse problems. >> Okay. So, that solved all the mice problems. >> Yeah. And they're lovable and they sit in their laps and purr and they love each other and they're just generally really good companions. >> Aren't they the perisi? >> Ah, yes. They're the perisi family. >> Ah, now you had a funny story, didn't you, about a mouse? >> Oh, yeah. So, the cats were chasing a mouse and I kept my shoes on the floor inside the door and so sometimes the mice hide in the shoes. Well, I put my shoes on and I felt something very funny in the toe of my shoe. Like I took it off and there was a live mouse in the shoe. >> Did you feel something squishy out in the toes? >> I felt something squishy in there. And I'm not usually hysterical about mice, but I was at there being a live mouse in the toe of my shoe with my foot in there as well. Well, I'm very happy with this little flower herb thing here because we have some peppermint here, which is not so easy to grow as regular mint. This is real peppermint. And then this is a decorative oregano, but very very aromatic. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. >> Very aromatic. >> And here's a rose. >> Oh, it smells good, >> doesn't it? >> It does. >> And here's a rosemary, which smells great. And in the middle, I let the dandelions grow because the dandelions are so rich in nutrients and every part of the plant is edible. the root, the leaves, and the flowers. And you can identify a dandelion by this deeply indented leaf form. And that there it's pretty smooth leaves. There are others that are look alike, but they're rougher, they're thicker, and they they're kind of hairy, but the dandelions are not hairy, and they have these deep indentations. And so this dandelion is a very splendid specimen because I let it grow in the garden bed. Dandelions are of great nutritional value and they are great uh for your liver for reconditioning your liver and cleansing your liver. Um they have lots of vitamins. >> Mhm. >> And um they have a little bitter flavor which is actually helpful for your digestion. It stimulates the bile in the gallbladder. And so you can pick these leaves and just chop them up very finely and chuck them in your salad and you'll never know they're there, but you'll get this wonderful food value out of them. And so the root, you can harvest the root. Best to harvest it in the spring or in the fall. Chop it up into small pieces and just roast it a little bit in the oven on a low temperature and then that can be brewed into a coffee-like drink. Yeah, that's true. >> Yeah, it has that kind of uh bitter depth of flavor that coffee does. And so some people call it dandelion coffee without the caffeine, which is can be helpful, too, cuz as opposed to caffeine is not so great for your liver. The dandelion will be supporting and cleansing your liver. >> I see you're looking at some plants down here. Looks like plantain. >> Yes, it is plantain. And plantain grows in the people's foot footsteps. And plantain is I use it in sabs to make a good skin sab. And it's has a lot of healing properties for for wounds. And it has when you put it in a sab with beeswax and other herbs, it has a band-aid effect to to heal the wound. So this is cold spoot. And in the spring when it pops up, it's interesting that the flowers pop up first and they're a pink umbilifer flower and then later the leaves pop up. So the the flowers are on a single stalk and then the leaves are a single stock and that's how you can identify there's one leaf per stalk. Really big leaves. And I use these in a smoking mixture with comfrey and sage and melon and mugwart. So they make a good cleansing smoking mix. And you can also tincture them or make a tea with them for the lungs. So they're a lung herb. >> Okay. So that would help with any bronchial issues you might have. >> Yes. And they're especially helpful for smokers. to um calm down a smoker's cough. This is yarao and it's a Achilles milopolium like from Achilles heel. So it's a stipic. It helps the stem bleeding. So it's also a great herb to include in a general wound sap along with other things. And so then the flowers and the leaves you can make you use the leaves and the flowers and you can make a tea out of them which are helpful for flu and um and temperatures. And then it's also really helpful for yeasty conditions. And so you make an infusion with the yarrow and then bathe the body parts that have the yeast infection. >> Okay. So, there's three three uses for the yarrow right there. >> Okay. And I'll add that uh it's good for the digestive system. Yum. Blackberries on the property. M. You got one, too? >> I got one, too. >> Oh, yeah. >> Oh, yeah. They're yummy. >> Yummy. Yummy. M. >> Well, let's go see the whole wall of blackberries. >> Okay. The Great Wall of Blackberries. >> The Great Wall of Blackberries. Did you know that the darker the fruit or vegetable is, the higher the nutritional value because they're just packed with nutrients and lots of minerals. A great wall of blackberries. >> Yeah, look at them all. There's a lot of blackberries here