Jim and I finished putting in the floor of the dining room area. We even built a set of stairs that lead down from the dining area to the yard below. After all the floor boards were tacked in, Jim and I sat on captain's chairs in the newly floored area and ate slices of roast beef, ham, with big hunks of feta walnut bread and a beet salad. It was one of those manly Hemingway moments without all the debauchery.
The next project at hand is to figure out some kind of water catchement system. Jim is suggesting we get a 100 gallon container and mount it up on one of the roof sections with water feeding into the tank from the gutters we'll need to put up. Since the tank will be on the roof we can run pipe down and have it run off of gravity feed. It should work out fine. A 100 gallons of water is not a lot of water for a family, so we'll be using that water primarily for cleaning and bathing. We'll bring up water for cooking and drinking in large containers from the county line. Just to give you a sense of how little 100 gallons of water is, most homes here on catchement systems have at a minimum 5000 gallon tanks, the norm is 10,000 gallons. When we were here on the Big Island ten years ago running the Bed and Breakfast, we had a 5000 gallon tank. That was really small for a Bed and Breakfast. I remember one morning, after only about a week of being an Inn Keeper, I got up to use the toilet. After flushing the toilet, I went to wash my hands. I turned on the sink and only air came out of the pipes. This couldn't be right, I thought to myself. I had just checked the tank the day before and it was completely full, 5000 gallons. Now, only air was coming out of the sink. Where could 5000 gallons have gone? I panicked. I ran out to the garage where the tank was and the water pump was running and pumping nothing but air. I turned it off before the motor burned out. I climbed up the ladder to look into the tank and sure enough it was completely drained. How could this have happened? It turns out that the flapper on the guest room's toilet was cracked. So, 5000 gallons basically flushed away in a day. Luckily, we didn't have any guests at the time and we fixed the situation pretty quickly. We became aware of the value of water for Puna people not on county water. We also became familiar with this water conservation phrase, "If it's yellow keep it mellow. If it's brown flush it down."
Our new water conservation phrase might go something like this, "Yellow or brown don't recoil, just turn it into planting soil."
As far as our toilet situation on the land, we're planning on building a compost toilet. It'll basically be a five gallon bucket with a nice wooden box around it and a toilet seat on top. Kim is reading a book on humanure, so we can get a better understanding on how to handle the waste. Kim got to use one of these toilets this weekend when she and Bodhi had a play date at one of his new Waldorf classmate's house. She was amazed that it didn't smell at all. Basically you do your business and after you're done you sprinkle some saw dust or grass or peat moss on the stuff. Once the bucket is full, you take it out to your compost heap and add whatever other kinds of composting material you have and in about a year, you'll have good soil for your garden. The resulting compost is incredibly safe with the right combination of proper materials, heat and time. We should all consider that if the whole world used flush toilets, we wouldn't have enough drinking water.
In addition to the amazing toilet, Bodhi did have a good time at his classmate's house. Kim is gifted when it comes to social networking. On Friday, when we dropped Bodhi at school, Kim saw a mom we had had a nice conversation with before and suggested that her son, Sebastian, and Bodhi have a play date the next day. It worked out great. Sebastian's dad is an orchid farmer and Sebastian's mom is an attorney with the public defender's office. They've been on the Big Island for four years and have not had the opportunity to make too many friends. So Kim's invite for a play date came as a real breath of fresh air for Bodhi's new Aunty Mirtha.
Bodhi had his first lesson in planting a garden today. Karen took him out to her vegetable garden and showed him how to plant seeds. They planted radishes, kale, collards, and green beans. He got to dig holes and drop seeds in and cover them up. Bodhi doesn't like to get dirty, so he wasn't too pleased that his hands were getting soiled. He'll get used to it. Although I consider myself more of a spiritual person rather than a religious person, I really admire the Benedictines. The Benedictines have the practice of holding fast to wherever they make a settlement. Through feasts or famines they will stick to that place and make it all work somehow. It gives them a sense of place and an anchor through the shifting currents of life. I think Bodhi had his first lesson in this today with getting in the soil and digging in.
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