after this you will know me better

sometimes i talk about urine and fecies and urinating in buckets and diluting it with water to use on plants because it makes good fertilizer and all that. and i understand that some people are completely grossed out by that kinda talk, but i want people who want to know me that im not just trying to be shocking or gross, but things such as this is what i am interested in learning about which leads to living a more sustainable organic life. the things i want to learn about are more than human excrement things but it just so happens that that is one of my most favorite aspects of the whole thing.

i want you to know that

when you flush your toilet you are usually flushing drinking water down the drain where it goes to a water treatment plant and it is usually treated with chlorine. this is a waste of water. this is also flushing what could be great fertilizer. when your feces is properly compsoted it can be magical. joe jenkins, author of the humanure handbook talks about this in detail. to read the whole book for free online or just a chapter go to www.thehumanurehandbook.com

it has been said that one persons urine has enough of the nutients it would take to feed that peron for a year.

i could go on and on .

update

a week ago today i got to chris s house. so far we have put a coat of lime puddy on the outside of his house in a few sections. we put down a hardwood floor in his living room area and then coated it with flaxseed oil. i planted a bunch of seedlings which seem to be doing great. i felt good planting them. i have been visiting them everyday to make sure theire doing ok. we also went to the market in argonil where we got about 15 trees for the forest garden, olives trees, chestnut, almonds,walnuts and a passion flower. if your interested about talking with me about forest gardening please email me. dward.okun@gmail.com

there is no shower here or hot water. i havent felt the need for showering yet, but if i wanted to i could wash myself in the stream the runs through his yard. and he has an old fashioned washing board kinda thing for the clothes. i have been brushing my teeth. i have been eating musli for breakfast alot. and i snack on nuts and dried apricots throughout the day that i got at the market. lunch and dinner we usually eat rice and vegies, or pasta and veggies.

so, i think im pregnant. so i am learning as much as a a can now.
a view of chris s house from the compost toilet

here i am puttting on a coat of linseed oil onto the floor we just put down
its hard to see in this pic but i planted 60 seedlings. caulifloower, broccoli, beet, and lettuce. today i placted 60 leeks and some portugeuse cabbage. as a permaculturist, chris has a no till garden. he uses no pesticides and never steps on the garden bed. i recently read that 80 percent of the microorganisms in the soil live in teh first 2 inches of it. so by stepping on the soil many die which is unfortunate because they are really great for the soils well being

a few pics

here are a few pics i took recently. one is the new floor we put in. another one is a view of chris house from a distance. another is me sitting on the side of the street waiting for a ride to get here, i was wearing my new portugal fooootball shirt. another pic is of chris carying some heavy trees he got at the market.

i have arrived

yesturday morning i said goodbye michael and maobi and had them drop me off at an intersection. i was standing around trying to catch a ride. it was exciting to be heading someplace new, and i was really happy. there was a street sign that i started hiting with a stick. it was making a really beutifull noise, and it kept me entertained until i got picked up by some old guy. the old guy brought me 20 minutes down the road to v. velha where i walked for a short time and eventually got to a rotary. the air reeked of cellulose because of the factory close by. trucks full of eucolyptus trees were passing every 10 minutes. i was wearing a bright red portugal fooootball shirt in hopes of getting picked up quicker. hahahha. a good amount of cars passed by. as a car was approaching someone was parked on the other side of the road honking at my to hop in. i recognized them, they had passed me 10 minutes before. my good looks must have made them turn around. they said they could bring me all the way to where i needed to be which was castelo branco. on the way there, their car had overheated. they pulled over on the highway and poured water on the engine or something. then a police man pulled up behind them and wasnt to happy becasue they dont want anyone pulling over on the side of the highway. anyway, they dropped me off at the bus station. before i went in the driver gave me a harty handshake and gave me a powerfull look.
i stood in line to get a ticket to oliveiro do hospital. i dont know how to speak portugeuse so i wrote my destination and what time i wanted to leave. everything was working out great. after 4 hours or so i got to oliveiro do hospital. my final destination was casal do abade. the busses werent running to casal do abade at that time, it was to late. so my plan was to find a place to sleep and get the bus in the morning.before i went off in search of a place to sleep i went into the snack bar-bus stop, to find out what time the bus left in the morning. it was hard to communicate to them , so i drew a picture of a bus and i wrote 6 00 . they kept saying taxi taxi taxi, and i gestured that i didnt have allot of money. but one of the guys in the snack bar went out side and came back 2 minutes later with a cab driver that spoke a little english. his name was carlos. he said he would drive me their for 12 euro. he was a nice guy, real nice. he bought me a beer and then we were off.
chris wasnt expecting me until the next day. i tried to call him to let him know i was coming early but his phone had no service.

