Tea of the Woods

Last weekend, we went to Seattle to speak at Gnomedex. We returned with a successful public speaking experience under our belt, lots of techy knowledge, awesome equally geeky friends, and…A COLD. It seems my body (being familiar with dirt germs) was a bit taken off-guard by concrete germs. But I’m not letting this cold get me down. Our neighbors, Jake and Melinda, gave me some tea that promises to get the sicky out of anyone. It’s made up of a ton of  local, wild herbs that they pick from their property, ours, and the bordering state land. I think they included everything...

Behold: Indoor Plumbing

That’s right, folks, we’ve got an integral part of our indoor plumbing installed and functioning! And what a beauty it is. A little drywall touch-up, bamboo trim, some caulking around the base of the toilet and a TP holder and it will look perfect. We purchased this Royal Monterey Dual Flush toilet from Overstock.com and installed it yesterday. The European-sized fittings caused a few extra trips to the hardware store. Aside from that-and Scott smashing his finger-the install went pretty smoothly. It’s one piece for easy cleaning and the seat and lid are soft close, so...

Bulb Bust

These CFL can light bulbs came out of the same package! One is bluish in color and the other is yellowish. They’re all supposed to look like the one on the right: warm. The bulbs are 2700k (kelvin), which is a measurement of color temperature. 2,700 to 3,000 Kelvin is supposed to match the warm light of a traditional incandescent bulb. Unfortunately, 90% of the 30 light bulbs we bought are the cold blue light you expect from an old CFL bulb. Pretty disappointing! We think Green technologies should hold themselves to the same standard of quality as all other products. Very often,...

Garden Update

The garden here at Moosicorn Ranch had a few things going against its odds of success: we are inexperienced gardeners, we chose to use the soil that was on site, and we had several late freezes. Although we had a couple casualties (bell peppers and watermelon), everything else seems to be thriving. The corn doesn’t seem to mind the fact that it doesn’t have enough room (lesson learned here: start seeds in individual containers so that the roots don’t get all tangled). Broccoli, basil and carrot are going strong and the raspberry plants we got from a friend (thanks, Anthony)...

Meanwhile, Outside

While inside the barnhouse there is a flurry of activity with drywall and the like, outside is where the real story is at (in my opinion). We’ve had some beautiful sunsets, encountered new wildflowers, met more of our winged and four-legged neighbors, and had some fun in the sun. The trail camera snapped a photo of this little cutie. Are those ears great or what?! And from our other game camera, a member of the Moosicorn Midnight Chorus: Among others, Pine Siskins and Red Crossbills visit our feeder: I had been eagerly awaiting the Marisposa Lilies’ arrival. I think they are...

August Construction Update

Where to begin with this update? First, I should mention the drywall disaster. I’ll be brief, because I think it deserves its own post! Instead of doing the drywall ourselves, we hired a contractor to make the process go faster and with skill. We thought the money was worth the time and mistakes we’d save. Unfortunately, the exact opposite occurred. It ended up being money out of our budget, four times as long as planned, full of mistakes, and it never actually got finished. The worst part of it all was that he lied to us. He asked for a draw to pay his laborers (which was not...

Summer Flowers

The diversity of flowers here is amazing! There are so many that I don’t ever get around to photographing them all and I’m sure I pass by many without ever noticing them. Often, I will lean in to view one flower and realize that there are three other types of tiny flowers around it. Trying to identify every flower found at Moosicorn Ranch is the most enjoyable challenge!  Here are a few of the latest summer blooms here at Moosicorn Ranch. To see them all, visit our Flickr page. Yellow Hawkweed (Hieracium caespitosum) Rosy Pussytoes (Antennaria microphylla) Spearleaf Stoncrop...

Septic Install in Pictures

We pondered over how to treat our waste for quite some time.  Originally we wanted to install a composting toilet then recycle our gray water for some useful purpose.  We ran into a couple of key problems with this scenario however.  1) We had very little use for the recycled gray water.  We couldn’t introduce it back into our supply lines, and it couldn’t be used to water our food crops.  (Recycled gray water is not permitted for watering organic veggies and such, it is great for landscaping, flowers and fruit trees though!) Since we don’t have any landscaping to water...

Solar Love!

Alexandra and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary a couple weeks back on June 23rd.  We’re not anniversary folks per se.  We struggle to remember the date and prefer random acts of romance over institutional ones.  But this year we BOTH decided to do something a little special for each other. I decided I was going to surprise my beautiful and talented wife by giving her the first component to our eventual solar panel system.  A gesture I knew she would appreciate and a functional starting point to one of our favorite aspects of the Moosicorn plans.  So, one day while running...

Moosicorn Vagabonds Turned Squatters

Construction of our home has been a journey. But perhaps more memorable than the building of our home has been our living situation(s). Even before moving to Moosicorn, we considered ourselves quite the couple of vagabonds. After selling our home in North Bend (finally) we put most of our belongings in storage and moved to a tiny 1 bedroom apartment in Mill Creek, then to a house in Bothell, another house in Lynnwood and finally, to Moosicorn Ranch near Spokane. That’s five different places in one year. We didn’t move because we wanted to, though. The apartment in Mill Creek was...

Consultant Campout Creativity

We are winding down on an absolutely beautiful Sunday afternoon here at Moosicorn (76* and sunny with just a slight breeze). The dry wallers called it a half day and all of our guests from the consultants camp out this weekend have headed home.  Sadie is plum tuckered from our exciting weekend full of company and walks about the property and is moving today for the sole purpose of adjusting nap locations. We’d would like to thank Alex Mann (landscape architect), Tosh Drake (architect), and Bob Gregson (farmer/author) for joining us yesterday.  These amazing individuals came up...

Insulation Is In!!!

A lot has happened since our last post… we’ve installed insulation, begun drywall and had both the ductless AC and radiant heat boiler installed.  Al has started working a full time job to help make ends meet and we’ve been invited to speak at Gnomedex!  Also I have been selected to judge a local green home building competition.  We’ve managed to plant our small test garden this week and received a few bids for the septic system as well.  We’re very excited to get drywall done and be onto the finish work as moving around the house/jobsite is a bit tight these...