on the property. So it was okay that the blackberries arranged themselves on this garden fence because it's also creates a deer barricade but with something edible. And so each year we at this time we start harvesting a lot of blackberries to turn them into blackberry wine. >> Oo. And you've got some of that going on, right? >> I got some going on and we'll have some for dinner. Right. >> So we're in the garden and we have tomatoes. >> Yes. >> Lots of tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes now because of my situation here deep in the valley and that's east and that's west. So the sun's just going across between the hills. I have a limited hours of direct sunlight. Therefore, I just grow cherry tomatoes, these small varieties, because I know that they're going to get ripe. When I've tried to grow big baby stick tomatoes, which are just so delicious, um they don't they kind of rot before they get ripe. There's not enough heat here. But little cherry tomatoes. I can do lots of those. >> What else do you have growing here? It looks like you got some comfrey. >> Yeah, >> lots of comfry. >> Okay, here's a lesson about comfrey. I used to have a comfrey heap over there. My permacult culture teacher came to visit and so I had lots of comfrey and she said, "Oh, you could use that in mulch in the garden." So I just went along and just pulled up the leaves and threw them all over the place. And pretty soon comfrey was growing everywhere. And then she remembered to tell me, "Oh, no. You have to cut the comfry off because when you pull it, this is just you're getting a part of the root. And if I throw that down on the ground, it's going to sprout because that is the root. You have to cut the comfry off about up here, several inches above the ground. So you're avoiding the rooty part of the stalk and then it's safe to use as mulch. >> Okay, good to know. >> Yeah, this is an important point for new homesteaders or if people inexperienced with comfrey because it's really hard to move a comfrey when it has very deep roots that go out like this under the ground. And when you try to dig it up, no matter how careful you are, you're going to break off a piece of root and it stays there and it will grow another plant. And I had a uh there was a clump of comfrey over there in the field and I said, "Well, best thing we can do is just clip it down." And and uh Woofer, who was here at the time, said, "Oh, no. I can move that for you." I said, "No, please not. You just leave it alone." "No, I can move it." light. So he insisted he dug up the comfrey and then the next year, you know what happened? I had a ring of comfrey instead of one plant. It just spreads. And so therefore, all I can do here is just keep chopping it off. Keep chopping it off and throw it in the compost and um sometimes use it as mulch. Anyway, the comfry story. >> Okay, so what else do we have here? We have gypsy broccoli. So, this broccol this kind of broccoli. You're walking in the garden bed right now. But anyway, >> sorry. I didn't see anything growing there except What was that? Look. >> It's okay. Come come this way. >> Yeah. You don't mind if I step on the comfry? Yeah. >> No, you're going to step on the comfry. No, the thing is that the the soil here is very soft >> and it easily gets compacted. So therefore, I avoid stepping on the beds because I'm just like compacting the soil. And you can see where you're walking here, it feels firmer. And in there, it was spongy. Okay. So, broccoli, gypsy broccoli, it just keeps on respouting, which is okay. Instead of having one big clump and you pick that and that's it. This is like been going all season long. There's several plants here and they just keep on putting up little broccololis for us. Okay, sunflowers. These are um bubnut squash, but I don't think we have any squash yet. Uh the peas got done. Salad greens. I've kept them going for a long time, but they've finally gotten away. But you know if you keep plucking the leaves from the outside, you just keep picking leaves from the outside of the plant, then they keep going for a lot longer. So these lettucees were planted in early June. And so now this is 2 and 1/2 months later, and they've only just now gone to gone to seed. These are still edible, but they're getting more bitter. If you pour plenty of salad dressing on it, though, it's okay. So behind you we have amaranth. Every part of this plant is is edible which is the leaves and these are flowers and the flowers are making little teeny teeny seeds. And this flower head's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger until it like curls over. I take these leaves and put them you can uh this is a bit old. This leaf is the younger leaves are better but you can put them in a stir fry. put them in stews and greens. And then I also just put the whole bits of flowers in my cooking. And then at the end you cut off the flower heads and put them in a paper bag upside down and all the seeds will fall out. And then you have this amaranth grain, little tiny seeds which you can use in soups or