gets more intersting here, i guess

i had some not so good directions on how to get to his place. it was something like, go into casal do abade until you see a post box then take a right and go up the track. carlos was driving around with as much of a clue as i had. he parked out side someones house and honked his horn until someone came out. i guess he asked her if there was anyone that spoke english around here, because we ended up from there going to another house and honking untill this english guy popped out of the window. i said im looking for someone named chris ripley who has a straw bale house. the englishman said a bunch of portugeuse stuff to carlos and then looked at me and said, ok, he is going to drop you off at a bridge. when you get to the bridge go to the right and walk up the track in the woods, and he lives around there. so we drove in that direction and couldnt find the bridge or anything. so carlos went to another house and honked until they came out. he asked them if they knew where we could find chris ripley, and they said to him to drive down the road just a bit and take a left. when we got there the road led into the woods, very dark and rocky with lots of ditches. then we got to a cross roads. when you get to a fork in the road take it. right right right, michelle michelle, michelle. so i i gave him some money and thanked him and helped him back out. the path was dark, but i could see a light from a house in the distance. there were 2 dogs on the path barking at me, they ended up leading me most of the way to the house. i could smell the house from far away. when i got close i touched it and i could feel the lime coating on the straw bales. i knocked on the door and recieved a nice warm welcome from chris. what a great guy he is. full of energy. very interesting. he made me dinner and we talked for a while. he had also given me some wine that he and a neighbor had made.
he showed me to a caravan which is to be my home for the next little while. it is cold here at night, and there is no heat. but that is just how i want it .

today we started working on the inside of his house. we are removing temporary beems and putting in perminent ones. unfortuntly i ended up breaking his bath tub, but i told him i will replace it. hahahahaha.

a bit about chris,
he has been living here in portugal for 4 years. a while ago he got fed up with england and decided to get out. he was backpacking around in spain then to portugal where he was shown some land. he thought it would be a great place to start a permaculture project so he bought it a few months later. he arrived in the summer and camped out. then in the winter he moved into a small beat up ruin where he lived for 2 years while he was building his straw bale house. he is getting married in 2 weeks and is going to have a baby soon.

tomarrow i leave

if all goes to plan, tomorrow i will be hitchhiking to a town where i will stay for the night and then catch a 6 30 in the morning bus to a town 2 hours north of here. then i will get another bus to go to a nice place to do a work exchange. its a little complicated. but i trust in life, an itºll work out.
i will be working on a straw bale house. the guy i am working for seems to be into the same things i am interested in like permaculture and what not. for people like my grandma who might not know what permaculture means i would describe at a sustainable way to live and be and grow with the earth. no chemicals or any of that awfull stuff. uhhhhhhhhh , i am bad with describing things.

today i walked

on my day off i slept later then i thought. i got up at 8. instead of just using water for my oatmeal i used some soy milk! i also put in some apple and banana and honey. i also drank coffee. while i was doing this i boiled 2 eggs. i ate the oatmeal, packed the eggs in a tupperware with some carrots and a pare. pair. paier. the fruit.
then i headed on a walk. the walking path was marked with yellow and red stripes to direct which way to follow. i have been at this place for 2 weeks now and this is the first time i really ventured out. i have been buisy. i noticed many eucalyptus trees. there is a factory that processes them for their ( a word that begins with a c) to make paper. they are planted by the company throughout the area which is not a very good thing. they are invasive trees with deep roots and they really hog the water from the other plants.
around here the houses are very very old. many made with stones. the not so old ones are made with clay blocks. the trail i was walking brought me through and abandoned village. michael and maobi had told me about this place. everyone that lived there was very old and died. there was one lady still living there until a short while ago she moved to an elderly peoples place. now there is no one at all. the houses are falling apart and nature is taking over, with many trees growing inside them. some of the houses still have things in them, like cooking supplies and clothes. it was a very eery place.
up the path a little more i sat and decided to meditate. it was the first time i tried meditating in a long, long time. but i was very nice. after the meitation i found some chocolate in my bag i didn't know i had.
then, more up the path there was a tree full of red balls. the outer skin was soft and pointed all over. i later found out the fruit was edible. so maybe ill go back and eat some.
i could see alot of the land surrounding the mountain from where i was. things are so much more green then they were when i first got to portugal. i set the camera to take a 10 second delayed picture of me while i was up there. it came out a little goofy. i didnt get too too lost on this adventure

okiedoke

about my last post with the 10 to 1 or the 3 to 1 ratio, i want you to know that one book i have on the subject says to use a 10 to 1 ratio and the other says a 3 to 1. when i get some time ill look more into it. but dont waste your pee even still.

all the bricks are now up. michael and i spent the whole day on it. tomarrow we will fill in the cracks with mortar then start on the wood work.

urine update!!!!

urine has lots of nitrogen and other beneficial goodness in it. the idea of it being flushed down the toilet and being chemically treated and messing with the lakes and all that terrible stuff is just ridiculous. if you want me to explain more email me and we will talk all about it. so. . . . . i set out some small buckets outside the house here to collect rain water. and now i pee in them. you shouldnt put the urine directly on the plant because its just too much nitrogen. i think the dilution ratio is 10 to 1 or 3 to 1. water to urine. thats why ive been peeing in the rain bucket.

try it at home!!!

caca

hahaha, i remember yesturday while we were standing at the site of the compsot project michael and his friend werner were talking and every few words was caca. i must say it is tough not knowing what people are talking about. i get the jist of it though. caca, i know i know i know. so, yesturday the foundation was poured down and today the entire first layer of bricks were set. also, this morning we went to a wood shop and took allot allot allot of there sawdust to use for the compost toilet. i spent a while sorting it into smaller bags so it will be easier to use. so now we have 5 pound bags of sawdust. very good. tomorrow most of the bricks should be up. maybe by friday we will start with the wood.
im getting sick of bread and cheese for lunch. i like it and all, its tasty , but i need a change. so i had them buy me some brown rice. so i make that in the mornings now and eat it at lunch. also, just so you know, because i bet you wonder. . . i have been eating oatmeal for breakfast the past few days.

hot nuts

this sunday there was a chestnut festival. on the way there we stopped to go see the biggest cork ouk tree in all of portugal. it was massive! they use cork oaks to make corks for wine and such. every ten years or so they harvest the bottom portion of bark from the cork oaks. they also make crafts and what not. cork oak. it might have been over 1000 years old.
then we got to the festival of the chestnuts. i bought a bag of hot nuts for 70 cents. it was a lot of nuts. very tasty. roasted chestnuts. they had wine there too, but you had to buy a cup for 1 50 and then each fill up was 50 cents. i shared with eik. i didnt drink much of it. i might have had 2 glasses. my head hurt pretty good for the rest of the night. cheap portuguese wine.

the compost toilet project is well underway now. the foundation has been laid out , and i few bricks have been put down. unfortunately i do not think it will be ready for the big party on saturday.

grandma

my grandma now knows how to get to my blog page

the straw bale house

eike is a neighbor of michael and maobi. he has a house made out of almost all natural material. the walls are made with straw bales. today i went over to his house and helped him put some plaster on the outside walls. the mix was calk, straw, water and sand i think. the work is harder than i thought it would be. the first layer is very important. you cant just spread it on, you kind of have to push it in there real good so it will hold. when that first layer dries after a day or 2 it will need to get 2 more coats. eike has spent the last 6 years working on the house. he has done pretty much the whole thing on his own. its a big , big house. eike is a real smart guy. he knows alot about natural building.
while working today i was thinking a lot about an idea i came with a little while ago of someday having my own land. i would like to build a yurt or a cabin or something, and have lots and lots of food crops and trees. i have been getting interested in the idea of food forests. i was thinking i could have a big week or how ever long work party type of thing. i would invite everyone i knew to come help out and i would post online. people could stay there for a week or so and work and i would give them food and such. and also they would learn how to work with cob, how to plant things, and all that stuff. a lot of people pay to learn that stuff, but im not interested in trying to get people to pay. it would be a good deal for the both of us.
some day i would really love to have some land to work on.

97 liters

michael just got back from the olive oil press. we ended up with 97 liters of oil. that's a lot

the start of a big project

before i came to michael and maobis place they had told me they wanted me to build them a compost toilet. i was thinking of building a small scale 3 to 4 person compost toilet which is just a small box, a bucket, some sawdust and what not. but they want a more intense compost toilet that can hold the poo of 20 people living there.
it will be set up like this . . . on the upper part there will be 2 sections so 2 people can be using the toilet at the same time. each section will have 2 toilets in them with one available to use while the other one is closed off. underneath there will be 4 sections, one closed off section under each of the the 4 toilets. when a section gets full it will be closed off and the other toilet that was locked down will be opened up and pooed in. by the time that section is filled up, the section that was first used will be somewhat broken down and hopefully ready to use in the garden. there is going to be a angled access door in the back which is south facing in hopes of generating some heat. i hope this works out well. im not sure if it will be safe to use directly on food crops but it should be ok on plants and trees and what not.
if you want to use your humanure on food crops it should be put into a compost bin where it can reach thermophilic temperatures which is 113 degrees. that will kill the parasites and what not.
we have a lot more planning to do. so far we put pegs around the perimeter and i started digging trenches for the foundation. yesterday i spent a lot of time ripping down a rock wall which i now realize didn't need to be taken down.