use it as a gr as a porridge kind of thing. And they're interesting because they get soft, but they're still crunchy. It's kind of this soft crunchy thing. One day I found a bag full of amaran heads that had kind of got stuffed away under things. And I pulled them out, I don't know, maybe five years later, and it's like, oh, what are these? This is really old. And I chucked them out on the compost heap. And the next thing I knew, the whole compost heap was just growing amarans. So I realized, wow, there's a lot of vitality in these seeds. These cuz they even looked moldy. It was like five years later it looked like something forgotten and dead and moldy. And the seeds just grew a forest of amaranth plants. So I transplanted the bigger ones into beds. And now I I never plant amaranth. It's all volunteers around the place and it's beautiful. >> It looks like you got some cabbage. >> Yep. Got some cabbage. There's cauliflowers coming along. This is a whole bed of lemon cucumbers under here. So, they're coming along. Lots of flowers and a few cubes. There's a kale. Volunteer. Kale is another thing I never have to plant. It just volunteers. [Applause] Little bit of corn back here, huh? >> Yeah, there's a Oh, there's a short corn and tall corn. There's two corns. I planted two kinds of corn. We're going to have some corn for supper. And this variety seems to just grow short cuz it's had the same amount of water nutrients. All this volunteer kale is in between. Zucchinis, yellow crook neck squash. You can see some of the little cooks in there. I've got a few beans back here. It looks like right here. Some beans. >> Yes, these are these are supposed to be bush beans, but um I don't like them. They're really tough. I'm enjoying the blue lake pole beans a lot better. >> Oh, the ones right here. >> Yeah. Look at that. Here we go. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. They're doing all right. >> They're doing all right. We're going to we're going to eat those for dinner, too. Look at that. >> Oh, looks like you got a nice acorn squash down here. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. >> Look at that. Do we have blueberries? >> Yeah, here's some. There's still some hanging around. So, it's a bit late in the season now, but >> they're still getting ripe underneath from underneath. >> Yeah, lot. >> Look at that branch over there. >> Oh, yeah. That one's pretty full. >> Yeah, >> a lot of blueberries. And over here, we have a very nice apple tree, huh? A lot of apples on there. All right, cool. >> This pear tree is making pears for the very first time. >> What do we have here? >> This is hops. >> Okay, so that's >> hops, which is well known in beer making. There's hoppy beer and for um centuries, hops has been an important ingredient in beer making, but it's a very relaxing herb. So, I make a bedtime tea with hops. Some nettles with some hops in it. >> Okay. Nettle hops tea. And this is the leaf right up here. That's what it looks like. >> Mhm. And so this vine completely dies back in the winter and goes underground. And all this growth you see happens in a couple of months. It just And it's smothering this tree. M. And it smells so good. >> Oh yeah. I have a smell of that. Good. Too bad we can't we can't video smells. >> Oh, yeah. Does it smell good? >> Yeah. Yeah. We don't have smellvision. >> Yeah. And this is our favorite shade tree here, a plum tree. And it's getting a nice little crop of plums. These plums will become dark red with a dark red flesh inside by the end of the month. And they're just so juicy and delicious. There's wood stove which I put a wooden counter on the top of was in a outdoor kitchen down there and we had a hard time letting go of it even though it's outlived its use as a wood stove for us. So I got this inspiration to turn it into a little wall and a place for my potting things for potting plants. And I've got stuff in the oven. It's a little storage area. >> Well, that's a good way to repurpose. >> Yeah. So, instead of it going to the dump and rusting away somewhere, we went, let's give it a new life. One day, I'll paint it up pretty colors. >> Coming up in episode two, we'll see the main house. >> Come on in for a tour of the house, >> which took 8 years to build from scratch and is still undergoing some construction. Have a look at the bathroom facilities. Now, this used to be a regular outhouse. Let me show you our outdoor kitchen that we set up for events and >> the guest kitchen and see some of the things they've repurposed. >> Solar clothes dryer, marsh shower. So, these here are from an old refrigerator unit that used to be used as a greenhouse for growing starts. We'll sit down for a delicious meal grown on the property, complete with homemade wine, and see what they call Freda's Cabin, a bungalow where I stayed the night. I hope you enjoyed being out here in Oregon with homesteaders Mark and Mary. Don't forget to give me a like on the video, share it, and subscribe. Until next time, this is the Rock Hopper. I'll see you. >> Bye >> bye. >> No place to be. [Music]