again with the olives

it is 1 30 in the morning. i just got in from finishing up with the olives. i have really been liking all this work. it feels good. this morning i got out of bed around 8. then around 9 30 we headed to the terrain and we picked olives until the sun came down and then picked some more. its was maybe 7 pm when we got back. then we ate a very delicious meal of mashed potatoes and mashed carrot with fried egg on top. then we drank some homemade wine from another one of michael and maobis friends. then a group of us put the bagged olives into a machine that took out all the leaves and stems. i had to stand there and shake up the olives when they were coming down the machine to put the leaves through the grate that then went into a bag.we all drank wine the whole time. lots and lots of wine. we now have 23 bags full. i would guess each bag ways at least 60 pounds. tomorrow morning we are going to the olive oil press place. i am excited to see how they make oil.
michelle doesnt like olives. i use to hate them. now i like how they taste. salty and what not. my feet stink.

many many olives

last night michaels friends from belgium came, and they brought 2 of there friends, a baby and a dog. today a group of us picked olives all day. we picked hundreds of pounds of olives. it was another beautiful day here. the sunset was great to see from the tops of the trees.
tomorrow we are going to pick the leaves out of the olive bags and play music while we do it. tonight after dinner we drank some of michaels friends homemade wine who lives down the street and grows the grapes himself. then we played music. maobi and i played hand drums and michael played piano. then maobi started playing the dijeridoo. i thought it sounded really good. they said i had some latino rhythm or something.
michael and maobi want to build a compost toilet down at the terrain. i am interested to see how it comes together. i am glad that i am here at this time and get to be part of the beginning of all of this. they are both smart and full of great ideas.right now i am planning on staying for 2 or 3 more weeks.

first day of work in portugal

on the way to the field we passed a donkey. michael. told me a funny story of how a neighbors donkey was running away and he chased after it for a while. eventually he caught it and figured he could just ride it back. when he was on, a dog started teasing the donkey which made the donkey run down the dog with michael still on it. the donkey was running high speed all through the town. when the donkey slowed down to take a turn michael was able to jump off.
michael and maobi live in a house that she got from her aunt. they bought 7 acres of land that isnt to far from the house. lots of olive trees. there are some caravns there that are available to sleep in. they have it set up real nice. attached to the caravan is a tarp and under the tarp a nice table to eat at and comfy chairs. we picked olives for maybe 6 hours. i liked being up in the tree. since ive been in europe ive climbed 3 fruit trees. i think 3.
its nice working with them and talking about our interests. they have been thinking of an intersting idea of having a small group of 10 or so people come to there place and all live together for a year and study permaculture and what not together. i think it is a great idea. they can all live and learn together and teach eachother and create right there on the land together.

i am now in portugal

not to long ago i left pierettes place in switzerland and went to see my brother in halle germany. it was nice to see him again. then i went to basel switzerland and hung out with tim. then i took a 10 pm flight to porto, portugal.
it was 11 30 when i got into porto. i asked a security guy where the light rail was and he gave me a rail pass and showed me to the train. what a nice guy!!! i had to take the train to campanha which is an hour or so from porto. then i was supposed to take the train to rodao, but the trains were not running that late. so i started walking around looking for a dry flat spot to sleep. after a little while i was sitting and i started talking with this lady and i asked her if i could stay at her place. she said she didnt have room. i believe her.i kept walking and i thought some guy was following me. i stopped and sat on a stoop. he came up to me and said something i didnt understand. i said no Portuguese. then i said. je me pelle dward, and then i shook his hand. he kept looking at my bag. then he left. soon after i came to a park with a few trees and such. it was somewhat well lighted and i didnt want to be seen sleeping with all my stuff with me. so i literally went and slept inside a bush. i big bush. not as big as you are thinking but big enough for me to crawl under it with my stuff. i put the tarp i had on the ground. i noticed it smelled like dog poo in there. gross. hahahahaha. it started to rain soon after so i took out my big trash bag and pulled it up to my waist. i slept for an hour or so then woke up a bit chilly so i went and found a new spot. a much better spot down some stairs that was dry and covered. no one could have seen me. i took out my sleeping bag and slept for another couple hours until it was time to go back to the train station.
3 hours later i was in rodao, portugal where michael picked me up. nice guy. we went to this bakery that uses a big old fashioned bread oven. then we went back to his place. so buautifull here. rolling hills and olive trees. old houses that look over a hundred years old. at the house i met his girlfriend maobi. very cool person. i like them both pretty good so far. i am excited to be working with them. i am going to help build them a compost pile and a compost toilet. tomarrow we will pick olives.